The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume I Part 26

_To H.S. Boyd_ Monday, December 24, 1844 [postmark].

My dearest Mr. Boyd,--I wish I had a note from you to-day--which optative aorist I am not sure of being either grammatical or reasonable! Perhaps you have expected to hear from _me_ with more reason....

I fancied that you would be struck by Miss Martineau's lucid and able style. She is a very admirable woman--and the most logical intellect of the age, for a woman. On this account it is that the men throw stones at her, and that many of her own s.e.x throw dirt; but if I begin on this subject I shall end by gnashing my teeth. A righteous indignation fastens on me. I had a note from her the other day, written in a n.o.ble spirit, and saying, in reference to the insults lavished on her, that she was prepared from the first for _publicity_, and ventured it all for the sake of what she considered the truth--she was sustained, she said, by the recollection of G.o.diva.

Do you remember who G.o.diva was--or shall I tell you? Think of it--G.o.diva of Coventry, and peeping Tom. The worst and basest is, that in this nineteenth century there are thousands of Toms to one.

I think, however, myself, and with all my admiration for Miss Martineau, that her statement and her reasonings on it are not free from vagueness and apparent contradictions. She writes in a state of enthusiasm, and some of her expressions are naturally coloured by her mood of mind and nerve.

May this Christmas give you ease and pleasantness, in various ways, my dearest friend! My Christmas wish for myself is to hear that you are well. I cannot bear to think of you suffering. Are the nights better?

May G.o.d bless you. Shall you not think it a great thing if the poems go into a second edition within the twelvemonth? I am surprised at your not being satisfied. Consider what poetry is, and that four months have not pa.s.sed since the publication of mine; and that, where poems have to make their way by force of _themselves_, and not of name nor of fashion, the first three months cannot present the period of the quickest sale. That must be for afterwards. Think of me on Christmas Day, as of one who gratefully loves you.

ELIBET.

A pa.s.sing reference in a previous letter (above, p. 217) has told of the beginning of another friendship, which was to hold a large place in Miss Barrett's later life; and the next letter is the first now extant which was written to this new friend, Anna Jameson. Mrs.

Jameson had not at this time written the works on sacred art with which her name is now chiefly a.s.sociated; but she was already engaged in her long struggle to earn her livelihood by her pen. Her first work, 'The Diary of an Ennuyee' (1826), written before her marriage, had attracted considerable attention. Since then she had written her 'Characteristics of Women,' 'Essays on Shakespeare's Female Characters,' 'Visits and Sketches,' and a number of compilations of less importance. Quite recently she had been engaged to write handbooks to the public and private art galleries of London, and had so embarked on the career of art authorship in which her best work was done.

The beginning and end of the following letter are lost. The subject of it is the long and hostile comment which appeared in the 'Athenaeum'

for December 28 on Miss Martineau's letters on mesmerism.

_To Mrs. Jameson_ [End of December 1844.]

... For the 'Athenaeum,' I have always held it as a journal, first--in the very first rank--both in ability and integrity; and knowing Mr.

Dilke _is_ the 'Athenaeum,' I could make no mistake in my estimation of himself. I have personal reasons for grat.i.tude to both him and his journal, and I have always felt that it was honorable to me to have them. Also, I do not at all think that because a woman is a woman, she is on that account to be spared the ordinary risks of the arena in literature and philosophy. I think no such thing. Logical chivalry would be still more radically debasing to us than any other. It is not therefore at all as a Harriet Martineau, but as a thinking and feeling Martineau (now _don't_ laugh), that I hold her to have been hardly used in the late controversy. And, if you don't laugh at _that_, don't be too grave either, with the thought of your own share and position in the matter; because, as must be obvious to everyone (yourself included), you did everything possible to you to prevent the catastrophe, and no man and no friend could have done better. My brother George told me of his conversation with you at Mr. Lough's, but _are_ you not mistaken in fancying that she blames you, that she is cold with you? I really think you must be. Why, if she is displeased with you she must be unjust, _and is she ever unjust_? I ask you. _I_ should imagine not, but then, with all my insolence of talking of her as my friend, I only admire and love her at a distance, in her books and in her letters, and do not know her face to face, and in living womanhood at all. She wrote to me once, and since we have corresponded; and as in her kindness she has called me her friend, I leap hastily at an unripe fruit, perhaps, and echo back the word. She is your friend in a completer, or, at least, a more ordinary sense; and indeed it is impossible for me to believe without strong evidence that she could cease to be your friend on such grounds as are apparent. Perhaps she does not write because she cannot contain her wrath against Mr. Dilke (which, between ourselves, she cannot, very well), and respects your connection and regard for him. Is not _that_ a 'peradventure' worth considering? I am sure that you have no _right_ to be uneasy in any case.

And now I do not like to send you this letter without telling you my impression about mesmerism, lest I seem reserved and 'afraid of committing myself,' as prudent people are. I will confess, then, that my _impression_ is in favour of the reality of mesmerism to some unknown extent. I particularly dislike believing it, I would rather believe most other things in the world; but the evidence of the 'cloud of witnesses' does thunder and lightning so in my ears and eyes, that I believe, while my blood runs cold. I would not be practised upon--no, not for one of Flushie's ears, and I hate the whole theory. It is hideous to my imagination, especially what is called phrenological mesmerism. After all, however, truth is to be accepted; and testimony, when so various and decisive, is an ascertainer of truth. Now do not tell Mr. Dilke, lest he excommunicate me.

But I will not pity you for the increase of occupation produced by an increase of such comfort as your mother's and sister's presence must give. What it will be for you to have a branch to sun yourself on, after a long flight against the wind!

_To Mr. Chorley_ 50 Wimpole Street: January 3, 1845.

Dear Mr. Chorley,--I hope it will not be transgressing very much against the etiquette of journalism, or against the individual delicacy which is of more consequence to both of us, if I venture to thank you by one word for the pages which relate to me in your excellent article in the 'New Quarterly.' It is not my habit to thank or to remonstrate with my reviewers, and indeed I believe I may tell you that I never wrote to thank anyone before on these grounds. I could not thank anyone for praising me--I would not thank him for praising me against his conscience; and if he praised me to the measure of his conscience only, I should have little (as far as the praise went) to thank him for. Therefore I do not thank you for the praise in your article, but for the kind cordial spirit which pervades both praise and blame, for the willingness in praising, and for the gentleness in finding fault; for the encouragement without unseemly exaggeration, and for the criticisms without critical scorn. Allow me to thank you for these things and for the pleasure I have received by their means. I am bold to do it, because I hear that you confess the reviewership; and am the bolder, because I recognised your hand in an act of somewhat similar kindness in the 'Athenaeum' at the first appearance of the poems.

While I am writing of the 'New Quarterly,' I take the liberty of making a remark, not of course in relation to myself--I know too well my duty to my judges--but to your view of the Vantage ground of the poetesses of England. It is a strong impression with me that previous to Joanna Baillie there was no such thing in England as a poetess; and that so far from triumphing over the rest of the world in that particular product, we lay until then under the feet of the world.

We hear of a Marie in Brittany who sang songs worthy to be mixed with Chaucer's for true poetic sweetness, and in Italy a Vittoria Colonna sang her n.o.ble sonnets. But in England, where is our poetess before Joanna Baillie--poetess in the true sense? Lady Winchilsea had an _eye_, as Wordsworth found out; but the d.u.c.h.ess of Newcastle had more poetry in her--the comparative praise proving the negative position--than Lady Winchilsea. And when you say of the French, that they have only epistolary women and wits, while we have our Lady Mary, why what would Lady Mary be to us _but_ for her letters and her wit?

Not a poetess, surely! unless we accept for poetry her graceful _vers de societe_.

Do forgive me if an impulse has carried me too far. It has been long 'a fact,' to my view of the matter, that Joanna Baillie is the first female poet in all senses in England; and I fell with the whole weight of fact and theory against the edge of your article.

I recall myself now to my first intention of being simply, but not silently, grateful to you; and entreating you to pardon this letter too quickly to think it necessary-to answer it....

I remain, very truly yours, ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

_To Mr. Chorley_ 50 Wimpole Street: January 7, 1845.

Dear Mr. Chorley,--You are very good to deign to answer my impertinences, and not to be disgusted by my defamations of 'the grandmothers,' and (to diminish my perversity in your eyes) I am ready to admit at once that we are generally too apt to run into premature cla.s.sification--the error of all imperfect knowledge; and into unreasonable exclusiveness--the vice of it. We spoil the shining surface of life by our black lines drawn through and through, as if ominously for a game of the fox and goose. For my part, however imperfect my practice may be, I am intimately convinced--and more and more since my long seclusion--that to live in a house with windows on every side, so as to catch both the morning and evening sunshine, is the best and brightest thing we have to do--to say nothing about the justest and wisest. Sympathies are our opportunities of good.

Moreover, I know nothing of your 'sweet mistress Anne.'[122] I never read a verse of hers. Ignorance goes for much, you see, in all our mal-criticisms, and my ignorance goes to this extent. I cannot write to you of your Anglo-American poetess.

Also, in my sweeping speech about the grandmothers, I should have stopped before such instances as the exquisite ballad of 'Auld Robin Gray,' which is attributed to a woman, and the pathetic 'Ballow my Babe,' which tradition calls 'Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament.' I have certain doubts of my own, indeed, in relation to both origins, and with regard to 'Robin Gray' in particular; but doubts are not worthy stuff enough to be taken into an argument, and certainly, therefore, I should have admitted those two ballads as worthy poems before the _Joannan aera_.

For what I ventured to say otherwise, would you not consent to join our sympathies, and receive the 'choir' (ah! but you are very cunningly subtle in your distinctions; I am afraid I was too simple for you) as agreeable writers of verses sometimes, leaving the word _poet_ alone? Because, you see, what you call the 'bad dispensation'

by no means accounts for the want of the faculty of poetry, strictly so called. England has had many learned women, not merely readers but writers of the learned languages, in Elizabeth's time and afterwards--women of deeper acquirements than are common now in the greater diffusion of letters; and yet where were the poetesses? The divine breath which seemed to come and go, and, ere it went, filled the land with that crowd of true poets whom we call the old dramatists--why did it never pa.s.s, even in the lyrical form, over the lips of a woman? How strange! And can we deny that it was so? I look everywhere for grandmothers and see none. It is not in the filial spirit I am deficient, I do a.s.sure you--witness my reverent love of the grandfathers!

Seriously, I do not presume to enter into argument with you, and this in relation to a critical paper which I admire in so many ways and am grateful for in some; but is not the poet a different man from the cleverest versifier, and is it not well for the world to be taught the difference? The divineness of poetry is far more to me than either pride of s.e.x or personal pride, and, though willing to acknowledge the lowest breath of the inspiration, I cannot the 'powder and patch.' As powder and patch I may, but not as poetry. And though I in turn may suffer for this myself--though I too (_anch' io_) may be turned out of 'Arcadia,' and told that I am not a poet, still, I should be content, I hope, that the divineness of poetry be proved in my humanness, rather than lowered to my uses.

But you shall not think me exclusive. Of poor L.E.L., for instance, I could write with _more_ praiseful appreciation than you can. It appears to me that she had the gift--though in certain respects she dishonored the art--and her latter lyrics are, many of them, of great beauty and melody, such as, having once touched the ear of a reader, live on in it. I observe in your 'Life of Mrs. Hemans' (shall I tell you how often I have read those volumes?) she (Mrs. H.) never appears, in any given letter or recorded opinion, to esteem her contemporary.

The antagonism lay, probably, in the higher parts of Mrs. Hemans's character and mind, and we are not to wonder at it.

It is very pleasant to me to have your approbation of the sonnets on George Sand, on the points of feeling and lightness, on which all my readers have not absolved me equally, I have reason to know. I am more a lat.i.tudinarian in literature than it is generally thought expedient for women to be; and I have that admiration for _genius_, which dear Mr. Kenyon calls my 'immoral sympathy with power;' and if Madame Dudevant[123] is not the first female genius of any country or age, I really do not know who is. And then she has certain n.o.blenesses--granting all the evil and 'perilous stuff'--n.o.blenesses and royalnesses which make me loyal. Do pardon me for intruding all this on you, though you cannot justify me--_you_, who are occupied beyond measure, and _I_, who know it! I have been under the delusion, too, during this writing, of having something like a friend's claim to write and be troublesome. I have lived so near your friends that I keep the odour of them! A mere delusion, alas! my only personal right in respect to you being one that I am not likely to forget or waive--the right of being grateful to you.

But so, and looking again at the last words of your letter, I see that you 'wish,' in the kindest of words, 'to do something more for me.'

I hope some day to take this 'something more' of your kindness out in the pleasure of personal intercourse; and if, in the meantime, you should consent to flatter my delusion by letting me hear from you now and then, if ever you have a moment to waste and inclination to waste it, why I, on my side, shall always be ready to thank you for the 'something more' of kindness, as bound in the duty of grat.i.tude. In any case I remain

Truly and faithfully yours, ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

[Footnote 122: Probably Miss Anne Seward, a minor poetess who enjoyed considerable popularity at the end of the eighteenth century. Her elegies on Captain Cook and Major Andre went through several editions, as did her _Louisa_, a poetical novel, a cla.s.s of composition in which she was the predecessor of Mrs. Browning herself. Her collected poetical works were edited after her death by Sir Walter Scott (1810).]

[Footnote 123: The real name of George Sand.]

_To Mr. Chorley_ [_The beginning of this letter is lost_]

[1845]

... to the awful consideration of the possibility of my reading a novel or caring for the story of it (_proh pudor!_), that I am probably, not to say certainly, the most complete and unscrupulous romance reader within your knowledge. Never was a child who cared more for 'a story' than I do; never even did I myself, _as_ a child, care more for it than I do. My love of fiction began with my breath, and will end with it; and goes on increasing; and the heights and depths of the consumption which it has induced you may guess at perhaps, but it is a sublime idea from its vastness, and will gain on you but slowly. On my tombstone may be written '_Ci-git_ the greatest novel reader in the world,' and n.o.body will forbid the inscription; and I approve of Gray's notion of paradise more than of his lyrics, when he suggests the reading of romances ever new, [Greek: _eis tous aionas_.]

Are you shocked at me? Perhaps so. And you see I make no excuses, as an invalid might. Invalid or not, I should have a romance in a drawer, if not behind a pillow, and I might as well be true and say so.

There is the love of literature, which is one thing, and the love of fiction, which is another. And then, I am not fastidious, as Mrs.

Hemans was, in her high purity, and therefore the two loves have a race-course clear.

This is a long preface to coming to speak of the 'Improvisatore.'[124]

I had sent for it already to the library, and shall dun them for it twice as much for the sake of what you say. Only I hope I may care for the story. I shall try.

And for the _rococo_, I have more feeling for it, in a sense, than I once had, for, some two years ago, I pa.s.sed through a long dynasty of French memoirs, which made me feel quite differently about the littlenesses of greatnesses. I measured them all from the heights of the 'tabouret,'[125] and was a good d.u.c.h.ess, in the 'non-natural'

meaning, for the moment. Those memoirs are charming of their kind, and if life were cut in filagree paper would be profitable reading to the soul. Do you not think so? And you mean besides, probably, that you care for _beauty in detail_, which we all should do if our senses were better educated.

So the confession is not a dreadful one, after all, and mine may involve more evil, and would to ninety-nine out of a hundred 'sensible and cultivated people.' Think what Mrs. Ellis would say to the 'Women of England' about me in her fifteenth edition, if she knew!

And do _you_ know that dear Miss Mitford spent this day week with me, notwithstanding the rain?

Very truly yours, ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

I have forgotten what I particularly wished to say--viz. that I never thought of _expecting_ to hear from you. I understand that when you write it is pure grace, and never to be expected. You have too much to do, I understand perfectly.