635.8. John Kenyon to EBB
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 4.
Ross.
July 15. 1838
My dear Miss Barrett
I told you that I should not read your book in town– Not only had I no time, but I felt that I should not be doing it justice– I remained three days at Cheltenham—that was no place for your book—but I have gone thru’ it—once (that once shall be merely a beginning) from beginning to end—here, and do not lose a day to thank you sincerely and gratefully for your kindest note attached to the Poem on Sounds—which note last night I read for the first time– When I said in Wimpole Str that I had not yet read the Seraphim, but had been turning over the smaller poems, your brother adverted to that on Sounds—and asked if I had remarked it– I had done so very cursorily and never looked at the note at all– And now it breaks out to make me start at my apparent unthankfulness.
It is not, my dear friend, for your praise of my verses that I feel most obliged to you. Time and opinion soon settle poetical like all other pretentions– Mine have never been high—I know my place—(which phrase I do not employ like insolent Seroanti—I hope—who use it most—when it least conveys their inner thoughts.) I told you the other day when you were enforcing me with all your kindly might to go to Three Mile Cross that you were among the best natured of human beings, and—knowing this your nature—“Your praise of my verse from love is undiscerned.” But I thank you for the great honour you do me in speaking of me as your valued friend. That I have felt a desire always to make myself so is most true; and the only Cousin, I believe, under some such classification as Aunt Dunn’s, I have always had, if not a paternal, a sort of avuncular pride in you—but when for both of your obligations—do you put among them my selfish desire to profit by your conversation, and to witness the happy intercourse that persists between your family and yourself father and brothers and sisters—whenever I might? Yet if you have far—far overvalued—I thank you again truly and gratefully for that very overvaluing—for that very self-blinding kindness–
—But will you never be worldly wise? will you—in your scorn of the utilitarians—never look to the expedient? Don’t you perceive that when you praise your friends—in print—even should it be justly—you withdraw them from the class of your puffers?
—Here am I—who in the pride of clanship—have been wafting my cousins poems to this man and that, whom I wished to think the better of me on her account—and all the while I have been circulating—quite unconsciously—a puff in my own favour– Had I been aware of said note, I should have been dilemma-’d—have found a respect “to give me pause.”—As it is I am in for it, and must trust (and I do so confidently) to the merit of your poetry to justify my apparent vanity.
“Earth I praise thee, Praise Thou Me.” I exclude all this “poet passion” when I say that I cannot express what pleasure I have received from much of your book—the far greater part of it indeed. Yet—as Sarah Coleridge—says of you—“I wrestle frequently with your cousin—but it is a pride to wrestle with a powerful mind”—I have margined my whole copy with pencil marks of praises.—Optimist I am. There is good in every thing or out of every thing– Your city life has produced the “Soul’s Travelling” and the exquisite “Doves”—But I will not specify—but only say, that if you have, as I think you have (but as you will not and cannot indeed think) injured the effect of several of your poems in the interfusion of—not so much a devotional feeling as a devotional phraseology—still I hold that the Virgin Mary to the Child Jesus (of which the |direct| motive |power| is Devotion) is among the very finest poems which it has ever been my lot to read– It is—in my feeling—quite worthy to pair with Milton’s hymn, which has supplied it’s motto—(The devotional part of the dove’s too is quite exquisite and is true—unforced—keeping)[.]
To return to the Poem of the Virgin’s original conception—in the succession of its thoughts—and in the clear natural—yet sublime expression of those thoughts it leaves nothing to desire. It is an elevating poem. I need not find fault & hope by way of making my praise seem the more sincere—but I could wish that it ended at—“And could not live and see—” or rather that—all page 260—as far as “crying—Song!” were omitted and that the Stanza “That tear fell not on Thee” should close it.– I think that I ought to be very fond of “Our Goethe’s friend—Bettine,” but I do not quite as yet make out the occasion of it—“He giveth his beloved Sleep” is a great favorite of mine—the more so perhaps because—in another sense—it is a maxim of my brother’s—(perhaps because his waking hours are so much hours of pain) that “Sleep is a holy thing”—and he never allows it to be unnecessarily disturbed.—You know this place—no doubt. Yesterday—thru some hours of rain and wind—I walked by Goodrich yesterday and all round Copped Hill—renewing my acquaintance with the curves and cliffs of the Wye.– You remember the field in front of the church yard, whence is the fine view. Barrett—who keeps this Swan Hotel—which he leaves in ten days—has built a new one in that field—a Tudor House with four sides—the hinder part communicating with stable yards & offices– The three others commanding views of the country. I find that I am pressed for time and I have friends at Malvern– I therefore give up Llandilo Vawr & Home Lacy & Foxley for the present—and go tomorrow to the Well house– I shall tell Mrs Trant that Henrietta calls her the worst of correspondents– I trust to be in Town on the 24th at latest. Can any of your family make use of me for any commissions at Malvern. I think I shall be about that neighbourhood till Saturday the 22nd—but, perhaps it were safer to say till the 20th—Post Office—Little Malvern. I have written you a scrambling letter of which I am half ashamed—but even here I am hurried—a debtor to my brother—whom I must now proceed to pay by another such scrambling letter—and all this time the sun is shining to tempt me out to the region—o’er a hundred valleys deep, where the hills ’till shadows sleep. Kind regards to all about you—and you. I hope are better. J. Kenyon.
Address, on integral page: To / Miss Barrett / No 50 Wimpole Str / London.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
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