Chapter IV (1)

1844-46

The year 1844 marks an important epoch in the life of Mrs. Browning. It was in this year that, as a result of the publication of her two volumes of 'Poems,' she won her general and popular recognition as a poetess whose rank was with the foremost of living writers. It was six years since she had published a volume of verse; and in the meanwhile she had been gaining strength and literary experience. She had tried her wings in the pages of popular periodicals. She had profited by the criticisms on her earlier work, and by intercourse with men of letters; and though her defects in literary art were by no means purged away, yet the flights of her inspiration were stronger and more assured. The result is that, although the volumes of 1844 do not contain absolutely her best work--no one with the 'Sonnets from the Portuguese' in his mind can affirm so much as that--they contain that which has been most generally popular, and which won her the position which for the rest of her life she held in popular estimation among the leaders of English poetry.

The principal poem in these two volumes is the 'Drama of Exile.' Of the genesis of this work, Miss Barrett gives the following account in a letter to Home, dated December 28 1843:

'A volume full of manuscripts had been ready for more than a year, when suddenly, a short time ago, when I fancied I had no heavier work than to make copy and corrections, I fell upon a fragment of a sort of masque on "The First Day's Exile from Eden"--or rather it fell upon me, and beset me till I would finish it.'[91]

[Footnote 91: _Letters to R.H. Home_, ii. 146.]

At one time it was intended to use its name as the title to the two volumes; but this design was abandoned, and they appeared under the simple description of 'Poems, by Elizabeth Barrett Barrett.' The 'Vision of Poets' comes next in length to the 'Drama'; and among the shorter pieces were several which rank among her best work, 'The Cry of the Children,' 'Wine of Cyprus,' 'The Dead Pan,' 'Bertha in the Lane,' 'Crowned and Buried,' 'The Mourning Mother,' and 'The Sleep,' together with such popular favourites as 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship,' 'The Romaunt of the Page,' and 'The Rhyme of the Duchess May.' Since the publication of 'The Seraphim' volume, the new era of poetry had developed itself to a notable extent. Tennyson had published the best of his earlier verse, 'Locksley Hall,' 'Ulysses,' the 'Morte d'Arthur,' 'The Lotus Eaters,' 'A Dream of Fair Women,' and many more; Browning had issued his wonderful series of 'Bells and Pomegranates,' including 'Pippa Passes,' 'King Victor and King Charles,' 'Dramatic Lyrics,' 'The Return of the Druses,' and 'The Blot on the 'Scutcheon'; and it was among company such as this that Miss Barrett, by general consent, now took her place.

_To Mrs. Martin_ January 8, 1844.

Thank you again and again, my dearest Mrs. Martin, for your flowers, and the verses which gave them another perfume. The 'incense of the heart' lost not a grain of its perfume in coming so far, and not a leaf of the flowers was ruffled, and to see such gorgeous colours all on a sudden at Christmas time was like seeing a vision, and almost made Flush and me rub our eyes. Thank you, dearest Mrs. Martin; how kind of you! The grace of the verses and the brightness of the flowers were too much for me altogether. And when George exclaimed, 'Why, she has certainly laid bare her greenhouse,' I had not a word to say in justification of myself for being the cause of it.

Papa admired the branch of Australian origin so much that he walked all over the house with it. Beautiful it is indeed; but my eyes turn back to the camellias. I do believe that I like to look at a camellia better than at a rose; and then _these_ have a double association....

I meant to write a long letter to you to-day, but Mr. Kenyon has been to see me and cut my time short before post time. You remember, perhaps, how his brother married a German, and, after an exile of many years in Germany, returned last summer to England to settle. Well, he can't bear us any longer! His wife is growing paler and paler with the pressure of English social habits, or rather unsocial habits; and he himself is a German at heart; and besides, being a man of a singularly generous nature, and accustomed to give away in handfuls of silver and gold one-third of every year's income, he dislikes the social obligation of _spending_ it here. So they are going back. Poor Mr. Kenyon! I am full of sympathy with him. This returning to England was a dream of all last year to him. He gave up his house to the new comers, and bought a new one; and talked of the brightness secured to his latter years by the presence of his only remaining near relative; and I see that, for all his effort towards a bright view of the matter, he is disappointed--very. Should you suppose that four hundred pounds in Vienna go as far as a thousand in England? I should never have fancied it.

You shall hear from me, my dearest Mrs. Martin, in another few days; and I send this as it is, just because I am benighted by the post hour, and do not like to pass your kindness with even one day's apparent neglect.

May God bless you and dear Mr. Martin. The kindest wishes for the long slope of coming year, and for the many, I trust, beyond it, belong to you from the deepest of our hearts.

But shall you not be coming--setting out--very soon, before I can write again?

Your affectionate BA.

_To John Kenyan_ [?January 1844.]

I am so sorry, dear Mr. Kenyon, to hear--which I did, last night, for the first time--of your being unwell. I had hoped that to-day would bring a better account, but your note, with its next week prospect, is disappointing. The 'ignominy' would have been very preferable--to us, at least, particularly as it need not have lasted beyond to-day, dear Georgie being quite recovered, and at his law again, and no more symptoms of small-pox in anybody. We should all be well, if it were not for me and my cough, which is better, but I am not quite well, nor have yet been out.

A letter came to me from dear Miss Mitford a few days since, which I had hoped to talk to you about. Some of the subject of it is Mr. Kenyon's '_only fault_,' which ought, of course, to be a large one to weigh against the multitudinous ones of other people, but which seems to be: 'He has the habit of walking in without giving notice. He thinks it saves trouble, whereas in a small family, and at a distance from a town, the effect is that one takes care to be provided for the whole time that one expects him, and then, by some exquisite ill luck, on the only day when one's larder is empty, in he comes!' And so, if you have not written to interrupt her in this process of indefinite expectation, the 'only fault' will, in her eyes, grow, as it ought, as large as fifty others.

I do hope, dear Mr. Kenyon, soon to hear that you are better--and well--and that your course of prophecy may not run smooth all through next week.

Very truly yours, E. BARRETT.

Saturday. _To John Kenyon_ Saturday night [about March 1844].

I return Mr. Burges's criticism, which I omitted to talk to you of this morning, but which interested me much in the reading. Do let him understand how obliged to him I am for permitting me to look, for a moment, according to his view of the question. Perhaps my poetical sense is not convinced all through, and certainly my critical sense is not worth convincing, but I am delighted to be able to call by the name of Aeschylus, under the authority of Mr. Burges, those noble electrical lines (electrical for double reasons) which had struck me twenty times as Aeschylean, when I read them among the recognised fragments of Sophocles. You hear Aeschylus's footsteps and voice in the lines. No other of the gods could tread so heavily, or speak so like thundering.

I wrote all this to begin with, hesitating how else to begin. My very dear and kind friend, you understand--do you not?--through an expression which, whether written or spoken, must remain imperfect, to what deep, full feeling of gratitude your kindness has moved me.[92] The good you have done me, and just at the moment when I should have failed altogether without it, and in more than one way, and in a deeper than the obvious degree--all this I know better than you do, and I thank you for it from the bottom of my heart. I shall never forget it, as long as I live to remember anything. The book may fail signally after all--_that_ is another question; but I shall not fail, to begin with, and _that_ I owe to _you_, for I was falling to pieces in nerves and spirits when you came to help me. I had only enough instinct left to be ashamed, a little, afterwards, of having sent you, in company, too, with Miss Martineau's heroic cheerfulness, that note of weak because unavailing complaint. It was a long compressed feeling breaking suddenly into words. Forgive and forget that I ever so troubled you--no, 'troubled' is not the word for your kindness!--and remember, as I shall do, the great good you have done me.

May God bless you, my dear cousin.

Affectionately yours always, E.B.B.

[Footnote 92: Referring to Mr. Kenyon's encouraging comments on the 'Drama of Exile,' which he had seen in manuscript at a time when Miss Barrett was very despondent about it.]

This note is not to be answered.

I am thinking of writing to Moxon, as there does not seem much to arrange. The type and size of Tennyson's books seem, upon examination, to suit my purpose excellently.

_To John Kenyan_ March 21, 1844.

No, you never sent me back Miss Martineau's letter, my dear cousin; but you will be sure, or rather Mr. Crabb Robinson will, to find it in some too safe a place; and then I shall have it. In the meantime here are the other letters back again. You will think that I was keeping them for a deposit, a security, till I 'had my ain again,' but I have only been idle and busy together. They are the most interesting that can be, and have quite delighted me. By the way, _I_, who saw nothing to object to in the 'Life in the Sick Room,' object very much to her argument in behalf of it--an argument certainly founded on a miserable misapprehension of the special doctrine referred to in her letter. There is nothing so elevating and ennobling to the nature and mind of man as the view which represents it raised into communion with God Himself, by the justification and purification of God Himself. Plato's dream brushed by the gate of this doctrine when it walked highest, and won for him the title of 'Divine.' That it is vulgarised sometimes by narrow-minded teachers in theory, and by hypocrites in action, might be an argument (if admitted at all) against all truth, poetry, and music!

On the other hand, I was glad to see the leaning on the Education question; in which all my friends the Dissenters did appear to me so painfully wrong and so unworthily wrong at once.

And Southey's letters! I did quite delight in _them_! They are more _personal_ than any I ever saw of his; and have more warm every-day life in them.

The particular Paul Pry in question (to come down to _my_ life) never 'intrudes.' It is his peculiarity. And I put the stop exactly where I was bid; and was going to put Gabriel's speech,[93] only--with the pen in my hand to do it--I found that the angel was a little too exclamatory altogether, and that he had cried out, 'O ruined earth!' and 'O miserable angel!' just before, approaching to the habit of a mere caller of names. So I altered the passage otherwise; taking care of your full stop after 'despair.' Thank you, my dear Mr. Kenyon.

Also I sent enough manuscript for the first sheet, and a note to Moxon yesterday, last night, thanking him for his courtesy about Leigh Hunt's poems; and following your counsel in every point. 'Only last night,' you will say! But I have had _such_ a headache--and some very painful vexation in the prospect of my maid's leaving me, who has been with me throughout my illness; so that I am much attached to her, with the best reasons for being so, while the idea of a stranger is scarcely tolerable to me under my actual circumstances.

The 'Palm Leaves'[94] are full of strong thought and good thought--thought expressed excellently well; but of poetry, in the true sense, and of imagination in any, I think them bare and cold--somewhat wintry leaves to come from the East, surely, surely!

May the change of air be rapid in doing you good--the weather seems to be softening on purpose for you. May God bless you, dear Mr. Kenyon; I never can thank you enough. When you return I shall be rustling my 'proofs' about you, to prove my faith in your kindness.

Ever affectionately yours, E.B.B.

[Footnote 93: In the 'Drama of Exile,' near the beginning (_Poetical Works_, i. 7).]

[Footnote 94: By Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton.]

_To H.S. Boyd_ March 22, 1844.

My dearest Mr. Boyd,--I heard that once I wrote three times too long a letter to you; I am aware that nine times too long a silence is scarcely the way to make up for it. Forgive me, however, as far as you can, for every sort of fault. When I once begin to write to you, I do not know how to stop; and I have had so much to do lately as scarcely to know how to begin to write to you. _Hence these_ faults--not quite tears--in spite of my penitence and the quotation.

At last my book is in the press. My great poem (in the modest comparative sense), my 'Masque of Exile' (as I call it at last[95]), consists of some nineteen hundred or two thousand lines, and I call it 'Masque of _Exile_' because it refers to Lucifer's exile, and to that other mystical exile of the Divine Being which was the means of the return homewards of my Adam and Eve. After the exultation of boldness of composition, I fell into one of my deepest fits of despondency, and at last, at the end of most painful vacillations, determined not to print it. Never was a manuscript so near the fire as my 'Masque' was. I had not even the instinct of applying for help to anybody. In the midst of this Mr. Kenyon came in by accident, and asked about my poem. I told him that I had given it up, despairing of my republic. In the kindest way he took it into his hands, and proposed to carry it home and read it, and tell me his impression. 'You know,' he said, 'I have a prejudice against these sacred subjects for poetry, but then I have another prejudice _for you_, and one may neutralise the other.' The next day I had a letter from him with the returned manuscript--a letter which I was absolutely certain, before I opened it, would counsel _against_ the publication. On the contrary! His impression is clearly in favour of the poem, and, while he makes sundry criticisms on minor points, he considers it very superior as a whole to anything I ever did before--more sustained, and fuller in power. So my nerves are braced, and I grow a man again; and the manuscript, as I told you, is in the press. Moreover, you will be surprised to hear that I think of bringing out _two volumes of poems_ instead of one, by advice of Mr. Moxon, the publisher. Also, the Americans have commanded an American edition, to come out in numbers, either a little before or simultaneously with the English one, and provided with a separate preface for themselves.

There now! I have told you all this, knowing your kindness, and that you will care to hear of it.

It has given me the greatest concern to hear of dear Annie's illness, and I do hope, both for your sake and for all our sakes, that we may have better news of her before long.

But I don't mean to fall into another scrape to-day by writing too much. May God bless you, my very dear friend!

I am ever your affectionate E.B.B.

[Footnote 95: There was, however, a still later last, when it became the 'Drama of Exile.']

_To H.S. Boyd_ April I, 1844.

My very dear Friend,--Your kind letter I was delighted to receive. You mistake a good deal the capacities in judgment of 'the man.'[96] The 'man' is highly refined in his tastes, and leaning to the classical (I was going to say to _your_ classical, only suddenly I thought of Ossian) a good deal more than I do. He has written satires in the manner of Pope, which admirers of Pope have praised warmly and deservedly. If I had hesitated about the conclusiveness of his judgments, it would have been because of his confessed indisposition towards subjects religious and ways mystical, and his occasional insufficient indulgence for rhymes and rhythms which he calls '_Barrettian_.' But these things render his favourable inclination towards my 'Drama of Exile' still more encouraging (as you will see) to my hopes for it.

Still, I do tremble a good deal inwardly when I come to think of what your own thoughts of my poem, and poems in their two-volume development, may finally be. I am afraid of you. You will tell me the truth as it appears to you--upon _that_ I may rely; and I should not wish you to suppress a single disastrous thought for the sake of the unpleasantness it may occasion to me. My own faith is that I have made progress since 'The Seraphim,' only it is too possible (as I confess to myself and you) that your opinion may be exactly contrary to it.

You are very kind in what you say about wishing to have some conversation, as the medium of your information upon architecture, with Octavius--Occy, as we call him. He is very much obliged to you, and proposes, if it should not be inconvenient to you, to call upon you on Friday, with Arabel, at about one o'clock. Friday is mentioned because it is a holiday, no work being done at Mr. Barry's. Otherwise he is engaged every day (except, indeed, Sunday) from nine in the morning to five in the afternoon. May God bless you, dearest Mr. Boyd. I am ever

Your affectionate ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

[Footnote 96: John Kenyon: see the last letter.]

_To Mr. Westwood_ April 16, 1844.

... Surely, surely, it was not likely I should lean to utilitarianism in the notice on Carlyle, as I remember the writer of that article leans somewhere--_I_, who am reproached with trans-trans-transcendentalisms, and not without reason, or with insufficient reason.

Oh, and I should say also that Mr. Home, in his kindness, has enlarged considerably in his annotations and reflections on me personally.[97] My being in correspondence with all the Kings of the East, for instance, is an exaggeration, although literary work in one way will bring with it, happily, literary association in others.... Still, I am not a great letter writer, and I don't write 'elegant Latin verses,' as all the gods of Rome know, and I have not been shut up in the dark for seven years by any manner of means. By the way, a barrister said to my barrister brother the other day, 'I suppose your sister is dead?' 'Dead?' said he, a little struck; 'dead?' 'Why, yes. After Mr. Home's account of her being sealed up hermetically in the dark for so many years, one can only calculate upon her being dead by this time.'

ELIZABETH BARRETT.

Several of the letters to Mr. Boyd which follow refer to that celebrated gift of Cyprus wine which led to the composition of one of Miss Barrett's best known and most quoted poems.

[Footnote 97: In _The New Spirit of the Age_.]

_To H.S. Boyd_ June 18, 1844.

Thank you, my very dear friend! I write to you drunk with Cyprus. Nothing can be worthier of either gods or demi-gods; and if, as you say, Achilles did not drink of it, I am sorry for him. I suppose Jupiter had it instead, just then--Hebe pouring it, and Juno's ox-eyes bellowing their splendour at it, if you will forgive me that broken metaphor, for the sake of Aeschylus's genius, and my own particular intoxication.

Indeed, there _never was_, in modern days, such wine. Flush, to whom I offered the last drop in my glass, felt it was supernatural, and ran away. I have an idea that if he had drunk that drop, he would have talked afterwards--either Greek or English.

Never was such wine! The very taste of ideal nectar, only stiller, from keeping. If the bubbles of eternity were on it, _we_ should run away, perhaps, like Flush.

Still, the thought comes to me, ought I to take it from you? Is it right of me? are you not too kind in sending it? and should you be allowed to be too kind? In any case, you must, not think of sending me more than you have already sent. It is more than enough, and I am not less than very much obliged to you.

I have passed the middle of my second volume, and I only hope that critics may say of the rest that it smells of Greek wine. Dearest Mr. Boyd's

Ever affectionate E.B. BARRETT.

_To Mr. Westwood_ June 28, 1844.

My dear Mr. Westwood,--I have certainly and considerably increased the evidence of my own death by the sepulchral silence of the last few days. But after all I am not dead, not even _at heart_, so as to be insensible to your kind anxiety, and I can assure you of this, upon very fair authority, neither is the book dead yet. It has turned the corner of the _felo de se_, and if it is to die, it will be by the critics. The mystery of the long delay, it would not be very easy for me to explain, notwithstanding I hear Mr. Moxon says: 'I suppose Miss Barrett is not in a hurry about her publication;' and _I_ say: 'I suppose Moxon is not in a hurry about the publication.' There may be a little fault on my side, when I have kept a proof a day beyond the hour, or when 'copy' has put out new buds in my hands as I passed it to the printer's. Still, in my opinion, it is a good deal more the fault of Mr. Moxon's not being in a hurry, than in the excessive virtue of my patience, or vice of my indolence. Miss Mitford says, as you do, that she never heard of so slow-footed a book.

_To H.S. Boyd_ 50 Wimpole Street: Wednesday, August I, 1844 [postmark].

My very dear Friend,--Have you expected to hear from me? and are you vexed with me? I am a little ambitious of the first item--yet hopeful of an escape from the last. If you did but know how I am pressed for time, and how I have too much to do every day, you would forgive me for my negligence; even if you had sent me nectar instead of mountain,[98] and I had neglected laying my gratitude at your feet. Last Saturday, upon its being discovered that my first volume consisted of only 208 pages, and my second of 280 pages, Mr. Moxon uttered a cry of reprehension, and wished to tear me to pieces by his printers, as the Bacchantes did Orpheus. Perhaps you might have heard my head moaning all the way to St. John's Wood! He wanted to tear away several poems from the end of the second volume, and tie them on to the end of the first! I could not and would not hear of this, because I had set my mind on having 'Dead Pan' to conclude with. So there was nothing for it but to finish a ballad poem called 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship,' which was lying by me, and I did so by writing, i.e. composing, _one hundred and forty lines last Saturday!_[99] I seemed to be in a dream all day! Long lines too--with fifteen syllables in each! I see you shake your head all this way off. Moreover it is a 'romance of the age,' treating of railroads, routes, and all manner of 'temporalities,' and in so radical a temper that I expect to be reproved for it by the Conservative reviews round. By the way, did I tell you of the good news I had from America the third of this month? The 'Drama of Exile' is in the hands of a New York publisher; and having been submitted to various chief critics of the country on its way, was praised loudly and extravagantly. This was, however, by a _private reading_ only. A bookseller at Philadelphia had announced it for publication--he intended to take it up when the English edition reached America; but upon its being represented to him that the New York publisher had proof sheets direct from the author and would give copy money, he abandoned his intention to the other. I confess I feel very much pleased at the kind spirit--the spirit of eager kindness indeed--with which the Americans receive my poetry. It is not wrong to be pleased, I hope. In this country there may be mortifications waiting for me; quite enough to keep my modesty in a state of cultivation. I do not know. I hope the work will be out this week, and _then_! Did I explain to you that what 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship' was wanted for was to increase the size of the first volume, so as to restore the equilibrium of volumes, without dislocating 'Pan'? Oh, how anxious I shall be to hear your opinion! If you tell me that I have lost my intellects, what in the world shall I do _then_--what _shall_ I do? My Americans--that is, my Americans who were in at the private reading, and perhaps I myself--are of opinion that I have made great progress since 'The Seraphim.' It seems to me that I have more _reach_, whether in thought or language. But then, to _you_ it may appear quite otherwise, and I shall be very melancholy if it does. Only you must tell me the _precise truth_; and I trust to you that you will let me have it in its integrity.

All the life and strength which are in me, seem to have passed into my poetry. It is my _pou sto_--not to move the world; but to live on in.

I must not forget to tell you that there is a poem towards the end of the second volume, called 'Cyprus Wine,' which I have done myself the honor and pleasure of associating with your name. I thought that you would not be displeased by it, as a proof of grateful regard from me.

Talking of wines, the Mountain has its attraction, but certainly is not to be compared to the Cyprus. You will see how I have praised the latter. Well, now I must say 'good-bye,' which you will praise _me_ for!

Dearest Mr. Boyd's affectionate E.B.B.

P.S.--_Nota bene_--I wish to forewarn you that I have cut away in the text none of my vowels by apostrophes. When I say 'To efface,' wanting two-syllable measure, I do not write 'T' efface' as in the old fashion, but 'To efface' full length. This is the style of the day. Also you will find me a little lax perhaps in metre--a freedom which is the result not of carelessness, but of _conviction_, and indeed of much patient study of the great Fathers of English poetry--not meaning Mr. Pope. Be as patient with me as you can. You shall have the volumes as soon as they are ready.

[Footnote 98: Evidently a reference to the name of some wine (perhaps Montepulciano) sent her by Mr. Boyd. See the end of the letter.]

[Footnote 99: It will be observed that this is not quite the same as the current legend, which asserts that the whole poem (of 412 lines) was composed in twelve hours.]

_To H.S. Boyd_ August 6, 1844.

My very dear Friend,--I cannot be certain, from my recollections, whether I did or did not write to you before, as you suggest; but as you never received the letter and I was in a continual press of different thoughts, the probability is that I did not write. The Cyprus wine in the second vial I certainly _did_ receive; and was grateful to you with the whole force of the aroma of it. And now I will tell you an anecdote.

In the excess of my filial tenderness, I poured out a glass for papa, and offered it to him with my right hand.

'_What is this_?' said he.

'_Taste it_,' said I as laconically, but with more emphasis.

He raised it to his lips; and, after a moment, recoiled, with such a face as sinned against Adam's image, and with a shudder of deep disgust.

'Why,' he said, 'what most beastly and nauseous thing is this? Oh,' he said, 'what detestable drug is this? Oh, oh,' he said, 'I shall never, never, get this horrible taste out of my mouth.'

I explained with the proper degree of dignity that 'it was Greek wine, Cyprus wine, and of very great value.'

He retorted with acrimony, that 'it might be Greek, twice over; but that it was exceedingly beastly.'

I resumed, with persuasive argument, that 'it could scarcely be beastly, inasmuch as the taste reminded one of oranges and orange flower together, to say nothing of the honey of Mount Hymettus.'

He took me up with stringent logic, 'that any wine must positively be beastly, which, pretending to be wine, tasted sweet as honey, and that it was beastly on my own showing!' I send you this report as an evidence of a curious opinion. But drinkers of port wine cannot be expected to judge of nectar--and I hold your 'Cyprus' to be pure nectar.

I shall have pleasure in doing what you ask me to do--that is, I _will_--if you promise never to call me Miss Barrett again. You have often quite vexed me by it. There is Ba--Elizabeth--Elzbeth--Ellie--any modification of my name you may call me by--but I won't be called Miss Barrett by _you_. Do you understand? Arabel means to carry your copy of my book to you. And I beg you not to fancy that I shall be impatient for you to read the two volumes through. If you _ever_ read them through, it will be a sufficient compliment, and indeed I do not expect that you _ever will_.

May God bless you, dearest Mr. Boyd.

I remain,

Your affectionate and grateful ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

The date of this last letter marks, as nearly as need be, the date of publication of Miss Barrett's volumes. The letters which follow deal mainly with their reception, first at the hand of friends, and then by the regular critics. The general verdict of the latter was extremely complimentary. Mr. Chorley, in the 'Athenaeum,'[100] described the volumes as 'extraordinary,' adding that 'between her [Miss Barrett's] poems and the slighter lyrics of most of the sisterhood, there is all the difference which exists between the putting-on of "singing robes" for altar service, and the taking up lute or harp to enchant an indulgent circle of friends and kindred.' In the 'Examiner,'[101] John Forster declared that 'Miss Barrett is an undoubted poetess of a high and fine order as regards the first requisites of her art--imagination and expression.... She is a most remarkable writer, and her volumes contain not a little which the lovers of poetry will never willingly let die,' a phrase then not quite so hackneyed as it has since become. The 'Atlas'[102] asserted that 'the present volumes show extraordinary powers, and, abating the failings of which all the followers of Tennyson are guilty, extraordinary genius.' More influential even than these, 'Blackwood'[103] paid her the compliment of a whole article, criticising her faults frankly, but declaring that 'her poetical merits infinitively outweigh her defects. Her genius is profound, unsullied, and without a flaw.' All agreed in assigning her a high, or the highest, place among the poetesses of England; but, as Miss Barrett herself pointed out, this, in itself, was no great praise.[104]

[Footnote 100: August 24, 1844.]

[Footnote 101: October 5, 1844.]

[Footnote 102: September 31, 1844.]

[Footnote 103: November 1844.]

[Footnote 104: See letter of January 3, 1845.]

With regard to individual poems, the critics did not take kindly to the 'Drama of Exile,' and 'Blackwood' in particular criticised it at considerable length, calling it 'the least successful of her works.' The subject, while half challenging comparison with Milton, lends itself only too readily to fancifulness and unreality, which were among the most besetting sins of Miss Barrett's genius. The minor poems were incomparably more popular, and the favourite of all was that masterpiece of rhetorical sentimentality, 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship.' It must have been a little mortifying to the authoress to find this piece, a large part of which had been dashed off at a single heat in order to supply the printers' needs, preferred to others on which she had employed all the labour of her deliberate art; but with the general tone of all the critics she had every reason to be as content as her letters show her to have been. Only two criticisms rankled: the one that she was a follower of Tennyson, the other that her rhymes were slovenly and careless. And these appeared, in varying shapes, in nearly all the reviews.

The former of these allegations is of little weight. Whatever qualities Miss Barrett may have shared with Tennyson, her substantial independence is unquestionable. It is a case rather of coincidence than imitation; or if imitation, it is of a slight and unconscious kind. The second criticism deserves fuller notice, because it is constantly repeated to this day. The following letters show how strongly Miss Barrett protested against it. As she told Horne,[105] with reference to this very subject: 'If I fail ultimately before the public--that is, before the people--for an ephemeral popularity does not appear to me to be worth trying for--it will not be because I have shrunk from the amount of labour, where labour could do anything. I have _worked_ at poetry; it has not been with me reverie, but art.' That her rhymes were inexact, especially in such poems as 'The Dead Pan,' she did not deny; but her defence was that the inexactness was due to a deliberate attempt to widen the artistic capabilities of the English language. Partly, perhaps, as a result of her acquaintance with Italian literature, she had a marked fondness for disyllabic rhymes; and since pure rhymes of this kind are not plentiful in English, she tried the experiment of using assonances instead. Hence such rhymes as _silence_ and _islands_, _vision_ and _procession_, _panther_ and _saunter_, examples which could be indefinitely multiplied if need were. Now it may be that a writer with a very sensitive ear would not have attempted such an experiment, and it is a fact that public taste has not approved it; but the experiment itself is as legitimate as, say, the metrical experiments in hexameters and hendecasyllabics of Longfellow or Tennyson, and whether approved or not it should be criticised as an experiment, not as mere carelessness. That Mrs. Browning's ear was quite-capable of discerning true rhymes is shown by the fact that she tacitly abandoned her experiment in assonances. Not only in the pure and high art of the 'Sonnets from the Portuguese,' but even in 'Casa Guidi Windows,' the rhetorical and sometimes colloquial tone of which might have been thought to lend itself to such devices, imperfect rhymes occur but rarely not exceeding the limits allowed to himself by every poet who has rhymed _given_ and _heaven_; and the roll of those who have _not_ done so must be small indeed.

[Footnote 105: _Letters to R.H. Horne_, ii. 119.]

The point has seemed worth dwelling on, because it touches a commonplace of criticism as regards Mrs. Browning; but we may now make way for her own comments on her critics and friends.

_To H.S. Boyd_ Tuesday, August 13, 1844 [postmark].

My very dear Friend,--I must thank you for the great kindness with which you have responded to a natural expression of feeling on my part, and for all the pleasure of finding you pleased with the inscription of 'Cyprus Wine.' Your note has given me much true pleasure. Yes; if my verses survive me, I should wish them to relate the fact of my being your debtor for many happy hours.

And now I must explain to you that most of the 'incorrectnesses' you speak of may be 'incorrectnesses,' but are not _negligences_. I have a theory about double rhymes for which--I shall be attacked by the critics, but which I could justify perhaps on high authority, or at least analogy. In fact, these volumes of mine have more double rhymes than any two books of English poems that ever to my knowledge were printed; I mean of English poems _not comic_. Now, of double rhymes in use, which are perfect rhymes, you are aware how few there are, and yet you are also aware of what an admirable effect in making a rhythm various and vigorous, double rhyming is in English poetry. Therefore I have used a certain licence; and after much thoughtful study of the Elizabethan writers, have ventured it with the public. And do _you_ tell me, _you_ who object to the use of a different _vowel_ in a double rhyme, _why_ you rhyme (as everybody does, without blame from anybody) 'given' to 'heaven,' when you object to my rhyming 'remember' and 'chamber'? The analogy surely is all on my side, and I _believe_ that the spirit of the English language is also.

I write all this because you will find many other sins of the sort, besides those in the 'Cyprus Wine;' and because I wish you to consider the subject as _a point for consideration_ seriously, and not to blame me as a writer of careless verses. If I deal too much in licences, it is not because I am idle, but because I am speculative for freedom's sake. It is possible, you know, to be wrong conscientiously; and I stand up for my conscience only.

I thank you earnestly for your candour hitherto, and I beseech you to be candid to the end.

It is tawny as Rhea's lion.

I know (although you don't say so) you object to that line. Yet consider its structure. Does not the final 'y' of 'tawny' suppose an apostrophe and apocope? Do you not run 'tawny as' into two syllables naturally? I want you to see my principle.

With regard to blank verse, the great Fletcher admits sometimes seventeen syllables into his lines.

I hope Miss Heard received her copy, and that you will not think me arrogant in writing freely to you.

Believe me, I write only freely and not arrogantly; and I am impressed with the conviction that my work abounds with far more faults than you in your kindness will discover, notwithstanding your acumen.

Always your affectionate and grateful ELIBET.

_To H.S. Boyd_ Wednesday, August 14, 1844 [postmark].

My dearest Mr. Boyd,--I must thank you for the great great pleasure with which I have this moment read your note, the more welcome, as (without hypocrisy) I had worked myself up into a nervous apprehension, from your former one, that I should seem so 'rudis atque incomposita' to you, in consequence of certain licences, as to end by being intolerable. I know what an ear you have, and how you can hear the dust on the wheel as it goes on. Well, I wrote to you yesterday, to beg you to be patient and considerate.

But you are always given to surprise me with abundant kindness--with supererogatory kindness. I believe in _that_, certainly.

I am very very glad that you think me stronger and more perspicuous. For the perspicuity, I have struggled hard....

Your affectionate and grateful ELZBETH.

_To Mr. Westwood_ 50 Wimpole Street: August 22, 1844.

... Thank you for your welcome letter, so kind in its candour, _I_ angry that you should prefer 'The Seraphim'! Angry? No _indeed, indeed_, I am grateful for 'The Seraphim,' and not exacting for the 'Drama,' and all the more because of a secret obstinate persuasion that the 'Drama' will have a majority of friends in the end, and perhaps deserve to have them. Nay, why should I throw perhapses over my own impressions, and be insincere to you who have honoured me by being sincere? Why should I dissemble my own belief that the 'Drama' is worth two or three 'Seraphims'--_my own_ belief, you know, which is worth nothing, writers knowing themselves so superficially, and having such a natural leaning to their last work. Still, I may say honestly to you, that I have a far more modest value for 'The Seraphim' than your kindness suggests, and that I have seemed to myself to have a clear insight into the fact that that poem was only borne up by the minor poems published with it, from immediate destruction. There is a want of unity in it which vexes me to think of, and the other faults magnify themselves day by day, more and more, in my eyes. Therefore it is not that I care _more_ for the 'Drama,' but I care less for 'The Seraphim.' Both poems fall short of my aspiration and desire, but the 'Drama' seems to me fuller, freer and stronger, and worth the other three times over. If it has anything new, I think it must be something new into which I have lived, for certainly I wrote it sincerely and from an inner impulse. In fact, I never wrote any poem with so much sense of pleasure in the composition, and so rapidly, with continuous flow--from fifty to a hundred lines a day, and quite in a glow of pleasure and impulse all through. Still, you have not been used to see me in blank verse, and there may be something in that. That the poem is full of faults and imperfections I do not in the least doubt. I have vibrated between exultations and despondencies in the correcting and printing of it, though the composition went smoothly to an end, and I am prepared to receive the bastinado to the critical degree, I do assure you. The few opinions I have yet had are all to the effect that my advance on the former publication is very great and obvious, but then I am aware that people who thought exactly the contrary would be naturally backward in giving me their opinion.... Indeed, I thank you most earnestly. Truth and kindness, how rarely do they come together! I am very grateful to you. It is curious that 'Duchess May' is not a favorite of mine, and that I have sighed one or two secret wishes towards its extirpation, but other writers besides yourself have singled it out for praise in private letters to me. There has been no printed review yet, I believe; and when I think of them, I try to think of something else, for with no private friends among the critical body (not that I should desire to owe security in such a matter to private friendship) it is awful enough, this looking forward to be reviewed. Never mind, the ultimate prosperity of the book lies far above the critics, and can neither be mended nor made nor unmade by _them_.

_To John Kenyan_ Wednesday morning [August 1844].

I return Mr. Chorley's[106] note, my dear cousin, with thankful thoughts of him--as of you. I wish I could persuade you of the rightness of my view about 'Essays on Mind' and such things, and how the difference between them and my present poems is not merely the difference between two schools, as you seemed to intimate yesterday, nor even the difference between immaturity and maturity; but that it is the difference between the dead and the living, between a copy and an individuality, between what is myself and what is not myself. To you who have a personal interest and--may I say? affection for me, the girl's exercise assumes a factitious value, but to the public the matter is otherwise and ought to be otherwise. And for the 'psychological' side of the question, _do_ observe that I have not reputation enough to suggest a curiosity about _my legends_. Instead of your 'legendary lore,' it would be just a legendary bore. Now you understand what I mean. I do not underrate Pope nor his school, but I _do_ disesteem everything which, bearing the shape of a book, is not the true expression of a mind, and I know and feel (and so do _you_) that a girl's exercise written when all the experience lay in books, and the mind was suited rather for intelligence than production, lying like an infant's face with an undeveloped expression, must be valueless in itself, and if offered to the public directly or indirectly as a work of mine, highly injurious to me. Why, of the 'Prometheus' volume, even, you know what I think and desire. 'The Seraphim,' with all its feebleness and shortcomings and obscurities, yet is the first utterance of my own individuality, and therefore the only volume except the last which is not a disadvantage to me to have thought of, and happily for me, the early books, never having been advertised, nor reviewed, except by accident, once or twice, are as safe from the public as manuscript.

Oh, I shudder to think of the lines which might have been 'nicked in,' and all through Mr. Chorley's good nature. As if I had not sins enough to ruin me in the new poems, without reviving juvenile ones, sinned when I knew no better. Perhaps you would like to have the series of epic poems which I wrote from nine years old to eleven. They might illustrate some doctrine of innate ideas, and enrich (to that end) the myths of metaphysicians.

And also agree with me in reverencing that wonderful genius _Keats_, who, rising as a grand exception from among the vulgar herd of juvenile versifiers, was an individual _man_ from the beginning, and spoke with his own voice, though surrounded by the yet unfamiliar murmur of antique echoes.[107] Leigh Hunt calls him 'the young poet' very rightly. Most affectionately and gratefully yours,

E.B.B.

Do thank Mr. Chorley for me, will you?

[Footnote 106: Henry Fothergill Chorley (1808-1872) was one of the principal members of the staff of the _Athenaeum_, especially in literary and musical matters. Dr. Garnett (in the _Dictionary of National Biography_) says of him, shortly after his first joining the staff in 1833, that 'his articles largely contributed to maintain the reputation the _Athenaeum_ had already acquired for impartiality at a time when puffery was more rampant than ever before or since, and when the only other London literary journal of any pretension was notoriously venal.' He also wrote several novels and dramas, which met with but little popular success.]

[Footnote 107: Compare Aurora Leigh's asseveration:

'By Keats' soul, the man who never stepped
In gradual progress like another man,
But, turning grandly on his central self,
Ensphered himself in twenty perfect years
And died, _not_ young.'

('Aurora Leigh,' book i.; _Poetical Works_, vi. 38.)]

_To Mrs. Martin_ Thursday, August 1844.

Thank you, my dearest Mrs. Martin, for your most kind letter, a reply to which should certainly, as you desired, have met you at Colwall; only, right or wrong, I have been flurried, agitated, put out of the way altogether, by Stormie's and Henry's plan of going to Egypt. Ah, now you are surprised. Now you think me excusable for being silent two days beyond my time--yes, and _they have gone_, it is no vague speculation. You know, or perhaps you don't know, that, a little time back, papa bought a ship, put a captain and crew of his own in it, and began to employ it in his favourite 'Via Lactea' of speculations. It has been once to Odessa with wool, I think; and now it has gone to Alexandria with coals. Stormie was wild to go to both places; and with regard to the last, papa has yielded. And Henry goes too. This was all arranged weeks ago, but nothing was said of it until last Monday to me; and when I heard it, I was a good deal moved of course, and although resigned now to their having their way in it, and their _pleasure_, which is better than their way, still I feel I have entered a new anxiety, and shall not be quite at ease again till they return....

And now to thank you, my ever-dearest Mrs. Martin, for your kind and welcome letter from the Lakes. I knew quite at the first page, and long before you said a word specifically, that dear Mr. Martin was better, and think that such a scene, even from under an umbrella, must have done good to the soul and body of both of you. I wish I could have looked through your eyes for once. But I suppose that neither through yours, nor through my own, am I ever likely to behold that sight. In the meantime it is with considerable satisfaction that I hear of your _failure of Wordsworth_, which was my salvation in a very awful sense. Why, if you had done such a thing, you would have put me to the shame of too much honor. The speculation consoles me entirely for your loss in respect to Rydal Hall and its poet. By the way, I heard the other day that Rogers, who was intending to visit him, said, 'It is a bad time of year for it. The god is on his pedestal; and can only give gestures to his worshippers, and no conversation to his friends.' ...

Although you did not find a letter from me on your return to Colwall, I do hope that you found _me_--viz. my book, which Mr. Burden took charge of, and promised to deliver or see delivered. When you have read it, _do_ let me hear your own and Mr. Martin's true impression; and whether you think it worse or better than 'The Seraphim.' The only review which has yet appeared or had time to appear has been a very kind and cordial one in the 'Athenaeum.' ...

Your ever affectionate BA.

_To Mr. Westwood_ August 31, 1844.

My dear Mr. Westwood,--I send you the manuscript you ask for, and also my certificate that, although I certainly was once a little girl, yet I never in my life had fair hair, or received lessons when you mention. I think a cousin of mine, now dead, may have done it. The 'Barrett Barrett' seems to specify my family. I have a little cousin with bright fair hair at this moment who is an Elizabeth Barrett (the subject of my 'Portrait'[108]), but then she is a 'Georgiana' besides, and your friend must refer to times past. My hair is very dark indeed, and always was, as long as I remember, and also I have a friend who makes serious affidavit that I have never changed (except by being rather taller) since I was a year old. Altogether, you cannot make a case of identity out, and I am forced to give up the glory of being so long remembered for my cleverness.

You do wrong in supposing me inclined to underrate Mr. Melville's power. He is inclined to High-Churchism, and to such doctrines as apostolical succession, and I, who, am a Dissenter, and a believer in a universal Christianity, recoil from the exclusive doctrine.

But then, that is not depreciatory of his power and eloquence--surely not.

E.B.

[Footnote 108: _Poetical Works_, iii. 172.]

_To Mr. Chorley_ 50 Wimpole Street: Monday. [About the end of August 1844.]

Dear Mr. Chorley,--Kindnesses are more frequent things with me than gladnesses, but I thank you earnestly for both in the letter I have this moment received.[109] You have given me a quick sudden pleasure which goes deeper (I am very sure) than self-love, for it must be something better than vanity that brings the tears so near the eyes. I thank you, dear Mr. Chorley.