SD1954. Bayard Taylor to Richard Henry Stoddard & Elizabeth Stoddard

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 248 (in part).

Paris,

August 4, 1856.

My time, as you may suppose, is mostly taken up in playing the cicerone to my brethren; …

I breakfasted with Barry Cornwall and Browning. Dear old Barry! I loved him from the first minute. He is reputed silent, but he opened his heart to me like an uncle. He showed me all his MSS., lots of unpublished poems, etc., and talked out of the abundance of his golden nature. Browning was most cordial. He wanted me to call on his wife, and I did so, and a jolly hour’s talk I had with the two. She is about publishing a poem of eleven thousand lines,—something entirely new in design,—and she feels a little nervous about it. I told her she should not, for if it was good it would surely be appreciated some time or other, and if not, the sooner it was damned the better; to which polite remark she agreed. Browning is much pleased with the American success of his last volume. He assaulted me with “From the desert I come to thee,” etc., which he knows by heart, and says is the finest thing of the kind he ever read. (Hold me!) …

Text: Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor, ed. Marie Hansen-Taylor and Horace E. Scudder (Boston, 1884), pp. 320–322.

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