3534. EBB to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 110–113.
[Florence]
[mid-March 1855] [1]
My dearest Mr Kenyon, we have put off from day to day writing this imminent letter to you .. (‘gare’ [2] ..) & come now with such an accumulation of grateful & affectionate feeling as is simply natural– Thank you for inclosures .. & the autograph part, chiefly. It all came right this time—& seeing that it’s the way of the world just now for all to go wrong .. we may thank your star & you for the peculiar fortune. I wish you had done what you have’nt .. read Grace Greenwood’s letter to me– There were some “facts” about the “floating lights” of disembodied souls floating round worktables & answering to names, which might have made you wink– For my part, I wink at nothing now a days … not even when the Czar drops down dead .. we are turning to melodrama. Whatever used to be miraculous is the commonplace of our time—& for my part, I profess to believe everything, as long as it is sufficiently impossible. Dont you? Robert pretends to be a sceptic—but that’s all bosh, you know .. it’s a taste not a creed, .. like believing in old Florentine art and rococo-ism in general. I, who am sensible, hold to steam engines & the rapping spirits.
Let me tell you, while on the subject, that Mr Kirkup came to us since I wrote last to you & announced formally that he having disbelieved in a future life and all things thereto appertaining, & having resolved to make no alteration in the negative of his creed without a special revelation to himself, had received it, abjured his incredulities accordingly, & so & so & so on. His clairvoyante [3] had had the rapping noises, & articulate voices—. I heard it all rather coldly .. you wont believe me, but I did .. I thought him a little hasty in concluding from the rap on the door which made him jump, after the various evidences of life being set down as inconclusive—raps all round (as it seems to me) against the chrystal globed universe. Hasty—that’s all. He is not philosophical in putting his experiments, & Robert insists that the clairvoyante cheats– Not that Robert has heard any of the raps. And he settles everything by believing nothing, ever .. & is perfectly as ‘hasty’ on the other side– Still I dont feel sure of the Kirkup phenomena—I dont quote them to you as “facts” … no, nor as fictions–
As you are so impertinent about my poem I take a cruel vengeance by insisting on your reading a poem of Penini’s written last January– [4] He sang it to my dictation (Robert has noted down the original air) & then he copied it back again with his own small fingers. The curious thing to me, is, that the child never heard an old ballad in his life– We dont give him [them] in poems with his pap—it’s not our way at all—and yet the old ballad movement of the whole is obvious– There’s a mystical touch too about it which charms me, & which perhaps he was unconscious of himself– ‘Really,’ said I, “it’s rather like Heine.” “And Tiney,” said Robert– Think– Written before the child was six years old.
My own poem seems flat & unprofitable [5] afterwards. If you all like it ever so much (and you wont) what can it be to me beside Penini’s? Yet there’s work in it, & will be more. Between five & six thousand lines written, & more still to write– Blank verse—. Why not?– An autobiography of a poetess—(not me) .. opposing the practical & the ideal life, & showing how the practical & real (so called) is but the external evolution of the ideal & spiritual—that it is from inner to outer, .. whether in life, morals, or art. A good deal, in this relation, upon the social question, & against the socialists– A good deal, in fact, about everything in the world & beyond … taken from the times, “hot and hot.” [6] I rather took fright at “Hard Times,” [7] as Robert told me from a review (we neither of us have seen the book) that it treated of an opposition of the Real & Ideal– But upon consideration I took breath & courage—because it’s impossible [8] that Dickens & I could walk precisely the same ground. If we did, there would be still, “badger’s foot” and “ourangoutang’s,”—distinct enough. “The Devil,” you say. Dont– I believe my book will be clear enough,—alive enough, even if the story may be wanting in “rapidity”– There are characters—talks. Well– Never blame me again for being secret with you, seeing that now I have told you more than I have told to Robert .. much less to any human soul else. If I talk of anything I’m going to do, I cant do it—it takes the spirit out of me. That’s my peculiarity.
I have been very unwell—with a worse attack on the chest than I ever had in Italy, .. in consequence of a very bitter wind & frost together– Now .. having a cat’s nine lives (besides a cat’s tendency to fall on my feet always) I am right again, .. and taking cod’s liver oil in order to appear before you all with decency– Poor Robert was horribly vexed by my cough– What he thought least of, was the spending his nights in lighting fires & warming coffee .. doing anything but sleeping– God loves him for it–– After all we find out that our winter here has been milder than anywhere else– Indeed the cold did not last long. At Rome the fountains were frozen, & at Pisa there was snow—neither place could triumph over Florence–
Thank dear Miss Bayley for her kind letter & give her my love & tell her that Madme Braun has written to me & sent me Dr Braun’s book– [9] So glad I am that you like Mrs Kemble. She is good & noble, & intellectual—not elastic in her modes of thought—not given to grow, perhaps .. nay, certainly. I very much like her– If you see Miss Haworth, will you ask her to write to me,—with my love to her.
Politics are lugubrious just now. You will find me meek about L Napoleon. Though the French government is, in my view, the most democratic in Europe (which does not exclude the despotic element—far from it–) it’s not my model government by any means. The least pebble in the path stops the machinery—the least difference between people & ruler upsets the country– An extraordinary man—an extraordinary people—an extraordinary state of things. If he does not provide a safety valve .. there may be a crash– Says Penini .. “I think Napoleon is the grandest emperor in the world”– And when we laughed .. “There may be others. I dont know. I mean, of the emperors mixed with me.”– Of the emperors associated with the Peninis!!!! God bless you. Let us see you well & as brilliant as usual.
Your ever affecte Ba–
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Harvard University.
1. Dating based on EBB’s references to her progress on Aurora Leigh in terms similar to those in letters 3530 and 3537.
2. “Beware.”
3. Regina Ronti; see letter 3518, note 10.
4. “The Poem of Lucy Lee.” Kenyon may have given the poem to Arabella. A manuscript copy of it in Pen’s hand, dated January 1855, is in the Moulton-Barrett Papers at the Berg (see Reconstruction, L55).
5. Cf. Hamlet, I, 2, 133.
6. Alfred Tennyson, “Will Waterproof’s Lyrical Monologue” (1842), line 228.
7. Dickens’s Hard Times had been published in August 1854. A review in The Athenæum of 12 August 1854, noted that “The case of Fancy versus Fact is here stated in prose, but without the fairness which belongs to a prose argument” (no. 1398, p. 992).
8. Underscored three times.
9. August Emil Braun, The Ruins and Museums of Rome. A Guide Book for Travellers, Artists and Lovers of Antiquity (Brunswick, 1854). This presentation copy is inscribed: “Mrs. Browning, with Mrs. Emil Braun’s best love and good wishes, Rome. Jany. 1855.” It sold as part of lot 931 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A300).
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