Elizabeth Barrett and R. Shelton
MacKenzie
by
David Bonnell Green
Although the letters of Elizabeth Barrett to Shelton Mackenzie[1] printed here for the first time do
not
contain startling revelations, they characteristically display her thought and
opinions, her humor, and her essential femininity,[2] and they do disclose the existence
of an
interesting early review of her work that has not previously been
known.
The chances are strong that even after their exchange of letters Miss
Barrett and Mackenzie never met,[3]
for during her years of invalidism in London she went out infrequently and
entertained few visitors. But she maintained an extensive correspondence,
and it is likely that Mackenzie
wrote to her without prior introduction. He was a journalist and man of
letters who after a varied career in England emigrated to the United States
where he settled in Philadelphia and continued his literary work. Among his
projects was a biographical dictionary of living authors, and it was in
connection with this venture—never brought to
completion—that he
wrote Miss Barrett.
[4]
The first letter presented is evidently not the earliest in their
correspondence but makes clear enough what the course of it has been.
Miss Barrett devotes the opening paragraph to her first translation of
Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound and includes mention of the
review of it that appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine.[5] This review is of particular
interest, for
unlike the brief, unfriendly notice in the
Athenaeum—the only
one hitherto known—it is encouraging and alludes to the shorter
poems
in the volume. The reviewer is plainly aware of the author's identity, and
he treats her work with gentle enthusiasm.[6]
The question of who the reviewer might be is an intriguing if
apparently insoluble one. Edmund Henry Barker, the eccentric classical
scholar, who tried at one time to ingratiate himself with Miss Barrett, is a
possible candidate, although no definite evidence of any kind links him to
the review.[7] Miss Barrett always
refers to the reception of the volume in a disparaging way, however, and
words of praise from Barker, whom she did not like, may have been
unpalatable to her.
50 Wimpole Street
Dear Sir
If you think it necessary to mention the translation I will not oppose
it obstinately—although, being the work of twelve days, printed
without
a name & never advertised nor reviewed, few persons, I believe, ever
heard of it, & still fewer ever read it. To prove to you how thoroughly
I repudiate & am ashamed of it, I will tell you that I have half finished
a new version of the same tragedy, in order to wipe off the blot on my
poetical escutcheon.[9] I love poetry
too well & Aeschylus too reverently, not to see as clearly as
you must see, if you know the version, all its stiffness,
baldness, coldness, & general inadequacy. But my object was a wrong
one— —the attainment of a literal rendering;—besides
the
immaturity of power. The only review which noticed the attempt was I
think the "Gentleman's"—& I think it was there, recommended
to the
junior idle scholars as a literaltranslationcramming book.
Inglorious glory!
But the version is, in fact, tolerably close & accurate,—&,
for the
rest, intolerable.
As to scholastic & anonymous matters, I do not know whether
such
a trifle as my papers 'On the Greek Christian Poets' which appeared in the
Athenaeum of either last year or the year before (I fancy last year) would
meet your purpose to hear of.[10] They
are in plain prose, with poetical translations from the poets, & are
without my name,—but they drew some attention, & have been
referred to in general reviews of my writings—
I thank you much for what you kindly & encouragingly say of
America,— & indeed the Americans have been very kind to me,
&
not only at New York & I felt it to be a kind as well as honorable
concession when a New York bookseller agreed to print in the best types
& paper (paying for the privilege) a work which might be snatched out
of his hand by the bookseller next door & printed as a tract.[11] For if they took liberties with your
'Titian,'[12] dear Sir, you must
consider the state of the copyright here, &
how the trade is surrounded by temptations to piracy, & undefended
in
its attempts at honesty. In fact, if the wrong is to English authors, the
ruin is to American authors, who behold themselves
superseded
at their own hearthstones.
I am taking a great liberty in writing more than a simple answer to
your questions;—I return to them.
It gave me too much pleasure to receive Mr. Leigh Hunt's gracious
praise,[13] for me to object to your
referring to it. I was born in the county of Durham, but spent the greater
part of my life, & from my infancy, at Hope End, Herefordshire,
close
to Malvern— As to dates, I never could remember one in my life
—
I am constantly forgetting the Annus Domini & doubting myself into
the
middle ages. I am afraid I must be past thirty by three or four
years—but
your readers will not care "too curiously to enquire" which;—and
your
"living authors" of the feminine gender, in general, will not, I fancy, on
such a point, combine to afford you information of such unlimited
frankness—
You will decide, as you see best, on the mention of the 'Prometheus'.
I am ashamed of this abundance of light words, & beg to remain, dear
Sir, with much esteem.
very faithfully yours
Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
As the foregoing letter indicates, Elizabeth Barrett took a lively
interest in the United States, an interest warmly reciprocated by many
Americans.[14] And the second letter
gives further evidence of her concern with American literary affairs.
Cornelius Mathews, of whom she speaks, was along with Poe one of her
most enthusiastic admirers and worked diligently on her behalf.[15] Her sympathy and gratitude does
not,
however, exclude an astringent sense of the realities, and her remarks are
properly balanced.
September 22, 1844.
50 Wimpole Street
Dear Sir,
I must trouble you with a line in which I thank you for the kind
opinion you have expressed to me of my poetry. To give me credit for truth
& earnestness in it, is not more, I may venture to say, than is due to
one
who has lived in her art from childhood to this day, &
who
has tasted in it her sweetest experiences . . . . . she might almost say her
only very sweet experiences;—of life under the earthly aspect. It is
true
of me indeed that I am an earnest writer,— that I write from impulse
& conviction of heart & mind,— that my faculty, whatever
it be,
angel or demon, rather possesses than is possessed by me. I thank you for
giving me credit for that quality of truth in my poems, without which I shd.
be less than I am.
Mr. Horne's notice of me was kindly intended &
written,— but
there was no attempt in it at analysis of the character of my poetry.[16] The Quarterly did not please me,
I
confess, very well—[17] It is
difficult, you know, for a reviewer to please his subject. The
North American Review was something fuller—[18] but the attempts at critical analysis
in
respect to me, have certainly not found any particular favor
in
my sight. My last volumes having, according to my own impression far
more maturity of mind & power in them than the 'Seraphim' book, I
am
presumptuous enough to hope for
more fulness in the judgment likely to be held on them & there
has
yet been only time for a gust of newspaper criticism, ruffling the
leaves,—
[19]
Your observations upon American literature are precisely suitable, I
think, to the case, —and I particularly agree with you on the matter
of
its being no compliment to be called the 'Mrs. Hemans of America'. That
Mrs. Sigourney shd. have been ruffled at all by your remark, proves . .
does it not? . . the American view of things,— & their ignoble
indifference towards their own individuality in letters? If you never read a
little volume of poems "On Man" by Cornelius Matthews of New
York,[20] I wd. recommend it to you
as a rare instance of exception from the ordinary smooth run, on a beaten
road, of American poetry. It is defective in grace,— & perhaps
in
clearness,— but it is strong & bold & suggestive, &,
as a
transatlantic production, is on those grounds, a curiosity. When Mrs.
Sigourney was in England she did me the honour of writing a letter to me
once,— but I am not acquainted with her otherwise, either personally
or
by
correspondence.[21]
I hold that Dr. Channing & Emerson are the two greatest names
for letters which America has yet given us. Add another,—
Cooper's,—
Which reminds me that I am preparing to read your 'Titian' with the
advantage of a personal association,— I am very fond of
romances,—
and the class called 'ArtNovels,' is full of interest to me. How I shd.
have lived so long without the knowledge of your 'Titian' I do not
know,—but I remember sending for it to the library in vain, when
it was
first published.
Allow me to remain, dear Sir, with sincere wishes for your prosperity
in & out of literature,
very faithfully yours
Elizabeth Barrett Barrett.
Notes
[1]
The best sketch of Mackenzie (1809-1881) is that
by Albert C. Baugh in the DAB; see also
DNB.
[2]
W. O. Raymond in a review of Gardner B.
Taplin, The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
(Victorian
Studies, I [1957], 96) has recently said of her letters: "Their
sparkle,
charm, and easy, graceful style are as delightful as their naturalness and
sincerity."
[3]
She did not know him "personally" at that time:
see The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ed. Frederic
G.
Kenyon (1898), I, 200.
[5]
CLIII (June 1833), 610-611.
[6]
He writes: "As this very interesting volume
modestly presents itself to our notice without a name, we deem it
uncourteous to break the studied silence of the author, or to say more than
that it is to a female pen we are indebted for what we believe to be
absolutely unique in English literature—an attempt on
the part
of a young lady to translate a play of Aeschylus; and who, if report speaks
truly, has read every word of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; and
this, too, ere she is well out of her teens. . . . For ourselves . . . the
appearance of a volume, that reminds us of the days of a Dacier and Carter,
cannot fail to be highly welcome. . . ." After quoting a specimen of the
translation he concludes: "By comparing this version with the original, it
will be seen that our author has, to use her own words, 'kept as closely to
the sense, as was poetically possible'; and so little, indeed, has she
swerved, not only here, but through the whole play,
from her purpose, that every reader of the Prometheus, who wants a
crib-book, would do well to bind up this translation with the
Greek text, in lieu of the literal prose Latin or English version usually put
into the hands of their pupils by the teachers of the March-of-Intellect area.
"As regards the Miscellaneous Poems attached to the translation of the
Prometheus, and for which the authoress pleads so prettily in her preface,
we are free to confess that to our taste they are the gems of the
volume."
[7]
It was through Barker, however, that the volume
was published by Barker's friend A. J. Valpy: see Elizabeth Barrett
to Mr Boyd, Unpublished Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Hugh
Stuart Boyd, ed. Barbara P. McCarthy (1955), p. 158. The letters
generally contain numerous references to Barker.
[8]
I wish to thank Messrs. John Murray, holders of
the Browning copyright, and Mr. R. Norris Williams, 2d, and the
Historical Society of Pennsylvania for their kind permission to publish this
and the following letter, and Mr. Williams and the Society to print excerpts
from the letters of Cornelius Mathews of November 26, 1842 and July 26,
1843. I should also like to thank the Haverford College Library for
permission to publish the excerpt from the Mathews' letter of March 30,
1843, which is in the Roberts Collection.
[9]
This second version was finished in 1845 and
included in the Poems of 1850; see Taplin, Life of
Elizabeth Barret Browning (1957), pp. 230-232.
[10]
"Some Account of the Greek Christian Poets,"
Athenaeum, Feb. 26, 1842, pp. 189-190; Mar. 5, 1842, pp.
210-212; Mar. 12, 1842, pp. 229-231; Mar. 19, 1842, pp. 249-252. These
were later collected in The Greek Christian Poets and the English
Poets (London, 1863), pp. 1-103.
[11]
Cornelius Mathews arranged for Henry G.
Langley to publish the book in America, where it was given the title
A Drama of Exile: and Other Poems (New York, 1844); see
Taplin, p. 109.
[12]
Titian, A Romance of Venice, 3
vols. (London, 1843).
[13]
In "Blue-Stocking Revels," The Poetical
Works of Leigh Hunt, ed. H. S. Milford (1923), pp. 180-181.
Hunt's
tribute contains the well-known line: "I took her at first for a sister of
Tennyson."
[14]
See Elizabeth Porter Gould, The
Brownings
and America (1904), especially pp. 9-26.
[15]
For a discussion of her relations with Mathews
see Taplin, pp. 108-110 et passim. See also Letters of
E.
B. Browning, ed. Kenyon, passim; Letters of the Brownings
to
George Barrett, ed. Paul Landis, with the assistance of Ronald E.
Freeman (1958), pp. 362-366; Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Addressed to Richard Hengist Horne, ed. S. R. Townshend Mayer
(1877), I, 173-174, 245-247, II, 152, 178; Frances Price, "Some
Uncollected Letters of Mrs. Browning," Notes &
Queries,
CLXXXVII (Nov. 18, 1944), 227-231.
Excerpts from three unpublished letters of Mathews to Rufus W. Griswold
give additional demonstration of his interest. He writes on November 26,
1842: "Be good enough not to forget the [word illegible] 3 or 4 extra copies
of Dec. Graham for Miss Barrett— I see this lady, by the by,
announced
as a regular contributor to your Magazine. Have you opened any
correspondence—? I am about to write to her in a few days &
if you
wish any proposition laid before her I shall be happy to serve you." And
on March 30, 1843: "On enquiry at Mr. Wiley I learn that Mr. Putnam (his
partner) is not in funds at London to honor a draft in favour of Miss Barret,
for Mr. Graham. The proper & briefest method of adjusting the matter
will be remitting to me $52—in current funds which will cover the
draft,
postage, Messr. Wiley & Putnam's comission. Be good enough to have
Mr. Graham do this at once." On July 26, 1843, he writes:
"You will oblige me by stating in what manner the claim of Miss
Barrett on Graham's Mage. has been arranged? I beg to ask an immediate
answer, &, as I desire that no farther unpleasant feeling shall grow of
this matter I trust it will be, a satisfactory one." For Miss Barrett and
Griswold, see further Taplin, p. 135. In another letter to Griswold, October
28, 1844, printed in Passages from the Correspondence and Other
Papers of Rufus W. Griswold, ed. W. M. Griswold (1898), p. 233,
Mathews reveals that Evart A. Duyckinck is the author of the review of the
1844 Poems in the American Whig Review, I
(Jan.
1845), 38-48, and indicates that Griswold wrote the review appearing in
Graham's Magazine, XXVI (Jan. 1845), 46-47.
[16]
Perhaps the chapters on her, written by R. H.
Horne, in A New Spirit of the Age (1844), II, 131-140,
although she seemingly is referring to a review of The Seraphim, and
Other Poems. It may be that Horne wrote the review of that work
in
the Monthly Chronicle, II (1838), 195, but, if so, the review
does not correspond very well with her description of it.
[17]
John Gibson Lockhart wrote the review in the
Quarterly, LXVI (1840), 382-389.
[18]
LV (1842), 201-218, possibly by George
Stillman Hillard.
[19]
Such as those in John Bull, Aug.
31,
1844, pp. 551-552, the Atlas, Aug. 31, 1844, pp. 593-594,
to
which she refers elsewhere (Letters, ed. Kenyon, I, 192, 194)
and the London Globe, Aug. 22, 1844.
[20]
Poems on Man (New York, 1843);
see Taplin, p. 109 and DAB.
[21]
For Mrs. Sigourney see Gordon S. Haight,
Mrs. Sigourney, The Sweet Singer of Hartford (1930). For
other expressions of Miss Barrett's opinion of Mrs. Sigourney, see
Letters, ed. Kenyon, I, 135, 251, and Elizabeth Barrett
to
Miss Mitford, The Unpublished Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Barrett to Mary
Russell Mitford, ed. Betty Miller (1954), pp. 171, 217,
241.