SD1598. Charles Kingsley to Charles Blanchford Mansfield

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 370 (in part).

[Winchfield, Hants]

[September 1852] [1]

… He won’t wash: he is very clever, but low-bred, effeminate, & ἄρρυθμος, [2] a man who fancies that a man can be a poet by profession—& do nothing else—a wild mistake. She is wonderful; but very obstinate in her bad taste, & considers Socialism as stuff, and Competition as the Divine Cheese. Not that I argued with her. I never argue with anyone. …

Text: Robert Bernard Martin, The Dust of Combat: A Life of Charles Kingsley (London, 1959), p. 161.

1. Written shortly after Kingsley’s first meeting with the Brownings, at the home of John Paine in Farnham, where the poets stayed from 21 to 23 August 1852.

2. “Ill-proportioned.”

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