ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING: _Letter to Leigh Hunt_. ‘Correspondence of Leigh Hunt,’ edited by his son. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1862.
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May I say of myself that I hope there is nobody in the world with a stronger will and aspiration to escape from _sectarianism_ in any sort or sense, when I have eyes to discern it--and that the sectarianism of the National Churches, to which I do not belong, and of the dissenting bodies, to which I do, stand together before me on a pretty just level of detestation? Truth (as far as each thinker can apprehend), apprehended--and love, comprehending--make my idea--my hope of a church. But the Christianity of the world is apt to wander from Christ and the hope of Him.
ELIZABETH BARRETT: ‘Letters to R. H. Horne.’
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[Sidenote: Her candor.]
You are my friend, I hope, but you do not on that account lose the faculty of judging me, or the right of judging me frankly. I do loathe the whole system of personal compliment, as a consequence of a personal interest, and I beseech you not to suffer yourself _ever_ by any sort of kind impulse from within, or extraneous influence otherwise, to say or modify a word relating to me.... I set more price on your sincerity than on your praise, and consider it more closely connected with the quality called kindness.... Now, mind! your best compliment to me is the truth at all times, without reference to sex or friendship. I excuse the unbonneting.
ELIZABETH BARRETT: ‘Letters to R. H. Horne.’
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[Sidenote: Her conscientiousness.]
What you say of a “poet’s duty” no one in the world can feel more deeply, in the verity of it, than myself. If I fail ultimately before the public--that is, before the people--for an ephemeral popularity does not appear to me worth trying for--it will not be because I have shrunk from the amount of labor--where labor could do anything. I have _worked_ at poetry; it has not been with me revery, but art. As the physician and lawyer work at their several professions, so have I, and so do I, apply to mine. And this I say, only to put by any charge of carelessness which may rise up to the verge of your lips or thoughts.
ELIZABETH BARRETT: ‘Letters to R. H. Horne.’
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[Sidenote: Her theories regarding imperfect double rhymes.]
With reference to the double rhyming, it has appeared to me to be employed with far less variety in our _serious_ poetry than our language would admit of genially, and that the various employment of it would add another string to the lyre of our Terpander. It has appeared to me that the single rhymes, as usually employed, are scarcely as various as they might be, but that of the double rhymes the observation is still truer. A great deal of attention--far more than it would take to rhyme with conventional accuracy--have I given to the subject of rhymes, and have determined in cold blood to hazard some experiments. At the same time I should tell you, that scarcely one of the _Pan_ rhymes [occurring in the poem of ‘The Dead Pan’] might not separately be justified _by the analogy of received rhymes_, although they have not themselves been received. Perhaps there is not so irregular a rhyme throughout the poem of _Pan_ as the “fel_low_” and “prunel_la_” of Pope the infallible. I maintain that my “islands” and “silence” is a regular rhyme in comparison.... A reader of Spanish poetry must be aware how soon the ear may be satisfied even by a recurring vowel. I mean to try it. At any rate, there are so few regular double rhymes in the English language that we must either admit some such trial or eschew the double rhymes generally; and I, for one, am very fond of them, and believe them to have a power not yet drawn out to its length, and capable of development, in our lyrical poetry especially.
ELIZABETH BARRETT: ‘Letters to R. H. Horne.’
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[Sidenote: Browning’s praise of “The Dead Pan.”]
I take the courage and vanity to send to you a note which a poet [Note by R. H. Horne: Robert Browning, then personally unknown to Miss Barrett, although an intimate friend of my own], whom we both admire, wrote to a friend of mine, who lent him the MS. [of ‘The Dead Pan’]. Mark! No opinion was asked about the rhymes,--the satisfaction was altogether impulsive, from within. Send me the note back, and never tell anybody that I showed it to you--it would appear too vain. Also, I have no right to show it. It was sent to me as likely to please me, and pleased me so much and naturally on various accounts, ... that I begged to be allowed to keep it.
ELIZABETH BARRETT: ‘Letters to R. H. Horne.’
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[Sidenote: “Lady Geraldine.”]
[Sidenote: A pleasing myth.]
Suddenly, one day, as the product of one day’s work, she astonished her friends with the rhapsody of ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship.’... This poem had all the faultiness which one might expect of a hundred and three stanzas forced by green-house heat into full bloom in twelve hours; this too by a weak invalid lying on a sofa; but must we spoil the pretty story that the sweet ballad had all the merit of winning for its writer the hand of Robert Browning! Yet the story is only a fiction of the gossip-writers. Nor is it true that the poet with whom she was to mate was then known to her only by his little book of ‘Bells and Pomegranates.’ She had more than a stranger’s reasons for making the wooer of Lady Geraldine speak in this wise:
“At times a modern volume--Wordsworth’s solemn-thoughted idyl, Howitt’s ballad-verse, or Tennyson’s enchanted reverie, _Or from Browning some ‘Pomegranate,’ which if cut deep down the middle, Showed a heart within, blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity_.”
THEODORE TILTON: _Memorial Preface_ to ‘Last Poems of Mrs. Browning.’
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[Sidenote: Surprise of Miss Barrett’s friends at her marriage.]
When I was ill at Tynemouth, a correspondence grew up between the then bed-ridden Elizabeth Barrett and myself; and a very intimate correspondence it became. In one of the later letters, in telling me how much better she was, and how grievously disappointed at being prevented going to Italy, she wrote of going out, of basking in the open sunshine, of doing this and that; “in short,” said she, finally, “there is no saying what foolish thing I may do.” The “foolish thing,” evidently in view in this passage, was marrying Robert Browning, and a truly wise act did the “foolish thing” turn out to be.
HARRIET MARTINEAU: ‘Autobiography.’ Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1877.
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It was more like a fairy tale than anything in real life I have ever known, to read, one morning, in the papers, of her marriage with the author of ‘Paracelsus,’ and to learn, in the course of the day, that not only was she married, but that she was absolutely on her way to Italy. The energy and resolution implied were amazing on the part of one who had long, as her own poems tell us, resigned herself to lie down and die.
HENRY F. CHORLEY: ‘Autobiography, Memoir, and Letters.’
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[Sidenote: Hawthorne’s first impression of Mrs. Browning, in 1856.]
She is a small, delicate woman, with ringlets of dark hair, a pleasant, intelligent, and sensitive face, and a low, agreeable voice. She looks youthful and comely, and is very gentle and lady-like.... She is of that quickly appreciative and responsive order of women, with whom I can talk more freely than with any man; and she has, besides, her own originality, wherewith to help on conversation, though, I should say, not of a loquacious tendency. We ... talked of Miss Bacon; and I developed something of that lady’s theory respecting Shakespeare, greatly to the horror of Mrs. Browning.... On the whole, I like her the better for loving the man Shakespeare with a personal love. We talked, too, of Margaret Fuller, who spent her last night in Italy with the Brownings.... I like her very much.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE: ‘Passages from the English Note-Books.’ Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1873.
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[Sidenote: The Brownings in Italy.]
Mrs. Browning is, in many respects, the correlative of her husband. As he is full of manly power, so she is a type of the most sensitive and delicate womanhood. She has been a great sufferer from ill health, and the marks of pain are stamped upon her person and manner. Her figure is slight, her countenance expressive of genius and sensibility, shaded by a veil of long, brown locks; and her tremulous voice often flutters over her words, like the flame of a dying candle over the wick.
I have never seen a human frame which seemed so nearly a transparent veil for a celestial and immortal spirit. She is a soul of fire, enclosed in a shell of pearl. Her rare and fine genius needs no setting forth at my hands. She is, also, what is not so generally known, a woman of uncommon, nay, profound learning.... Nor is she more remarkable for genius and learning, than for sweetness of temper, tenderness of heart, depth of feeling, and purity of spirit. It is a privilege to know such beings, singly and separately, but to see their powers quickened, and their happiness rounded, by the sacred tie of marriage, is a cause for peculiar and lasting gratitude. A union so complete as theirs, in which the mind has nothing to crave nor the heart to sigh for, is cordial to behold and soothing to remember.