"50 Wimpole Street,
December 5th 1845.
It is with shame and confusion of face, my dear Mr.
Mathews, that I read your letter and remembered that it was to be enunciated of
me 'the maid is not dead but sleepeth.'
Nothing but being actually dead, I do humbly confess, could justify me before my
own conscience and your sense of justice, and so there is nothing for me (being
too, too much alive) but to creep on the knees of a contrite soul to the back
door of your mercy and to pray her to be at home to me and let me in. Will
you—can you forgive me?
'Not dead'—you say—'not even ill!' you repeat. Can such
things be in that old land of corruption, and can they be pardonable?
Not dead—not even ill—I confess—nay, shamefully better I
am! Shamefully well I am, and yet you must try to forgive me—try to be consoled
for this handwriting of mine, in the proper place of that of my executors.
For here is the truth. I am always much better when it
is summer, my complaint being weakness of the lungs, and for several summers I
have made progress in the gross, though thrown back every winter in some degree
on the spikes again. Did you ever 'do the sum' about the snail who crept and
slept and crept and slept? I have, both in a sum and an experience. Still
in this last summer my advances were very large. I was quite well in fact, only
not quite strong of course,—able to go out in the carriage—able to get into the
air and feel 'this is liberty again,' and then, I was on the verge of an
expedition to Italy in which to hide myself from this winter,—and I felt that if
I could go I should be well and strong like the enjoyers of the world’s life—and
I was hindered in the going. It was too full a benediction for such a head as
mine. Well,—and all these intentions and hopes and emotions, and some others yet
stranger and deeper, absorbed me!"
Strange and deep emotions indeed.
"It was as if an oyster had the wings of an eagle, and
lighted on Teneriffe. Now could he be expected to think any more of his sandbank
or even of the curlew’s cry associated with his former immobility? and I,
who am not naturally an oyster; but had an oyster’s life thrust on me—I
could think of nothing but of the new budding of the new wings—but of the
beating of my own heart. I forgot how to write and read. Try if you can
understand. I mean to say, I thought of nothing long enough to write it down in
letters and agree to engagements on it.– I could think of you sometimes. I could
think that I was abominably ungrateful to you, and to some others. But I could
not write, I read your 'Abel' and indeed did my best to get it reviewed by some
one capable of entering into the peculiar life of that work."
She is describing being paralysed by being in love with Browning without mentioning being in love with anyone. The oyster analogy being suggestively apt for someone in love. She surely could have worked that into one of the sonnets, mayhaps she did and it ended up consigned to the fire. Perhaps one of the Blogoleers will give it a try.
"They answered me, that it was all in vain,—just as you
anticipated,—that it was too peculiar, your little book—too deeply dyed in your
national colours, to have a hope of success with readers here; and I could
understand something of this from the effect of the book on myself. I could
discern the talent—but it missed its hold on me precisely because there was a
want of the necessary American stuff in me, to hold by. And I tell you this of
your Abel, to prove how I have not been utterly self-absorbed—believe me, I have
not. Also if adversity is good for me, I am now restored to my prison—shut up as
of old,—not ill, but forced on the pain of being ill to keep my double doors
shut doubly and my windows hermetically sealed, and a
fire by day and by night; and having tasted of liberty, the slavery is bitter. I
shake my chains impotently; forgive me for the sake of that piteous sound."
She is very delicate with her criticism of his American book but rather lays it on a bit thick with her pathetic appeal to her poor health. Given the state of womanhood in the 19th century she may as well use the state of her lungs to deflect blame. Hopefully Mr. Mathews will not think the less of her for this pathetic parry.
"Now,—your first charge finds me innocent—innocent. I
never received Griswold’s poets,—never the Southern quarterly, Columbian
Magazine, etc.—never, that packet. I sent repeatedly
to Mr. Putnam’s, naming Griswold. And the answer has always been 'not received.'
Several newspapers have come safely, for which I have silently thanked you. I
had the remittance safely too, from Mr. Langley, and take shame on myself for
not acknowledging it. [According to The Footnote King she received £14.] Will you be so
kind?—but no. I should write to him, I think, with my own hand. I was very well
satisfied with his report of the poems, and grateful to you all, notwithstanding
appearances. As to the proposition about the prose miscellanies, I could not but
be gratified by it, but I wish you to understand that I should be averse from
the re-issue of the Athenæum papers without a complete course of rewriting. It
has frequently been urged on me here to throw them (enlarging them in the
process) into the shape of publishable chapters on English poetry and Greek
Christian poetry, and if Mr. Langley likes to give me time, I do not object to
placing a volume of miscellanies from the source designated, or others, in his
hands. But should they not be put into proof in London and then transmitted? How
should it be? You amuse me when you say that Mr. Poe has dedicated a book to me
and abused me in the preface of it. That I should not think human
justice—if it were not American. I know him for a writer of considerable power.
And now may I hope without audacity to hear of you and of your doings? I am a
penitent—believe it of me. How does 'Big Abel' succeed in his land? And what are
you engaged on at present? For me, I have been an example of idleness, as you
may gather.
Mrs. Butler [Fanny Kemble for you Blogoleers who have not been paying attention] brings to England a good report of American
life, and professes an intention of growing old among you when her time comes.
In the meanwhile she does not think of returning to the stage here, but rather
of assisting her father in his Shakespearian readings, by which he makes some sixty pounds a week
already. I understand Mr. Browning has just published another number of 'Bells
and Pomegranates,' in which his great original faculty throws out new colours
and expands in new combinations. A great poet he is—a greater poet he will
be—for to work and to live are one with him. The 'Flight of the Duchess' in his
last number, has wonderful things in it, and the versification is a study for
poets."
"I understand Mr. Browning has just published...." Indeed? How could she possibly know this? Ah well, she has to promote her personal poet. She is certainly good at promotion: she has planted the seed of Browning's genius among the Americans:
"Walter Savage Landor has lately addressed
the following verses to him:
To Robert Browning.
'There is delight in singing though none hearBeside the singer; and there is delight
In praising, though the praiser sit alone
And see the praised far off him, far above.
Shakespeare is not our poet but the world’s,
Therefore on him no speech; and short for thee,
Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale
No man hath walked along our roads with step
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue
So varied in discourse. But warmer climes
Give brighter plumage, stronger wing. The breeze
Of Alpine heights thou playest with, borne on
Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.'
Fine, generous lines, are they not? and never a better
epithet chosen, than the word 'hale,' for Chaucer. Mr. Tennyson has a pension,
you see, but for the rest, is said rather to smoke than to make poems. He has
taken a whole turret to himself in the 'Castle of Indolence'. Dickens is about to cast himself headlong
into the doubtful undertaking of the new daily paper, the 'Daily News.' The
opinions against success are many. It is a great object to combine literature
and civil philosophy, both of the highest and purest, and to give the man of
letters in England that social status which on the continent is secured to him.
But thinkers have observed first, That the English people will not have
democracy in a journal apart from politics, viz., the old forms of party—that
literature will not be permitted to keep place beside what are considered in
this country graver questions—and that lastly, the social rank of men of letters
must be given by society when it is ripe enough to discern and give, and cannot
be snatched prematurely. While we offer dinners and memorials to a railway
speculator, like Hudson, we are not in a
condition—our hands are not clean enough—to invite poets across our thresholds.
This England of ours is behind other nations in the true civilization. I
cannot choose but think so. Dear Mr. Matthews, let me have your forgiveness
soon, and believe in the continued grateful regard of
Elizabeth Barrett Barrett."
It is a smart Englishwoman who praises the egalitarian way of the Americans while begging forgiveness. Another example of Miss Barrett's letter writing gifts.
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