Saturday.
December 20, 1845.
I have your letter now, and now I am sorry I sent mine. If I wrote that you had ‘forgotten to write,’ I did not mean it; not a word! If I had meant it I should not have written it. But it would have been better for every reason to have waited just a little longer before writing at all. A besetting sin of mine is an impatience which makes people laugh when it does not entangle their silks, pull their knots tighter, and tear their books in cutting them open.
How right you are about Mr. Lowell! He has a refined fancy and is graceful for an American critic, but the truth is, otherwise, that he knows nothing of English poetry or the next thing to nothing, and has merely had a dream of the early dramatists. The amount of his reading in that direction is an article in the Retrospective Review which contains extracts; and he re-extracts the extracts, re-quotes the quotations, and, ‘a pede Herculem,’ from the foot infers the man, or rather from the sandal-string of the foot, infers and judges the soul of the man — it is comparative anatomy under the most speculative conditions. How a writer of his talents and pretensions could make up his mind to make up a book on such slight substratum, is a curious proof of the state of literature in America. Do you not think so? Why a lecturer on the English Dramatists for a ‘Young Ladies’ academy’ here in England, might take it to be necessary to have better information than he could gather from an odd volume of an old review! And then, Mr. Lowell’s naïveté in showing his authority, — as if the Elizabethan poets lay mouldering in inaccessible manuscript somewhere below the lowest deep of Shakespeare’s grave, — is curious beyond the rest! Altogether, the fact is an epigram on the surface-literature of America. As you say, their books do not suit us: — Mrs. Markham might as well send her compendium of the History of France to M. Thiers. If they knew more they could not give parsley crowns to their own native poets when there is greater merit among the rabbits. Mrs. Sigourney has just sent me — just this morning — her ‘Scenes in my Native Land’ and, peeping between the uncut leaves, I read of the poet Hillhouse, of ‘sublime spirit and Miltonic energy,’ standing in ‘the temple of Fame’ as if it were built on purpose for him. I suppose he is like most of the American poets, who are shadows of the true, as flat as a shadow, as colourless as a shadow, as lifeless and as transitory. Mr. Lowell himself is, in his verse-books, poetical, if not a poet — and certainly this little book we are talking of is grateful enough in some ways — you would call it a pretty book — would you not? Two or three letters I have had from him . . . all very kind! — and that reminds me, alas! of some ineffable ingratitude on my own part! When one’s conscience grows too heavy, there is nothing for it but to throw it away! —
Do you remember how I tried to tell you what he said of you, and how you would not let me?
Mr. Mathews said of him, having met him once in society, that he was the concentration of conceit in appearance and manner. But since then they seem to be on better terms.
Where is the meaning, pray, of E.B.C.? your meaning, I mean?
My true initials are E.B.M.B. — my long name, as opposed to my short one, being Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett! — there’s a full length to take away one’s breath! — Christian name . . . Elizabeth Barrett: — surname, Moulton Barrett. So long it is, that to make it portable, I fell into the habit of doubling it up and packing it closely, . . . and of forgetting that I was a Moulton, altogether. One might as well write the alphabet as all four initials. Yet our family-name is Moulton Barrett, and my brothers reproach me sometimes for sacrificing the governorship of an old town in Norfolk with a little honourable verdigris from the Heralds’ Office. As if I cared for the Retrospective Review! Nevertheless it is true that I would give ten towns in Norfolk (if I had them) to own some purer lineage than that of the blood of the slave! Cursed we are from generation to generation! — I seem to hear the ‘Commination Service.’
May God bless you always, always! beyond the always of this world! —
Your
E.B.B.
Mr. Dickens’s ‘Cricket’ sings repetitions, and, with considerable beauty, is extravagant. It does not appear to me by any means one of his most successful productions, though quite free from what was reproached as bitterness and one-sidedness, last year.
You do not say how you are — not a word! And you are wrong in saying that you ‘ought to have written’ — as if ‘ought’ could be in place so! You never ‘ought’ to write to me you know! or rather . . . if you ever think you ought, you ought not! Which is a speaking of mysteries on my part!