1864. EBB to Thomas Westwood
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 124–125.
50 Wimpole Street.
[ca. 13] March. 1845. [1]
My dear Mr Westwood, for your kindness I must thank you then, in a full condition of abstraction, if not for the ‘articled’ kindness [2] —and so I do, most heartily. For the rest, be sure that I never thought of assuming the probability of your passing into the ranks of my critics: it is enough that you are among those of my friends. And besides, if you & I both had the wish—you, in generosity, & I, in ambition, .. yet there are certain difficulties in the way of the critic unprofessional, as I know of experience. Our most sweet voices are scarcely admissable among the most sour ones of the regular brotherhood. Oh, no. What led me to ask you such a question, was the coincidence of the remark in your letter with the review in the Metropolitan,—founded upon the previous feeling in my mind that nobody who was not a sort of personal friend, could have written such heaps of laudation as are observable in the said review. But in any case, you are not the friend—and I do not know where to go to look for him .. I am quite at a loss. Surely you admit that the praise is flagrant. I have worn a double veil ever since. And to speak generally, & in the very face of your fastidiousness, I am of opinion that the critics have done by me & my book most generously, & that no poet under sun (at this hour of noon) has so little reason as I, to complain of the race. Why Tennyson with all his claims, has had less frequent critical notices,—& with applausive modifications all through– For if they talk loudly of my faults, .. in Blackwood & the Dublin review for instance, [3] .. still the admissions are great,—and I feel that it would be very ungrateful of me to refuse to be satisfied. So I am satisfied—& grateful besides—and now I am full of intention & asperation towards better & more deserving deeds on my own part. If the long current of east wind does not breathe me away into the cold of Hades, I shall be doing something soon, even if .. “what it be yet, I know not–” [4]
In the meantime it is very pleasant for me to know that you are well—& the pleasanter, as I had been carrying about with me an uncomfortable fear, which, like a pin put in awry, pricked me whenever I turned your way. Also, if you are well in this weather, you must be well essentially—and I exult for you. And Harriet Martineau is quite well also—“trudging for miles together in the snow,” [5] when the snow was, & in great spirits. Wordsworth is to be in London in the spring. Tennyson is dancing the polka & smoking cloud upon cloud at Cheltenham. [6] Robert Browning is meditating a new poem, & an excursion on the continent. Mr Horne is recovering from a dislocation of the shoulder, from a skaiting-fall on the Elbe. Miss Mitford came to spend a day with me some ten days ago,—sprinkled, as to the soul, with meadow-dews– Am I at the end of my account?– I think so– Flush is growing fat, .. which crowns it–
Do you read Blackwood? & in that case, have you had deep delight in an exquisite paper by the Opium-eater, which my heart trembled through from end to end? What a poet that man is! how he vivifies words, & deepens them, & gives them profound significance– Well, then—there is Christopher on the critics excellent—only I do not think with him always– But those two articles are enough to bear one Blackwood number afloat triumphantly—are they not? [7] I understand that poor Hood is supposed to be dying .. really dying .. at last. Sydney Smith’s last laugh mixes with his .. or nearly so. But Hood has a deeper heart, in one sense, that [sic] Sydney Smith,—& is the material of a greater man. [8]
And what are you doing? writing?—reading? or musing of either?
Are you a reverie-man .. in opposition to the thinker? Once, Reverie-ing was my besetting sin,—but now, it is only my frailty. Now, that I lie here at the mercy of every reverie, I save myself, by an instinct of self-preservation, from that ‘gnawing tooth,’ (as Homer & Æschylus did arightly call it,) & spring forward into definite work, & thought– Else I should perish. Do you understand that? If you are a reverie-man you will—and if not, you must set it down among those mysteries of mine, which people talk of as profound.
May God bless you.
I remain very faithfully yours
Elizabeth B Barrett.
Publication: LEBB, I, 161–162 (in part, as 31 December 1843).
Manuscript: British Library.
1. Dated by Miss Mitford’s visit “ten days ago,” 3 March.
3. For the text of the review in The Dublin University Magazine, see pp. 364–371; and for the text of the review in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, see vol. 9, pp. 350–363.
4. Cf. II Esdras 4:46.
6. See letters 1924 and 1930 where EBB provides a similar description of Tennyson.
7. “No. II. Dryden and Pope” of the series “North’s Specimens of the British Critics” appeared in the March 1845 issue of Blackwood’s (pp. 369–400); see letter 1843, note 7. De Quincey’s “Suspiria de Profundis: Being a Sequel to the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater” also appeared in the March issue (pp. 269–285).
8. Hood was seriously ill; he died on 3 May 1845 at age 47. Smith had died on 22 February 1845.
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