3639. RB to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 278–282.
13 Dorset St Baker St
October 1st ’55.
My dear Mr Kenyon,
With this, you will get the last of the second volume [1] —it seemed better to wait for the end of it all than to send and write at once—tho’ your letter of about a fortnight since made the waiting a hard business. How kindly,—and too kindly,—you speak of “Saul!” Yet, I know, you write just as kindly,—and perhaps with some pain to yourself, when you cannot give me the praise you feel I should be glad to have. In your few criticisms on “Saul,” I quite agree, thanking you heartily for the same: I restore “so docile” [2] (altered to get an anapæst there) and alter in the other places. I should mention that I have gone over the preceding portion of the two volumes perhaps half a dozen times or more very carefully, making minute improvements which “tell” on the general effect. In your remarks on the little or no pleasure you derive from dramatic—in comparison with lyric—poetry (understanding the vulgar or more obvious form of drama,—scene & dialogue,—for lyrics may be dramatic also in the highest sense)—I partake your feeling to a great degree: lyric is the oldest, most natural, most poetical of poetry, and I would always get it if I could: but I find in these latter days that one has a great deal to say, and try and get attended to, which is out of the lyrical element and capability—and I am forced to take the nearest way to it: and then it is undeniable that the common reader is susceptible to plot, story, and the simplest form of putting a matter “Said I,” “Said He” & so on. “The whole is with the Gods” [3] as Cleon sums up in one of the things I send you. Well, dear Mr Kenyon, of this you are sure, I hope and believe,—that I have done my very best, with whatever effect and acceptance: and I really believed, like a goose, that this time I should get your white ball in my urn, [4] —it was not to be! But why should not I tell you, what will give you the pleasure you would give me were it in your power—that Fox and Forster,—and I will associate with them Lytton, young as he is,—these three and yourself being my sole referees hitherto, with one exception,—well, these three take one’s breath away with their—not sympathy merely—but anticipations of success—of “a sale” in short: and Chapman, shrewd as he is, makes no scruple of declaring that he expects the same. My exception—my fourth critic is the fine fellow of the Revue des Deux Mondes—who writes of the first volume (to me) “il y a là du colossal!”. [5] I put all this down impudently on paper to please you, as I say—for I know whether you will grieve or no to find your dark auguries met by some blue bits in various parts of my poor horizon. So I leave it till another month [to] justify one or the other prophecy. We publish at the end of October [6] —with no better wishes than yours! And now to other matters.
Yes—it was a gratifying thing to reknit affection with Macready: he did not come that evening from a sudden, severe attack of illness– Forster dined with us and I afterward went to Macready who was in the Doctor’s hands: next day we all dined together lovingly at Forster’s—next day, he called here and sat with Ba for two hours and more—we parted old friends and something more—Forster assuring me that he regards the meeting us, and especially the becoming acquainted with Ba a great happiness—we have promised to visit him next year,—if it may be. For Forster,—I cannot tell you how impressed I am by his unmistakeable love and benevolent feeling to us all: one visit to London has repaid itself, were it but by that experience: we have dined at his house five times—so happily—and shall do so, for the last time next Tuesday. As I am not much otherwise nor better (I fear) than when he knew me twenty years since, I refer this new heat to the new element in what is called “me”—to wit, Ba—whom he seems to appreciate at her worth. You will like to hear this. Carlyle, too, had been very kind—coming up from the country for one day a fortnight ago, (“miraculously” declares his wife)—and all merely to see me. He returned last week “for good”—and I saw him another evening: he who called two days ago—tho’ we were out, unfortunately. And now for a top jewel to our crown: on Wednesday Alfred Tennyson came at 2. ’oclock—having arrived the day before—and spent the whole day with us, dining, smoking, and bidding us, “as brother-poets” tell him,—as he would tell us,—“how we worked, composed &c”—most pleasant it all was: he said he must go to Oxford the next day, having invitations: but, lo, next day, at noon he returned,—walked with me, dined again with us, and took leave at past two next morning! So if we tired him, his the blame. Among other delights, he read to us the whole of Maud—a business of one hour and a half—reciting in the proper places two unfinished and unwritten portions, and describing two other; necessary, he conceives, to complete his idea: he read strikingly and peculiarly—as he said, between a song and a recitation—but very beautiful and impressive in its effect—his tones quite haunt us. He stopped ever and anon to comment on his own work with an adorable naïveté—calling attention to this and the other nicety,—telling us how this passage was originally penned, and how he fain would alter the other: in short it was a rare thing to remember. He is a good deal annoyed by the little men of the little papers who attack him just now .. but Moxon has sold seven thousand copies of Maud—& will go on selling. He showed me a dear bit of a letter from his wife enjoining on him to call on us and cultivate our love. “You should help each other” [7] she said. He loves her as she deserves, and spoke to one’s heart’s content of her. In reading, he stopped repeatedly, overcome by his own feeling, tears in his eyes and very voice. This too is worth many travels & pains to have gained, is it not?
Dear Arabel came on the sly from Eastbourne to a friend’s house opposite for a day or two—to see us once again, as we could not see her. She left yesterday, [8] taking Penini with her—to return him on Tuesday: Ba thinks the seeing a little more red in his cheeks will repay her for letting him go out of her sight for two days—but she finds it hard—we say with Maud’s lover– “The tiny cell is forlorn, void of the little living will, that made it stir on the shore”– [9] He is very good & dear, that is the fact.
And for us, we purpose to leave next Wednesday week—even sooner it would have been, but for an arrangement with the people of this house, whose convenience is regarded by our staying till then. We have printed my book well, made a new friendship or two, received many proofs of good will—seen many dear old friends—much of you, tho’ not so much as next year shall permit, let us hope. Sarianna has been disappointed of her appartment—taken by her, but reclaimed by the old tenant within the lawful time, it appears: she will try again on our return; and meantime ac[c]epts gratefully your leave to let her chairs remain—we think she will soon be able to find use for them.
Lastly, dear Mr Kenyon, I must bring myself to say a word about what I feel a repugnance to .. not trouble you, so much as myself with: it is like interlining a poem with red ink jottings of £.s.d:—moreover, I am apprehensive you will blame me for disregarding a very express injunction of yours—such as I should have ventured to disregard in no other matter. You refer of your own accord to money-matters, however,—offering to pay our next dividend in advance, and reminding us of the £100 still at our own disposal, & kept for emergencies. I suppose you were incited to this kind forethought by some indefinite instinct or other, as I wrote upon quite other subjects: but when I remember how urgently you bade me, just a year ago, remind you of the times when your half-yearly largess is appointed by your own goodness to be paid,—I feel, I repeat, fearful that you will blame me for having delayed to mention simply that you will find, by reference to your memoranda, that the July allowance has not been made. You may, very likely, have confounded the payment of it with the larger than usual Ship-dividend you gave my uncle in the previous June. My business is—I feel while I write now—to do what you bid me on this point—and I beg your pardon for not having done so. For I do confess to the temptation, if it were allowable or, indeed, possible—to let your benevolence go unjogged in this matter—sure that somebody else would profit by any unaccounted-for surplus £50 you might observe in your July accounts: but that which I might be tempted to do in our own quarters,—where we can, if we please,—somewhat suck our own paws, bearlike, thro’ a season of pecuniary dearth and winter,—that, becomes impossible when we have once launched off and trusted ourselves to the wide sea of sharks, lodging-house keepers and other drainers of the purse: for England & France are not to be had for nothing: we had a larger ship-dividend than usual this year—but part of it goes to the gap its absolute blank made last year: and they crib more & more income tax, and give us nothing but General Simpson in return. [10] We shall do well eventually—our books get on, slowly but surely. I have written to America,—am promised something and may not impossibly get it: but meantime I can no more indulge in luxuries of my soul than Tennyson can in his—for he can’t buy a book, he says, so poor is he—(having at least six times as much as we have) and moreover wants eight thousand pounds to buy his house, poor fellow! If every purchaser of our poems in America had paid us a penny, things would be different; or if the Haymarket that played “Colombe” had given the due £10 a-night—as I could make them by law,—or if the windows of heaven were opened,—and on many similar hypotheses! Meanwhile thank God that we have the many, inestimable mercies we have, the child we have, the dear friend we have that I write this to, and who will forgive it as if it were only a misty superfœtation of Saul or Blougram’s!
Ba’s kindest love goes to you—she bids me say—Sarianna’s best thanks and regards accompanying it. All remembrances to your Brother & Sister: we had a note from Mrs Jameson, the other day, mentioning that she was at Vienna & pretty well. The cholera has raged at Florence—small hopes of letting our “appartamento,” I suppose.
Here I will leave off: having tired you or worse—yet I will not think so. Good bye, & God bless you, dear Mr Kenyon.
Yours ever affectionately
Robert Browning.
Publication: William S. Peterson, “The Proofs of Browning’s Men and Women,” Studies in Browning and His Circle, 3 (Fall 1975), 28–29 (in part).
Manuscript: Harvard University.
1. i.e., proofsheets of Men and Women.
2. “Saul,” line 37. The proof copy of Men and Women (see Reconstruction, E253), reads “very docile.” An anapaest in this context is a metrical foot of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable; “Saul” is written in anapaestic pentameter.
3. This sentence does not appear in “Cleon”; cf. lines 151–152 of the poem.
4. An allusion to the procedure for applying to become a member of certain exclusive London clubs; members place in a bag or urn either a white ball to admit or a black ball to exclude the applicant. One black ball is usually enough to block membership.
5. “There is something colossal about it!” Joseph Milsand used “colossal” differently in his draft of letter 3628 (see the end of the first paragraph).
6. Men and Women was published on 10 November 1855.
7. See SD1862.
8. Arabella returned to Eastbourne on 29 September. Either RB forgot which day it was, or he began this letter on 30 September.
9. Tennyson, Maud (1855), XXIII, 3, 1–3.
10. Sir James Simpson (1792–1868) had assumed command of the British troops in the Crimea after the death of Lord Raglan on 28 June 1855. According to the ODNB, Simpson’s attack on the Redan in the final assault on Sebastopol was a failure, and it was the success of the French attack on the Malakhov that secured the victory.
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