The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume I Part 29

Well, and you are at once angry and satisfied, I suppose, about Maynooth; just as I am! satisfied with the justice as far as it goes, and angry and disgusted at the hideous shrieks of intolerance and bigotry which run through the country. The dissenters have very nearly disgusted me, what with the Education clamour, and the Presbyterian chapel cry, and now this Maynooth cry; and certainly it is wonderful how people can see rights as rights in their own hands, and as wrongs in the hands of their opposite neighbours. Moreover it seems to me atrocious that we who insist on seven millions of Catholics supporting a church they call heretical, should _dare_ to talk of our scruples (conscientious scruples forsooth!) about a.s.sisting with a poor pittance of very insufficient charity their 'd.a.m.nable idolatry.' Why, every cry of complaint we utter is an argument against the wrong we have been committing for years and years, and must be so interpreted by every honest and disinterested thinker in the world. Of course I should prefer the Irish establishment coming down, to any endowment at all; I should prefer a trial of the voluntary system throughout Ireland; but as it is adjudged on all hands impossible to attempt this in the actual state of parties and countries, why this Maynooth grant and subsequent endowment of the Catholic Church in Ireland seem the simple alternative, obviously and on the first principles of justice.

Macaulay was very great, was he not? He appeared to me _conclusive_ in logic and sentiment. The sensation everywhere is extraordinary, I am sorry really to say!

Wordsworth is in London, having been commanded up to the Queen's ball.

He went in Rogers's court dress, or did I tell you so the other day?

And I hear that the fair Majesty of England was quite 'fluttered' at seeing him. 'She had not a word to say,' said Mrs. Jameson, who came to see me the other day and complained of the omission as 'unqueenly;'

but I disagreed with her and thought the being '_fluttered_' far the highest compliment. But she told me that a short time ago the Queen confessed she never had read Wordsworth, on which a maid of honour observed, 'That is a pity, he would do your Majesty a great deal of good.' Mrs. Jameson declared that Miss Murray, a maid of honour, very deeply attached to the Queen, a.s.sured her (Mrs. J.) of the answer being quite as abrupt as _that_; as direct, and to the purpose; and no offence intended or received. I like Mrs. Jameson better the more I see her, and with grateful reason, she is so kind. Now do write directly, and let me hear of you [in d]etail. And tell Mr. Martin to make a point of coming home to us, with no grievances but political ones. The Bazaar is to be something sublime in its degree, and I shall have a sackcloth feeling all next week. All the rail carriages will be wound up to radiate into it, I hear, and the whole country is to be shot into the heart of London.

May G.o.d bless you.

Your ever affectionate BA.

I hear that Guizot suffers intensely, and that there are fears lest he may sink. Not that the complaint is mortal.

[Footnote 133: Referring to the Pythagorean doctrine of the sanct.i.ty of beans.]

_To Mr. Westwood_ Wimpole Street: April 9, 1845.

Poor Hood! Ah! I had feared that the scene was closing on him. And I am glad that a little of the poor grat.i.tude of the world is laid down at his door just now to m.u.f.fle to his dying ear the harsher sounds of life. I forgive much to Sir Robert for the sake of that letter--though, after all, the minister is not high-hearted, or made of heroic stuff.[134]

I am delighted that you should appreciate Mr. Browning's high power--very high, according to my view--very high, and various. Yes, 'Paracelsus' you _should_ have. 'Sordello' has many fine things in it, but, having been thrown down by many hands as unintelligible, and retained in mine as certainly of the Sphinxine literature, with all its power, I hesitate to be imperious to you in my recommendations of it. Still, the book _is_ worth being _studied_--study is necessary to it, as, indeed, though in a less degree, to all the works of this poet; study is peculiarly necessary to it. He is a true poet, and a poet, I believe, of a large '_future in-rus, about to be_.' He is only growing to the height he will attain.

_To Mr. Westwood_ April 1845.

The sin of Sphinxine literature I admit. Have I not struggled hard to renounce it? Do I not, day by day? Do you know that I have been told that _I_ have written things harder to interpret than Browning himself?--only I cannot, cannot believe it--he is so very hard. Tell me honestly (and although I attributed the excessive good nature of the 'Metropolitan' criticism to you, I _know_ that you can speak the truth _truly_!) if anything like the Sphinxineness of Browning, you discover in me; take me as far back as 'The Seraphim' volume and answer! As for Browning, the fault is certainly great, and the disadvantage scarcely calculable, it is so great. He cuts his language into bits, and one has to join them together, as young children do their dissected maps, in order to make any meaning at all, and to study hard before one can do it. Not that I grudge the study or the time. The depth and power of the significance (when it is apprehended) glorifies the puzzle. With you and me it is so; but with the majority of readers, even of readers of poetry, it is not and cannot be so.

The consequence is, that he is not read except in a peculiar circle very strait and narrow. He will not die, because the principle of life is in him, but he will not live the warm summer life which is permitted to many of very inferior faculty, because he does not come out into the sun.

Faithfully your friend, E.B. BARRETT.

[Footnote 134: Hood died on May 3, 1845; while on his deathbed he received from Sir Robert Peel the notification that he had conferred on him a pension of 100 a year, with remainder to his wife.]

The following letter relates to the controversy raging round Miss Martineau and her mesmerism. Miss Barrett had evidently referred to it in a letter to Mr. Chorley, which has not been preserved.

_To Mr. Chorley_ 50 Wimpole Street: April 28, 1845.

Dear Mr. Chorley,--I felt quite sure that you would take my postscript for a womanish thing, and a little doubtful whether you would not take the whole allusion (in or out of a postscript) for an impertinent thing; but the impulse to speak was stronger than the fear of speaking; and from the peculiarities of my position, I have come to write by impulses just as other people talk by them. Still, if I had known that the subject was so painful to you, I certainly would not have touched on it, strong as my feeling has been about it, and full and undeniable as is my sympathy with our n.o.ble-minded friend, both as a woman and a thinker. Not that I consider (of course I cannot) that she has made out anything like a '_fact_' in the Tynemouth story--not that I think the evidence offered in any sort sufficient; take it as it was in the beginning and unimpugned--not that I have been otherwise than of opinion throughout that she was precipitate and indiscreet, however generously so, in her mode and time of advocating the mesmeric question; but that she is at liberty as a thinking being (in my mind) to hold an opinion, the grounds of which she cannot yet justify to the world. Do you not think she may be? Have you not opinions yourself beyond what you can prove to others? Have we not all? And because some of the links of the outer chain of a logical argument fail, or seem to fail, are we therefore to have our 'honours' questioned, because we do not yield what is suspended to an inner uninjured chain of at once subtler and stronger formation? For what I venture to object to in the argument of the 'Athenaeum' is the making a _moral obligation_ of an _intellectual act_, which is the first step and gesture (is it not?) in all persecution for opinion; and the involving of the 'honour' of an opponent in the motion of recantation she is invited to. This I do venture to exclaim against. I do cry aloud against this; and I do say this, that when we call it 'hard,' we are speaking of it softly. Why, consider how it is! The 'Athenaeum' has done quite enough to _disprove the proving_ of the wreck story,[135] and no more at all. The disproving of the proof of the wreck story is indeed enough to disprove the wreck story and to disprove mesmerism itself (as far as the proof of mesmerism depends on the proof of the wreck story, and no farther) with all doubters and undetermined inquirers; but with the very large cla.s.s of previous _believers_, this disproof of a proof is a mere accident, and cannot be expected to have much logical consequence. Believing that such things may be as this revelation of a wreck, they naturally are less exacting of the stabilities of the proving process. What we think probable we do not call severely for the proof of. Moreover Miss Martineau is not only a believer in the mysteries of mesmerism (and she wrote to me the other day that in Birmingham, where she is, she has present cognisance of _three cases of clairvoyance_), but she is a believer in the personal integrity of her witnesses. She has what she has well called an 'incommunicable confidence.' And this, however incommunicable, is sufficiently comprehensible to all persons who know what personal faith is, to place her 'honour,' I do maintain, high above any suspicion, any charge with the breath of man's lips. I am sure you agree with me, dear Mr. Chorley--ah! it will be a comfort and joy together. Dear Miss Mitford and I often quarrel softly about literary life and its toils and sorrows, she against and I in favour of; but we never could differ about the worth and comfort of domestic affection.

Ever sincerely yours, ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

I am delighted to hear of the novel. And the comedy?

[Footnote 135: One of the visions of Miss Martineau's 'apocalyptic housemaid' related to the wreck of a vessel in which the Tynemouth people were much interested. Unfortunately it appeared that news of the wreck had reached the town shortly before her vision, and that she had been out of doors immediately before submitting to the mesmeric trance.]

_To Mr. Chorley_ 50 Wimpole Street: April 28, 1845.

Dear Mr. Chorley,--... For Miss Martineau, is it not true that she _has_ admitted her wreck story to have no proof? Surely she has.

Surely she said that the evidence was incapable, at this point of time, of justification to the _exoteric_, and that the question had sunk now to one of character, to which her opponent answered that it had always _been_ one of character. And you must admit that the direct and unmitigated manner of depreciating the reputation, not merely of Jane Arrowsmith, but of Mrs. Wynyard, a personal friend of Miss Martineau's to whom she professes great obligations, could not be otherwise than exasperating to a woman of her generous temper, and this just in the crisis of her grat.i.tude for her restoration to life and enjoyment by the means (as she considers it) of this friend. Not that I feel at all convinced of her having been cured by mesmerism; I have told her openly that I doubt it a little, and she is not angry with me for saying so. Also, the wreck story, and (as you suggest) the three new cases of clairvoyance; why, one _cannot_, you know, give one's specific convictions to general sweeping testimonies, with a mist all round them. Still, I do lean to believing this _cla.s.s_ of mysteries, and I see nothing more incredible in the apocalypse of the wreck and other marvels of clairvoyance, than in that singular adaptation of another person's senses, which is a common phenomenon of the simple forms of mesmerism. If it is credible that a person in a mesmeric sleep can taste the sourness of the vinegar on another person's palate, I am ready to go the whole length of the transmigration of senses. But after all, except from hearing so much, I am as ignorant as you are, in my own experience. One of my sisters was thrown into a sort of swoon, and could not open her eyelids, though she heard what pa.s.sed, once or twice or thrice; and she might have been a prophetess by this time, perhaps, if, partly from her own feeling on the subject, and partly from mine, she had not determined never to try the experiment again. It is hideous and detestable to my imagination; as I confessed to you, it makes my blood run backwards; and if I were _you_, I would not (with the nervous weakness you speak of) throw myself into the way of it, I really would not. Think of a female friend of mine begging me to give her a lock of my hair, or rather begging my sister to 'get it for her,' that she might send it to a celebrated prophet of mesmerism in Paris, to have an oracle concerning me. Did you ever, since the days of the witches, hear a more ghastly proposition? It shook me so with horror, I had scarcely voice to say 'no,' hough I _did_ say it very emphatically at last, I a.s.sure you. A lock of my hair for a Parisian prophet? Why, if I had yielded, I should have felt the steps of pale spirits treading as thick as snow all over my sofa and bed, by day and night, and pulling a corresponding lock of hair on my head at awful intervals. _I_, who was born with a double set of nerves, which are always out of order; the most excitable person in the world, and nearly the most superst.i.tious. I should have been scarcely sane at the end of a fortnight, I believe of myself! Do you remember the little spirit in gold shoe-buckles, who was a familiar of Heinrich Stilling's? Well, I should have had a French one to match the German, with Balzac's superfine boot-polish in place of the buckles, as surely as I lie here a mortal woman.

I congratulate you (amid all cares and anxieties) upon the view of Naples in the distance, but chiefly on your own happy and just estimate of your selected position in life. It does appear to me wonderfully and mournfully wrong, when men of letters, as it is too much the fashion for them to do, take to dishonoring their profession by fruitless bewailings and gnashings of teeth; when, all the time, it must be their own fault if it is not the n.o.blest in the world. Miss Mitford treats me as a blind witness in this case; because I have seen nothing of the literary world, or any other sort of world, and yet cry against her 'pen and ink' cry. It is the cry I least like to hear from her lips, of all others; and it is unworthy of them altogether. On the lips of a woman of letters, it sounds like jealousy (which it cannot be with _her_), as on the lips of a woman of the world, like ingrat.i.tude. Madame Girardin's 'Ecole des Journalistes' deserved Jules Janin's reproof of it; and there is something n.o.ble and touching in that feeling of brotherhood among men of letters, which he invokes.

I am so glad to hear you say that I am right, glad for your sake and glad for mine. In fact, there is something which is attractive to _me_, and which has been attractive ever since I was as high as this table, even in the old worn type of Grub Street authors and garret poets. Men and women of letters are the first in the whole world to me, and I would rather be the least among them, than 'dwell in the courts of princes.'

Forgive me for writing so fast and far. Just as if you had nothing to do but to read me. Oh, for patience for the novel.

I am, faithfully yours, ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

_To Miss Thomson_[136]

50 Wimpole Street: Friday, May 16, 1845 [postmark].

I write one line to thank you, dear Miss Thomson, for _your_ translation (so far too liberal, though true to the spirit of my intention) of my work for your alb.u.m. How could it _not_ be a pleasure to me to work for you?

As to my using those ma.n.u.scripts otherwise than in your service, I do not at all think of it, and I wish to say this. Perhaps I do not (also) partake quite your 'divine fury' for converting our s.e.x into Greek scholarship, and I do not, I confess, think it as desirable as you do. Where there is a love for poetry, and thirst for beauty strong enough to justify labour, let these impulses, which are n.o.ble, be obeyed; but in the case of the mult.i.tude it is different; and the mere _fashion of scholarship_ among women would be a disagreeable vain thing, and worse than vain. You, who are a Greek yourself, know that the Greek language is not to be learnt in a flash of lightning and by Hamiltonian systems, but that it swallows up year after year of studious life. Now I have a 'doxy' (as Warburton called it), that there is no exercise of the mind so little profitable to the mind as the study of languages. It is the nearest thing to a pa.s.sive recipiency--is it not?--as a mental action, though it leaves one as weary as ennui itself. Women want to be made to _think actively_: their apprehension is quicker than that of men, but their defect lies for the most part in the logical faculty and in the higher mental activities. Well, and then, to remember how our own English poets are neglected and scorned; our poets of the Elizabethan age! I would rather that my countrywomen began by loving _these_.

Not that I would blaspheme against Greek poetry, or depreciate the knowledge of the language as an attainment. I congratulate _you_ on it, though I never should think of trying to convert other women into a desire for it. Forgive me.

To think of Mr. Burges's comparing my Nonnus to the right Nonnus makes my hair stand on end, and the truth is I had flattered myself that n.o.body would take such trouble. I have not much reverence for Nonnus, and have pulled him and pushed him and made him stand as I chose, never fearing that my naughty impertinences would be brought to light.

For the rest, I thank you gratefully (and may I respectfully and gratefully thank Miss Bayley?) for the kind words of both of you, both in this letter and as my sister heard them. It is delightful to me to find such grace in the eyes of dearest Mr. Kenyon's friends, and I remain, dear Miss Thomson,

Truly yours, and gladly, E.B.B.

If there should be anything more at any time for me to do, I trust to your trustfulness.

[Footnote 136: Afterwards Mdme. Emil Braun; see the letter of January 9, 1850. At this time she was engaged in editing an alb.u.m or anthology, to which she had asked Miss Barrett to contribute some cla.s.sical translations.]

_To Miss Thomson_ 50 Wimpole Street: Monday [1845].

My dear Miss Thomson,--Believe of me that it can only give me pleasure when you are affectionate enough to treat me as a friend; and for the rest, n.o.body need apologise for taking another into the vineyards--least Miss Bayley and yourself to _me_. At the first thought I felt sure that there must be a great deal about vines in these Greeks of ours, and am surprised, I confess, in turning from one to another, to find how few pa.s.sages of length are quotable, and how the images drop down into a line or two. Do you know the pa.s.sage in the seventh 'Odyssey' where there is a vineyard in different stages of ripeness?--of which Pope has made the most, so I tore up what I began to write, and leave you to him. It is in Alcinous' gardens, and between the first and second hundred lines of the book. The one from the 'Iliad,' open to Miss Bayley's objection, is yet too beautiful and appropriate, I fancy, for you to throw over. Curious it is that my first recollection went from that shield of Achilles to Hesiod's 'Shield of Hercules,' from which I send you a version--leaving out of it what dear Miss Bayley would object to on a like ground with the other:

Some gathered grapes, with reap-hooks in their hands, While others bore off from the gathering hands Whole baskets-full of bunches, black and white, From those great ridges heaped up into fight, With vine-leaves and their curling tendrils. So They bore the baskets ...

... Yes! and all were saying Their jests, while each went staggering in a row Beneath his grape-load to the piper's playing.

The grapes were purple-ripe. And here, in fine, Men trod them out, and there they drained the wine.

In the 'Works and Days' Hesiod says again, what is not worth your listening to, perhaps:

And when that Sinus and Orion come To middle heaven, and when Aurora--she O' the rosy fingers--looks inquiringly Full on Arcturus, straightway gather home The general vintage. And, I charge you, see All, in the sun and open air, outlaid Ten days and nights, and five days in the shade.

The sixth day, pour in vases the fine juice-- The gift of Bacchus, who gives joys for use.

Anacreon talks to the point so well that you must forgive him, I think, for being Anacreontic, and take from his hands what is not defiled. The translation you send me does not 'smell of Anacreon,' nor please me. Where did you get it? Would this be at all fresher?

Grapes that wear a purple skin, Men and maidens carry in, Br.i.m.m.i.n.g baskets on their shoulders, Which they topple one by one Down the winepress. Men are holders Of the place there, and alone Tread the grapes out, crush them down, Letting loose the soul of wine-- Praising Bacchus as divine, With the loud songs called his own!