Correspondence

4124.  EBB & RB to Joseph Milsand

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 25, 26-28.

Jan 31. ’58.

My dear Milsand,

The sight of your handwriting made us very happy—though I feel the unimmediateness of all letter-writing so much, as to hinder myself of getting the real good that is obtainable by that process, just because the greatest good is hardly obtainable. You know what I mean & would express: I wish you could walk in here every day and sit down without our needing to say—“How glad we are to see you!–” Let me fancy you are sitting there by the fire in an empty large chair we have,—& we will begin talking at once. Truest thanks for all you have done and offer to do about the translation, [1] —with a renewed caution to you not to do us more harm than good, as you easily may, if you make a serious labour out of the mere supervision and control which will be quite valuable enough. I understand, I am sure, all about the projected translation,—what such a thing might be conceived to realize of perfection,—what it probably or certainly will present of imperfection—and I accept the latter very heartily: for if there is any vitality in the work itself, supposing it to suffer no more than needs must—or almost needs must be in such a version,—I count on its doing something for itself—as all such works must have done: even in the average hasty and careless translations, the popular instinct has seen through to them in all instances—take that of “Faust” which, in Engd at least, was pretty exactly consigned to its proper place on the strength of two or three miserable and incomplete attempts at rendering—because one’s common sense is prompt to take for granted that in such a case there is the least done possible—that if anything is recognized at all thro’ the fog of the intervening foreign language it would be found to be distinct in all its details could one get closer to it. So here,—the positive advantages of giving a fair idea of the work—with your supervision which will do far more than that, (I mean, that not one translation from the modern English that I ever heard of, can have been equally favoured)—these make us accept M. Riou’s service very gladly: we confirm all our rights over his translation to you, and,—if possible,—reserve to ourselves the right of authorizing another version in case of the failure of this present one only—indeed, its success would take out of our hands the power of doing so, and may just be alluded to as an incentive to diligence. There! And now, and ever,—succeed the version or fail,—we are wholly bound to you who will have done your utmost for us, whether we will or no. (Did you ever see a review of “Aurora” in the Revue Britannique a year ago? [2] It was made up of extracts from English journals—and one of these, Blackwood, having alluded to the Aunt in the poem,—who is never named therein,—as “Aunt Margery”,—(a nom-charge [3] as if he had called her “ma mère l’Oie”) [4] —the new reviewer constantly gave her that name in his account of the poem, as if he had found it there.)

I shall let my wife say a word—she is suffering from the cold which is intense—but does not alarm me as at London or Paris. Peni is quite well and sweet-tempered even more than of old, we think: the cold weather is lighted up & warmed for him by the masking which begins to-day! I sympathize wholly with you about the execrable & cowardly crime we all have been shocked by. [5] God bless you, dearest friend–

Yours affectionately ever,

RB.

[Continued by EBB]

I feel as if I would rather not write about ‘Aurora,’ my dear friend– I am so grateful to you that my sense of your kindness goes better in Robert’s words than in any of mine—and especially this must be so today, with the sort of half-soul and no-body feeling to which the severe weather has reduced me. Think of Arno being frozen for the first time since 1847!! [6] And in Rome & Naples, it freezes & snows, they say, till the “sweet south” [7] has turned “bitter north” [8] over the distracted magnet–

One gets warm through it all however to think of the attempted crime in Paris. Whether Penini or I was the most furious, is hard to say. I think he—for he cried out that he “would stay a year in prison himself, to have those wicked people well punished,” .. a sacrifice which did’nt occur certainly to me. “Poor Napoleon,” said Penini, with a most pathetic tone of voice. I am so glad that you think there is something in “cet enfant là,” [9] —because really I think so too.

I ought to have written to you long ago in reply to that kindest & most welcome letter you wrote to me on my book– Let me say now that it gave me intense pleasure.

Do be well, & let us see you so when we get to Paris next summer. That, of itself, would be worth going for–

Affectionately & gratefully yours

EBB

Address, in RB’s hand: M. Milsand.

Publication: Scribner’s Magazine, July 1896, 114–115.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library, Joseph Milsand Archive.

1. Of Aurora Leigh (see letter 4104).

2. By Amédée Pichot (1795–1877) in the January 1857 issue (for the full text of this review, see vol. 23, pp. 356–363). Pichot had been the editor of the Revue Britannique since 1839.

3. “Stock name.”

4. “Mother Goose.”

5. The attempted assassination of Napoleon III (see letter 4121, note 5).

6. Sic, for 1849 (see the first paragraph in letter 2828).

7. Cf. Twelfth Night, I, 1, 5; see letter 668, note 3.

8. John Kenyon, “The Gods of Greece” (1843), line 87.

9. “That child.”

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