1949. EBB to Thomas Westwood
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 273–274.
50 Wimpole Street.
June 21. 1845.
My dear Mr Westwood,
If you have been saying paternosters backward over me to turn me to confusion, … seeing that I have seemed to deserve all manner of retribution, I cannot be surprised at it. Certainly I shd have answered your letter long & long ago. The appearance must have been as if I had no interest in your verses or in your plans—& yet indeed the interest was in me, & is in me—only I have been crossed by various influences lately which have troubled (yet not painfully I thank God) the standing water of my daily habits. Otherwise I shd have written long & long ago, & after hoping that you were free from the anxiety you referred to (& earnestly I do hope that you are quite free—& that all the fear of mourning is turned to the certainty of joy) I shd have gone on to speak of your verses in the Athenæum, [1] which without liking as well as the preceding ones I liked much, … & still & still on, to the Athenæum critical scheme, & the best means of succeeding in it. But you see .. I have been silent instead! and it is only now that like the Arabian fish, I am “in my duty” .. leaping on the live coals. [2] Well, but I did indeed like the verses– They were high in the sentiment of them, & true in the significance—those, I mean, on the “poet,” which you published: & I liked too the stanzas you sent me——though neither one nor the other can be considered comparable in vigour, to the Leaf [3] I praised of old. And now for the critical matter.
It will certainly be well that you shd try your hand in the way suggested—only I do not at all doubt your ability to do such work as will be required in the Athenæum. Also I do not doubt that the workers there will be glad of your assistance. I thought once of saying to you that if I could do anything ...... but I believe that you will meet with no difficulty, & that if upon any work which may appear, you write a notice, a sheet or a sheet & a half or so in length, & send it to the editor, Mr Dilke, addressing a note to him with a proposition of continuing to send him such m∙s. on his ordinary terms, .. you will find no difficulty in your path. Still if it wd be a relief to your fancy in any way to mention my name to Mr Dilke as your friend, you are (I hope I need not say) at absolute liberty to mention it to him:—only understanding that I pretend to no sort of influence with him directly or indirectly, & that I shd be unwilling to have him imagine me capable of presuming on the mere courtesies to which my intercourse with him has been confined. He knows me much as he knows you, .. & if a little more in degree, it is the sole advantage I have. Therefore you will do just as you like in this matter—& use me or leave me as your fancy of the moment may please to act.
Tennyson, I have no personal knowledge of—but those who have, (& influence besides) might wisely act in it as you suggest. I quite take your view in the meanwhile, & comparative estimate of the two poets,—viz .. himself & the author of the Bells & Pomegranates, Sphinxine or not, the latter has the spirit of the oracles in him, & will do greater things than the world can yet guess. I heard a personal friend say of him the other day—“He is worthy to be a poet; for he is one in life & heart.” [4] In the divinest songs, it is the poem of the life (of the individual though inner life) which goes expanding outwardly. And so, farewell—& let me hear of you, dear Mr Westwood.
Faithfully your friend
E B Barrett.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: British Library.
1. Westwood’s poems: “The North Wind: A Fragment of Diablerie” and “The Poet and His Vocation” had appeared in The Athenæum (17 and 31 May 1845, no. 916, p. 488, and no. 918, p. 542, respectively).
2. The allusion is to the “Story of the Fisherman,” in “The Nineteenth Night” from The Arabian Nights, in which the sultan’s cook is frying the fish; when she thinks they are cooked, the kitchen wall opens, and a beautiful lady appears and asks the fish: ‘Fish, fish, are you in your duty?’” (The Arabian Nights, 1811, trans. Jonathan Scott, vol. 1, p. 107).
3. Collected in Westwood’s Beads from a Rosary (1843), a copy of which he presented to EBB (see letter 1503).
4. Writing to RB on 5 November 1845, EBB said: “Did I ever tell you what he [Kenyon] said of you once—‘that you deserved to be a poet—being one in your heart & life’: he said that of you to me, & I thought it a noble encomium & deserving its application.”
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