2267. EBB to Anne Thomson
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 12, 169–172.
50 Wimpole Street
Monday– [23 March 1846] [1]
My dear Miss Thomson
Believe of me that it can only give me pleasure when you are affectionate enough to treat me as a friend—& for the rest nobody need apologize for taking another into the vineyards, least Miss Bayley & yourself to me. At the first thought I felt sure that there must be a great deal about vines in these Greeks of ours, & am surprised, I confess, in turning from one to another, to find how few passages of length are quotable—& how the images drop down into a line or two. Do you know the passage in the 7th Odyssey where there is a vineyard in different stages of ripeness, of which Pope has made the most, [2] so I tore up what I began to write & leave you to him. It is in Alcinous’s gardens, & between the first & second hundred lines of the book. The one from the Iliad, open to Miss Bayley’s objection, is yet too beautiful & appropriate, I fancy, for you to throw over. Curious it is, that my first recollection went from that shield of Achilles to Hesiod’s shield of Hercules from which I send you a version … leaving out of it what dear Miss Bayley would object to on a like ground with the other—
Some gathered grapes, with reaphooks in their hands,—
While others bore off from the gathering bands
Whole baskets-full of bunches, black & white,
From those great ridges heaped up into sight
With vine-leaves and their curling tendrils. So
They bore the baskets....…
........ Yes! and all were saying
Their jests, while each went staggering in a row
Beneath his grape-load to the piper’s playing.
The grapes were purple-ripe– And here, in fine,
Men trod them out, and there they drained the wine. [3]
In the ‘Works & Days’ Hesiod says again, what is not worth your listening to perhaps ..
And when that Sirius & Orion come
To middle Heaven, and when Aurora .. she
O’ the rosy fingers … looks enquiringly
Full on Arcturus, .. straightway gather home
The general vintage. And, I charge you, see
All, in the sun & open air, outlaid
Ten days & nights, and five days in the shade.
The sixth day, pour in vases the fine juice ..
The gift of Bacchus who gives joys for use– [4]
Anacreon talks to the point so well that you must forgive him, I think, for being Anacreontic, & take from his hands what is not defiled. The translation you send me, does not “smell of Anacreon” nor please me– When did you get it? Would this be at all fresher?
Grapes that wear a purple skin,
Men & maidens carry in
Brimming baskets on their shoulders,
Which they topple one by one
Down the wine press. Men are holders
Of the place there, and alone
Tread the grapes out, crush them down,
Letting loose the soul of wine ..
Praising Bacchus as divine
With the loud songs called his own! [5]
You are aware of the dresser of the vine in Homer’s Hymn to Mercury translated so exquisitely by Shelley—and of a very beautiful single figure in Theocritus besides– Neither probably would suit your purpose. In the ‘Pax’ of Aristophanes there is an idle ‘Chorus’ who talks of looking at the vines & watching the grapes ripen & eating them at last—but there is nothing of vineyard work in it, so I dismiss the whole. [6]
For Hector & Andromache, would you like me to try to do it for you? It would amuse me, & you should not be bound to do more with what I send you than to throw it into the fire if it did not meet your wishes precisely. The same observation applies, remember, to this little sheet, which I have kept .. delayed sending .. just because I wanted to let you have a trial of my strength on Andromache in the same envelope—but the truth is that it is not begun yet .. partly through other occupation & partly through the lassitude which the cold wind of the last few days always brings down on me. Yesterday I made an effort, & felt like a broken stick .. not even a bent one! So wait for a warm day (& what a season we have had!– I have been walking up & down stairs [7] and pretending to be quite well—) and I will promise to do my best—and certainly an inferior hand may get nearer to touch the great Greek lion’s mane than Pope’s did.
Will you give my love to dear Miss Bayley? She shall hear from me—and you shall, in a day or two. And do not mind Mr Kenyon. He ‘roars as softly as a sucking dove’ [8] —nevertheless he is an intolerant monster, as I half told him the other day.
Believe me dear Miss Thomson
Affectionately yours,
EBB
Publication: LEBB, I, 261–264 (as [1845]).
Manuscript: Boston Public Library.
1. Dated by EBB’s reference in letter 2271 to attempting a translation of the “Hector & Andromache scene from the Illiad” for Miss Thomson.
2. In his translation of The Odyssey, VII, 158–166. For an account of EBB’s involvement in making translations for Miss Thomson’s “Classical Album,” see vol. 10, p. 397.
3. Hesiod, The Shield of Heracles, 293–301.
4. Hesiod, Works and Days, 609–617.
5. Anacreontea, “Ode LIX,” “A Vintage-Song,” lines 1–10.
6. Cf. Aristophanes, The Peace, lines 1158–71. Shelley’s translation of Homer’s “Hymn to Mercury” appeared in 1824; EBB refers to lines 108–117. The “single figure in Theocritus” is perhaps the scene in Idylls, I, 45–56.
7. The remainder of the original letter is missing; what appears is from a transcript in the Boston Public Library.
8. Cf. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I, 2, 82–83.
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