3192. RB to Edward Chapman
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 64–65.
Florence,
April 15. ’53.
Dear Mr Chapman,
Thanks for the note just received. The First volume was duly dispatched hence on the day you wrote it—the 6th &, I wish, may only just have reached you—for, see—I enclose a new beginning to the first poem in it, the “Drama of Exile,” [1] which my wife is very anxious should be substituted for the present one—or, rather, it is an insertion, not a substitution. Will you have the goodness to see that the Printers don’t stumble in such a ticklish place? They have simply to print this page of copy as the beginning of the poem—title and all [2] —and when they get to the end of the copy, to go on to corresponding line in the printed book–
I also enclose a word of postscript to follow the advertisement—for the alterations & corrections were so considerable that some notice of them is no more than proper. [3] Both our thanks for all the trouble you will take, & believe me, my dear Sir,
Yours very faithfully,
R Browning
I shall ruin you in postage—but they say the unpaid letters go the safelier.
Publication: NL, pp. 62–63.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. Lines 1–28, a monologue by Lucifer, first published in Poems (1853).
2. This included a reworking of the first scene setting in “A Drama of Exile,” as published in Poems (1850), where EBB describes “The outer side of the gate of Eden shut fast with clouds, from the depth of which revolves the sword of fire self-moved. A watch of innumerable angels, rank above rank, slopes up from around it to the zenith; and the glare, cast from their brightness and from the sword, extends many miles into the wilderness. Adam and Eve are seen in the distance, flying along the glare.” In Poems (1853), EBB moves the clause “A watch … the zenith” to the beginning of the Lucifer-Gabriel dialogue. The clause “and the glare … the wilderness” was deleted.
___________________
