3269. William Allingham to EBB & RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 296–301.
quasi Ballyshannon, Ireland,
24 Sept. ’53
My dear Mr & Mrs Browning
I could never tell you, if I tried, how happy your letter made me. I know the happiness will not wither from this moment, yet while thinking every day “I have had a letter from Florence—I may send a letter to Florence—today if I choose”, it prolonged the first sensation, & kept me from being eager to make a new date. Here is part of what I said or sung to myself at the time—(the day happened, for one, to be fine)—
What brings the daily lottery of the Post? [1]
A prize indeed!
From Florence. Now, how to enjoy it most?
Yes, take it out to read
In the sloped garden, where through warp of leaves
A rippled azure weft the river weaves,
And through the chirrupping of every bird
A murmur wide, at will forgot or heard.
Not in the summer-house; the morning light,
Rebuked by crowded hop, asserts its right
Of shining full upon the open letter.
This square stone is better,
Under the south-looking wall,
Between a rubied currant-bush,
Caging the sun at heart of every flush,
And a verbenum* [2] whose spicy scent
Pitches an Arab tent
There
In the desert air,
For the pink & rose city afar is set,
With every lavender minaret,
And the Lily of the Valley sweet,
At my feet,
Is out of bloom,—
Though Spring little gives and Summer bereaves
Since a pure white thought finds room
All the days in the dark leaves.
Open & read & smile,
And muse, looking out on the blue & white sky,
With a happy sigh.
And blessings on her whoeer she be
That all the while,
Unseen of me,
Sings from far water-shore some kind old song
Doing the reverie no wrong.
Thus hums in your ear in Italy an echo of the Ballyshannon girl’s song, self-forgotten two months ago. I squeezed a ripe red currant for memorandum on your letter. Since then the remaining bunches have shrivelled, or deepened into a gloomy red,—for the children neglect them, both while the gooseberries are going out (this was a great gooseberry year) and the apples are coming in: and the common Roses are buried in clay and the wealthy mummied in porcelain sarcophaguses; scarce any left but the “Monthly”, [3] most delicious, I think, of all.
Unless I go on to give you news of Mignonetti & Carnations & Heliotropes, I have of mutual friends nothing to say, not having visited in England since I left you in London—since I thought of you through a moonlight night last year from Euston Square towards Holyhead, until I fell asleep, finding second class boards very hard,—and having had scarcely any letters, except from Mr Landor. He has been making his round of summer visits, & is now at either Warwick, or Archdeacon Hare’s, Lewes, as hearty as ever, & impetuous as few men are at 20. [4] A noble man I believe him. Another such is lately dead, General Sir Charles Napier, a soldier one must love. [5]
Mrs Browning wishes for “incredible news”. [6] Well, it is discovered (vide the Eclectic (I think) Review) that Scott did not write the Waverly Novels. [7] Note, the evidence is just like what Mrs Crowe and other philophantomists (no offence!) deal in. “The writer of this article recd the following narrative from the lips of a lady of rank, who for some weeks last summer was residing at the house of a wellknown & highly respected clergyman in the west of Scotland[.]” The substance is that years before a gentleman unknown had applied to the highly respected clergyman (who I suppose was less highly respected at that time) for lodgings—was recd (the terms are not mentioned)—secluded himself—is by accident discovered seated amid mountains of ms—takes the clergyman into confidence—mss are sent to Mr Scott of Edinburgh, who prepares them, in succession, for the press, &c &c—Secrecy no longer necessary—&c &c &c—I am willing, more than willing, to be a believer in “manifestations”, but can only be sure of this, that I have myself found nothing in evidence of them, & of this, that most of the true-narrative tellers deserve—not respect, nor toleration. They do serious wrong.
There is in this place a marvel relating to drownings, wh was talked of recently, though I could not trace it to any one who call’d himself a witness. The recent occasion was this, a man & a boy were fishing on the sea-rocks, the boy striving to cross a chasm, fell in, the man leaped in to save him, they grappled & both were lost. [8] On the night before (said the people then) a great human multitude of old & young had been seen, or at least heard, passing along the road on which these two lived—coming from the sea & again returning towards it. Probably, the Drowned seeking or bringing message for the next of doom.
There was something more than commonly touching about the boy’s fate. His body was found on the day your letter came, which somehow makes me think I ought to tell you of it. A rough road brought me (the letter in my pocket) to the sea-side, where there are high crags, with ruins of a castle, & under them black, shelving rocks, cloven into deep fissures where the two were drowned. The surge was spilt along, hissing like new milk, but today seeming much less innocent. In front of a cottage they were staunching with tar the seams of a rough coffin. The boy’s father has been for years in America. In June of this year he wrote to the uncle with money, desiring him to come out & bring “Francis,” now about 16 years old, along with him. The letter, wh I read, after giving particular directions for the journey, says “I am proud to tell you it is my second son, only 6 yrs old, that is writing this,” and in a postscript the second son writes from himself, “I send a kiss to my brother Francis, & I’ll give him two more when he comes here.”
The letter came in the interval between the drowning of the boy & the finding of his corpse.
I remember a little point of another sort, in the affair. The money was in care of the Priest who properly refused to give it up till the father shd be told what had happened. The uncle came to me to write, he wished the father to be persuaded to leave the money for him—“Soap him up, Sir,” says he, “as well as you can.” This was not hardness, only want of dexterity in phrasing. Perhaps there is oftener difference between people in phrase than in feeling.
In literature the only sensation lately is Alexander Smith. The volume is a hubbub of brilliant words, wh fail to bring a breath of new force & zest into one’s life such as all real “genius” brings—an exquisite boon. His present writing shows Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, &c &c & Mr Fustianus Bailey, mixt into one grand Smithiness—which, say the Critics, is “more like than the originals.” The fortnightly paper wherein Alex first appeared, [9] announced “another New Poet on the 1st of August,” [10] but I have not yet beheld his sign in the heavens.
The unannounced Comet which (in compensation) has lately been bright of evenings, now hid in sunshines, promises to support the family reputation by shaking horrible things down on us out of its hair. North, West, East,—cholera, Yellow Fever, War. [11] But milder Stars shine many, & always.
You are kind enough to ask of my plans. As to life, where & how to spend it, I am at present spared trouble by a body of Royal Commissioners who have taken that important affair in charge. These have resolved it to be desirable that I shd leave Ballyshannon for Coleraine, a town near the Giant’s Causeway, … where in fact I am writing these words, in the office of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Customs, my title here. [12] I have £140 a year—every one congratulates me, and—I am very discontented. 29 years of age, past, I have spent the best hours of fifteen & a half years at a Bank & a Custom House desk, to the ruin of my health & the loss of my education. I am going to make a desperate effort (something short of the Newgate Calendar) to get together a few hundreds of pounds, & go to school, either at the London University or one of the new Queen’s Colleges in Ireland [13] for 3 or 4 years, submit to the rules, learn what I can, in & beyond them—proceeding the while towards a Degree, as a goal to be visible to family relatives & to hinder them from regarding me as perfectly mad, also as a likely means of assisting to some livelihood afterwards. The lookout in that direction is cloudy enough & the road stony—but the lookout in this direction—from the Controller’s office-stool—is far less cheerful, especially since I must gaze with neck twisted sideways, & must walk crab-like. In the other it seems I could at all events look & walk right on.
I have contributed half a dozen songs to the stock of one of the Dublin ballad-printers, and send you one, which is to the following very simple tune. It has in fact only 8 bars, but in performance each note may be twirled indefinitely—
[Here is Ireland in Italy] [15] The printer told me that when there were a dozen or so of my songs he would print them in a little book. “Price a penny?” “Why, Sir, it’s not every one buys a penny book,—but a ha’penny book is sure to sell.” To be sure to sell, at any price, is truly delightful.
Writings of other kinds I have in intention—awaiting a favorable time.
You asked me for a long letter & I have snatched at the offer, which you will not blame, considering the pleasure it gives me to write. It is real charity to receive it.
Our skies have been very un-blue all Summer. So ill humoured a season I don’t remember, if other years imitate it, the standard rhymes for June will be Typhoon, July, you lie! (antithetically of the old poets), August, raw gust, September—a fierce word to be coined.
I shall expect, whether fairly or not, a word or two, between this time & Christmas, & remain in all seasons & weathers, dear Mr & Mrs Browning, most truly yours
W. Allingham
(Coleraine, Ireland)
Publication: Letters from William Allingham, ed. Helen P. Allingham (London, [?1913]), pp. 2–5.
Manuscript: R.H. Taylor Collection.
1. To the right of the verse, Allingham has written: “N.B. The rest of the letter is plain prose.”
2. To the right of the verse, Allingham has written: “*The wrong name, I believe, of a shrub with willow-shaped fragrant leaves, common in our gardens.”
3. A rose, native to China, that “blossoms in every month in the year” (The Ladies’ Wreath: An Illustrated Annual, New York, 1852, p. 60). Allingham refers to the “Monthly Rose” in his diary as his “constant favourite … in colour and fragrance the acme of sweetness and delicacy combined, and keeping up, even in winter time, its faithful affectionate companionship” (William Allingham: A Diary, ed. H. Allingham and D. Radford, 1907, p. 5).
4. At the age of seventy-eight in the summer of 1853, W.S. Landor resigned himself to travelling less than he had during previous summers. In August he visited his sister Elizabeth in Warwick. But after his return home to Bath he decided against a visit to his friend Julius Charles Hare (1795–1855), Archdeacon of Lewes, who lived in Herstmonceux, Sussex (see R.H. Super, Walter Savage Landor: A Biography, New York, 1954, pp. 414–415).
5. Charles James Napier (1782–1853), British Army officer and military governor, much beloved by the soldiers who served under him, had fought in the Peninsular War, during which he was many times wounded; in the War of 1812 against the United States; and in India. Promoted to the rank of major-general in 1837, he received a knighthood the following year. According to the ODNB, he “died on 29 August 1853 from a cold caught when a pallbearer at Wellington’s funeral.” A brief tribute to Napier by Landor appeared in The Examiner of 10 September 1853. It concluded with a short poem that began: “Thy greatest man [Wellington] from earth had past, / England! and now is gone thy last” (p. 579).
6. See EBB’s portion of letter 3221.
7. Allingham goes on to paraphrase a passage from a review of Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore (vols. 3 and 4, 1853) that appeared in The Eclectic Review for May 1853, pp. 575–589). The Wellesley Index attributes the review to Cyrus Read Edmonds (1809–68), author of John Milton: A Biography (1851).
8. We have been unable to trace a record of these deaths in newspapers of the period.
9. According to the ODNB, “Smith’s first published poem (in Spenserian stanzas) appeared in James Hedderwick’s Glasgow Citizen in 1850.” But Allingham has in mind The Critic, a “fortnightly paper” that introduced Smith to the public on 1 December 1851 with numerous extracts and declared: “We—we first—we alone, claim the merit of discovering a new Poet in Glasgow, and a Poet, too, who in genius, circumstances, and present position, is not unlike John Keats” (p. 567). The Critic went on to publish more of Smith’s works in succeeding issues, including his long narrative poem “A Life-Drama,” which appeared serially from 1 March 1852 to 15 January 1853.
10. The Critic placed advertisements in the 19 July 1853 issues of The Daily News (p. 8) and The Morning Chronicle (p. 1) that read as follows: “Another New Poet.—The MS. of another new Poet will be introduced to the readers of the CRITIC … in the number of August 1.” In that number (p. 392), the journal revealed the identity of “another new Poet.” He was John Stanyan Bigg (1828–65), of Ulverston, Lancashire, who had previously published The Sea-King; A Metrical Romance, in Six Cantos (1848). As it had done with Alexander Smith’s “A Life-Drama,” The Critic ran serially a long work of Bigg’s: Night and the Soul, between 1 September 1853 and 15 April 1854. It appeared in book form the next month.
11. The threat of war existed in the East between Russia and Turkey; and an outbreak of cholera had occurred in the North at Copenhagen (see letter 3263, note 14). Meanwhile, in the West, yellow fever had broken out in New Orleans. The Times of 2 September 1853 (p. 7) carried several excerpts from local newspapers describing the situation. The New Orleans Bulletin reported that “up to the present date the official returns give for the present epidemic season 3,039 deaths from yellow fever, and 1,747 [from] other diseases, making a total of 4,786 from the 28th of May to the 10th of August. … The most fatal day we have yet had was on the 5th inst., when the total deaths were 238, of which 208 were from yellow fever.”
12. From 1850 until this time, Allingham had been assigned to the Customs House at Ballyshannon, co. Donegal. Coleraine, co. Londonderry, is situated on the River Bann about 7 miles S.W. of the Giant’s Causeway, a basalt formation consisting of tightly packed columns that jut into the sea for several hundred feet. It is in county Antrim, 2½ miles N.E. of Bushmills.
13. In 1845 Parliament passed the Colleges (Ireland) Act, which resulted in the founding of Queen’s Colleges at Cork, Belfast, and Galway. These colleges opened for admission in the autumn of 1849.
14. The lyrics read: “O lovely Mary Donnelly, It’s you I love the best, If fifty girls were round you I’d hardly see the rest. Be what it may the time o’ day, the place be where it will, Sweet looks o’ Mary Donnelly they bloom before me still.”
15. Brackets supplied by the author. The phrase, written beside the song, alludes to RB’s poem “England in Italy” (1845).
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