584. EBB to Lady Margaret Cocks
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 274–276.
74 Gloucester Place
Saturday– [19 August 1837] [1]
My dear Lady Margaret,
I have seen in the papers, the death of a beloved friend of yours, & one for whom I myself had a true esteem—and when I feel so sure that your feelings have been much affected by this event, I cannot help expressing some sympathy with you & to you, altho’ I scarcely know where to send it, after it is expressed. The illness of dear Miss Baker was known to me a very short time before the last news came. May you have every comfort dear Lady Margaret, in knowing that God’s comforts were close to her, when her soul & body felt His separating power,—& the full assurance (and oh! the fulness of such assurance must fill all vacancies of departed friendship!) that she went from the comfort to the Comforter. I should much like to hear this—and also how her family are. Her sisters must feel it bitterly.
I have been hoping a little to hear from you. It would give me pleasure—but not if writing be an inconvenience, as it is sometimes. Of ourselves I have not much to say– Here is the little—which is I know, always welcome to your kindness. It consists a good deal in negatives, for we have not taken a house, & we have not looked at the country this summer, as some of us had a midsummer day’s dream of doing. Papa does however continue to think first of Devonshire Place, & then of Wimpole St,—& has been on the very threshold of a house in the former, & is now almost past the door posts of one in the latter. Whenever we are settled, if we ever are, you shall hear more, dear Lady Margaret—but my eldest brother says that he does not believe people ever do take houses, & I am half inclined to agree with him that it must be a popular fallacy.
My own occupations are easily reckoned up—for I scarcely ever do anything—in the way of business I mean—except writing—with the undertone of a little teaching: & even the German has not been studied or looked at much—except a few tragedies of Schiller’s & Goëthe’s seen by glimpses. Of these, I like Jean better than Mary Stuart, & him of the Iron hand less than Egmont– [2] As to the two poets, Schiller is as clear & noble as a water <course>, which has however the marks of spades on its banks—but Goëthe’s poetry springs like a fountain out of the depths of his nature,—by the impulse of his nature, & whether clear or turbid, is a beautiful poetic thing. The Germans are great men—but the demigods are still among my Greeks.
I have been writing a poem, a ballad, for Miss Mitford’s Annual, Finden’s Tableaux—the Romance of the Ganges. The subject is an unusual one for me, but I illustrated the engraving sent to me, & could not diverge. Do you know the pretty Hindoo superstition, of floating little lamps upon their God-river, to try by the burning or the quenching, the faith of absent lovers?– That is my subject. The annual is very beautiful, or rather is to be so next month. Mr Kenyon is another contributor—& there are besides some shining names, near which I may well be awestruck at having to stand.– I have just finished a poem of some length—within a few lines of the length of the Prometheus—on the subject of the Crucifixion. [3] It is a dramatic lyrical poem—& Papa fancies it,—& so I believe do I—to be the best I have written—the optimum malorum [4] not being very high praise. I have not thought of doing anything with it yet—but it is too long for a magazine. I dare say you dear Lady Margaret wd not like it—it may be thought near the precipice,—& yet I shall wish some day in the long hereafter to learn your opinion of it. Mr Kenyon says I have left the classicalists, & joined the Romanticists—but I always maintain that the true classicalists are the romanticists. Marlowe was a better Greek than Pope.
Has your Ladyship seen Lamb’s letters, in Mr Talfourd’s edition? [5] I quite sighed when I finished them. They are exquisite—& the “gentle hearted Charles” [6] shows in them all his gentle heart, together with his very quaint sly brilliant (as starlight) fancies.
You must hear a good deal of our young & interesting Queen, from Miss Cocks’s situation near her. [7] From what I have heard, nature & its emotions will not be quenched against her throne!
Believe me my dear Lady Margaret
Ever & affectionately yours
E B Barrett.
My sisters are quite well. Henrietta begs her remembrances, to be put in here. She has had a little country air—just for ten days—at Chiselhurst.
Address, on integral page: The Lady Margaret Cocks.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: James Hervey-Bathurst.
1. Dated by reference to the death of Lady Margaret’s friend, Harriet Baker, on 17 August 1837 at Cheltenham.
2. “Jean” presumably means Jeanne d’Arc, the subject of Schiller’s play Die Jungfrau von Orleans (1801). The other plays mentioned are Maria Stuart (1800), also by Schiller, and Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen mit der eisenen Hand (1773) and Egmont (1788).
3. i.e., “The Seraphim.”
4. “The best of the bad.”
5. Letters of Charles Lamb, With a Sketch of His Life (1837).
6. This epithet was used by Coleridge in a poem addressed to Lamb, “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison.” It was first written in a letter from Coleridge to Southey, 17 July 1797, and subsequently published in The Annual Anthology (1800).
7. Lady Margaret’s niece, Caroline Margaret Cocks, eldest daughter of Viscount and Viscountess Eastnor, had been appointed Maid of Honour to Queen Victoria, at a salary of £300 per annum, soon after the Queen’s accession.
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