SD820.2. Thomas Lovell Beddoes to Thomas Forbes Kelsall
Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 333 (in part).
Zurich—the hills covered with snow.
May 1837
… Without any such risk, however, I can tell you how I employ, or abuse, my time. You must know that I am an M.D. of the U. of Würtzburg, and possess a very passable knowledge of anatomy and physiology, &c.: that I narrowly escaped becoming a professor of comparative anatomy in the University of Zurich, (having been recommended unanimously for that chair by the medical faculty here,) by means of a timely quarrel in which I engaged, more solito, with several members of the government. Now, being independent, and have all the otium if not the dignitas eines privatis irrenden-gelehrten, sometimes I dissect a beetle, sometimes an oyster, and very often trudge about the hills and the lakes, with a tin box on my back, and “peep and botanize” in defiance of W.W. Sometimes I peep half a day through a microscope: sometimes I read Italian (in which I am only a smatterer,) or what not: and not seldom drink and smoke like an Ætna.
As sudden thunder—
(Here followed the lyric which is inserted in Death’s Jest-Book, p. 115.)
And so I weave my Penelopean web, and rip it up again; and so I roll my impudent Sisyphean stone; and so I eat my beef-steak, drink my coffee, and wear my coats out at elbow, and pay my bills (when I can,) as busy an humble bee, as any who doth nothing.
* * * * * *
And here closeth this epistle. I shall hardly write again before I have finished my book, which grows as slowly as a yew-tree, at present the chapters in hand requiring a light-hearted sunniness of style, which I can only command when the birds are singing, and sun is shining on morning dew.
Yours, T. L. B.
I hope to hear from you again before I return to England, and would request you to send me a song which you recommend. I wish to be prodigal of lyrics, and have only about twenty-two or twenty-three as yet; one or two of which are of doubtful merit. In this confounded weather the cold-blooded frogs themselves hardly have the heart to sing our their love-thoughts. What do you say to the new dramatists? An article in a Dublin review, which I looked through a day or two ago, contains extracts, which certainly indicate a beathing of the pulse, a warming of the skin, and a sigh or two from the dramatic lady muse, as if she were about to awake from her asphyxy of a hundred years: and the Examiner is quite rapturous about Strafford; although I confess that the extracts, he chooses and praises, appear to me not exactly dramatic. One is a dialogue between two people describing Pym’s appearance, action &c. in a style, which has been approved of by critics of late, and considered highly graphic. But is it not very artificial? In Shakespeare such passages are rare, and only in scenes, where the person, whose actions are described, must necessarily be laconic if not entirely speechless, and where the spectators, in their doubt, fear, and wonder, naturally communicate to each other their interpretations of the dumb show before them. For instance, in Hamlet where the ghost, unwilling, or unable perhaps, to speak to his son in the presence of Horatio and the watch, motions him to follow. It is of some consequence to settle one’s opinion on a question of this nature. I am not sure that I am right, but I doubt: what say you?
Text: Thomas Lovell Beddoes, The Poems Posthumous and Collected, ed. Thomas Forbes Kelsall (London, 1851), I, cii–civ.
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