5853. RB to Richard Herne Shepherd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 159–160.
19. Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace. W.
Feb. 1. 67.
Dear Sir, [1]
I hardly know what to say in reply to your request: I cannot but have repugnance to any exhibition of a boyish attempt, [2] which never bore my name, and, as yourself remark, from my keeping it out of all collections of my poems these thirty years and more, must have enjoyed my best wishes for its abolition: but nobody cares about an author’s feelings in such a matter, and I can hardly do more than make a grimace and submit to whatever mine may have to undergo. I do not wonder that you refused to edit the whole poem for America, [3] though I am obliged greatly by your sense of justice and gentlemanliness as shown by such a refusal,—and in consequence I will bring myself to say that—in reliance upon those two qualities—if you will strictly confine yourself to “a few extracts”—and will preface these with mention of the fact that the poem was purely dramatic, and intended to head a series of “Men & Women” such as I have afterwards introduced to the world under somewhat better auspices,—mentioning this on your own authority, and not in any way alluding to this of mine—and, further, if you will subject the whole of the extracts to my approval—(not a single remark upon them,—only the passages themselves)—in this case, and not otherwise, I give the leave you desire. [4] I may add that I am glad you do not refer to any early works of my wife: I should be compelled to prevent any extract from them.
I am, dear Sir,
yours faithfully
Robert Browning.
Address: Richard Herne Shepherd Esq / 5. Hereford Square, / Brompton. S.W.
Publication: William Lyon Phelps, “Notes on Browning’s Pauline,” Modern Language Notes, 47 (May 1932), 295.
Manuscript: Yale University.
1. Richard Herne Shepherd (1842–95), editor and bibliographer.
2. Pauline (1833).
3. Presumably at this time, Shepherd owned the copy of Pauline (see Reconstruction, B23) that later sold as lot 33 in the Alfred Crampton Sale at Sotheby’s, 3 June 1896.
4. According to William Michael Rossetti, RB decided to include Pauline in Poetical Works (6 vols., 1868) because of a letter “from somebody … who contemplated publishing some considerable part of P[auline] in some form” and consequently he “found the best thing to do would be to take the affair into his own hands, and republish the whole poem with proper press-corrections” (see SD2956). And yet, RB tells George Murray Smith in letter 5985: “I will include ‘Pauline’ as you desire.” Shepherd later published an article entitled “Robert Browning’s First Poem” in The St. James’s Magazine of April 1871 (pp. 485–496), which contains many lengthy extracts from Pauline.
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