The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume I Part 4

Am I to accept your generous sacrifice of reading nine-tenths of my 'Vow,' as an atonement for your WANT OF CONFIDENCE IN ME? Oh, your conscience will understand very well what I mean, without a dictionary.

Arabel and I intend to pay you a visit on Monday, and if we can, and it is convenient to you, we are inclined to invite ourselves to your dinner table. But this is all dependent on the weather.

Believe me, dear Mr. Boyd, your affectionate friend, E.B. BARRETT.

[Footnote 24: An allusion to the first line of 'The Poet's Vow.']

[Footnote 25: The 'Seraphim,' published in 1838.]

_To H.S. Boyd_ [74 Gloucester Place:] November 26, 1836 [postmark].

My dear Mr. Boyd,--I have been so busy that I have not been able until this morning to take breath or _inspiration_ to answer your lyrics.

You shall see me soon, but I am sorry to say it can't be Monday or Tuesday.

I have had another note from the editor of the 'New Monthly Magazine'--very flattering, and praying for farther supplies. The Angels were not ready, and I was obliged to send something else, which I will not ask you to read. So don't be very uneasy.

Arabel's and my best love to Annie. And believe me in a great hurry, for I won't miss this post,

Yours affectionately, E.B. BARRETT.

Your lyrics found me dull as prose Among a file of papers And a.n.a.lysing London fogs To nothing but the vapours.

They knew their part; but through the fog Their flaming lightning raising; They missed my fancy, and instead, My choler set a-blazing.

Quoth I, 'I need not care a pin For charge unjust, unsparing; Yet oh! for ancient bodkin[26] keen, To punish this _Pindaring_.

'Yet oh! that I, a female Jove, These fogs sublime might float on, Where, eagle-like, my dove might show A very [Greek: _ugron noton_].[27]

'Then lightning should for lightning flash, Vexation for vexation, And shades of St. John's Wood should glow In awful conflagration.'

I spoke; when lo! my birds of peace, The vengeance disallowing, Replied, 'Coo, coo!' But _keep in mind_, That _cooing_ is not _cowing_.[28]

[Footnote 26: The bodkin seems to be a favourite weapon with ancient dames whose genius was for killing (note by E.B.B.).]

[Footnote 27: A reference to Pindar, _Pyth_.i. 9.]

[Footnote 28: These verses are inclosed with the foregoing letter, as a retort to Mr. Boyd's parody.]

_To Mrs. Martin_ 74 Gloucester Place: December 7, 1836.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Indeed I have long felt the need of writing to you (I mean the need to myself), and although so many weeks and even months have pa.s.sed away in silence, they have not done so in lack of affection and thought.

I had wished very much to have been able to tell you in this letter where we had taken our house, or where we were going to take it. We remain, however, in our usual state of conscious ignorance, although there is a good deal of talking and walking about a house in Wimpole Street--which, between ourselves, I am not very anxious to live in, on account of the gloominesses of that street, and of that part of the street, whose walls look so much like Newgate's turned inside out. I would rather go on, in my old way, inhabiting castles in the air than that particular house. Nevertheless, if it _is_ decided upon, I dare say I shall contrive to be satisfied with it, and sleep and wake very much as I should in any other. It will certainly be a point gained to be settled somewhere, and I do so long to sit in my own armchair--strange as it will look out of my own room--and to read from my own books.... For our own particular parts, our healths continue good--none of us, I think, the worse for fog or wind. As to wind, we were almost elevated into the prerogative of _pigs_ in the late storm.

We could almost _see_ it, and the feeling it might have been fatal to us. Bro and I were moralising about shipwrecks, in the dining-room, when down came the chimney through the skylight into the entrance pa.s.sage. You may imagine the crashing effect of the bricks bounding from the staircase downwards, breaking the stone steps in the process, in addition to the falling in of twenty-four large panes of gla.s.s, frames and all. We were terrified out of all propriety, and there has been a dreadful calumny about Henrietta and me--that we had the hall door open for the purpose of going out into the street with our hair on end, if Bro had not _encouraged_ us by shutting the door and locking it. I confess to opening the door, but deny the purpose of it--at least, maintain that I only meant to keep in reserve a way of escape, _in case_, as seemed probable, the whole house was on its way to the ground. Indeed, we should think much of the _mercy_ of the escape. Bro had been on the staircase only five minutes before. Sarah the housemaid was actually there. She looked up accidentally and saw the nodding chimneys, and ran down into the drawing-room to papa, shrieking, but escaping with one graze of the hand from one brick. How did _you_ fare in the wind? I never much imagined before that anything so true to nature as a real live storm could make itself heard in our streets. But it has come too surely, and carried away with it, besides our chimney, all that was left to us of the country, in the shape of the Kensington Garden trees. Now do write to me, dearest Mrs. Martin, and soon, and tell me all you can of your chances and mischances, and how Mr. Martin is getting on with the parish, and yourself with the parishioners. But you have more the name of living at Colwall than the thing. You seem to me to lead a far more wandering life than we, for all our homelessness and 'pilgrim shoon.' Why, you have been in Ireland since I last said a word to you, even upon paper....

I sometimes think that a pilgrim's life is the wisest--at least, the most congenial to the 'uses of this world.' We give our sympathies and a.s.sociations to our hills and fields, and then the providence of G.o.d gives _them_ to another, It is better, perhaps, to keep a stricter _ident.i.ty_, by calling only our thoughts our own.

Was there anybody in the world who ever loved London for itself? Did Dr. Johnson, in his paradise of Fleet Street, love the pavement and the walls? I doubt _that_--whether I ought to do so or not--though I don't doubt at all that one may be contented and happy here, and love much _in_ the place. But the place and the privileges of it don't mix together in one's love, as is done among the hills and by the seaside.

I or Henrietta must have told you that one of my privileges has been to see Wordsworth twice. He was very kind to me, and let me hear his conversation. I went with him and Miss Mitford to Chiswick, and thought all the way that I must certainly be dreaming. I saw her almost every day of her week's visit to London (this was all long ago, while you were in France); and she, who overflows with warm affections and generous benevolences, showed me every present and absent kindness, professing to love me, and asking me to write to her. Her novel is to be published soon after Christmas, and I believe a new tragedy is to appear about the same time, 'under the protection of Mr.

Forrest.' Papa has given me the first two volumes of Wordsworth's new edition. The engraving in the first is his _own face_. You might think me affected if I told you all I felt in seeing the living face.

His manners are very simple, and his conversation not at all _prominent_--if you quite understand what I mean by _that_. I do myself, for I saw at the same time Landor--the brilliant Landor!--and _felt_ the difference between great genius and eminent talent; All these visions have pa.s.sed now. I hear and see nothing, except my doves and the fireplace, and am doing little else than [_words torn out_]

write all day long. And then people ask me what I _mean_ in [_words torn out_]. I hope you were among the six who understood or half understood my 'Poet's Vow'--that is, if you read it at all. Uncle Hedley made a long pause at the first part. But I have been reading, too, Sheridan Knowles's play of the 'Wreckers.' It is full of pa.s.sion and pathos, and made me shed a great many tears. How do you get on with the reading society? Do you see much or anything of Lady Margaret c.o.c.ks, from whom I never hear now? I promised to let her have 'Ion,'

if I could, before she left Brighton, but the person to whom it was lent did not return it to me in time. Will you tell her this, if you do see her, and give her my kind regards at the same time? Dear Bell was so sorry not to have seen you. If she had, you would have thought her looking _very_ well, notwithstanding the thinness--perhaps, in some measure, on account of it--and in _eminent_ spirits. I have not seen her in such spirits for very, very long. And there she is, down at Torquay, with the Hedleys and Butlers, making quite a colony of it, and everybody, in each several letter, grumbling in an undertone at the dullness of the place. What would _I_ give to see the waves once more! But perhaps if I were there, I should grumble too. It is a happiness to them to be _together_, and that, I am sure, they all feel....

Believe me, dearest Mrs. Martin, your affectionate E.B.B.

Oh that you would call me Ba![29]

[Footnote 29: Elizabeth Barrett's 'pet name' (see her poem, _Poetical Works_, ii. 249), given to her as a child by her brother Edward, and used by her family and friends, and by herself in her letters to them, throughout her life.]

_To H.S. Boyd_ [74 Gloucester Place:]

Thursday, December 15, 1836 [postmark].

My dear Mr. Boyd,--... Two mornings since, I saw in the paper, under the head of literary news, that a change of editorship was taking place in the 'New Monthly Magazine;' and that Theodore Hook was to preside in the room of Mr. Hall. I am so much too modest and too wise to expect the patronage of two editors in succession, that I expect both my poems in a return cover, by every twopenny post. Besides, what has Theodore Hook to do with Seraphim? So, I shall leave that poem of mine to your imagination; which won't be half as troublesome to you as if I asked you to read it; begging you to be a.s.sured--to write it down in your critical rubric--that it is the very finest composition you ever read, _next_ (of course) to the beloved 'De Virginitate' of Gregory n.a.z.ianzen.[30]

Mr. Stratten has just been here. I admire him more than I ever did, for his admiration of my doves. By the way, I am sure he thought them the most agreeable of the whole party; for he said, what he never did before, that he could sit here for an hour! Our love to Annie--and forgive me for Baskettiring a letter to you. I mean, of course, as to size, not type.

Yours affectionately, E.B. BARRETT.

Is your poem printed yet?

[Footnote 30:Do you mind that deed of Ate Which you bound me to so fast,-- Reading 'De Virginitate,'

From the first line to the last?

How I said at ending solemn, As I turned and looked at you, That Saint Simeon on the column Had had somewhat less to do?

'Wine of Cyprus' (_Poetical Works_, iii. 139)]

_To H.S. Boyd_ [74 Gloucester Place:] Tuesday [Christmas 1836].

My dear Friend,--I am very much obliged to you for the _two_ copies of your poem, so beautifully printed, with such 'majestical' types, on such 'magnifical' paper, as to be almost worthy of Baskett himself.

You are too liberal in sending me more than one copy; and pray accept in return a duplicate of grat.i.tude.

As to my 'Seraphim,' they are not returned to me, as in the case of their being unaccepted, I expressly begged they might be. Had the old editor been the present one, my inference would of course be, that their insertion was a determined matter; but as it is, I don't know what to think.[31] A long list of great names, belonging to _intending_ contributors, appeared in the paper a day or two ago, and among them was Miss Mitford's.

Are you wroth with me for not saying a word about going to see you? Arabel and I won't affirm it mathematically--but we are, metaphysically, _talking_ of paying our visit to you next Tuesday.

Don't expect us, nevertheless.

Yours affectionately, E.B. BARRETT.

What are my Christmas good wishes to be? That you may hold a Field in your right hand, and a Baskerville in your left, before the year is out! That degree of happiness will satisfy at least the _bodily_ part of you.

You may wish, in return, for _me_, that I may learn to write rather more legibly than 'at these presents.'