Correspondence

3924.  Bryan Waller Procter to RB

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 129–132.

32 Weymouth Street

Portland Place

London

November 21st (my birthday) 1856.

To Robert Browning—

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My dear Browning–

My birthday (æt. 80) [1] is a good day I think to acknowledge & send thanks for Aurora Leigh. I have received it & have been employing my leisure in reading it. Tell this to your poetess & (I hope) my friend.

But I am a bad praiser. I never say half I think in this way—even to you. What can I say to a Lady, who would be disgusted were She to read any exaggerated commendation? It must be truth.

I have read two books (I am thus far) of Aurora with very great pleasure. It is alive with fine & brilliant thoughts—(some of them I imagine no one but a poet can see)– It is fresh & interesting, & carries you on. I like it better than if it were a more ‘regular’ poem. It swerves into an original style. It has faults too, some of which (may I say it?) I like—some—(may I say this too?) I dont like. It is too easy perhaps for a poem—for a poem which is—what?—something between an epic & an idyll & a ______ I want a something to add to the description. The story is told sometimes in a way I think scarcely allowable even in dramatic writing, & some of the lines are defective in weight & melody. [My dear Mrs Browning, do not hate me for saying this. I read (present tense) your poem with a true heart & I say to you what I would say or confess to myself. Take it for so much.] [2]

<I hope in the next edition that a few unpleasant things will be lost: vizt The reference to the Medusa snakes & the sweating [3] in book 1 & the word ‘stink’ [4] in I think Book 2. &c. No line should end with a monosyllable, unless it be a weighty one.> [5]

But these things are trifles & ought not to weigh,—& will not in a wholesome mind, weigh a grain in the balance, compared with the many manifest beauties of the book.

It will probably induce new things in verse—we have been too much imprisoned by precedents.

Chapman has had a good beginning—has sold 600 I think on subscribing it. All good go with the poetess! All success go with her book—with her & her book now & always.

My volume is not out yet. [6] Mr Wilmot’s illustrated book [7] has had an extraordinary Sale. I, alas, shall come in at his tail. Ticknor & Fields have declined to take the number of Copies which Chapman offered them at a low price, but Appleton (of New York) has taken 500. [8] I need not say that a Copy will go by the first opportunity to the Casa Guidi. [9]

[I have on reading the foregoing struck out some lines. I seem to be finding fault—carping at everything, while I wish & mean to express my pleasure. I have half a mind to burn the letter. But do you my dear RB. read no part of this that you think would give your wife a moment’s annoyance. Be my friend thus far.]

[Nov. 22.]

Leaving high & solemn things, let us descend a little. What do you think of my having been invited to purchase a Medallion of Lon[g]fellow for 30s/ only. [10] It is true. A plaster medallion of the popular American writer by Marshall Wood was offered to me, by the Author, for this insignificant Sum, at ten o’Clock last night. In my half sleepy state I have declined it. Shall I lend him £10?——or what?

There is nothing new in Literature. But in other ways many. We have a fresh fraud & two fresh murders every day. I am providing against the Garrottists. [11]

Forster is much annoyed by rheumatism. A report came to us that Mr Kenyon was not so well; but we have as yet not been able to trace it to any good foundation. I trust that it has none.

I should like a line when you will vouchsafe a line. I hope that your pretty little boy is well & also your poetess to whom I beg my love—if she will accept it after all my carping. My dear Browning. I need not assure you I hope that I am now as ever

Your sincere

B. W. Procter.

PS.

My wife’s mother, Mrs Montagu, is dead. [12] We buried her this day week—in a grave in which I buried my eldest boy (the sweetest child in the world) 20 years ago! [13] How dismal a house is where any one is lying dead. How horrible all the subsequent business with undertakers & sextons!

Address: Robt Browning Esqre / Casa Guidi / Florence / Italy.

Publication: Luther A. Brewer, My Leigh Hunt Library, the Holograph Letters (Iowa City, 1938), pp. 218–219.

Manuscript: University of Iowa.

1. Sic. Perhaps Procter is being facetious. He was born on 21 November 1787, making this his 69th birthday and the beginning of his 70th year.

2. Here and in the next two occurrences, the square brackets are supplied by Procter.

3. Cf. Aurora Leigh, I, 157–159.

4. Actually in Book III, line 300.

5. Procter lightly crossed out the passage in angle brackets. Many of the lines in Aurora Leigh end in monosyllables.

6. Dramatic Scenes, with Other Poems (1857); see letter 3885, note 3.

7. Robert Aris Willmott’s The Poets of the Nineteenth Century (see letter 3845, note 3) included: “One Hundred Engravings Drawn by Eminent Artists … Engraved by the Brothers Dalziel.” Among the artists were Arthur Hughes, John Tenniel, Ford Madox Brown, and John Everett Millais. RB’s “Two in the Campagna” was illustrated by Edward Alfred Goodall (1819–1908), and EBB’s “Wine of Cyprus,” by John Richard Clayton (1827–1913).

8. The American edition of Dramatic Scenes was in fact published by Ticknor and Fields in Boston, 1857. The firm of D. Appleton and Company, founded as a dry-goods store by Daniel Appleton (1785–1849), began publishing in 1831. From 1848, the company was run by his eldest son, William Henry Appleton (1814–99), in partnership with his four brothers.

9. A copy of Dramatic Scenes sold as part of lot 1022 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A1898).

10. A medallion in bronze of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by Marshall Wood (1835–82) was shown at the 1858 Royal Academy exhibition. We have been unable to trace it or any copies.

11. Procter alludes to so-called “garrotte robberies,” which were prevalent in 1850’s London. Unsuspecting pedestrians were attacked from behind and incapacitated, sometimes killed, by means of a garrotte. An editorial in The Times of 10 November 1856 lamented that in “certain portions of London … a man cannot return to his home at night without imminent danger of being throttled, robbed, and, if not actually murdered, at least kicked and pommelled within an inch of his life. … Gar[r]otte robberies are on the increase, and now we have before us three months of short days and long nights. This gloomy period will no doubt be turned to the best account by the Thugs of Cockayne, and, if the police cannot or will not protect us, we must learn to protect ourselves” (p. 6).

12. Anna Dorothea Montagu (née Benson, 1774–1856); see letter 2238, note 9. She died on 10 November “at the house of her son-in-law, B.W. Procter … in the 83d year of her age” (The Times, 11 November 1856, p. 1).

13. According to the St. Marylebone Parish Church records, Edward Waller Procter (1830–35), eldest of the Procters’ two sons and the third of six children, died at age 5 and was buried on 16 March 1835—more than 21 years before the date of this letter. Cause of death was scarlet fever (see ODNB).

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