5345. RB to James Thomas Fields
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 25–26.
London, 19 Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace, W.
March 11. ’64.
Dear Mr Fields,
I thought there was no use in replying to yours of last October [1] till I could really write to the purpose, which I hope to do presently. You receive with this the better half of my new poems [2] —the rest, about a hundred pages more, will follow in a week or two. I accede to your desire “to print in the Atlantic Monthly three poems in succession before the book is ready, for £50 over and above the £100 you are to send for the six weeks advance of the volume or volumes.” I am disinclined to contribute to periodicals, you know, but your offer is handsome; I am sure you will manage to do whatever Mr Chapman recommends in my interest, and save my copyright on this side of the water at least. If the experiment should succeed on your side also, we can repeat it when I publish next,—that is, soon, for I am inclined to work, and have done somewhat.
The poems go better: it is considered, in one than in two volumes: if I send all up to page 168. (I am not certain what I may find ready) the next poem will be a long affair—the choice thing, perhaps. [3]
I particularly hope that you will not include in your triad “James Lee,” nor the longer pieces: “James Lee” gives the title to the volume simply because it stands first, and something must be registered here: the proper title would be “Second Series of Men and Women,” but publishing interests are against that. It is a mere makeshift, and bad, because if you print the said “James Lee” by itself, you seem to put forward the leading piece of the lot, whereas it is lightish rather: while if you take, say, “Abt Vogler,” “Gold Hair” and “The Worst of It,” you will gain, and I not lose, thereby. [4]
Please write to me at once. This must be despatched, and I end it with true thanks to Mrs Fields for her kind remembrance of me and mine—the boy, fifteen two days ago, and a good stout fellow able to ride, row, swim, fence, and box, with other educational delights: I want your money for him.
I continue to find friends in fresh American comers—it would be strange indeed if I did not wish you all well from the bottom of my heart: & hereupon, goodbye, friends all, ever
Yours faithfully ever
Robert Browning.
Docket: a. March 26/1864.
Publication: The Poems of Robert Browning, Vol. 4, ed. John Woolford et al. (Harlow, England, 2012), p. 574 (in part).
Manuscript: Huntington Library.
1. This letter has not surfaced. Doubtless, it was a reply to RB’s of 16 October 1863 (see letter 5283).
2. Dramatis Personæ (1864), published by Chapman and Hall on 28 May. The American edition was published by Ticknor and Fields on 2 September.
3. Probably “Mr. Sludge, ‘The Medium’,” which begins on p. 169 in the English edition.
4. Fields published “Gold Hair,” “Prospice,” and part of “James Lee” (section VI of “Under the Cliff”) in The Atlantic Monthly (see letter 5283, note 2). “The Worst of It” appeared in the Boston Daily Evening Transcript of 25 June 1864, p. 4, with the following note: “From Browning’s ‘Dramatis Personæ’ in press of Ticknor & Fields.”
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