By slow approach, and like a promontory
Which seems to glide and meet a coming ship,
The pale gold platform of the morning came
Towards the gliding mount. Against a sky
Of delicate purple, snowbright courts and halls,
Touched with light silvery green, gleaming across,
Fronted by pillars vast, cloud-capitalled,
With shafts of changeful pearl, all reared upon
* * * *
From the bright peak of that surrounded mount,
One step sufficed to gain the golden floor,
Whereon the palace of the morning shone,
Scarcely a bow-shot distant; but that step,
Orion’s humbled and still mortal foot
Dared not adventure. In the goddess’ face
Imploringly he gazed. “Advance,” she said,
In tones more sweet than when some heavenly bird,
Hid in a rosy cloud, its morning hymn
Warbles unseen, wet with delicious dews,
And to earth’s flowers, all looking up in prayer,
Tells of the coming bliss.
* * * *
Forward Orion stepped: the platform bright
Shook like the reflex of a star in water
Moved by the breeze. (III.ii)
The jealousy of Artemis strikes him dead in the midst of his new happiness and glory and expansive schemes for the good of the human race; after which, having stood in melancholy and remorse before Eos, who reproaches her for the deed, the rivals unite in supplication to Zeus, and receive from the supreme god, not indeed Orion’s restoration to earth, but his exaltation into the heavenly cycle.
So fares it ever
With the world’s builder. He, from wall to beam,
From pillar to roof, from shade to corporal form,
From the first vague thought to the temple vast,
A ceaseless contest with the crowd endures,
For whom he labours.
* * * *
He who will do and suffer, must – and end.
Hence, death is not an evil, since it leads
To somewhat permanent, beyond the noise
Man maketh on the tabor of his will,
Until the small round burst, and pale he falls,
His ear is stuffed with the grave’s earth, yet feels
The inaudible whispers of eternity,
While Time runs shouting to Oblivion
In the upper fields. (III.iii)
We must transcribe one noble passage, which embodies the philosophy of the whole work, and entreat our country’s poets to lay to heart the persuasion of its conclusion: –
The wisdom of mankind creeps slowly on,
Subject to every doubt that can retard
Or fling it back upon an earlier time;
So timid are man’s footsteps in the dark,
But blindest those who have no inward light.
One mind, perchance, in every age contains
The sum of all before and much to come;
Much that’s far distant still; but that full mind,
Companioned oft by others of like scope,
Belief, and tendency, and anxious will,
A circle small transpierces and illumes:
Expanding, soon its subtle radiance
Falls blunted from the mass of flesh and bone.
The man who, for his race might supersede
The work of ages, dies worn out – not used,
And in his track disciples onward strive,
Some hairs’ breadths only from his starting point:
Yet lives he not in vain; for if his soul
Hath entered others, though imperfectly,
The circle widens as the world spins round, –
His soul works on while he sleeps ‘neath the grass.
So, let the firm philosopher renew
His wasted lamp – the lamp wasted not in vain,
Though he no mirrors for its rays may see,
Nor trace them through the darkness; – let the hand,
Which feels primæval impulses, direct
A forthright plough and make his furrow broad,
With heart untiring while one field remains;
So let the herald Poet shed his thoughts,
Like seeds that seem but lost upon the wind.
Work in the night, thou sage, while Mammon’s brain
Teems with low visions on his couch of down; –
Break, thou, the clods, while high-throned vanity,
‘Midst glaring lights and trumpets, holds its court; –
Sing, thou, thy song amidst the stoning crowd,
Then stand apart, obscure to man, with God.
The poet of the future knows his place,
Though in the present shady be his seat,
And all his laurels deepening but the shade.
We would willingly follow the beautiful with further extracts, but the reader must seek for himself Orion’s anguish aft er his blindness, and his ultimate beatification, not omitting his morning hunt of shadowy stags in Chios –
There’s always morning somewhere in the world;
and the fine scenic descriptions which abound in the poem. Here is a pastoral revel not unworthy of Theocritus: –
Rhexergon tore down boughs, while Harpax slew
Oxen and deer, more than was need; and soon
On the green space Orion built the pile
With cross logs, underwood, dry turf and ferns,
And cast upon it fat of kine, and heaps
Of crisp dry leaves, and fired the pile, and beat
A hollow shield, and called the Bacchic train,
Who brought their skins of wine, and loaded poles
That bent with mighty clusters of black grapes
Slung midway. In the blaze Orion threw
Choice gums, and oil, that with explosion bright
Of broad and lucid flame alarmed the sky,
And fragrant spice, then set the Fauns to dance,
While whirled the timbrels, and the reed-pipes blew
A full-toned melody of mad delight.
Down came the Mænads from the sun-brown hills,
And flocked the laughing nymphs of groves and brooks;
With whom came Opis, singing to a lyre,
And Sida, ivory-limbed and crowned with flowers.
High swelled the orgie; and the roasting bulk
Of bull and deer was scarce distinguishable
Mid the loud-crackling boughs that sprawled in flame.
Now richest odours rose and filled the air,
Made glittering with the cymbals spun on high,
Through jets of nectar upward cast in sport,
And raging with songs and laughter and wild cries.
* * * *
The wine ran wastefully, and o’er the ears
Of the tall jars that stood too near the fire,
Bubbled and leapt, and streamed in crimsoning foam,
Hot as the hissing sap of the green logs; –
But none took heed of that nor anything,
Thus song and feast, dance, and wild revelry,
Succeeded; now in turn, now all at once
Mingling tempestuously. In a blind whirl
Around the fire Binstor dragged a rout
In osier bands and garlands; Harpax fiercely
The violet scarfs and autumn-tinted robes
From Nymph and Mænad tore; and, by the hoofs,
Autarces seized a Satyr, with intent,
Despite his writhing freaks and furious face,
To dash him on a gong, but that amidst
The struggling mass Encolyon thrust a pine,
Heavy and black as Charon’s ferrying pole,
O’er which they, like a bursting billow, fell. (I.iii)
With regard to these “wood friends,” we cannot follow their significant misfortunes. Akinetos, the unmoved, who is in his great shapeless lumbering calm so strikin
g to the imagination as to deserve well of the memory, after an interview with Chronos on the “ribbed sea-sand,” perishes worthily, but as poets, alone – or, for aught we know, geologists – can understand – by gradual petrifaction and adhesion to the rock.
The reader will infer from our analysis and extracts, that neither in its intention, nor in its execution, is this an ordinary work; and, indeed, for a work to show unity in its design, and labour in its developement, distinguishes it sufficiently from what is called work in our days, to justify some protraction of critical attention. That it will ever be a popular poem (notwithstanding the announcement which just reaches us of a second edition), is a different question; and it is hard to believe that the very author of it thought sanguinely of a popular reception, even while he was adjusting the eccentricity of a popular price. To thoughtful minds the poem will be welcome for its original cast and elevated cheerful teaching; and by poetical minds it will be received cordially as a poet’s gift. If to either it should occur, as it certainly does to ourselves, that the personal in the work trenches too closely on the allegorical, and fades too dimly and coldly away into the mere symbolical; that the action becomes contemplation, the epos a vision, and the reader a riddle-guesser, unstartled (though he began with hunting in Chios) by meeting Father Time upon the sands; the answer to the objection lies, we suppose, in the fact that the author has written no epic, but a spiritual epic; and in the illustration, that such as seek for warmth and colour, or anythingbesides a grand design and outline, will not go for satisfaction to the new Cartoons in Westminster Hall. A gift horse is not to be looked too narrowly in the mouth, far less a horse of the divine breed of Pegasus – far less when we hope for other fountains to be struck forth into silver beneath his hoof; and when we ourselves, with all our self-respect, are unconscious of miraculous Borrow-skill in the breathing of our critical whispers. Enough, that Mr. Horne has obliged us to believe in his power where we least believe in his epic; and that we recommend his poem to the public, pointing significantly to the fate of Akinetos, the great unmoved, which adorns it.
The Letters
St. Marylebone Parish Church, where Robert and Elizabeth were married in secret, due to her father having expressly forbidden his children to marry. Mr. Barrett disinherited Elizabeth, as well as her other siblings that had married, and Elizabeth’s brothers accused Browning of being a lower-class gold-digger, refusing to see him.
The church today
The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Edited by Frederic G. Kenyon
CONTENTS
PREFACE
CHAPTER I. 1806-1835
CHAPTER II. 1835-1841
CHAPTER III. 1841-1843
CHAPTER IV. 1844-46
CHAPTER V. 1846-1849
CHAPTER VI. 1849-1851
CHAPTER VII. 1851-1852
CHAPTER VIII. 1852-55
CHAPTER IX. 1855-1859
CHAPTER X. 1859-60
CHAPTER XI. 1860-1861
Barrett Browning, 1858
Robert Browning by Michele Gordigiani, 1858
PREFACE
The writer of any narrative of Mrs. Browning’s life, or the editor of a collection of her letters, is met at the outset of his task by the knowledge that both Mrs. Browning herself and her husband more than, once expressed their strong dislike of any such publicity in regard to matters of a personal and private character affecting themselves. The fact that expressions to this effect are publicly extant is one which has to be faced or evaded; but if it could not be fairly faced, and the apparent difficulty removed, the present volumes would never have seen the light. It would be a poor qualification for the task of preparing a record of Mrs. Browning’s life, to be willing therein to do violence to her own expressed wishes and those of her husband. But the expressions to which reference has been made are limited, either formally or by implication, to publications made during their own lifetime. They shrank, as any sensitive person must shrink, from seeing their private lives, their personal characteristics, above all, their sorrows and bereavements, offered to the inspection and criticism of the general public; and it was to such publications that their protests referred. They could not but be aware that the details of their lives would be of interest to the public which read and admired their works, and there is evidence that they recognised that the public has some claims with regard to writers who have appealed to, and partly lived by, its favour. They only claimed that during their own lifetime their feelings should be consulted first; when they should have passed away, the rights of the public would begin.
It is in this spirit that the following collection of Mrs. Browning’s letters has now been prepared, in the conviction that the lovers of English literature will be glad to make a closer and more intimate acquaintance with one — or, it may truthfully be said, with two — of the most interesting literary characters of the Victorian age. It is a selection from a large mass of letters, written at all periods in Mrs. Browning’s life, which Mr. Browning, after his wife’s death, reclaimed from the friends to whom they had been written, or from their representatives. No doubt, Mr. Browning’s primary object was to prevent publications which would have been excessively distressing to his feelings; but the letters, when once thus collected, were not destroyed (as was the case with many of his own letters), but carefully preserved, and so passed into the possession of his son, Mr. R. Barrett Browning, with whose consent they are now published. In this collection are comprised the letters to Miss Browning (the poet’s sister, whose consent has also been freely given to the publication), Mr. H.S. Boyd, Mrs. Martin, Miss Mitford, Mrs. Jameson, Mr. John Kenyon, Mr. Chorley, Miss Blagden, Miss Haworth, and Miss Thomson (Madame Emil Braun). To these have been added a number of letters which have been kindly lent by their possessors for the purpose of the present volumes.
The duties of the editor have been mainly those of selection and arrangement. With regard to the former task one word is necessary. It may be thought that the almost entire absence of bitterness (except on certain political topics), of controversy, of personal ill feeling of any kind, is due to editorial excisions. This is not the case. The number of passages that have been removed for fear of hurting the feelings of persons still living is almost infinitesimal; and in these the cause of offence is always something inherent in the facts recorded, not in the spirit in which they are mentioned. No person had less animosity than Mrs. Browning; it seems as though she could hardly bring herself to speak harshly of anyone. The omissions that have been made are almost wholly of passages containing little or nothing of interest, or repetitions of what has been said elsewhere; and they have been made with the object of diminishing the bulk and concentrating the interest of the collection, never with the purpose of modifying the representation of the writer’s character.
The task of arranging the letters has been more arduous owing to Mrs. Browning’s unfortunate habit of prefixing no date’s, or incomplete ones, to her letters. Many of them are dated merely by the day of the week or month, and can only be assigned to their proper place in the series on internal evidence. In some cases, however, the envelopes have been preserved, and the date is then often provided by the postmarks. These supply fixed points by which the others can be tested; and ultimately all have fallen into line in chronological order, and with at least approximate dates to each letter.
The correspondence, thus arranged in chronological order, forms an almost continuous record of Mrs. Browning’s life, from the early days in Herefordshire to her death in Italy in 1861; but in order to complete the record, it has been thought well to add connecting links of narrative, which should serve to bind the whole together into the unity of a biography. It is a chronicle, rather than a biography in the artistic sense of the term; a chronicle of the events of a life in which there were but few external events of importance, and in which the subject of the picture is, for the most part, left to paint her own portrait, and that, moreover, unconsciously. Still, this is a method whi
ch may be held to have its advantages, in that it can hardly be affected by the feelings or prejudices of the biographer; and if it does not present a finished portrait to the reader, it provides him with the materials from which he can form a portrait for himself. The external events are placed upon record, either in the letters or in the connecting links of narrative; the character and opinions of Mrs. Browning reveal themselves in her correspondence; and her genius is enshrined in her poetry. And these three elements make up all that may be known of her personality, all with which a biographer has to deal.
It is essentially her character, not her genius, that is presented to the reader of these letters. There are some letter-writers whose genius is so closely allied with their daily life that it shines through into their familiar correspondence with their friends, and their letters become literature. Such, in their very different ways, with very different types of genius and very different habits of daily life, are Gray, Cowper, Lamb, perhaps Fitzgerald. But letter-writers such as these are few. More often the correspondence of men and women of letters is valuable for the light it throws upon the character and opinions of those whose character and opinions we are led to regard with admiration or respect, or at least interest, on account of their other writings. In these cases it may be held that the publication is justifiable or not, according as the character which it reveals is affected favourably or the reverse. Not all truth, even about famous men, is useful for publication, but only such as enables us to appreciate better the works which have made them famous. Their highest selves are expressed in their literary work; and it is a poor service to truth to insist on bringing to light the fact that they also had lower selves — common, dull, it may be vicious. What illustrates their genius and enhances our respect for their character, may rightly be made known; but what shakes our belief and mars our enjoyment in them, is simply better left in obscurity.
Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Page 140
