3334. EBB to Thomas Westwood
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 94–97.
Via Bocca di Leone 43, Rome.
Feb: 2nd, [1854] [1]
Thank you, my dear Mr Westwood, for your kind defence of me against the stupid, blind, cur-dog backbiting of the American writer. [2] I will tell you. Three weeks ago I had a letter from my brother, apprizing me of what had been said, and pressing on me the propriety of a contradiction in form: said I in reply: “When you marry a wife, George, take her from the class of those who have never printed a book—if this thing vexes you. A woman in a crowd can’t help the pushing up against her of dirty coats—happy if somebody in boots does not tread upon her toes!” Words to that effect, I said. I really could not do the American the honour of sitting down at the table with him to say: “Sir, you are considerably mistaken”. He was not only mistaken, you see, but so stupid and self-willed in his mistake—so determined to make a system of it—but he was too disreputable to set right. Also, of the tendency of one’s writings one’s readers are the best judges. I don’t profess to write a religious commentary on my writings. I am content to stand by the obvious meaning of what I have written, according to the common sense of the general reader.
The tendency of my writings to Swedenborgianism has been observed by others—though I had read Swedenborg, when I wrote most of them, as little as the American Editor of Robert Hall can have done, and less can’t be certainly. Otherwise, the said editor would have known that the central doctrine of Swedenborgianism being the Godhead of Jesus Christ, no Unitarian liberal or unliberal could have produced works Swedenborgian in character—and that William and Mary Howitt being Unitarian (which I believe they are) couldn’t have a tendency at the same time to Swedenborgianism—unless it should be possible for them to be bolt upright with a leaning to the floor. I speak to a wise man. Judge what I say. [3] For my own part I have thought freely on most subjects and upon the state of the Churches among others, but never at any point of my life, and now, thank God, least of all, have I felt myself drawn towards Unitarian opinions. I should throw up revelation altogether if I ceased to recognise Christ as divine. Sectarianism I do not like—even in the form of a State Church, and the Athanasian way of stating opinions, between a scholastic paradox and a curse, is particularly distasteful to me. [4] But I hold to Christ’s <invisible Church as referred to in Scripture, and to the Saviour’s humanity and divinity as they seem to me conspicuous in Scripture, and so you have done me justice and the American has done me injustice....> [5]
Well, I have seen your Mrs Brotherton, only once, though, because she can’t come to see me at all, and lives too far for me to go in the winter weather. [6] I shall see more of her presently, I hope, and in the meantime she is very generous to me, and sends me violets, and notes that are better, and we have a great sympathy on the spiritual subjects which set you so in a passion. What do I say? She sends me Greek (of which she does not know a single character) written by her, or rather through her .. mystical Greek, from a spirit-world, produced by her hands, she herself not knowing what she writes. The character is beautifully written, and the separate words are generally correct—such words as “Christ”, “God,” “tears”, “blood”, “tempest”, “sea”, “thunder”, ”calm”, “morning”, “sun”, “joy”. No grammatical construction hitherto, but a significant sort of grouping of the separate words, as if the meaning were struggling out into coherence. My idea is that she is being exercised in the language, in the character, in order to fuller expression hereafter. Well—you would have us snowed upon with poppies till we sleep and forget these things. I, on the contrary, would have our eyes wide open, our senses ‘all attentive’, [7] our souls lifted in reverential expectation. Every fact is a word of God—and I call it irreligious to say—“I will deny this because it displeases me”—“I will look away from that because it will do me harm”. Why be afraid of the truth? God is in the truth, and He is called also Love. The evil results of certain experiences of this class result mainly from the superstitious and distorted views held by most people concerning the spiritual world. We have to learn—we in the body—that Death does not teach all things. Death is simply an accident. Foolish Jack Smith who died on Monday is on Tuesday still foolish Jack Smith. If people who on Monday scorned his opinions prudently, will on Tuesday receive his least words as oracles, they very naturally may go mad, or at least do something as foolish as their inspirer is. Also it is no argument against any subject, that it drives people mad who suffer themselves to be absorbed in it. That would be an argument against all religion and all love, by your leave. Ask the Commissioners of Lunacy; knock at the door of mad-houses in general, and enquire what two causes act almost universally in filling them. Answer—love and religion. The common objection of the degradation of knocking with the leg of the table, and the ridicule of the position for a spirit etc, etc, I don’t enter into at all. Twice I have been present at table-experiments, [8] and each time I was deeply impressed—impressed, there’s the word for it! The panting and shivering of that dead dumb wood, the human emotion conveyed through it—by what?—had to me a greater significance than the St Peter’s of this Rome. O poet!—do you not know that poetry is not confined to the clipped alleys, [9] no, nor to the blue tops of “Parnassus hill”? [10] Poetry is where we live and have our being [11] —wherever God works and man understands. Hein [12] .. if you are in a dungeon and a friend knocks through the outer wall, spelling out by knocks the words you comprehend—you don’t think the worse of the friend standing in the sun who remembers you. He is not degraded by it, you rather think. Now apply this. Certainly, there is a reaction from the materialism of the age … and this is certainly well, in my mind, but then there is something more than this, more than a mere human reaction, I believe. I have not the power of writing myself at all, though I have felt the pencil turn in my hand—a peculiar spiral motion like the turning of the tables, and independent of volition, but the power is not with me strong enough to make words or letters even.
We see a good deal of Fanny Kemble, a noble creature, and hear her sister sing,—Mrs Sartoris. Do admit a little society. It is good for soul and body, and on the Continent it is easy to get a handful of society without paying too dear for it. That, I think, is an advantage of Continental life.
Publication: LEBB, II, 155–158.
Source: Kenyon Typescript, British Library.
1. Year provided by EBB’s reference to Westwood’s letter in The Church and State Gazette (see letter 3333, note 21).
3. Cf. I Corinthians 10:15.
4. EBB refers to the Athanasian Creed, which was influenced by the teachings of Athanasius (ca. 298–373), Bishop of Alexandria. It differs from the Apostles’ creed and the Nicene Creed both in format and content, especially in its use of anathemas and the assertion that belief in its version of the Catholic faith is essential for salvation.
5. The passage in angle brackets is not part of the Kenyon Typescript; it is taken from LEBB, II, 156.
6. Mary Brotherton is listed in the Brownings’ address book of this period (AB-3) at 16 Via Sant’Isidoro. Although it was less than a mile from there to the Brownings’ apartment, the distance included a steep change in elevation.
7. From the thirty-third of Donne’s Fifty Sermons (1649): “That faithfull company of departed saints, to whom thy merit must open a more inward and familiar room in the Fathers Kingdome, stand all attentive, to heare what thou wilt aske of this Father.”
8. Conducted in Casa Guidi; see letter 3286.
9. Cf. Tennyson, “Amphion” (1842), lines 85–86.
10. Cf. Tennyson, In Memoriam (1850), XXXVII, 6–8.
11. Cf. Acts 17:28.
12. A French expression meant to add emphasis or invite a response.
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