754. RB to Euphrasia Fanny Haworth
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 269–270.
[London]
Thursday Night. [May 1840] [1]
My dear Miss Haworth,
Yours received some five minutes since—fancy! But the truth is I am glad to find you have not been indisposed—as I feared. As to Sordello—enfoncé! [2] You say roses and lilies and lilac-bunches and lemon-flowers about it while every body else pelts cabbage stump after potato-paring—nay, not every body—for Carlyle .. but I won’t tell you what Milnes told me Carlyle told him the other day: (thus I make you believe it was something singular in the way of praise—connu! [3] ) All I need remark on in your note is the passage you want cleared up: “What are you to be glad of?” Why that as I stopped my task awhile, left off my versewriting one sunny June day with a notion of not taking to it again in a hurry, the sad disheveled form I had just been talking of, that plucked and pointed, wherein I put, comprize, typify and figure to myself Mankind, the whole poor-devildom one sees cuffed and huffed from morn to midnight, that, so typified, she may come at times and keep my pact in mind, prick up my republicanism and remind me of certain engagements I have entered into with myself about that same, renewed me, gave me fresh spirit, made me after finishing Book 3d commence Book 4th, what is involved here? Only one does not like serving oneself as a certain “Watson” served Horace in a translation I have: e.g. Book 1. Ode 1. Lines 1 & 2: “O Mæcenas, descended from Kings (Tuscan, that is Etrurian) your Ancestors, (O you who have proved yourself to be) both my patron (since you kindly reconciled me with Augustus) and a sweet honor to me (by your Quality and politeness to poor me whose father was nothing but a Freedman) &c.&c.&[c] [4]
You don’t know, it seems, that I have announced Three Dramas? [5] —I see—the fly-leaf was left out of your copy; I am in treaty with Macready about one of these—which I am going to send him, I should say rather [6] —which I think clever and he will think stupid. Don’t fear, however, any more unintelligible writing––
Carlyle is lecturing with éclât [7] —the Macreadys go, & the Bishop of Salisbury, and the three Miss Styles [8] that began German last week: I have still your Tieck, remember. [9]
Ever yours faithfully,
R Browning.
Publication: NL, pp. 18–19.
Manuscript: Huntington Library.
1. Dated by the reference to Carlyle’s lectures.
2. “Done for!” The reception accorded Sordello was almost entirely negative, with it acquiring a reputation of being “the least comprehensible poem written in the English language” (DeVane, p. 85). RB himself, in letter 771, spoke of its being “praised by the units, cursed by the tens, and unmeddled with by the hundreds!”
Miss Haworth’s copy was offered for sale in 1971 (see Reconstruction, C565).
3. “That’s an old story!” (colloquial).
4. RB refers to The Works of Horace (1741), translated by David Watson (1710–56). The passage he criticizes occurs on p. 2.
5. See letter 747, note 6. As RB’s comment indicates, apparently some copies of the book lacked the advertisement.
6. One of the works announced as “nearly ready” was Mansoor the Hierophant; this was renamed The Return of the Druses, a revised text of which RB promised Macready in letter 761.
7. Carlyle was delivering six lectures, on 5, 8, 12, 15, 19 and 22 May, on “Heroes and Hero-Worship.”
8. Edward Denison (1801–54) was consecrated Bishop of Salisbury in 1837, at the unusually early age of 36. In 1835, he had violently opposed proposals for the admission of Dissenters to Oxford University. The Misses Styles have not been identified.
9. Johann Ludwig Tieck (1773–1853), novelist and playwright, translated Shakespeare into German (Shakespeare’s dramatische Werke, 1825). As RB makes mention of this work in a letter to Domett on 5 March 1843, it is quite probable that this is the book borrowed from Miss Haworth.
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