Amongst your bounties I was much amused with the New York magazines, the curious turning up of a new claimant to the Louis-the-Seventeenth pretension amongst the Red Indians, and the rappings and pencil-writings of the new Spiritualists. One should wonder most at the believers in these two branches of faith, if that particular class did not always seem to be provided most abundantly whenever a demand occurs. Only think of Mrs. Browning giving the most unlimited credence to every "rapping" story which anybody can tell her! Did I tell you that the work on which she is engaged is a fictitious autobiography in blank verse, the heroine a woman artist (I suppose singer or actress), and the tone intensely modern? You will see that "Colombe's Birthday" has been brought out at the Haymarket. Mr. Chorley (Robert Browning's most intimate friend) writes me word that Mrs. Martin (Helen Faucit, at whose persuasion it was acted) told him that it had gone off "better than she expected." Have you seen Alexander Smith's book, which is all the rage just now? I saw some extracts from his poems a year and a half ago, and the whole book is like a quantity of extracts put together without any sort of connection, a mass of powerful metaphor with scarce any lattice-work for the honeysuckles to climb upon. Keats was too much like this; but then Keats was the first. Now this book, admitting its merit in a certain way, is but the imitation of a school, and, in my mind, a bad school. One such poem as that on the bust of Dante is worth a whole wilderness of these new writers, the very best of them. Certainly nothing better than those two pages ever crossed the Atlantic.
God bless you, dear friend. Say everything for me to dear Mr. and Mrs. W——, to Dr. Holmes, to Dr. Parsons, to Mr. Whittier, (how powerful his new volume is!) to Mr. Stoddard, to Mrs. Sparks, to all my friends.
Ever most affectionately yours, M.R.M.
I am writing on the 8th of May, but where is the May of the poets? Half the morning yesterday it snowed, at night there was ice as thick as a shilling, and to-day it is absolutely as cold as Christmas. Of course the leaves refuse to unfold, the nightingales can hardly be said to sing, even the hateful cuckoo holds his peace. I am hoping to see dear Mr. Bennoch soon to supply some glow and warmth.
Swallowfield, June 4, 1853.
I write at once, dearest friend, to acknowledge your most kind and welcome letter. I am better than when I wrote last, and get out almost every day for a very slow and quiet drive round our lovely lanes; far more lovely than last year, since the foliage is quite as thick again, and all the flowery trees, aloes, laburnums, horse-chestnuts, acacias, honeysuckles, azalias, rhododendrons, hawthorns, are one mass of blossoms,—literally the leaves are hardly visible, so that the color, whenever we come upon park, shrubbery, or plantation, is such as should be seen to be imagined. In my long life I never knew such a season of flowers; so the wet winter and the cold spring have their compensation. I get out in this way with Sam and K—— and the baby, and it gives me exquisite pleasure, and if you were here the pleasure would be multiplied a thousand fold by your society; but I do not gain strength in the least. Attempting to do a little more and take some young people to the gates of Whiteknights, which, without my presence, would be closed, proved too far and too rapid a movement, and for two days I could not stir for excessive soreness all over the body. I am still lifted down stairs step by step, and it is an operation of such time (it takes half an hour to get me down that one flight of cottage stairs), such pain, such fatigue, and such difficulty, that, unless to get out in the pony-chaise, I do not attempt to leave my room. I am still lifted into bed, and can neither turn nor move in any way when there, am wheeled from the stairs to the pony-carriage, cannot walk three steps, can hardly stand a moment, and in rising from my chair am sometimes ten minutes, often longer. So you see that I am very, very feeble and infirm. Still I feel sound at heart and clear in head, am quite as cheerful as ever, and, except that I get very much sooner exhausted, enjoy society as much as ever, so you must come if only to make me well. I do verily believe your coming would do me more good than anything.
I was much interested by your account of the poor English stage coachman. Ah, these are bad days for stage coachmen on both sides the Atlantic! Do you remember his name? and do you know whether he drove between London and Reading, or between Reading and Basingstoke?—a most useless branch railroad between the two latter places, constructed by the Great Western simply out of spite to the Southwestern, which I am happy to state has never yet paid its daily expenses, to say nothing of the cost of construction, and has taken everything off our road, which before abounded in coaches, carriers, and conveyances of all sorts. The vile railway does us no earthly good, we being above four miles from the nearest station, and you may imagine how much inconvenience the absence of stated communication with a market town causes to our small family, especially now that I can neither spare Sam nor the pony to go twelve miles. You must come to England and come often to see me, just to prove that there is any good whatever in railways,—a fact I am often inclined to doubt.
I shall send this letter to be forwarded to Mr. Bennett, and desire him to write to you himself. He is, as you say, an "excellent youth," although it is very generous in me to say so, for I do believe that you came to see me since he has been. Dear Mr. Bennoch, with all his multifarious business, has been again and again. God bless him! ...To return to Mr Bennett. He has been engaged in a grand battle with the trustees of an old charity school, principally the vicar. His two brothers helped in the fight. They won a notable victory. They were quite right in the matter in dispute and the "excellent youth" came out well in various letters. His opponent, the vicar, was Senior Wrangler at our Cambridge, the very highest University honor in England, and tutor to the present Lord Grey.
By the way, Mr. —— wrote to me the other day to ask that I would let him be here when Mr. Hawthorne comes to see me. I only answered this request by asking whether he did not intend to come to see me before that time, for certainly he might come to visit an old friend, especially a sick one, for her own sake, and not merely to meet a notability, and I am by no means sure that Mr. Hawthorne might not prefer to come alone or with dear Mr. Bennoch; at all events it ought to be left to his choice, and besides I have not lost the hope of your being the introducer of the great romancer, and then how little should I want anybody to come between us. Begin as they may, all my paragraphs slide into that refrain of Pray, pray come!
I have written to you about other kindnesses since that note full of hopes, but I do not think that I did write to thank you for dear Dr. Holmes's "Lecture on English Poetesses," or rather the analysis of a lecture which sins only by over-gallantry. Ah, there is a difference between the sexes, and the difference is the reverse way to that in which he puts it! Tell him I sent his charming stanzas on Moore to a leading member of the Irish committee for raising a monument to his memory, and that they were received with enthusiasm by the Irish friends of the poet. I have sent them to many persons in England worthy to be so honored, and the very cleverest woman whom I have ever known (Miss Goldsmid) wrote to me only yesterday to thank me for sending her that exquisite poem, adding, "I think the stanza 'If on his cheek, etc.,' contains one of the most beautiful similes to be found in the whole domain of poetry." I also told Mrs. Browning what dear Dr. Holmes said of her. The American poets whom she prefers are Lowell and Emerson. Now I know something of Lowell and of Emerson, but I hold that those lines on Dante's bust are amongst the finest ever written in the language, whether by American or Englishman; don't you? And what a grand Dead March is the poem on Webster! ...Also Mrs. Browning believes in spirit-rapping stories,—all,—and tells me that Robert Owen has been converted by them to a belief in a future state. Everybody everywhere is turning tables. The young Russells, who are surcharged with electricity, set them spinning in ten minutes. In general, you know, it is usual to take off all articles of metal. They, the other night, took a fancy to remove their rings and bracelets, and, having done so, the table, which had paused for a moment, began whirling again as fast as ever the contrary way. This is a fact, and a curious one.