4997. RB to William Wetmore Story & Emelyn Story
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 4–7.
1. Chichester Road, Upper Westbourne Terrace.
Dec: 17. ’61.
Dearest Friends, & dearer than ever just now!– The parcel [1] & letter have this moment arrived & I lose not a minute in telling you so; as also that I will go this morning & see with Dicey [2] what is to be done– I much fear little or nothing, beyond some cost of publishing—which you may expect, I should say: perhaps immediate circulation, even in a cheap & popular paper, which would put your thoughts into thousands of heads at once, would be better than any delay in trying for the more dignified journals, & certainly than the pamphlet-form: this miserable affair of the “Trent” has so changed the object of interest for the moment. [3] I have not even glanced at your writing, so anxious am I to assure you at once on the above-mentioned points, but I know that we agree in feeling here, as in other matters—& probably do not differ even in appretiation [sic] of facts, as in old subjects of dispute when our feelings went equally together. I think English judgment of the northern procedures has been wrong from the beginning,—just as of the French procedures (will you let me say) in Italy: our people expected in both cases that the pure & simple right in the case would be declared & rigorously carried out without one let or stop or diplomatical fetching of circuits—“Italy shall be free, & Slavery abolished, absolutely, at once & forever.” At the first hesitation in face of difficulties, we cried out, “Italy will not be freed, nor slavery extinguished, after all”—& our sympathy stopped & irritation began—as if the spirit of all we would have sympathized in were not actively alive all the time, & taking the crooked road to what, in this poor world, is only reached by a straight one “as the crow flies,”—far above our heads, and rather near the heaven. The spirit of all Mr Lincoln’s acts is altogether against slavery in the end: but in apprehension of the result of losing the uncertain states, he declared his intention to be quite otherwise: you understand this, & the English did not, & so all the work of the “Times” was “cut out for it” [4] —and, just as in the Italian case, every measure now taken by the North in the direction, plainer & plainer, of complete emancipation, will be considered as “forced upon them.” It seems besides as if no mistake on one part can be met without two or more mistakes on the other, to make up for their coming late into observation; so the malice of the “Times” provoked abuse enough on your side, & threatenings quite beside the purpose—because our neutrality, poor, hard cold thing indeed, was the worst you had to expect, and in no moment of the fear of a terrible result for the cotton-operatives here, did anyone dream of taking part with the south. This sad affair of the “Trent” puts all this away, however—our people hold to the bone they have got in their jaws this time—that a naval lieutenant is not an admiralty-judge: if you put things as they were, so far as possible,—let the prisoners be restored with an acknowledgement that the seizure was wrong; I think the “Trent” ought in fairness to be considered as taken into one of your ports & subject to adjudicature: if our lawyers are right, you will have to restore her & pay for the detention,—if your authorities,—the ship is yours, envoys & all. There is remedy for our wrong in the legal way, & no other: but you are too likely to say—“the ship would be confiscated, the damages infinitely greater,—this twitching the sum in dispute out of the waistcoat-pocket is kinder than issuing writs & imprisoning the debtor ‘while he demurs’—if the debt be disproved after all, the writ & expenses will all fall on you—whereas carry off my money & I lose that decidedly, right or wrong—moreover you treated me thus at Charing Cross!”– So it seems we may fairly say, & you fairly do—but who can be sure he sees clearly, once the bad blood setting towards the head? Come what will, I—insignificant unit here—make no “war” in my soul with my truest brothers & friends—no one ever had cause to love a country better than I, who have so long been only not an American because people can hardly experience such generosity except as strangers. Nor do I mean ever to go into the matter again with you, dearest of all American friends, which our respective lawyers will wrangle out for some time yet. I hope! Here is a first bitter fruits of the business, that this letter which I have been meaning every day to write in reply to your two precious budgets of home news that gave me pleasure like pain & pain like pleasure, so recently—this letter proves, as you see, something altogether foreign to what it should be if true to my heart & responsive to yours: it is all written moreover while Pen is practising at my elbow on a grand piano in a very little London room—but my minutes (I dont know whether I began by saying) are numbered & disposed of from morning till night,—I never had so much to do, or so little pleasure in doing it, or anything. I will tell you when I write next (which must be as soon as I know anything decidedly about your pamphlet)—how I am provided with teachers for Pen & what I mean to do with him for the present. But having scribbled what I really doubt whether you or anybody else can read or understand, in determination to say something at once—I will leave off for a day or two. Truest love & thanks to dear Mrs Story & Edie for their letters: Pen is quite well. All regard & remembrances from us both to the Abbé when you see him. [5] Other friends I mean to write to very soon.
Ever yours affectionately & beyond
fear of change,
Robert Browning.
Publication: BAF, pp. 88–91.
Manuscript: Keats-Shelley Memorial Association.
1. The parcel contained an essay by Story that addressed England’s lack of sympathy and support for the North in the American Civil War. Entitled “The American Question,” it was published in three parts in The Daily News of 25 (p. 3), 26 (p. 3), and 27 December 1861 (p. 2).
2. Edward James Stephen Dicey (1832–1911); see letter 4730, note 9.
3. On 8 November 1861, off the coast of Cuba, a British mail packet, the Trent, was intercepted and boarded by the U.S.S. Jacinto under the command of Capt. Charles Wilkes (1798–1877), who ordered the removal of James Mason and John Slidell, two Confederate emissaries bound for Europe to obtain recognition of the Confederacy as a sovereign state. The Trent was allowed to proceed on its course for St. Thomas. Mason and Slidell were eventually taken to Boston. When news reached England later that month, the British government viewed the incident as a belligerent act and began preparing for war. An ultimatum from Lord John Russell to the British ambassador in Washington, threatening war if the prisoners were not released in a week, was communicated to William Seward, the secretary of state, on 18 December. Eight days later, the U.S. government agreed to the release. At the time of RB’s letter to the Storys, war between Great Britain and the United States was a real possibility.
4. In the first installment of “The American Question,” Story writes: “The articles in the Times are as bad in their spirit as they are incorrect in their statements of fact. They show not only ignorance but wilful ignorance, and one can scarcely wonder at the feeling of England if popular opinion is shaped by the writers of these articles” (The Daily News, 25 December 1861, p. 3). Earlier, Story had illustrated his point with quotations from an editorial in The Times of 12 October 1861 (p. 6): “One paper [The Times] stigmatizes this war as ‘the most groundless and wanton civil conflict of which history gives us any account.’ … The Times says that ‘we, in common with every nation of Europe, have regarded this unnatural struggle with horror and loathing’” (p. 3).
5. Abbé Maurice Venturini (b. 1826), Pen’s former Latin tutor (see letter 4535, note 18).
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