3742. EBB to Elizabeth Clementine Kinney
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 138–140.
Paris. 3. Rue du Colysée.
Feb. 29. [1856] [1]
My dear Mrs Kinney, are you very angry with me for not writing, when certainly I should have written, were it only to thank you for your interesting letters?. Every benefit makes “mille mécontents et un ingrat” [2] .. and here’s the ‘ingrat,’ you think! No indeed– I protest most earnestly. The truth is I fell a-dreaming over your letters .. which, first of all, (pardon me) offer evidence why Hume should be burned as a sorcerer, & then why he should be hung as no sorcerer .. (“Perhaps Mr Browning was right after all,” say you.) And while I dreamed, I was wakened rudely by a call to do a great deal of writing—& I have been writing, writing, writing, ever since,—transcribing, putting together, getting in order the poor poem which never will be finished you suppose, & yet which must be printed next summer. I write everyday till fairly tired; & have not a half hour, except by chance, for writing letters or reading books.
And even if the poem should not please you when all’s done, I shall please you more by it perhaps than by my conclusions which I shall write here—namely that Hume is morally worthless, and a true medium. The fact of his being morally worthless, no more impugns the fact of his being a true medium, than it does the colour of his eyes and the size of his feet. If I caught my dentist shoplifting, I would’nt on that account, suspect his power over my molars. Hume’s moral worthlessness impugns his authority– If he swore to me he met a spirit on the stairs, I would’nt believe him. But that he might meet a spirit on the stairs or road, (as Balaam’s ass did) [3] is quite possible; and if I saw the vision of it by his mediumship, I would believe in my own consciousness surely.
What strikes me is, that with all your scepticism & opportunities, not one of you has approached the detection of a single trick. It is not detection, that you should sit down afterwards [‘]‘with memory for a medium” [4] & consider what might be a possible solution of this or that phenomenon. For instance .. if the “hands” are produced by machinery, the proof must be within easy reach. Gutta-percha, wax or the like, are demonstrable. Why not demonstrate?
As to the moral teaching of so-called spirits, there’s every sort of teaching—and anyone who subjects his soul to such instructions, will probably get the worst of it. I have seen feats of Spiritual Telegraphy & such things. I have heard of ‘Free love doctrines’ for years. I never could see how the abuse of a thing went against the use of it. You might put down the Christian religion on such grounds. House-doors are convenient things, but I dont pull in all the riff-raff passers-by, to make them give me lessons in philosophy or theology. Neither do I nail up my street-door. It appears to me a great thing to know that there’s access to, & proof of, the spiritual world—but certainly I do not look for revelations by any such means.
Mr Scarlett told Mr Lytton the experience you spoke of, as he passed through Paris.
Miss Blagden is living very near,—still meaning, she says, to go to Madrid—but I do hope still, she wont. She goes to Florence in May. I have been much better since I wrote last to you through the extraordinary mildness of the winter here after just the first month or two. My husband is at work on Sordello—and little Penini (to go from the head to the foot of the house) is learning French in great glory. He is grown fatter & rosier, & is in full force & spirits, .. liking Paris very much but longing for Florence, & calling himself faithfully an “Italian”. I hope your dear little girls are growing into life with as much sap and colour. Speaking of him makes me think of dear Sophia Cottrell to whom I owe a letter & will pay it, tell her with my best love. I enclose a note of thanks to Mr Powers. How is the Pensoroso .. or the Melancholy, as I think the statue should be called? [5]
I am living here shut up as usual in the winter .. only the small close rooms make it not quite as usual .. confinement in those acres of palace at Florence, being quite another thing. My husband goes out more in the evening, & hears good music, & sees some interesting people– ‘Men & Women’ have made much sensation in England .. & make way, we hear through Carlyle, among the thinkers. In America, you have given us a more popular reception.
Oh– I do wonder so that Mr Reade should give away his only child, [6] his only fragment of that poor lost domestic happiness of his, for somebody else to take care of.! I think he must indeed have cold & slack affections, & that it must be difficult for poetry to come out of such a man. I could forgive any degree of apparent indifference, or literary absorption. Souls in agony will throw themselves into unnatural attitudes. But to give away his child!– That’s horrible.
Is dear Mr Kinney quite well now? I should like to talk “the spirits” over with him rationally & quietly. Does he write? & like Florence as he did?– We unite in warm regards to him, while I remain
truly & affectionately yours
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Publication: Bosco, pp. 104–106.
Manuscript: Yale University.
1. Year provided by reference to the return address.
2. “A thousand malcontents and one ingrate.” Cf. Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV (1752), chap. 26.
3. See Numbers 22:21–34.
4. EBB quotes from Mrs. Kinney’s letter; see the fourth paragraph in letter 3724.
5. “La Penserosa”; see letter 3244, note 1.
6. Thomas Buchanan Read’s wife and youngest daughter died of cholera in June 1855 (see letter 3583, note 6). His only son died in 1853. Read and his surviving daughter, Alice (1845–70), returned to America in the autumn of 1855, as indicated by a letter from him to his brother-in-law Cyrus Garrett (d. 1867, aged 58), dated Philadelphia, 9 November 1855 (ms at Smithsonian). In that letter Read refers to his daughter’s future: “You need not be afraid, my dear Cyrus, of my disposing of Alice without consulting you.” He also mentions that he intends to travel on to Cincinnati to visit Garrett and his wife, Sarah (née Read), as soon as he sees to the publication of his new poem, The House by the Sea (Philadelphia, 1856). Evidently, he and Alice made the trip towards the end of the year, and the latter remained with her aunt and uncle. Alice is listed at the Garretts’ address in the Cincinnati censuses of 1860 and 1870.
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