516. EBB to Lady Margaret Cocks
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 157–160.
74 Gloucester Place—Portman Square
[9 December 1835] [1]
My dear Lady Margaret,
I have been in London scarcely a week,—and I am writing in a scarcely quieted confusion,—to comply with the kind request you made me of acquainting you with our movements. They seemed to be, even after I wrote to you last, such very uncertain things, that I had half resigned the rest of my life to Sidmouth; when a sudden summons from Papa brought us here almost too quickly for us to be well aware of where & how we were going. The house we are in, is large enough to hold us comfortably,—& we are likely to remain in it for four months,—in which time our capacities for living the natural term of man’s life in this smokygen & foggygen, [2] may be ascertained. Should we be ascertained to have such a capacity, then Papa will probably take an unfurnished house,—& we shall be Londoners as long as we are mortals. These are the probabilities—what man calls the probabilities, & what he perhaps ought to call, the inferences from his ignorances. I confess to the sighing of many sighs, on exchanging [‘]‘the bright t[h]e blue the ever free” [3] ocean, for that long & high brick wall opposite, & “the interstices between the intersections” [4] filled up by dash & din & ever disagreeable fogs. I do not enjoy what I look upon. And I cannot understand yet what people mean in London, when they say—“what a lovely day”! There seem to me to be no lovely days here. Well! but, this is the impression—the unreflected-upon impression. I am contented, I hope & believe: and can see,—tho’ I cannot, the sunshine—the many advantages in the way of occupation & employment to my brothers—yes! & advantages otherwise. Dear Lady Margaret, who speaks far too kindly of me, would see for my very own self some which I do not see. The society she refers to, is a thing as distant as when I was at Sidmouth. And besides—were it not distant—should I not—with my habits which have grown like a double rind thicker & thicker upon my spirit,—wish that it were distant, & shrink away from it, & make it distant by my own will? Yes! indeed! Dear Lady Margaret can scarcely imagine what an indisposition towards new countenances is in me: So strong, that it even counteracts my undying love for genius itself,—& would make me turn from the faces of some, to see whose footsteps I would make many pilgrimages. Can this be understood? Perhaps, scarcely so by any one who had not lived so secludedly as I have lived. Dear Lady Margaret will shake her head over it, at any rate. I am taught to look forwards to one great pleasure next summer. Did you not teach me? One three weeks is to be spent here by a dear friend of mine. And how glad I shall be to see her & to talk of some of the feelings & thinkings of the last three years. The last letter was so kind!—.
This is the day of publication for Mr Bulwer’s new work—Rienzi: and I mean to read it. [5] He stands in my estimation, one of the most if not the very most, eminent geniuses of the present day. What would he not be, if he were sanctified! the peculiar thing in him, seems to me to be this—that he is a double man! that he appears to have two hearts—one a worldling’s, the other a poet’s; two minds––one a keen cunning matter of fact mind,—the other noble generous & Platonically imaginative. He is a wonderful man: would that he were a regenerated man! But I mean to read his book.
I did not mean however to raise Lætitia Landon on as high a pedestal as Felicia Hemans, nor even upon a near pedestal to her’s. She is “toujours tourterelle”; [6] and is deficient in energy & condensation as well as in variety. I used to think when her laurel was first growing that it wd become an higher tree; but it will not now. Nevertheless there does appear to me a good deal to admire in her poetry even as it is! There is a vividness & a naturalness, both in the ideas & the expression of them—yes! & a pathos too! She is like a bird of a few notes. They are few—but nature gave them! And notwithstanding what you say of her, if you do ever meet the verses upon her verses on the memory of Mrs Hemans, in a New Monthly Magazine, read them.
Mr Boyd is living a mile and a half from us, which is a pleasure to me, tho’ I would have had him rather nearer. I have paid to him one visit; & I dare say, we shall soon recommence the Greek readings. Except himself & a dear friend of our family’s, [7] there is no one in London whom I would not rather walk to shun than walk to see. Therefore I learn what is the solitude of a multitude—the deepest! But altho’ deep, it is not solitude in its ideal poetic form. It is not solitude by the sea–
Talking of poetry, have you seen Serjeant Talfourd’s new tragedy, the Ion. At any rate you may have probably seen the review of it & extracts from it, in the last Quarterly. [8] He has been kind & flattering enough to send it to my publisher for me; & I read it thro’ yesterday with much pleasure & admiration. The tone of sentiment throughout it, is high & noble—& the impression of the whole, like the sight of a hero. My fault finding is confined to a want of concentration, which I either perceive or fancy. And I am not anxious to find fault,—seeing that the character of the work is so Greeklike, & not after the Utilitarians!– [9]
We are scarcely settled enough here to be able to say what we think of doing & reading! my brother George is ‘devoted’ to the law. I use that word, pray believe, in the most rigid sacrificial meaning. I have no sympathy with the legalities– And besides, I had dreamed so long of dear Georgie’s being a minister of Jesus Christ, that I do not like the awakening. But God’s will in all things being good, surely His will must be good in regulating & choosing the instrument by which He wd be served! Dear Lady Margaret! When you write to me again, will you say how you get on with the writing & the reading? how is the German in particular! I have read lately Stilling’s autobiography; [10] & was by turns touched & amused by it. It is an instance of the durability of romance & sentiment. I read it in English of course; but I am yearning to look into the German souls of some German writers, without arriving at their thoughts by “transfusion”. By the way, that novel of poor young Godwin has footprints of genius in it,—with all the dust of it!——
Am I taking a great freedom in asking a frank for the enclosed letter? I should be very much obliged if one were to be granted to me–
My sister’s kind regards– Let dear Lady Margaret think sometimes
of her ever affectionate
E B Barrett
Addressed and franked by Lord Somers on integral page: Tewkesbury Decr Thirteenth / 1835 / The Lady Margaret Cocks, [11] / Victoria Cottage / Leamington / Somers.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: James Hervey-Bathurst.
1. Dated by the reference to the publication of Rienzi.
2. The suffix “gen” from γεινομαι (to beget), meaning “that which produces” (OED).
3. It seems fair to assume that EBB, quoting from memory, had in mind the line “The blue, the fresh, the ever free!” (line 2 of “The Sea,” by Bryan Waller Procter).
4. “Anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections;” (the definition of a net in Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language).
5. An advertisement in The Athenæum of 5 December 1835 (no. 423) announced the publication of Rienzi on the following Wednesday, which was the 9th.
6. “Always a turtle-dove.”
7. Miss Trepsack.
8. Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795–1854), lawyer, judge and author, had previously published some poems and a series of essays. Ion, his first published play, printed privately in 1835, was first performed on 26 May 1836 at Covent Garden. The reviewer in The Quarterly Review (no. CVIII, September 1835, pp. 505–516) considered it “a tragic composition, which, after repeated perusal, we are satisfied must ultimately fix the name of Mr. Talfourd on a very high station in contemporary literature.” For details of the Brownings’ association with Talfourd, see pp. 323–324.
9. The Utilitarians believed that the chief consideration in determining any course of conduct should be to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number.
10. Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling (1740–1817), author, oculist, and sometime professor of economical, financial and statistical science at the University of Marburg. An English version of his autobiography, translated by Samuel Jackson, was published in 1835–36.
11. Between this line and the next, there appears the name “Lady Margaret Cocks,” written by EBB and deleted by Lord Somers.
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