SD2114. Edmund Clarence Stedman to Elizabeth Clementine Kinney
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 268–269 (in part).
N.Y.
November 3 1857
My dearest Mother
I send you another letter by this mail written last Sunday, which you had perhaps better read first, if they arrive together, as it contains about all the news matter to date. They took up so much room that I resolved to write you another letter, which should not have a word in it about any thing but those literary matters which are as yet undiscused between us. …
You ask me again about Mrs. Browning. I say what I said before, that I consider her that of all living women, she has gone the farthest “within the veil.” She stands under the very shadow of the wings of the cherubim. Such women as she & Rosa Bonheur (the magnificent “Horse Fair” of the latter is here on exhibition) make us glad that some angels are denied their wings & cannot yet fly away from Earth to Heaven. But when it comes to a direct comparison between E.B.B. & A.T., let us forget enthusiasm and be just. You may say of Tennyson, as I said before, that he masters his art, always; that Mrs. Browning often allows her art to master her. Mrs. B. frequently sacrifices an artistic result in order to bring out & develop the remotest subtlety of her thought; but Tennyson, with the same wonderful subtlety of thought, always contrives to develop it perfectly, and at the same time preserve the integrity of his Art. This distinction will be perceived and understood by any one who has read them both, carefully. Hence the following remark on Mrs. B’s last work: “Aurora Leigh” is a poem containing enough poetry to “set up” a half dozen poets; it is full of brilliant passages, is strikingly original, & the first two chapters alone shew that Mrs. B. has been through all the stages of poetic experience, has felt the yearnings & uttered the echoes of youth, & has “learned to unlearn” in her maturity. The poem, too, is earnest & takes hold of the real. But it is deficient in artistic structure. It is too long—being filled out by passages of very unequal merit, many of which should have been ruthlessly pruned by the Author. Tennyson would have got all the poetry of the book, double the thought, & more of a story, in one half the space. As it is, the poem appears to have come hot & seething from the author’s spiritual brain—it seems as if she scorned her art, in order to make the dignity of her soul more apparent. It seems as if she knew & took pride in those passages of true poetry & high art which her genius would create continually, but felt no regret at interspersing them with prosaic connections. Hence “Aurora Leigh” seems firstly a novel in verse, & only secondly, a poem. What think you, & what says my father? The sonnets & ballads of Mrs. B. are equal to any of her works, I think. In all, she is intensely subjective, & stamps her own soul upon her poems. But Tennyson has that God like objectivity, which separates itself from its work, & looks upon life & earth through their telescopes of a remote sphere. You sympathize most with Mrs. B.—you kneel at the feet of the other. The one is something of a seraph—the other the prince of the cherubim. We can spare neither. …
Tennyson & the Brownings are not well known (popularly) in America. I have grown up alone. I have never met ten men who read my favorite authors, or held to my opinions. So don’t suppose that there is a “spasmodic” or “Tennysonistic” fever here, for there isn’t. I echo nobody; all my companions are practical working men among whom I am this literary chap—having myself no literary acquaintances & preferring to remain quiet till mature. …
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: None traced.
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