4565. Walter Savage Landor to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 119–122.
[Florence]
[1 January 1860] [1]
This is new year’s day—may it (and fifty more) bring happiness with it to you and the worthy partaker with you of that, and of all heaven’s best gifts– You recieve here a fresh Dialogue. [2] Abelard was always a little of a hypocrite– Heloise was for once. I have been reading her first letter—was there ever one so eloquent? I wish we had a little of Abelard’s poetry, altho’ none of that age was intrinsically worth a straw. Strange enough! the best in those ages was Icelandic. Doubtless you have seen William Herbert’s translations from that language [3] .. I owe my Gunlaug to it, not worth much. [4] —No tidings yet of my Hellenics– As for the other Poems quid dignum tanto feret hic promissor hiatu? [5] I never shall get them. [6] I never would have askt Forster to procure them for me had I known who was Moxon’s successor. [7] Now divide my thousand kind wishes (the remaining ones) between the young Abelard and the young Heloise, [8] auguring them a better fate than befell either of their predecessors in study. Always my kindest remembrances to the Story’s– Kirkup and Countess Baldelli called on me yesterday, Kirkup desired his remembrances when I should write to you.
Ever yours
W. S. L.
Address: Robert Browning Esq / 28 Via del Tritone / 2ndo Piano / Roma.
Publication: BBIS-5, p. 22 (as [3 January 1860]).
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
Enclosure:
Abelard, Heloise and Canon Fulbert.
Heloise. It is very late, I fear; the birds are singing in the convent garden opposite. Well for us, my uncle is not come downstairs, altho’ he might, if in good humour, be overjoyed at seeing your solicitude to begin our lesson.
Abelard. We can wait patiently for him. I hope you have slept as soundly.
Heloise. I slept later, but rose earlier. When I left my chamber I heard his diapason. I could fancy it rang the rings of the curtain.
Abelard. Hush! hush! here he comes.
<Heloise. Good morning, my dear uncle. You have slept soundly and seem refresht.
Fulbert. There is a slumberous swing in that couple of matin bells yonder, which almost makes me think they never have been beatified; they deprive us of sleep and take it all to themselves.
Heloise. Uncle, don’t be cross.
Fulbert (calling the maid) Agaton! Agaton!> [9] Agaton! Agaton! bring the ham in, and a bottle or two of Moselle. Brother Abelard, I prefer white wine at breakfast, having no objection to a slight tinge somewhat more positively red; have you?
Abelard. None whatever; I can tolerate one quite rosacious.
Fulbert. My niece yonder .. Leida! she has crept nearer to us, in order to hear our disquisition. I was about to say that she never drinks wine. She knows better. Girls should always keep their heads cool and clear. We were talking, I think, of .. the ham is tender; try it. You deep scholars have weak appetites. Let me recommend to you this central slice; not absolutely central, but better stil, being nearer the hock, and impinging on that glorious globule which butchers call (a little irreverently) the pope’s eye. Eat, eat, man! It is wiser to eat heartily at breakfast than at supper, after which it may occasion bad dreams. Even the pleasanter of youth ought to be driven off, might and main.
Heloise. But suppose, dear uncle, they are not to be driven off, and will come back again if they are. We are weak creatures in our sleep and must succumb.
Fulbert. The Devil is the Prince of Darkness. What a dominion he has! half the world!. Pick up my fork, Heloise. Kyrie eleeison! Often as he comes by day, he comes oftener by night. What say you, Sire Abelard!
Abelard. By day we have weapons for him, face to face, but by night he takes us at a disadvantage. It is well to be wakeful as long as we can.
Fulbert. There, Heloise! mind that.
Heloise. Trust me, dear uncle!
Fulbert. Surely he was a fanciful and foolish man who gave him the name of Lucifer, which means strictly the morning star; does not it?
Abelard. I coincide in opinion with you, my learned Canon, and would suggest that Satan, or any other less pleasant appellation, befits him better. I find in the morning star no such malignant influences.
Fulbert. One day or other, I will turn over my books; they may throw, peradventure, some light upon the subject .. Talking of books, what author is it, you are now perusing?
Abelard. Heloise is already, as you know, not only a proficient in latin, but she writes it as ably as the Fathers of the Church. She could even pen a papal Brief, or suggest an Allocution.
Fulbert. Dont tell His Holiness, or we may lose her. He knows how to value such scribes, and what work to set them about.
Heloise. I would rather be where I am.
Fulbert. So thou shalt. Rome is a naughty place: even the religious, it is re-ported, have been infected at sundry times by its malaria. Tho’ it never can reach the Vatican, so peculiarly under divine protection and its patron Saint. Yet Saint Peter may sometimes be looking another way and hear no cock in the loft. Better a spirit of poetry than a blast of pestilence. Poetry is the earliest disease caught by girls, and even youths of maturer age are liable to catch it of them.
Heloise. There, Abelard! mind that.
Fulbert. He runs no danger if you keep him close and tight.
Heloise. I will do my best; but you must allow us a leaf or two of poetry.
Fulbert. A leaf or two of sage is enough to season a goose. Take about as much poetry; more of either is heating. What poetry would you begin with, friend Abelard, after the Psalms and Hymns? Learned men have rendered the latin hymns palatable by trussing up their hind quarters with rhyme– Ah, the poor Romans! they knew not what rhyme was; they had neither rhyme nor reason.
Heloise. And yet they sang under the window (I mean the men did) of those they loved.
Fulbert. More shame for them, if true. But now tell me, friend Abelard, whether there be anything in measure, long or short, which may be safely put into a maiden’s hand.
Abelard. We are beginning our lessons in poetry with Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Fulbert. Ovid, Ovid: I do think I have met with the name somewhere. Ho! now I remember; it was at Monsignore the Archbishop’s, when I waited on his venerable Lordship, last candlemas with the offering of a taper of virgin wax scented with myrrh and spikenard from the Holy Sepulcher. He threw it (I mean the scroll) indignantly away, and his cap over it, even before he had markt it for prohibition. In fact I could discern only the title in large gold letters, with a picture of two Angels as loving as Angels should be, and a head of the blessed Dove peeping down from a cloud approvingly.
Abelard. It could not be the Metamorphoses, the only poem of that author which I propose for Heloise’s perusal. We must beg your permission to relieve occasionally grave philosophy by less grave poetry.
Fulbert. Be it so. Of the poets, I know, and desire to know, little: but the philosophers were poor benighted heathens. Our own poets, and those recently imported from abroad, have made very free with Gods and Goddesses, I hear. I don’t see what emolument the said Gods and Godesses brought to them in their straits, bite their nails and scratch their scalps as they would. On what subject did your other Ovid treat?
Heloise. That poem of his which we are reading begins with the Creation of the world.
Fulbert. Well, the man had something to work upon, and he sett [sic] about it early in the day. But what could he advance after the manifestations of Genesis? Poets do twist and turn things about strangely. I wonder how he contrived to manage the Serpent.
Heloise. He kept clear of him, and went another way.
Fulbert. Then, like a child, he forgot the last lines of the lesson, and could have little or nothing to say about that mischief-maker Eve.
Heloise. The scene is laid far remote from Paradise and Eden.
Fulbert. Now a question for you, grave theologian Abelard. He made a Creation of his own, it seems; how did he contrive to people it? Women there must be.
Heloise. There are several.
Fulbert. And, no doubt, very active in their vocation. And Devil there must also be where they are, tho’ kept out of sight, I warrant ye, and slithering in silence.
Heloise. Really and truly, my dear uncle, you make me blush, talking so of the women.
Fulbert. Perhaps I was going too far with ’em. Let me only just swallow the morsel on my plate, and then I promise you I will leave you couple to yourselves. Do you find too much aniseed in it, friend Abelard, as you leave half the slice on your plate?
Abelard. I find everything exquisite here.
Fulbert. You reserve your appetite; it will come before dinner; until then, good-bye.
1. Day and month provided by Landor’s first sentence; year provided by postmark.
2. See enclosure.
3. Select Icelandic Poetry, Translated from the Originals; with Notes (2 parts, 1804–06) by William Herbert (1778–1847), classical scholar, botanist, and from 1850 until his death Dean of Manchester.
4. “Gunlaug and Helga” (1806), “a narrative poem which neatly interwove three of the stories Herbert told in his notes” (R.H. Super, Walter Savage Landor: A Biography, New York, 1954, p. 72).
5. “What will this boaster produce in keeping with such mouthing?” (Horace, Ars Poetica, line 138, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough).
8. i.e., Pen Browning and Edith Story.
9. The passage within angle brackets is written on a slip of paper, affixed to the page.
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