5460. RB to Alfred Tennyson
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 146.
19. Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace,
Oct. 13. ’64.
Dear Tennyson,
I have been two months away and only find your Book [1] now. (It ought to show “From A.T.” on the fly-leaf for my son’s sake hereafter.) “Enoch” continues the perfect thing I thought it at first reading: but the “Farmer,” [2] taking me unawares, astonishes me more in this stage of our acquaintanceship. How such a poem disproves the statement in that strange mistake of yours—the Flower-apologue: “steal your seed?” [3] —as if they want flower-seed in a gum-flower manufactory! One might cabbage out a tolerable rose, by adroit scissor-work on starched calico, after studying in your gardens of Gul, [4] —but the seed for the phænomenon itself comes from a place that was never reached from the top of a wall, you may be sure. “Boadicea,” [5] the new metre, is admirable—a paladin’s achievement in its way: I am thinking of Roland’s Pass in the Pyrenees, where he hollowed a rock that had hitherto blocked the road, by one kick of his boot—so have you made our language undergo you.
Do but go on—and I won’t mind adding, may I continue to see and hear you—it is reason enough for being ready to do so.
Good bye and God bless you! Give my congratulations to Mrs Tennyson. I looked a long look three days ago at the Hôtel de Douvres where I met her first [6] —and of you I was thinking particularly at Amiens-station [7] next afternoon when somebody clapped me on the shoulder—Grant Duff, if you know him.
Ever yours, on the various stations of this life’s “line”, and, I hope, in the final refreshment-room ere we get each his cab and drive gaily off—“Home.” Where call upon
Robert Browning.
Publication: BBIS-22, pp. 31–32.
Manuscript: Tennyson Research Centre.
1. This presentation copy of Enoch Arden, etc. (1864) was later inscribed by the author: “Robert Browning from his friend & admirer A Tennyson” (see Reconstruction, A2273).
2. “The Northern Farmer.”
3. Cf. “The Flower,” line 12.
4. Cf. Byron, The Bride of Abydos (1813), I, 1, 8.
5. Written in galliambics, “Boädicea” is the first poem in the “Experiments” section of Enoch Arden, etc.
6. In the summer of 1851 when the Brownings were on their way to London and the Tennysons were on their way to Florence (see letters 2929 and 2930).
7. Where RB had seen him on 26 September 1861 when both were en route to England. Both had been lucky to avoid a train accident at Amiens that occurred at 11 p.m. of the same day (see letters 4969 and 4988).
___________________
