689. RB to Euphrasia Fanny Haworth
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 137–139.
[London]
Thursday Night. [?25] [April 1839] [1]
Dear Miss Haworth,
You once said “letters were vile things”—they will be admirable things with me ere long, for the virtue and knack have gone out of me; I talk better, rather, than I used,—certainly better; and as one swings over briar and puddle best with one pole only, so do “Come over into Macedonia and help us” [2] —besloughed in a comparison–
It must be this warm-chilly April weather, sweet-sour like violet punch, that undoes me. Soberly—eh? Oh! Those rhymes are rare: every body knows I [3] beat the world that way—can tie and untie English as a Roman girl a tame serpent’s tail—but rare are those rhymes all the same. Do you know I was, and am, an Improovisatore of the head—not of the hort (vide Cheveley) [4] —not you! (Know anything about me) [5]
You read Balzac’s “Scènes” etc—he is publishing one, “Béatrix”, in the feuilleton of the “Siécle”, day by day– [6] I receive it from Paris two days old and usually post it off to a friend of mine, as soon as skimmed. But the four or five first chapters were so delightful that I hate myself for not having sent them to Barham [7] —and console myself only by knowing that you are spared a sad disappointment as well—for the going on of it all is naught—a story of Guérande in Bretagne– [8] He makes it out a sort of Venice. I told somebody, on the point of going to Bordeaux, to get there if he loved me (he does, I think). “Why” quoth he “I pass within five or six miles of it”—ie, overland, by Nantes;—yet all my wisest charming went to the deaf adder [9] —I don’t believe the man will take the trouble to leave his route–
Did Mrs Macready tell you of the outrageous rascality of the Covent G. Renters, or their representatives? [10]
Don’t let me leave out the praises of your nonsense.
My eye is caught by an old proof of an article by Fox, my Chiron in a small way: [11] I wonder whether this is not the style you like? Tell me—it is a good sample of his ware.
Do you know Milnes’ Poems? or himself peradventure?
I shall put in a funny thing disinterred along with Fox’s lucubration—very funny I thought it at the time: the print too!
Write very soon, pray.
RB
What the children were singing last year in Venice, arm over neck. [12]
Publication: NL, pp. 15–18.
Manuscript: Huntington Library.
1. Dated by the reference to Le Siècle.
2. Acts, 16:9.
3. Underscored twice.
5. RB added this parenthetical phrase as an afterthought.
6. Béatrix ou les Amours Forcés was serialized in Le Siècle, commencing on 13 April 1839. RB’s reference to “the four or five first chapters” provides the conjectural dating.
7. Barham Lodge, Miss Haworth’s home in Elstree.
8. Balzac devotes more than 100 pages of Béatrix to a description of Guérande and its people.
9. Cf. Psalms, 58:4.
10. Macready had held his position as actor-manager at Covent Garden for two years based only on a verbal agreement. The proprietors subsequently saw fit to disregard this pledge (see diary entries for 10–13 April 1839, Macready, I, 508–510).
11. An acknowledgement of Fox’s influence on RB. Chiron was a centaur who taught Achilles, Hercules and other heroes music, medicine and hunting.
12. Attempts to identify this tune are dealt with by Jacob Korg in his Browning and Italy (1983), p. 230, note 19.
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