747. RB to Alfred Domett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 261–263.
[London]
Monday Mg [23 March 1840] [1]
My dear Domett,
I was a little way out of Town when your letter arrived—how much it gratified me, blame as well as praise, [2] I cannot tell you, nor need, I hope. The one point that wants correcting is where you surmise that I am “difficult on system”– No, really—the fact is I live by myself, write with no better company, and forget that the “lovers” you mention are part & parcel of that self, and their choosing to comprehend my comprehensions—but an indifferent testimony to their value: whence it happens, that precisely when “lovers,” one and all, bow themselves out at the book’s conclusion … enter (according to an old stage-direction) two fishermen to the one angel, Stokes and Nokes [3] to the Author of “Venice” [4] (who should have been there, comme de droit, [5] had I known him earlier)—and ask, reasonably enough, why the publication is not confined to the aforesaid brilliant folks, and what do hard boards and soft paper solicit if not their intelligence, such as it may be? I wish I had thought of this before—meantime I am busy on some plays (those advertised) [6] that shall be plain enough if my pains are not thrown away—and, in lieu of Sir Philip [7] & his like, Stokes may assure himself that I see him—(first row of the pit, under the second Oboe, hat between legs, play-bill on a spike, and a “comforter” round his throat “because of the draught from the stage”—) and unless he leaves off sucking his orange at the pathetic morsels of my play—I hold them naught.
I have just received a note from Chr. Dowson—a piece of himself, so kind is it—and must try to thank him forthwith: after all, writing unintelligible metaphy<si>cs, is not voted as bad as murder—some murders—this Islington affair, for instance: [8] Nay, Bell’s Life in London, of yesterday week, after exposing the malice of a report “that the long and earnestly expected set-to between the Snuffy Seedsman and Bermondsey George was off”—and setting an anxious correspondent (“Alligris”) right on “Grab the black tan crop-eared dog’s mother’s pedigree,[”] assured its readers “Browning” was “a lofty poet”—somebody must have vouched to the Editor for my being seven feet high. [9]
I must get Dowson’s assent ere I try to tempt you here, for the quietest of dinners, ere long: will you much mind the walk, this odd weather? Snow fell a minute since, and now a sun (after a sort) shines merrily– Don’t you feel a touch of the vagabond, in early spring-time? How do the lines go—
“ηλιβατοις ὑπο κευθμωσι γενοιμαν
ινα με πτερουσσαν ορνιν
θεος εν πταναις αγελαισι θειη–
αρθειην δε επι ποντιον,
κυμα τας Αδριηνας ακτας,
Ηριδανου θ' `υδωρ.[”] [10]
and so would you, I fancy–
Ever yours most truly,
R Browning.–
Docket, in hand of Domett: Rd March 1840. AD.
Publication: RB-AD, pp. 28–31.
Manuscript: British Library.
1. Dated by the docket and the references to Bell’s Life in London.
2. The “blame as well as praise” would have been in response to RB’s gift of Sordello (letter 739).
3. Fictitious names, the equivalent of the impersonal “A” and “B,” used for illustrative purposes.
4. i.e., Domett himself. RB’s copy of this 1839 work formed part of lot 1063 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A810).
5. “By right.”
6. These were Pippa Passes, King Victor and King Charles, and Mansoor the Hierophant (later called The Return of the Druses). An advertisement at the end of Sordello announced them as “nearly ready.” However, as letter 754 indicates, not all copies of the book contained this notice.
7. The context suggests that RB’s reference is to Sir Philip Sidney (1554–86), who discussed the use of fictitious names (“John a noakes” and “John a stile”) by poets and lawyers in An Apologie for Poetrie (1595).
8. Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, 22 March 1840, carried an account of the brutal murder in Islington the previous Tuesday of John Templeman: “The forehead was completely dashed in by a blow from some heavy instrument; the nose and both jaw-bones were smashed, and the mouth was severely bruised and mutilated. It is the opinion that the violence must have been inflicted by a hatchet. Three of the deceased’s teeth were found lying about....”
9. Bell’s Life in London, 15 March, contained a short review of Sordello (see p. 416). RB’s reference to his being called “a lofty poet” is perhaps a paraphrase of “the vision and the faculty divine” ascribed to him. However, a careful search of all the issues for March and April failed to disclose anything about “Snuffy Seedsman” et al., so we must assume that, tongue-in-cheek, RB was parodying the paper’s style.
10. Euripides, Hippolytus, 732–737: “Under the arched cliffs O were I lying, / That there to a bird might a God change me, / And afar mid the flocks of the winged things flying / Over the swell of the Adrian sea / I might soar—and soar,—upon poised wings dreaming, / O’er the strand where Eridanus’ waters be” (trans. Arthur S. Way, 1980). The Eridanus was one of the tributaries of what is now known as the Po.
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