634. EBB to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 34–35.
[London]
[late May 1838] [1]
My dear Mr Kenyon,
The books are just come. You know you are not obliged to read yours until you have leisure for doing so, even though you go into Normandy for such leisure. [2]
I have always forgotten to say that perhaps I have spoilt the last stanza of the sea mew. I waited to consult you about it long & long, & after all did not see you until I was obliged to send it to press. You suggested—did you not—
“And with it, grief, our destiny”—
but we neither of us observed that a repetition of ‘grief’ was incurred by the suggestion. See the first line of the stanza–
And so when I came to be or to try to be, very exact indeed in order to printing, I was obliged to find another way of attending to your criticism. [3]
The “forward shade” in the first stanza, is right I believe—is what you wished me to write.
You must forgive the plagiarism as confessed in a note to ‘Sounds.’ [4] It is the consequence of my early association with “Fire-thieves!” [5]
Pray send the ballad back, if it is troublesome. [6]
Most truly yours
EBB–
Address, on integral page: John Kenyon Esqr
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Columbia University.
1. Dated by receipt of copies of The Seraphim.
3. The first line of the final stanza of “The Sea-Mew” reads “He lay down in his grief to die.” In lieu of Kenyon’s suggestion, involving the repetition of “grief,” EBB made the last line read “And, with our touch, our agony.”
4. Line 38 of “Sounds” reads “Like a singing in a dream.” A note quotes four lines from Kenyon’s poem “Reverie,” the last one reading “Like music mingling in a dream,” and acknowledges an unconscious debt to Kenyon.
5. A reference to EBB’s reading and translating Prometheus. After Jupiter had taken fire away from the earth, Prometheus climbed to the heavens with the aid of Minerva and stole fire from the chariot of the sun. (Prometheus Bound, line 1124, refers to Prometheus as “The reverencer of men, the thief of fire.”)
6. EBB had sent Kenyon the manuscript of her poem for the 1839 Findens’ Tableaux. He returned it on 4 June, and EBB then sent it on to Miss Mitford (letter 636).
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