654. EBB to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 62–65.
[London]
[ca. 15 July 1838] [1]
In default of commissions to trouble you <…> [2] to thank you my dear friend for a letter which wa<s…> pleasantness. Do let me in the first place assure <…> did not doubt your having seen the note long ago, a though<t…> my mind to make me wonder why you did not say so. Certainly I wonder now—but it is that you should think it worth while to say so much. The note was meant only to be once-blessed—only to please myself; and if it is ‘twice blessed’ in the result & has pleased you besides, there is a reason for my thanking it but none for your thanking me. I too “know my place”,—& did not presume to pretend to ‘puff’ you in saying what I thought of your book,—& no critic except you, would be malignant enough to dream of such a thing. But I felt it to be a natural pleasure to record, under circumstances when those who have been kind to us are most remembered by us, & close to my poetry in which & near which I could not write untruly, the name of one who truly has been & truly is a valued friend to me—albeit himself so very great an infidel as neither to “believe in thieves” nor in his own kindnesses. As to the last scepticism I might easily—as Johnson said of Berkeley’s system—“confute it thus” [3] —by an appeal to my own experience & sense of those kindnesses– And indeed & without a jest, my dear friend, I have often felt them silently, just because I did not feel them lightly—& being you know so perverse by nature, am not likely to be persuaded by you out of the pleasure of my gratitude. And all this time I am magnanimously forgetting to congratulate <…>ed for my note instead of reproached for my <…l>ost one limb of your infidelity—& learnt to “believe <…> very very much that the greater part of my book <…> in pleasing you—& altho’ so much of your pleasure is of course owing to your kind intent of being pleased, yet that shall not & ought not to diminish my pleasure. The book is full of many sorts of faults—but if I should live I may write a better one—& in the meantime, will make such a glad use of the kindness of my friends, of your kindness & dearest Miss Mitford’s which I owe to yours, as to build a hope upon your praise that I have written in this book something better than I did formerly—& helped to confute (for my own private satisfaction) a dreadful theory of Mr Boyd’s, that “women never improve”. Notwithstanding it, by the way, & to my extreme surprise, he has praised my book most unduly & kindly—with some exceptions—Margret for instance, which is said to be “ridiculous stuff & nonsense”– Mrs Coleridge’s opinion [4] —you once told it to me here—was upon this account i.e. the hope of making progress—a very gratifying one—but it closed with a great hyperbole,—for nothing “justifies what Miss Mitford says” except her own nature—according to which she wears her heart & her imagination in the same place. But speaking of Mrs Coleridge––I wont lose another opportunity of begging you to disclaim for me, whenever you have any, the knowing more Greek than she does. Indeed it is very improbable. Mr Boyd told me once that he admired! how I could possibly read so fluently & be so ignorant,—& it used to be a favorite triumph of his malice to close a long reading, by a catechism upon the grammar (his & Gascoigne’s “Ladye Gramar” [5] who was never a liege lady of mine) until I cried out for mercy & begged to be sent to school where he said I deserved to be sent—just to escape his “cruel smile”. Not that Mr Boyd would tell you any of this scandal about me. Oh no!—he has far too sublime ideas upon friendship. Because I said to him once before Arabel, with regard to a literary habit of his, involving no opprobrium––“How can you Mr Boyd, do so?”—I had a long lecture on our next interview for referring to such a thing before my sister– He did not expect it of me– He really thought that any objection I had to make before a third person, ought at least to refer to hi<…> character, & that I might spare his literary reputation—assure<…> that was the way in which he always acted by me!”— And this, <…> simplicity & gravity that I dared not laugh—& answered as <…> could,—that I was very much obliged to his <…> my literary reputation being of less <…> much for my moral!” <…> & unfortunately for me, <…> to you how in reading <…> this from the beginning to <…> skipping reader– I did <…> study it as I ought to hav<e…> grammar-phobia—no <…> study of language per se <…> Only certainly the Greek is <…> near philosophy than any othe<r…> is rather, like truth in the ab<stract> form, than philosophy, which is man’s aspect towards the truth.
Ought you not to have been thanked before this moment, dear Mr Kenyon, for the vision you allowed us to have of him of the Quantock hills? [6] I was as interested in seeing him as any such ignoramus could be– Neither did I ever mention Mr Milnes’ memorials—which I did not enjoy so much as his former volume,—not that they manifest less genius,—but that there is to me more interest in the character of the first manifestation. Others however, & perhaps most others, will think otherwise: but as to his being a true & original poet, all must agree. [7]
It is years since we were at Ross. I was there only once—but I remember the field—& the churchyard!—and Goodrich Castle, [8] & the beautiful Wye whose beauty we only traced as far as the ruin. Where you now are is of course more familiar to me—very familiar—at once gladly & sadly so, as everything near & dear to us, is or becomes. How strange it is—and yet not strange!––that every earthly joyfulness will in time, if it be remembered, grow into an occasion for sadness!——
I heard from Miss Mitford this morning. She says that Mr Chorley has been spending four days with her—a very good example, as it seems to me. If you call me good natured, dear Mr Kenyon (why, I dont quite understand) for wanting you to go to Three Mile Cross, what am I to call you for not going?––– I pause for a reply!
Thank you,—I have felt & been better for some days—but with a betterness liable to change with the winds & the coming on of any occasions for exertion or excitement. Dr Chambers did however tell me, unasked, last week—(& I have a moral as well as professional confidence in him, on account of the honesty & sincerity I have observed in him)—that he has grounds for hoping that with care & in time [“]the lung will entirely recover itself”– And if it pleases God, it will be so–
Papa is not in the house—neither are my sisters—to send their kind regards to you. I take the liberty of sending them notwithstanding. We shall all be very glad to see you back again.
Your affectionate & obliged—however distant is the relationship—cousin.
E B Barrett.
Address, on integral page: <… Malvern> Wells.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Manuscripts Division, New York Public Library.
1. Dated by Kenyon’s being at Malvern, as mentioned in the previous letter.
2. The manuscript of this letter is extensively damaged: the upper corner of the first leaf is torn off, and a large part of the central portion of the second leaf is missing.
3. “We stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley’s ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter … Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone … ‘I refute it thus’” (Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 1791, I, 257).
4. Sara Coleridge (1802–52), the daughter of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, had married her cousin Henry Nelson Coleridge (1798–1843) in 1829; she was the author of Phantasmion, a fairy-tale (1837).
5. Possibly a reference to “Certayne Notes of Instruction” at the end of The Posies of George Gascoigne, Esquire (1575).
6. i.e., Kenyon’s friend Andrew Crosse, who had visited Wimpole Street with Kenyon on 1 July. He lived at Broomfield, Somersetshire, on the slopes of the Quantock Hills.
8. Goodrich Castle, dismantled in the Civil War, stood on a precipice rising sheer above the River Wye, four miles below Ross-on-Wye.
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