1860. EBB to George Goodin Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 115–116.
[London]
Saturday. March 9 [sic, for 8]. 1845 [1]
My Dearest Georgie,
Thanks upon thanks to you for letting me know so soon of your vision in the fender of Alfred Tennyson. I envied you notwithstanding the tobacco smoke– Such things may be, overcoming as with a summer-cloud,—while the recollection would remain as an essential good—and that, I envy you– Still, you might have been more particular in your chronicle & told me a little of what he said. That he shd say nothing of me, I do assure you neither surprised nor vexed me—though if he had said anything of me, I shd have been surprised & pleased. It was more natural that he shd say nothing of me——and I have sense enough to think so. But was a word said of poetry at all? of his own? Do answer this question.
I waive the dirty shirt. It was by way of lyrical transition into the society of lawyers with dirty consciences. Dont imagine that in my idea of him, he wears a dirty shirt. It is just the contrary.
Henrietta & three of our males dined with the Peytons yesterday, & found them beginning a sigh for Barton Court: & this really does not appear to me according to the instinct of an intelligent animal. At their ages too,—with life just beginning—& shutting down all the doors & windows to the entrance of new ideas & images!! It may be innocence—but it is not wisdom. For the rest, they talk of returning this day week, next saturday.
Have Mr & Mrs Martin gone? Probably they have—for I have heard nothing of them since you went.
Dearest George, I think of you much, & wish earnestly that you were back again with a heavy purse, & a sprig of laurel jutting past the left ear. If you are magnanimous you will write to me again soon. Mr Kenyon wrote to Mr Browning to enquire respecting the authorship of the review in the Metropolitan, & received of course an assurance that it was not by his hand. [2] It is wonderful to me how anybody could fancy such a thing in the course of a flash of lightening. And then Mrs Coleridge (Sara, the poet’s daughter) has written to Mr Kenyon a letter he sent me [3] —& among other things in it, she says that people who do not like Barrettisms, prefer the dialogue part between Adam & Eve in the drama of Exile, and the sonnets, to anything else in my two volumes. Which I can believe,—& partially see the reasons of. Not that they are the best, because the preferred–
You shall hear from me soon again. It is much warmer today—much.
May God bless you, dearest George!
Your ever attached
Ba–
Papa’s love with the enclosures– After you have acknowledged (n.b) these halves, [4] you are to have the others. So be a good boy & write.
Address: George Goodin Moulton-Barrett Esqre. / Barrister at Law / Oxford Circuit.
Publication: B-GB, pp. 129–131.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. 9 March 1845 was a Sunday.
2. EBB had asked Westwood if he wrote the review (see letter 1855).
3. We have been unable to trace this letter, but for other comments by Sara Coleridge about EBB’s poetry, see SD1199, as well as SD1225 for another letter from Sara Coleridge.
4. Possibly currency or securities, the balance of which might have been the ‘restored fragments’ sent in letter 1863.
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