639. EBB to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 43–45.
50 Wimpole Street.
Thursday morning. [7 June 1838] [1]
I meant to have thanked you before dear Mr Kenyon for the kindness which has been as useful to me as I fear it was troublesome to you with your engagements αναριθμοι! [2] —but my first writing was obliged to be given to the ballad & Miss Mitford & to the thought that I had already stepped over the bound she had set for me in regard to Finden. And tuesday was a blank day,—for on it, I was subjected to the ‘Spallanzani process’ [3] of going out to drive, & could do nothing afterwards but feel tired– This morning however my parcel is on its road to judgment & Reading,—& my gratitude is ready to tell you, that the ballad seems to me far the better for my obedience to the greater number––almost all .. of your criticisms, & that I had the less remorse in receiving them, because the good they did, might be a little for Miss Mitford, as well as a great deal for me. Might be! for her! but I do not think the ballad will appear among her Tableaux after all. It is far too long for the purpose–
Now I am not going to tire you over again along the same road—but I just want to say—for fear you should think me obstinate—why I have not after all your recommendation, connected the Beati Mortui [4] &c with the story, by the expression ‘Not prophecy’ or any other. The adoption of that expression or its equivalent, wd have, in the first place, told the poor page’s fate too plainly to the reader, & prematurely: and then again, it is according to my conception,—that the convent music & mourning shd be kept as distinct & separate as possible from the story. It comes when the page is happiest, & so absorbed in happy thought that he is unconscious even of the sound. And the reference to him, to the destiny reserved for him (for none are blessed but the dead!) I would rather that the reader remembered at the close of the poem than felt at the time, according to the natural process of reading our omens by the light of our actual griefs. At the close of the poem, I have written some lines to make (at least I hope so) the whole clearer—& to show that the dirge begun for the Abbess was as suited for the page [5] —there being no lament begun underneath the sun which ere it end will suit but one.
I have left the Judge’s hand ‘little’ instead of making it either ‘gentle’ or ‘delicate’ [6] —because you see, tho’ you may not have thought of it at the time—she was speaking of her own—and as dear little Mary Hunter used to say “It is very wrong to self-praise oneself”– The ‘energy’ & ‘passiveness’ are both sent away—& very properly—but I left the ‘dead’ & ‘death’—& the ‘bodily’ besides, [7] —as you said you liked them yourself, & only doubted whether others would.
And this is all that I can remember, to tire you with.
It pleased me very very much that you should, on the whole, like the ballad—& none the less so that I turned over the leaves of Mr Reade’s poem [8] for some minutes before I opened your letter—for the fear of what it might say! Bro observed “What a want of curiosity”!—but I responded & explained––“What a want of courage”!
I hope that you say only in jest, & think in no way—I would not have anyone to think so—and still less you to whom I am grateful for so much more indulgence than I can meet with from others—that in being obscure I am ‘proud & perverse’ or at all doing what I choose to do. Indeed it is very different. I see plainly that this fault of obscurity, even if it were alone, would do the work of all other faults—& also that it is not the prevailing fault of true poets– And so if I shd live, & if you will sometimes help me, I must try to keep it farther off.
Your affectionate but very tiresome
friend & cousin
E B Barrett.
I sent for Tait for the name’s sake of Miss Mitford’s “Wedding Slippers” [9] —& it was a pleasant surprise to see besides them a review of your book. [10] You have probably seen it—but if not, you can have it from this house at any minute.
Address: John Kenyon Esqr / 4. Harley Place.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Mills College.
1. Dated by the dispatch of EBB’s manuscript to Miss Mitford (see previous letter).
2. “Without number.”
3. Lazaro Spallanzani (1729–99), an Italian, was a natural scientist, writing on such subjects as respiration, digestion, etc. He demonstrated that it was the action of the gastric juices that accomplished digestion, rather than its being purely mechanical. What exactly EBB means by “the Spallanzani process” is not clear; it was presumably some prescribed regimen of diet and exercise.
4. Lines 71 and 86 of “The Romaunt of the Page” read “Beati, beati, mortui!” (“Blessed, blessed, be the dead!”).
5. Lines 341 ff.
6. Line 211.
7. Stanza XII.
8. Italy (1838) by John Edmund Reade (1800–70), who was best known for Cain, the Wanderer (1829).
9. Miss Mitford’s story, “Wedding Slippers,” was printed in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine (1838, V, 366–371).
10. In the same issue of Tait’s (pp. 395–397) was a review of Kenyon’s Poems, For the Most Part Occasional, “a volume of graceful and classic poetry … ‘fit audience, though few,’ will be found for these polished and classic effusions, though they display few of the qualities which beget either an instantaneous, a wide, or a fervid and headlong popularity.” Many of the poems are said to have a “pensive and tender cast … versified with equal elegance; so that … the delicate workmanship enhances the value, or gives a value of its own.” The book was also reviewed at length in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Review (December 1838, pp. 779–794).
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