2859. EBB to Thomas Westwood
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 134–136.
Florence.
June 13th [1850] [1]
My dear Mr Westwood,
Your letter came like a reproach to me—but I was not in the least inclined to reproach you for ‘denying yourself’ & writing another book. At poet’s perjuries, Jove laughs, [2] as at others,—& nobody weeps .. there’s the advantage! Thank you much for proposing to give us a copy. [3] Addressed to the care of Miss Browning, New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey, we shall receive it in time & by the aid of opportunities, & I earnestly wish for it all the good fortune that can befall good books, meanwhile. If I should be slow in getting it & writing to you about it, try to understand that we live at the end of the world & have to wait for everything—have waited in vain up to this moment for my husband’s new poem, which has been published upwards of two months, &, a printed page of which, we have not cast eyes upon yet. And now to answer your question. I should be heartily glad to do so satisfactorily—saying which, I sigh .. for we have no power to give the sort of help you seem to think possible. We have never, either of us, used the least personal influence to push our own books, & we are out of the way of doing it now, more than ever. Judge by the Athenæum!– The sub-editor of that paper is a valued & deservedly valued friend of ours [4] —yet he could not hinder the appearance of the malignant article you know, though it was absolutely antipathetical to his own opinion. So, we heard, through a common acquaintance. In respect to persons connected with the Examiner, I must repeat that we have no power. The least failure of delicacy in commending books to critics, leads to a prejudice against, rather than for,—and it is not possible, observe, to drop the name of a book in conversation, when the Alps are between us & our gossips. At the same time I may promise you that if an occasion of doing good to your book shd present itself, it will be neglected by neither of us. We have given away no copies of our’s—the publishers being in full possession of the risk & the rest, .. which precludes the author’s pleasure of making gifts to her friends. My new edition has been in the press much too long, & when it will be out, I have no more idea of than you can have. The printers are living, I suppose, upon lotoses. Another poem of Tennyson’s, ‘In Memoriam’ is at hand, it appears. [5] He had kept it by him for years, because it related to the loss of a beloved friend of his, a son of Hallam’s, & he was loth to break on the silence of a freshly closed grave. I dare say it will be full of exquisite beauty & pathos .. but we shall have to wait for that as for other things. New books, to us in Florence, mean .. books three years old. They are rococo with you, when we catch them up. In spite of which, we love Florence. If you were to see how the golden sun mixes with the golden Arno in the evenings, light & water running together under the marble bridges, you would not wonder that we love Florence. It is very beautiful. Our little boy runs about, singing to himself, & looking like a fairy—first cousin to Puck. I wanted much to take him home to show him this year, but I dare say we shall not be able after all to manage it, though we are giving too much time to our English friends to forget us, & I seem to feel “the daisies growing over me” [6] already, as poor Keats did—moral daisies, in a figure. One may well expect to be forgotten after a nearly four years absence, in this world, except in cases of supernatural kindness.
You seem to like Brussels, and I have heard from others that it is an agreeable place of residence. The truth is that social life is a lighter thing, more easy to carry on the continent than in England. You have had ‘a long & dreary winter’. So have we, though this is Italy. It has been an exceptionally severe winter everywhere, as well as in the north, & perhaps the comet has had something to do with it, freezing us at a distance before it burns us near.
Yes, I have had two letters from you—more is my shame! At least I have the virtue to thank you now for both of them .. and with my husband’s regards & best wishes, I remain
dear Mr Westwood, most faithfully yours
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. Year provided by EBB’s reference to In Memoriam.
2. Cf. Romeo and Juliet, II, 2, 92–93.
3. The Burden of the Bell, and Other Lyrics, which was published in August 1850.
4. A reference to Henry Fothergill Chorley.
5. Tennyson’s poem, written in memory of his closest friend Arthur Henry Hallam (1811–33), son of historian Henry Hallam (1777–1859), was published on 1 June 1850. Tennyson had worked at it intermittently for seventeen years.
6. Cf. the remark attributed to John Keats shortly before his death, as told by Joseph Severn in a letter to John Taylor and recorded in Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats (1848), ed. Richard Monckton Milnes, II, 98. For the complete text of the letter from Severn to Taylor (6 March 1821), see The Keats Circle: Letters and Papers, 1816–1878, ed. Hyder Edward Rollins (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), I, 224.
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