SD1798. Journal Entry of Elizabeth Clementine Kinney
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 370–371 (in part).
[Florence]
Jan’y 6 / 55.
Mr Browning spent last evening with us: he is a better conversationist, I think, than poet. His resources seem inexhaustable, & he talks incessantly. What a memory he has! what a fund of anecdote! What versatility of expression! Yet, to look at him, none would suppose that he was either poet or humorist. His poetry too, save its quaintness, gives one no true idea of the man: it is obscure, metaphysical, studied, full of affectations; tho’ giving signs enough of his sympathy with nature, & with the human heart. Sometimes I think he is a born-poet; sometimes that he is a made-poet: after hearing him talk, I am inclined to believe that he can do anything he chooses in the poetical way; but chooses to write as he does—preferring to lead a school of poetry modernized; to following in the smooth track of the old poets. He studies, labors in all he writes—not to polish; but to roughen it! His condensation—as some call it—would be wonderful, if it were condensation; but it really is failing purposely to fill up: his is the dot & line plan of writing—trying to give more force of expression—as painters do sometimes in sketches—without coloring. One would say to read many of his poems that what his late verses for a ragged school said of Luther—“The better the uncouther!”—was his rule for poetry. In person he is small, with a head that seems overgrown for his body, & set right on his shoulders; he has a profusion of coarse waving black hair sprinkled with grey, which hides entirely from its length what of neck he has. His eyes are grey & expressive; his beard nearly grey; his features ordinary; yet his mouth at times indicates humor, which he possesses; sometimes satire, & he has enough of this—too much for keeping friends. His manner is impulsive,—his movements perpetual, & as roving as a cricket’s: he is for all in all a very amusing man. Mrs Browning as a poet is no doubt his superior; indeed I think her the first of living female poets. She is as good too, as she is great; never speaks ill of any one, & is kind, gentle, conciliating with all. How different is her husband! Impulsive, often abusive in speaking of others, & unsparing in his ridicule & contempt of many whom the world calls poets. Not long ago an article appeared in the New York Home Journal, purporting to be extracted from a private letter written by a lady from Rome—which handled the Brownings in a most unbecoming manner. I was so wounded by it—as I love Mrs B. truly—that I wrote an answer; or rather referred to it in one of my published letters for the Newark Daily. What I wrote was a genuine expression of feeling: the attack was so mean, and especially so as having appeared in the paper edited by a poet: N. P. Willis—that I thought it right to notice it & did so from the best of motives. My article was copied into all the leading journals, much praised for its kind intent & language, & called for the many editorial remarks favorable, to the poets referred to. It however caused me unpleasant feelings which I mean to take note of here, & so place a copy of it below.
“The friends of Mr. and Mrs. Browning at Florence, have been much mortified and grieved by an article in the New York Home Journal of July 15th, ridiculing their personal appearance and manners. This, though in itself too low and frivolous to merit attention, is noticeable as having been introduced into a paper conducted by a brother poet, and that too, as extracted from the private correspondence of an American lady at Rome; thus allowing itself as much out of place as the editor was out of good taste and feeling in giving it such unnecessary conspicuity. But what surprises us more, and touches him nearer, is the home-thrust which he has given his reputation for gallantry, in this double offence against the fair sex, exposing the exterior imperfections of one—and she a woman whom angels might name with reverence—to jeering dolls and sneering fools, and at the same time laying open the private shallowness of another to public view. Nor does his after-hit at “common observers” mend at all his own disabled sense. “Lack of second-sight” indeed must those have who see only in Mrs. Browning the frail form, shattered by disease, on which the strong workings of genius, and beatings of a true woman’s heart have left deep traces in advance of time; or who cannot see in her eye—that fitting outlet of her large and comely soul—the beaming of a moral beauty as far surpassing mere superficial charms, as the beauty of her heavenly countenance will surpass that of the lesser angels—(if angels they should chance to become)—whose puny sneer dared ridicule the plain bodily disguise of one who walked “humbly and softly” on earth, though in reality head and shoulders above all queenly women; whose physical voice was too feeble a medium for the prophet-tone of a spirit which found only utterance through her pen, and echo in truest bosoms. One, too, who never soiled that pen by the venom of malice—who had emphatically “the law of kindness ever in her heart and on her lips,” out of which came never cursing, but blessing and love for all. How can we wonder that such spirits shrink from promiscuous intercourse; or, that when they are induced, against their will, to go into ungenial society, they should there “answer the fool according to his folly,” and be mistaken by such for fellow triflers! Why should the stores of learning which enrich and minds and works of Mr. and Mrs. Browning—such universal intelligence, such powers of conversation as he possesses, be cast as pearls before the common herd? Why should not Mrs. Browning’s instinctive modesty, or her silence in the presence of babblers, be mistaken by such for stupidity? Her works speak herself; though on their blank leaf—as a caution to these casual observers, who must of necessity be casual readers—should be written:
Stay! come not here with unanointed eyes,
And hope that inner temple to behold
Where Beauty dwells in phases manifold.
Come not, unless your liberal thought can rise
To Freedom’s heaven, this poet’s paradise:
Come not, without the key, of antique mould.
To her great wealth of lore and fable old;
Nor lampless search the deep that in her lies,
But ye, who have a truth-lit spirit, come!
You, who that superhuman power can see
Which turns the meanest thing beneath Heaven’s dome
To gold, thro’ its divinest alchemy,
Come—kneel for Genius, enter Feeling’s home,
And own the Godlike in Humanity.”
Mr Browning saw it, & wrote me a letter expressive of displeasure; when all save he thought I had done them a true kindness. The letter mine refers to, called Mrs Browning “An old moth—a crooked, dried up little old woman, with a horrible mouth!” etc. Said that Mr B. was “a frivolous man with an everlasting gab,” & other like impertinences. Had he seen it, he would have felt the force of mine. But all he saw was that I did not call his wife beautiful in person, & for this could not forgive me. In his note to me he says: “I won’t concede for a moment, on accounts of any counter balance of mental qualities that my wife may have, that her “form is shattered by disease.” etc. quoting from my letter, & adding “I see well enough yet—as Benedick says—without spectacles, & yet see nothing of the matter.” Mrs Browning made an apology to me for his ill-humor, & thanked me herself with feeling for “the kind things” I had said of her. But I learned by all this, that no one is so lifted up by intellectual gifts as to be indifferent to personal appearance—that all one may say in praise of the mind & heart, will not weigh a feather in the balance of personal vanity; & did not wonder so much as I had before, that Mad. de Staël should have expressed a willingness to resign all her mighty mind for beauty of person. “Surely all that a man hath will he give for his skin!”, said the father of lies, with truth!
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Columbia University.
___________________
