SD2110. Elizabeth Clementine Kinney to Edmund Clarence Stedman
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 267–268 (in part).
Casa del Bello, Florence,
October 8th 1857.
My dearest Edmund:
What can I say to comfort—to cheer you on your twenty fourth birthday? …
Mrs Jameson is still at Florence: as fat, slatternly, and disagreeable an old woman as ever wrote refined & delicate books. The Brownings have been at the baths all summer: they returned only yesterday & I have not yet seen them; but shall meet them at a literary soirée on Saturday at Miss Blagden’s villa. She is herself another English author. … (After dinner) The Brownings have just called here but we were at dinner & could not see them. They live just round the corner in the immortal “Casa Guidi.” Their only child—a fine poetic boy of seven years—has been very ill in the country, but is better. …
What you say of Mrs Browning & Tennyson I do not altogether agree with. He must hide his diminished head, & take his “Princess” & “Maud” with him, after “Aurora Leigh.” His “Talking Oak,” “Two Voices,” “Ulysses,” “Miller’s Daughter” (which you meant when you spoke once of the “Gardener’s Daughter” which latter does not apply to our threefold case) &c. prove him a true poet: why then will he forsake his calling to go off into spasmodics as in Maud, or into crazy puerilities as in The Princess. By the bye, you have never told me how you like Aurora Leigh—pray tell me. I hope that Robert Browning is now engaged on dramas—his only poetic truth. When he wanders from the stage he is sure to fall into tangled marshes. His “Sordello” is a literary puzzle, as I told him, & ought to be preserved among the “curiosities of Literature.” …
For myself I agree with you in almost all you say, even about Tennyson—having told you before how I liked some of the very poems you mention. As for the “Princess”, “Dora” & some others, we must agree to disagree. I am in need of no copy of his works, having read & studied every line he ever wrote. Moreover I’ve not “read current opinions” of any author, but read & judge for myself independently of other’s opinions even of my husband’s or Lord’s. And so, I shall always hold the half—at least the third of Alfred Tennyson’s poems as very sweet melodies to cherish into dozing (not into dreaming the dolce far niente-mood. The rest have something—or are suggestive at least of something. But he never was, nor never will be up to an “Aurora Leigh.” In the finish of art he no doubt excels Mrs Browning, as much as she excels him in the soul of Art, & I thought the same of both before I ever knew the latter. …
I should have shown your poem & letter to the Brownings were they like any other people. But, without being at all self-intrusive, there is that in their very quietness & entire indifference to the possible merits of any of their associate-writers which proves their perfect self-consciousness & honest belief that they & Tennyson are the only poets of the day. Even of Leigh Hunt, who wrote a beautiful Sonnet in their praise, they say with apparent good feeling, “Oh he is such a kind friend & nice old gentleman, but of course no poet!” & so of Longfellow, Horne & the rest. Bayard Taylor sent them his “Songs of the Orient” in which are some exquisite gems: two or three months afterwards I saw the book on their table with leaves still uncut!
9th) So, I said, “if you are not going to read this book please lend it to me.” “Oh yes!” they answered, “You know we have no time for such things.” Yet Mr Taylor had been with them much in Florence & they called him “a good fellow” & “kind friend” of theirs! Of course I never let them know that I had ever presumed to write anything: nor could I dare expose one of my darling son’s lines to the kindliest indifference. A young American poet of great promise sent the Brownings two fine specimens of his genius asking their opinion of them: (I suppose more to get an autograph-note than for anything else) these he sent thro’ your old friend Clark, who as he did not know the Brownings, asked me to hand them. I did so, with a note of my own, stating the poet’s wishes. Weeks passed & nothing came in return: till one day I met Browning, when he said “Oh, I have to thank you for something sent me.” I asked how he liked the verses. “Well, really, I haven’t read them yet!” he replied, with all the good-nature in the world. Indeed they (the Brownings) are so unpretending in appearance after all, that one forgives their inappreciation of others; especially since they have the right to be self-appreciating, & are so only passively. I love Mrs B. dearly, & yet, I know it never entered into her heart that I had any more than the claim of love as a true woman myself, & as a just appreciator of her. Mrs Jameson is here still & one of the uglies & disagreeables of the world of talent. You enquire if I saw Miss Cushman when here last. No; because she only passed through Florence en route for England & the US. So, of course, I did not carry out my half-intention of showing her my dramas: & had she stopped, probably my heart would have failed me. She visited us when here just a year ago now, & we were delighted with her. Miss Hosmer, the American sculptress has recently gone on to Rome again after stopping a few days here. She spent an evening with us, & I found her much more civilized & I may add womanized than when I last saw her. Her visit at home has done both her manners & her purse good; as she returns with orders enough to keep her busy for two years, after having exhibited her reclining statue of La Beatrice della Ceci in Boston to her great triumph. I saw it in Rome, & though it quite wonderful for so young an artist—she is now twenty three. …
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Columbia University.
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