2548. Alfred Domett to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 13, 271–275.
Nelson [New Zealand]
August 20th 1846
My dear Browning–
Thanks (many) for your two letters (Nov & March) which I got both together—more thanks for the book—which it would not be polite I suppose to say had not you written it yourself—and did it not therefore contain more of yourself than even the letters—which it is the highest merit of letters to do. I do not mean mine however, to be meritorious in that way—because myself and my environment & New Zealand must be an infinite bore to you as to anybody else. I will only allude to your allusions to me and so get done with that. The Examiner leaders in the first place, are not worth your praises—as no leaders could be worth much—being the most ephemeral of all ephemerals in their very nature—and these in particular being written right up against disgust and aversion & with the full benefit of haste. I have for a long time done with them & have only written about 4 since last January or February—which if you get the papers you may discover—or perhaps not—either way it does not matter– I did them at first because I had nothing else to do—for the money for them—little even of which little money I got—so that necessity for writing being removed I “whistled them down the wind.” [1] The paper is going to the devil—and I suppose will arrive there in a few weeks more.
About the Council and my refusal [2] —you make too much of the affair apparently. I have a great respect & admiration for John Lilburne—but “jawing” is not my forte at all– I have not the “Gift of the gab.” Even had it been—I should not have stirred but in some cause than [sic, for that] more deeply interested me. This is bad philosophy I know—and “valetism”—but so it was. But one thing is certain—Fitzroy would not have accepted their nomination of me—you know the proposal was only that the public should propose a member to him whom if he approved of him he would nominate. Sinclair (an attorney here called Govnt representative) on the occasion alluded to, let the settlers know as much as that he would have withheld the seat from me had I been chosen. They persisted nevertheless—but I knew at all events I could do Fitzroy more harm by writing those “leaders” and by refusing the seat altogether. And the general impression here was the same. The other day Grey made me the offer of a seat in the Council—a man whom I should be happy to work under—if I could—for I think there is something of the hero in him. I refused—though declaring (as he asked me) that I had none of the same objection I had to sitting there with Fitzroy——solely on account of the expense. Afterwards I thought it a foolish proceeding not to risk the money for it—and so caused him to know. The Wellington would-be’s I believe blame me greatly for consenting to sit—the idiots! because “representative govt” is not given them. As if the whole thing could be changed in a moment—and as if security for life & property (which really did not exist before) were not the first thing to be attained—and the man who reasonably might be expected to confer it, were not meanwhile to be supported! There are many other reasons in favor of my view which I wont bore you with. The thing is a trifle. And I say openly that I go for my own purposes—which, as I know the public affairs will not be injured by my going—I consider I have a right to consider. Debating & councilling or whatever you call the taking part in “national” or colonial or local “palaver”—I hate from my Soul. That seems all I need say of myself, at least exclusively.
Your Lyrics have delighted me. I congratulate you on having at last succeeded in throwing off all obscurity. Had you always written as clearly, how “famous” would you have been long ago! You deserve Landor’s praise—though, according to form, you are obliged to affect & disclaim it in your letter. Your own praise of his sonnet looks a little like sarcasm—the application of “hale” to Chaucer being the greatest triumph of original genius you can discover in it. I like the kindness of the old fellow in writing it more than the writing. Why should he go imitating the worn out old sonnet cadence? (“& then dying proudly” [3] as Keat[s] says & all that cant). He was too lazy I see to accomplish the rhymes so gives us a sonnet in blank verse. But it does well enough and will silence the tongues of some of the stupid who could not find the merits they will now take on trust. I like best about it, your Father’s having had it printed—do you remember (I do) when he would not “believe in you” unlike Kadejah in Mahomet. So you have converted him! [4]
The best things in this book are the Italian day (Sorrento plain) which gives me more of Italy than a hundred tourist[’]s octavoes—the Confessional ballad—the Spanish-flower love-verses– Italy in England & Theocrite & the Lost Leader & Saul. These are all admirable. The Ride is spirited & graphic—that little bit off Spain “Nobly Cape St Vincent”—capital– The rest I dont care so much for. St Praxed’s is perhaps a little strained. The Duchess is not so good as the rest—though you have made the English language show rhyming facilities in it equal to the Italian’s in Redi’s Bacco in Toscana [5] —& distanced that amicable creature Ingoldsby even in his one excellence rhyming, beyond all measurement. Altogether the book is first rate and easily places you above all living poets—though to be sure there is only Tennyson worth reading besides. While talking of your old complaint (not headache but obscurity) which you have herein got so happily rid of—I will say that I have only come upon 3 passages or rather lines in the whole book in which I found a glimpse (can you have a glimpse of obscurity) of it– They being so few—I shall mention them—though it is of the mousing style of criticism. The first then is “All the plain saw me gather, I garland”—a fiend of a line for ambiguity! [6] “All the people of the plain saw me gather” what?—“I garland!”—what is gathering “I garland”?—every body sticks at that line—so plain though it be when found out– Who would think of “garland” being a verb? Not I, till half a dozen readings of the poem; & of a “which” being understood between all & Plain! You should alter this. It is a capital specimen of the cause of obscurity—carelessness or cram[m]ing too much into a given space.– The second stumbling block is in Theocrite—“Oer his work his boy’s curls fell” [7] I thought & others that it was Theocrite’s boy, and that the worthy workman was the “happy father thereof”– Had you written “the” boys curl’s—or “his boy-curls” making boy an adjective—that bog would have been avoided. The third, I see is not worth mentioning—but the thing is so excellent otherwise that one regrets the blemish. In “Lost Leader” you say “Best fight on bravely”—it does not appear at first who had best fight on bravely—the renegade or the lamenters of his apostasy who speak or sing. [8] “Such trifles! you say”—but in such trifles exactly is it that the difference between obscurity & perspicuity in writing consists. Enough of all that– These are the only 3 lines I have found to object to and because they are so few I have mentioned them. Your beautiful Saul & Abner is worthy of David himself– Where is Part the second. [9] It will be classed with Schiller’s Song of the Bell (though I prefer yours) or Homer[’]s shield-description. I wish some Retz[s]ch [10] would illustrate it—but all that will come.
Meanwhile as I say in a letter by this mail to Arnould, you knock one down into self[-]disgust that one cannot do something too one self! But we cannot all go to Corinth—so we come to New Zealand—which is next door to going to the Devil.
How I like that Fortú Fortú my loved one! [11] not the girl but the poem!– “The mountains & their infinite movement” [12] —is what I see now as I walked across the Apennines going to Florence—and how a distant blue top seems ever and anon holding its breath, as if it were, in hopes of escaping your attention & crouching down behind the others unconscious of just its scalp being uncovered & overtopping them– You have revived the thing in my memory—and that of how many others! I almost wish you were confined to Dramatic Lyrics! What good effect too might you make them have—as you do in Ancien Regime (a nut for young England) in the Confessional (a sugar plum for the Puseyites[)]. Show the folly of a thousand modern whimwhams by vivid pictures of the evil of them in former days—and you do the good in the most effective because least suspected fashion– You may stick them together too in dramatic contrast—and how ma<ny> wider bits of wisdom come out of them. You have done this occasionally—but “more of it—oh more of it” as Phene or Pippa which was it says. [13] That Puseyism—for Gods sake give it some graphic digs in the wind like your Confessional from time to time. Then while keeping the character of universalism, you may be striking at the evils of the time with as much effect as the most ephemeral of latinists could.
What evil I return for good! My scrawl is becoming almost illegible to myself I see– How unlike your great thick perpendicular blackletter, which I could read across a New Zealand swamp—almost (so clear is our atmosphere) across a New Zealand Bay!
I thank you heartily for your kindness in giving my Father whatever news you get of me—and me of him.–
I hope you are paying attention to your health and head. Do not be beaten when winning the world—by foolishly overworking yourself.
Give my kind remembrances to your family. Write when you have nothing better to do—or not so—because that would be never—but whenever the spirit may move you to—and that it often may is the prayer
Of your sincere friend
Alfred Domett
Address: Robert Browning Esqre / Hatcham / Surrey / England.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Alexander Turnbull Library.
1. Cf. “partem volucris dispersit in auras” (Vergil, Æneid, XI, 795).
2. A reference to RB’s comments in letter 2109 (see note 9).
3. Keats, “To Charles Cowden Clarke,” line 61 (Poems, 1817).
4. Kadejah (or Khadija) was the prophet Mohammed’s wife, and, according to most sources, his first convert. While Maynard suggests that RB’s father’s “enthusiasm waned for a period” after the publication of Sordello, he notes that his “sympathy and support seem never to have dried up” (p.38).
5. Francesco Redi’s Bacco in Toscana (1685), translated by Leigh Hunt, is an energetic dithyrambic poem; and The Ingoldsby Legends (1840) by Richard Barham is known for its unique rhythm and rhyme. Domett’s comments on RB’s “rhyming facilities” in “The Flight of the Duchess” is particularly interesting in light of EBB’s comments in letter 2095, in which she said “the rhythm of that ‘Duchess’ does more & more strike me as a new thing; something like (if like anything) what the Greeks called pedestrian metre,—between metre & prose .. the difficult rhymes combining too quite curiously with the easy looseness of the general measure.”
6. “England in Italy,” line 11. The editors of the Oxford edition of RB’s Works note that RB “revised [this line] in 1849, but in 1863 reverted to his original reading” (The Poetical Works of Robert Browning, ed. Ian Jack et al., Oxford, 1983–, 4, 41).
7. “The Boy and the Angel,” line 6, which RB altered in subsequent editions of his works to read: “O’er his work the boy’s curls fell.”
8. The line actually reads: “Best fight on well” (“The Lost Leader,” line 29), and there is no evidence that RB ever altered the line. The editors of the Oxford edition of RB’s Works state that “the meaning is no doubt that ‘The Lost Leader’ had ‘Best fight on well’.” (Works, 4, 57).
9. The completed version of “Saul” was published in Men and Women in 1855.
10. Maritz Retzsch (1779–1857), painter and engraver, furnished illustrations for Schiller, Goethe and others. Schiller’s Das Lied von der Glocke was first published in the Musenalmanach for 1800. “Homer[’s] shield description” is a reference to the Iliad, XVIII, lines 478–617. According to EBB in letter 2134, Kenyon said “that it [“Saul”] reminded him of Homer’s shield of Achilles, thrown into lyrical whirl & life.” Kenyon also expressed this opinion to Mrs. Jameson; see SD1245 and SD1247 in vol. 12.
11. “England in Italy,” line 1.
12. “England in Italy,” line 181.
13. The line is Pippa’s in Pippa Passes, “Introduction,” 160.
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