4629. EBB to Editor of The Athenæum
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 238–239.
28– Via del Tritone–
March– 23– 1860–
To the Editor of the Atheneum
Sir, [1]
The Atheneum, containing an article on my “Poems before Congress,’ [2] reaches me at Rome this day.
Will you bear with me while I say one word?
I cannot attribute even to my critic that “blaze of infallibility” [3] which he most wrongfully accuses me of claiming for myself, while I find in his remarks the extraordinary mis-statement, that the poem called “A Curse for a Nation” refers to England.
Yet I am almost sure that it is unnecessary for me to appeal from this critic’s sense of justice to the public’s, and that, when he has read the poem in question once fairly through, he will admit that it can only point to a “country over the western sea”, [4] “a land not mine,” [5] and to a national sin from which, I thank God, England has nobly relieved herself–
This poem was in fact, written and printed several years ago for the Anti-slavery Society of the United States, [6] and is well-known among American readers, who, with a characteristic intelligence and generosity, neither mistook the writer’s motive in it, nor withdrew their sympathy from her in consequence.
I remain Sir,
faithfully yours
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. William Hepworth Dixon (1821–79), editor of The Athenæum (1853–69).
2. A review by Henry Fothergill Chorley of Poems Before Congress appeared in The Athenæum of 17 March 1860 (no. 1690, pp. 371–372). For the full text of this review, see p. 358.
3. Following an extract from “A Curse for a Nation,” Chorley writes: “The terrible assumption of vain-glory, that those whom the poetess curses must be accursed, seems to be lost in the blaze of her own infallibility as regards Italian men and affairs,—French relations,—English abominations, and every grave, intricate question which makes men weigh, wait and suspend the sledge-hammer or—the curse” (The Athenæum, p. 372).
4. Cf. “A Curse for a Nation,” lines 4 and 52.
5. Cf. “A Curse for a Nation,” lines 31–32.
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