3588. EBB to Chevalier de Chatelain
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 215–216.
13. Dorset street.
July 26. 1855.
Sir, [1]
Returning to England from Italy after an absence of nearly three years I discover at last the honour you have done me in translating my poem of the ‘Cry of the Children.’ [2] I hope you will no longer attribute to me an apparent want of courtesy which would have been quite without excuse if your letter had reached my hands any sooner.
Now, I thank you much, and beg you to try to understand the pleasure I have in the opening made by your talent for my poetry into the region of the generous French sympathies.
I remain Sir,
your’s respectfully
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Address: The / Chevalier de Chatelain / 27. Grafton Place / Euston Square.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Jean Baptiste François Ernest de Chatelain (1801–81), writer and translator, was born in Paris. He began his writing career as a poet and journalist, but, according to the ODNB, “his chief delight was translating … his numerous renderings of English poetry into often unconventional French verse included The Canterbury Tales and works by Tennyson and Longfellow.” His Beautés de la Poesie Anglaise (5 vols., 1860–72) featured translations of EBB’s “The Cry of the Children” (see note 2) and RB’s “The Confessional” (5, 25–27). He was made a chevalier in 1835 and began signing his works as “Chevalier de Chatelain.” In 1843 he married Clara Du Mazet de Pontigny (1807–76), also a writer and translator, who was born in England to a French father and English mother. The Chatelains settled in England, and the chevalier became a British citizen in 1848. They lived for many years next door to RB at 20 Warwick Crescent.
2. Chatelain’s translation was published as “Le Cri des Enfants” in his Beautés de la Poësie Anglaise (5 vols., 1860–72), 2, 83–86. It first appeared, however, as “La Plainte des enfants” in a lengthy prospectus for Beautés in his translation of Anna H. Potts’s Simple Poems for National and Sunday Schools (Cambridge, 1852): Simples Poèmes, à l’usage des Écoles Nationales du Dimanche (1857), pp. 70–72.
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