What I Remember, Volume 2

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

How great her sorrow was for the death of her friend, Browning knew, doubtless, but nobody else, I think, in the world save myself.

I have now before me one of her little scraps of letters, in which she encloses one from Mrs. Browning which is of the highest interest. The history and genesis of it is as follows. Shortly after the publication of the well-known and exquisite little poem on the god Pan in the Cornhill Magazine, my brother Anthony wrote me a letter venturing to criticise it, in which he says: "The lines are very beautiful, and the working out of the idea is delicious. But I am inclined to think that she is illustrating an allegory by a thought, rather than a thought by an allegory. The idea of the god destroying the reed in making the instrument has, I imagine, given her occasion to declare that in the sublimation of the poet the man is lost for the ordinary purposes of man's life. It has been thus instead of being the reverse; and I can hardly believe that she herself believes in the doctrine which her fancy has led her to illustrate. A man that can be a poet is so much the more a man in becoming such, and is the more fitted for a man's best work. Nothing is destroyed, and in preparing the instrument for the touch of the musician the gods do nothing for which they need weep. The idea however is beautiful, and it is beautifully worked."

Then follows some verbal criticism which need not be transcribed. Going on to the seventh stanza he says, "In the third line of it, she loses her antithesis. She must spoil her man, as well as make a poet out of him—spoil him as the reed is spoilt. Should we not read the lines thus:—

"'Yet one half beast is the great god Pan
Or he would not have laughed by the river.
Making a poet he mars a man;
The true gods sigh,' &c."?

In justice to my brother's memory I must say that this was not written to me with any such presumptuous idea as that of offering his criticism to the poetess. But I showed the letter to Isa Blagden, and at her request left it with her. A day or two later, she writes to me: "Dear friend,—I send you back your criticism and Mrs. B.'s rejoinder. She made me show it to her, and she wishes you to see her answer." Miss Blagden's words would seem to imply that she thought the criticism mine. And if she did, Mrs. Browning was doubtless led to suppose so too. Yet I think this could hardly have been the case.

Of course my only object in writing all this here is to give the reader the great treat of seeing Mrs. Browning's "rejoinder." It is very highly interesting:—

* * * * *

"DEAREST ISA,—Very gentle my critic is; I am glad I got him out of you. But tell dear Mr. Trollope he is wrong nevertheless" [here it certainly seems that she supposed the criticism to be mine]; "and that my 'thought' was really and decidedly anterior [sic] to my 'allegory.' Moreover, it is my thought still. I meant to say that the poetic organisation implies certain disadvantages; for instance an exaggerated general susceptibility, …[1] which may be shut up, kept out of the way in every-day life, and must be (or the man is 'marred' indeed, made a Rousseau or a Byron of), but which is necessarily, for all that, cultivated in the very cultivation of art itself. There is an inward reflection and refraction of the heats of life …[1] doubling pains and pleasures, doubling therefore the motives (passions) of life. I have said something of this in A.L. [Aurora Leigh]. Also there is a passion for essential truth (as apprehended) and a necessity for speaking it out at all risks, inconvenient to personal peace. Add to this and much else the loss of the sweet unconscious cool privacy among the 'reeds' …[1] which I for one care so much for—the loss of the privilege of being glad or sorry, ill or well, without a 'notice.' That may have its glory to certain minds. But most people would be glad to 'stir their tea in silence' when they are grave, and even to talk nonsense (much too frivolously) when they are merry, without its running the round of the newspapers in two worlds perhaps. You know I don't invent, Isa. In fact, I am sorely tempted to send Mr. Trollope a letter I had this morning, as an illustration of my view, and a reply to his criticism. Only this letter among many begins with too many fair speeches. Still it seems written by somebody in earnest and with a liking for me. Its main object is to complain of the cowardly morality in Pan. Then a stroke on the poems before Congress. The writer has heard that I 'had been to Paris, was fêted by the Emperor, and had had my head turned by Imperial flatteries,' in consequence of which I had taken to 'praise and flatter the tyrant, and try to help his selfish ambition.' Well! one should laugh and be wise. But somehow one doesn't laugh. A letter beginning, 'You are a great teacher of truth,' and ending, 'You are a dishonest wretch,' makes you cold somehow, and ill disposed towards the satisfactions of literary distinction. Yes! and be sure, Isa, that the 'true gods sigh,' and have reason to sigh, for the cost and pain of it; sigh only … don't haggle over the cost; don't grudge a crazia, but…. sigh, sigh … while they pay honestly.

"On the other hand, there's much light talking and congratulation, excellent returns to the pocket from the poem in the Cornhill; pleasant praise from dear Mr. Trollope…. with all drawbacks: a good opinion from Isa worth its gold—and Pan laughs.

"But he is a beast up to the waist; yes, Mr. Trollope, a beast. He is not a true god.