4659. EBB to Henry Fothergill Chorley
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 302–306.
28 Via del Tritone. Rome
May 2. [1860] [1]
My dear Mr Chorley I make haste to answer your letter, & beg you to do the like in putting out of your life the least touch of pain or bitterness connected with me– It is true, true, true, that some of my earliest gladness in literary sympathy & recognition came from you– I was grateful to you then as a stranger, & I am not likely ever to forget it as a friend– Believe this of me, as I feel it of you.
In the matter of reviews & of my last book, & before leaving the subject for ever, I want you distinctly to understand that my complaint related simply to the mistake in facts & not to any mistake in opinion– The quality of neither mercy nor justice should be strained [2] in the honest reviewer by the personal motive; &, because you felt a regard for me, that was no kind of reason why you should like my book–
In printing the poems I well knew the storm of execration, which would follow– Your zephyr from the Athenæum was the first of it .. gentle indeed in comparison with various gusts from other quarters– All fair it was from your stand-point, to see me as a prophet without a head, or even as a woman in a shrewish temper [3] —and if my husband had not been especially pained by my being held up at the end of a fork as the unnatural she-monster who had “cursed” her own country, (following the Holy Father,) [4] I should have left the “mistake” to right itself, without troubling the Athenæum office with the letter they would not insert– [5] In fact, Robert was a little vexed with me for not being vexed enough– I was only vexed enough when the Athenæum corrected its mis[s]tatement in its own way– [6] That did extremely vex me, for it made me look ungenerous, cowardly, mean—as if, in haste to escape from the dogs in England, I threw them the good name of America– “Mrs Browning now states”.
Well—dear Mr Chorley, it was not your doing. So the thing that “vexed me enough” in you, was a mistake of mine– Let us forgive one another our mistakes—& there, an end– I was wrong in taking for granted that the letter which referred to your review was entrusted to you to dispose of,—and you were not right in being in too much haste to condemn a book you disliked, to give the due measure of attention to every page of it. The insurgents being plainly insurgents, you shot one at least of them without trial .. as was done in Spain the other day. [7] True, that even favorable critics have fallen here & there into your very mistake—but is not that mainly attributable to the suggestive power of the Athenæum? Do you not believe so yourself?
“Thais led the way”! [8]
And now that we clasp hands again, my dear friend, let me say one word as to the “argument” of my last poems– Once, in a kind & generous review of ‘Aurora Leigh,’ you complained a little of “new lights–” [9] Now I appeal to you– Is it not rather you than I, who deal in ‘new lights,’ if the liberation of a people & the struggle of a nation for existence have ceased in your mind to be the right arguments for poetry? Observe– I may be wrong or right about Napoleon– He may be snake, scoundrel, devil, in his motives. But the thing he did, was done before the eyes of all– His coming here was real—the stroke of his sword was indubitable—the rising & struggle of the people was beyond controversy—& the state of things at present is a fact. —What if the father of poetry Homer (to go back to the oldest lights) made a mistake about the cause of Achilles’ wrath– [10] What if Achilles really wanted to get rid of Briseis & the war together, & sulked in his tent in a great sham? Should we conclude against the artistic propriety of the poet’s argument therefore?
You greatly surprise me by such objections. It is objected to “new lights,” as far as I know, that we are apt to be too metaphysical, self-conscious, subjective, everything for which there are hard German words. The reproaches made against myself have been often of this nature, as you must be well aware. ‘Beyond human sympathies’ [11] is a phrase in use among critics of a certain school– But that, in any school, any critic should consider the occasions of great tragic movements, (such as a war for the life of a nation,) unfit occasions for poetry, .. improper arguments, .. fills me with an astonishment which I can scarcely express adequately—and, pardon me, I can only understand your objection by a sad return on the English persistency in its mode of looking at the Italian war– You have looked at it always too much as a mere table for throwing dice .. so much for France’s ambition, so much for Piedmont’s .. so much stuff for intrigue in an English parliament for ousting whigs, or inning conservatives– You have not realized to yourselves the dreadful struggle for national life .. you who, thank God, have your life as a nation, ‘safe’– A calm scholastic Italian friend of ours said to my husband at the peace, .. “It’s sad to think how the madhouses will fill after this.” You do not conceive clearly the agony of a whole people with their house on fire—though Lord Brougham used that very figure to recommend your inter-national neutrality. [12] No, if you conceived of it, .. if you did not dispose of it lightly in your thoughts as of a Roccabella conspiracy, full half vanity, & only half serious,—a Mazzini explosion, not a quarter justified, & taking place often as an affair of metier .. you, a thoughtful and feeling man, would cry aloud that if poets represent the deepest things, the most tragic things in human life, they need not go further for an argument– And I say my dear Mr Chorley, that if, while such things are done & suffered, the poet’s business is to rhyme the stars & walk apart, .. I say that Mr Carlyle is right, & that the world requires more earnest workers than such dreamers can be– [13]
For my part, I have always conceived otherwise of poetry– I believe that if anything written by me has been recognized even by you, the cause is that I have written not to please you or any critic, but the deepest truth out of my own heart & head. I dont dream & make a poem of it. Art is not either all beauty or all use—it is essential truth which makes its way through beauty into use– [14] Not that I say this for myself. Artistically I may have failed in these poems—that is for the critic to consider—but in the choice of their argument I have not failed artistically, I think .. or my whole artistic life & understanding of life have failed–
Then .. I cannot persuade you of this .. but I believe it .. I have tried to stand on the facts of things before I began to feel “dithyrambically.” [15] Thought out coldly, then felt upon warmly– I will not admit of “being heated out of fairness”!! [16] I deny it, & stand upon my innocency–
And after all, “Casa Guidi Windows” was a book that commended itself to you, Mr Chorley. I remember well your kindness to it– [17] Nothing was said then about the “fit arguments of poetry”,—and I recovered from it to write ‘Aurora Leigh,’ of which however many people did say that it was built on an unfit argument, & besides was a very indecent, corrupting book. (Have I not heard of ladies of sixty who had “never felt themselves pure since reading it”..?) But now, consider. Since you did not lose hope for me in “Casa Guidi Windows” because the line of politics was your own, why need you despair of me in the Poems before Congress, although I do praise the Devil in them?—— A mistake is not fatal to a critic? need it be so to a poet? Does Napoleon’s being wicked (if he is so) make Italy less interesting? Or unfit for poetry, historical subjects like ‘The Dance’ or the ‘Court Lady’.?——
Meanwhile that thin-skinned people the Americans, exceed some of you in generosity, rendering thanks to reprovers of their ill-deeds & understanding the pure love of the mother. Let me tell you rather for their sake than mine. I have extravagant praises & prices offered to me from “over the western-sea,” [18] in consequence of these very ‘Poems before Congress.’ The nation is generous in these things & not “thin-skinned.’[’]
As to England, I shall be forgiven in time. The first part of a campaign & the first part of a discussion are the least favorable to English successes. After a while, by the time you have learnt to shoot cats with the new rifles, you will put them away, & arrive at the happy second thought which corrects the first thought. That second thought will not be of invasion, prophecies a headless prophet. “Time was when heads were off a man wd die”– [19] A man—yes– But a woman! We die hard, you know–
Here, an end. I hope you will write to me some day to ease me by proving to me that I have ceased to be bitter to the palate of your soul– Believe this!—that rather than be a serious sadness to you I would gladly sit on in the pillory under the aggressive mud of that mob of Saturday reviewers who take their mud & their morals from the same place, & use voices hoarse with hooting down un-English poetesses, to cheer on the English champion, Tom Sayers. [20] For me, I neither wish for The Belt nor martyrdom—but if I were ambitious of anything, it might be to be wronged where … for instance … Cavour is wronged. <***>
Publication: LEBB, II, 364–365 (as [early 1860] to Mrs. Jameson) and 380–383.
Manuscript: Wellesley College and Yale University.
1. Year provided by EBB’s references to The Athenæum.
2. Cf. The Merchant of Venice IV, 1, 184.
3. EBB paraphrases remarks from Chorley’s review of Poems Before Congress in The Athenæum of 17 March 1860 (no. 1690, pp. 371–372). For the full text of this review, see p. 358.
4. By way of excommunication; see letter 4637, note 12.
7. An ill-conceived and futile Carlist revolt had been suppressed by the Spanish government in early April. The Examiner of 21 April 1860 reported the capture of the principals involved, General Ortega and the Pretender Don Carlos de Bourbon (1818–1861), and added the following: “In the meantime two poor wretches belonging to the Carlist faction were taken at Baracaldo, about three miles from Bilboa, and shot, as also a Carlist Colonel, Don Epifanio Carrion” (p. 247).
8. John Dryden, “Alexander’s Feast” (1697), line 148.
9. In Chorley’s review of Aurora Leigh in The Athenæum of 22 November 1856 (no. 1517, pp. 1425–27), he complained of EBB’s “flippancy,” “dreary disquisition,” and “novelties to which no diffusion of the new light will reconcile serious readers.” For the full text of this review, see vol. 23, pp. 275–279.
10. The Iliad begins with a quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles. The latter had captured the beautiful Briseis as a prize in battle. Agamemnon, compelled to give up his own prize, demands Briseis. Achilles acquiesces but persuades his mother to beseech Zeus to take his side against the Greeks.
11. We have been unable to trace this phrase in reviews of EBB's works. However, in a notice of Poems (1850) that appeared in The Leader of 30 November 1850, George Henry Lewes wrote something similar about “A Drama of Exile”: “We do not deny the beauty of many passages … but we say the poem is a caprice: it is not hewn out of experience; it does not appeal to human sympathies” (p. 856). For the full text of this review, see vol. 16, pp. 318–324.
12. We have been unable to trace the comment EBB attributes to Lord Brougham.
13. In On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841), Carlyle writes: “The Poet who could merely sit on a chair, and compose stanzas, would never make a stanza worth much” (Lecture III, “The Hero as Poet,” p. 127). In Past and Present (1843), on the poet as worker, he notes, “The spoken Word, the written Poem, is said to be an epitome of the man; how much more the done Work. Whatsoever of morality and of intelligence; what of patience, perseverance, faithfulness, of method, insight, ingenuity, energy; in a word, whatsoever of Strength the man had in him will be written in the Work he does” (p. 213).
14. EBB echoes the definition of the poet’s truth as spoken by her heroine in Aurora Leigh: “I write so / Of the only truth-tellers now left to God, / The only speakers of essential truth, / Opposed to relative, comparative, / And temporal truths” (I, 858–862).
15. EBB alludes to the first sentence in Chorley’s review of Poems Before Congress: “Mrs. Browning is in this book authoritatively dithyrambic, blessing or blaming as suits an anointed priestess.”
16. This and the following quotation are presumably from Chorley’s letter, which has not surfaced..
17. Communicated to EBB in person or by letter. The Athenæum’s review of Casa Guidi Windows (1851) was written by John Westland Marston (see vol. 17, pp. 306–309).
18. EBB, “A Curse for a Nation,” lines 4 and 52.
19. Cf. Macbeth, III, 4, 77–78.
20. Tom Sayers (1826–65), prize fighter and English champion since 1857. According to the ODNB, “Sayers’s last and most famous fight was with the American John C. Heenan [1834–73] (the Benicia Boy), for £200 a side and the championship. They met at Farnborough on Tuesday 17 April 1860, and fought thirty-seven rounds in two hours and six minutes. The event attracted the keenest interest in both hemispheres, and a large crowd, including Lord Palmerston.” The fight ended in a draw, and “each man received a belt.”
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