[Postmark: May 1, 1846]
I am delighted with the verses and quite surprised by
Mr. Arnould’s, having expected to find nothing but love
and law in them, and really there is a great deal besides.
Hard to believe, it was, that a university prize poet (who was
not Tennyson) could write such good verses : but he wrote
them of you, and that was enough inspiration for him, I
suppose, as it would be for others, my own dearest. How
I delight in hearing you praised ! — it is such a delightful
assent to the word which is in me, in the deepest of me.
You know that mysterious pleasure we have, in listening to
echoes ! — we hear nothing new, nothing we have not said
ourselves — yet we stand on the side of the hill and listen . .
listen . . as if to the oracles of Delphi. The very pleasure
of it all is in the repetition . . the reverberation.
When you had gone yesterday and I had taken my
coffee, holding my book . . ‘La Gorgone’ a sea-romance
by Landelle, (those little duodecimo books are the only
possible books to hold in one’s hand at coffee-times . . and
the people at Rolandi’s library sent me this, which is not
worth much, I think, but quite new and very marine) . .
holding my book at one page, as if fixed . . transfixed, . .
by a sudden eternity, . . . well, after all that was done
with, coffee and all, . . in came George, and told me that
the day before he had seen Tennyson at Mr. Venables
house, or chambers rather. Mr. Venables was unwell,
and George went to see him, and while he was there, came
the poet. He had left London for a few days, he said, and
meant to stay here for a time . . ‘ hating it perfectly ‘ like
your Donne . . ‘seeming to detest London,’ said George
. . ‘abusing everything in unmeasured words.’ Then he
had been dining at Dickens’s, and meeting various cele-
brities, and Dickens had asked him to go with him
(Dickens) to Switzerland, where he [is] going, to write his new
work : ‘ but,’ laughed Tennyson, ‘ if I went, I should be
entreating him to dismiss his sentimentality, and so we
should quarrel and part, and never see one another any
more. It was better to decline — and I have declined.’
When George had told his story, I enquired if Tennyson
was what was called an agreeable man — happy in con-
versation. And the reply was … ‘ yes — but quite inferior
to Browning ! He neither talks so well,’ observed George
with a grave consideration and balancing of the sentences,
. . ‘ nor has so frank and open a manner. The advantages
are all on Browning’s side, I should say.’ Now dear George
is a little criticised you must know in this house for his
official gravity and dignity — my sisters murmur at him very
much sometimes . . poor dear George ! — but he is good
and kind, and high and right minded, as we all know, and
I, for my part, never thought of criticising him yesterday
when he said those words rather . . . perhaps . . barris-
terially, . . had they been other words.
My other words must go by my next letter — I am to
write to you again presently, you are to be pleased to
remember . . and that letter may reach you, for aught I
can guess, at the same moment with this. In the mean-
time, ever beloved,
I am your
Ba.