Correspondence

5455.  Alexander Macmillan to RB

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 138.

[London]

October 5, 1864.

<***> I [1] shall feel very much obliged if you will allow me to include a poem of Mrs. Browning’s, “My Doves,” [2] in a selection of poems for the young, which I am now printing. [3]

I have been reading aloud at home the poem about St. John’s death, [4] with great effect. My wife [5] and sister, [6] who constitute my audience, found it hard on first reading. I rather think the reader felt the same. But on second reading things become clearer, as they do when the dimmed eye gets used to stronger light. The early pictures are marvellous. Holman Hunt should paint the awakening of John when the boy reads the text to him. [7]

“Sludge” and “Bishop Blougram” make a nice, somewhat peculiar pair. I have only read “Caliban” once, which was not quite enough for a dull fellow. I somewhat guessed the drift. But you do read us all riddles. “Doth he not speak in parables?” [8] Still we are thankful he does speak. <***>

Text: Letters of Alexander Macmillan, ed. George A. Macmillan (Glasgow, 1908), p. 178.

1. Alexander Macmillan (1818–96), who with his brother Daniel Macmillan (1813–57) founded the publishing firm of Macmillan & Co.

2. First published in The Seraphim, and Other Poems (1838).

3. The Sunday Book of Poetry (1865), ed. Cecil Frances Alexander (1818–95) was published by Macmillan in time for the 1864 Christmas market. EBB’s “My Doves” appears on pp. 279–281.

4. “A Death in the Desert” (Dramatis Personæ, 1864).

5. Caroline Macmillan (née Brimley, 1824–71).

6. Macmillan had two sisters living in 1864: Margaret (afterwards Bowes, 1801–90), resident in the United States in 1864; and Janet (afterwards Wilson, 1816–69), in Scotland in 1864. Presumably, Macmillan refers to his brother’s widow, Frances Eliza Macmillan (née Orridge, 1821–67). She and her children are listed in the 1861 England census as members of Macmillan’s household at Cambridge.

7. “A Death in the Desert,” lines 58–66.

8. Cf. Ezekiel 20:49.

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