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Jack, Ian
1987.
Browning's Dramatic Lyrics (1842).
Browning Institute Studies,
Vol. 15,
Issue. ,
p.
161.
Article contents
Joseph Arnould and Robert Browning: New Letters (1842–50) and A Verse Epistle
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
“Arnould wrote the cleverest, gratefullest verse-thanks to me, the other day, for these lyrics of mine,” Robert Browning told Alfred Domett in a letter of 1842, “and brought you in so happily.” Joseph Arnould himself, writing Domett some months later, spoke disparagingly of his epistle as “very schoolboy verses.” Though they had said exactly what he had felt at the time and still felt about the beauty and power of Browning's recent poetry, Arnould could not help fancying that his lines had given Browning “a bad opinion of my sincerity.” Arnould does less than justice to his verse critique. He is sincere to the point of much tactful admonishment, and though his tone is ingenuous and his style colorful rather than polished, he is selective and informed in many of his judgments. The epistle tells us much about this cultivated friend, and it suggests still more about the intellectual environment in which Browning worked during the early 1840's while he was trying to write dramas for the stage and at the same time feeling his way toward his special subject and manner. That Browning himself valued Arnould's epistle is shown by his giving it (perhaps along with other poems) to Elizabeth Barrett; for on 1 May 1846 Elizabeth wrote: “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.” F. G. Kenyon, when he was collecting Browning's letters to Domett for Robert Browning and Alfred Domett (1906), a book that also contains letters and excerpts from letters of Arnould to Domett, seems to have had no knowledge of the whereabouts of the verse epistle. Fortunately the manuscript of this piece, together with the accompanying letter and six additional letters of Arnould's to Browning written in the years 1846–50, has recently come into the possession of Gordon N. Ray, President of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Mr. Ray has kindly made them available for reproduction here.
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References
1 F. G. Kenyon, Robert Browning and Alfred Domett (1906), p. 49 (13 December 1842). Kenyon, in his full introduction and running commentary upon the letters of Browning, Domett, and Arnould that figure in this volume, provides a valuable account of Browning's friendship with the two men—and especially with Domett, the original of Browning's Waring (1842) and the “Alfred, dear friend” addressed in the concluding stanzas of The Guardian Angel (1855).
2 Ibid., pp. 87–88 (undated but probably late 1843 or early 1844).
3 The Letters of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1845–6 (1899), ii, 115.
4 Kenyon, R. B. and A. D., p. 25.
5 W. Hall Griffin, “Early Friends of Robert Browning,” The Contemporary Review, lxxxvii (1905), 439 ff.
6 W. H. Griffin and H. C. Minchin, The Life of Robert Browning (1910), p. 79. In the remainder of this paragraph, biographical data not specifically annotated are based on the entry for Arnould in DNB, First Supplement (1901), i, 78.
7 John Wilson Croker, who heard Arnould read the poem before the Duke of Wellington on the Duke's being received as Chancellor of the University (1834), pronounced the verses “very good” (DNB; Kenyon, R.B. and A.D., p. 22). The audience is said to have interrupted Arnould's reading frequently with loud cheers. See The Times for 12 June 1834, p. 3, where an account is given and The Hospice of St. Bernard is printed in full, together with its learned notes.
8 The Diary of Alfred Domett, 1872–85, ed. E. A. Horsman (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), pp. 8–9.
9 Ibid., p. 14. On Domett's restlessness, see pp. 8–10.
10 The text of Arnould's letters requires relatively little editing. His handwriting is legible, and his punctuation, though erratic, seldom obscures the sense—except in one particular. The exception is his habit of linking independent clauses or even complex sentence units with colons or dashes, so that two or more are often presented as a single lengthy sentence without any real unifying focus. I have frequently broken these meanderers into separate sentences. Wherever a colon or dash seems remotely justified or particularly expressive of Arnould's mood (as especially in the letter of 16 October 1846 congratulating Browning upon his marriage), I have let Arnould's punctuation stand. F. G. Kenyon in preparing Arnould's letters to Domett for R.B. and A.D. presumably faced the same problem and has provided me with a precedent.
In editing the verse epistle, feeling that a poet should be allowed his own way with his lines, I have let Arnould's idiosyncratic punctuation and capitalization stand except where an occasional period or comma, inserted in brackets, seems especially to be demanded. The manuscript of the verse epistle contains a few cancels which suggest that Arnould wrote his epistle hurriedly and without resort to a second draft. Examples: line 39, “Whose broad phylacteries are [chased &] scrolled & chased”; line 67, “one truth half-phrased, another [thing] is behind”; line 155, “Unread the riddle, let the mystery end” is canceled in its entirety for “Make plain all riddles, let all mysteries end[.]”
11 Dramatic Lyrics appeared in the latter part of November 1842 as No. iii of Bells and Pomegranates (1841–46), a series of inexpensive pamphlets offering Browning's new works to the public in small type and double columns. Though Arnould in the letter and the accompanying verse epistle speaks chiefly of the poems contained in Dramatic Lyrics, he also discusses Pippa Passes, issued in April 1841, as No. i of the series, and King Victor and King Charles, which appeared on 12 March 1842, as No. ii. See William Clyde DeVane, A Browning Handbook, second edition (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1956), pp. 88 ff.
The poem that Arnould refers to farther along in the paragraph as “Artemis” is Artemis Prologuizes (Browning changed the spelling to Prologizes in 1863) and Madhouse Cells was the title under which Johannes Agricola in Meditation and Porphyria's Lover were published as I and ii without further name, their separate titles first appearing in the collected edition of Browning's poems in 1849 (see DeVane, A Browning Handbook, pp. 123–125). Waring is Browning's famous fancy portrait of Alfred Domett. Arnould testifies to its likeness.
12 Miss Browning: Sarianna Browning, the poet's sister, two years his junior and the only other child of the family. “Sarianna, as my wife now always calls her, we are both very much attached to; she is marvellously clever—such fine clear animal spirits—talks much and well, and yet withal is so simply and deeply good-hearted that it is a real pleasure to be with her.”—Arnould to Domett (Kenyon, R.B. and A.D., p. 104, 28 July 1844).
13 Arnould was apparently among those who found Sordello (1840) a baffling poem. Domett, to judge from Browning's letter in reply to him (Kenyon, R.B. and A.D., pp. 28 ff. [March 1840]), had been equally emphatic upon Browning's need to write more plainly than he had done in Sordello.
14 “A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog
Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old,
Where armies whole have sunk ... —
—Paradise Lost ii. 591–593
Walter, the arch mystagogue, is possibly Michael Walther (1593–1662), German theologian and author of The Golden Key of the Ancients.
15 Allusions in the next twenty lines refer to the following poems: “Ottima ... Sebald”: Pippa Passes; “Victor”: King Victor and King Charles; “Napoleon's”: Incident of the French Camp; “Tourney Queen”: Count Gismond; “Cavalier”: Cavalier Tunes; “madhouse cells”: Johannes Agricola in Meditation and Porphyria's Lover; “marble-brinked canals”: In a Gondola; “Cadmus' brood”: Artemis Prologuizes; “friendship”: Waring—based, as observed above, on the personality of Alfred Domett.
16 “The ‘noon-day haunted chamber‘”: King Victor and King Charles ii.i.190.
17 The “three giant strides” are apparently the three numbers of Bells and Pomegranates that had been published by this time (see n. 11)—three steps Browning has taken from the slough in which he had foundered in writing Sordello.
18 The lines following suggest the influence of Carlyle, whom Arnould greatly admired (see Kenyon, R.B. and A.D., pp. 67–70, 141).
19 Kenyon, R.B. and A.D., p. 52 (13 December 1842).
20 Ibid., p. 66 (undated, but about May 1843).
21 Ibid., p. 87 (undated, but probably in late 1843).
22 Ibid., pp. 66–67.
23 Ibid., p. 104 (28 July 1844).
24 Ibid., p. 110 (23 February 1845). Arnould's “Rabelais” appeared in The New Quarterly for January 1845. After he had completed his treatise on marine insurance and the law (published in 1848), Arnould became a regular contributor to the Daily News. He was offered (but refused) the editorship of this journal, whose editors in earlier years had been Charles Dickens and John Forster. See Griffin, “Early Friends of Robert Browning,” p. 430.
25 Kenyon, R.B. and A.D., p. 130 (13 July 1846).
26 Letters of R.B. and E.B.B., ii, 410 (10 August 1846).
27 The marriage had taken place on 12 September, but Elizabeth had then returned to the Barrett residence in Wimpole Street until the elopement on 19 September 1846.
28 Shakespeare, Sonnet 116.
29 A tear in the letter requires emendations, indicated by brackets, here and a few words farther on in the same sentence.
30 Henry Fothergill Chorley (1808–72), chief literary and music critic of The Athenaeum, lived three doors from the Arnoulds in Victoria Square. Browning had introduced the Arnoulds to Chorley. Christopher Dowson, mentioned in the next sentence of Arnould's letter, was a fellow member of “The Colloquial.” He had married Domett's sister. See Griffin, “Early Friends of Robert Browning,” pp. 430–431, 434.
31 “Wanstead” refers to the Dowsons' country home at Woodford in the borough of Wanstead and Woodford (in Essex), frequently visited by the Arnoulds and Sarianna and Robert Browning. See Griffin, “Early Friends of Robert Browning,” pp. 434–435, 439; Kenyon, R.B. and A.D., pp. 26–27, 39–40, 89, 93–94.
“Hatcham”: The Browning family had moved from Camberwell to a larger house at Hatcham in 1840.
32 This passage is the only evidence we have, to my knowledge, that Browning was at any time in his life a smoker of tobacco.
33 See Kenyon, R.B. and A.D., pp. 133–136 (30 November 1846). It is likely that Sarianna Browning was the source for much of the detail in this valuable account.
34 John Kenyon, wealthy patron of the arts and intimate friend of both Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (he was her second cousin and was instrumental in Browning's first writing her). See Griffin and Minchin, Life of Robert Browning, passim.
35 Paracelsus (1835) and many of the pieces that had appeared in Bells and Pomegranates (1841–46) were revised for Browning's first collected edition of 1849. Paracelsus and Pippa Passes underwent especially thorough revision. See DeVane, A Browning Handbook, pp. 49, 91, 102 ff.
36 A tear in the margin of the letter makes necessary the emendation.
37 This work is more fully described below, in Arnould's letter of 1848.
38 Governor (Sir George) Grey had given Domett a seat in the Legislative Council, an appointment that led to further administrative posts. Domett's political activities in New Zealand are described at length in the introduction to Diary of Alfred Domett, ed. Horsman, pp. 15–39. They culminated in Domett's being made Prime Minister of New Zealand in 1862–63.
39 Louis Antoine Jullien (1812–60), French composer and director, was a familiar figure in the world of popular music in England in the 1840's. The opera Iphigénie en Aulide of Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–87), based on Racine's play, was especially well known. Gluck's later work, Iphigénie en Tauride, was based on a play of Corneille's. Gluck had been knighted (made a Ritter) by the Pope.
In the sentence following: John Medex Maddox (1789–1861) managed the Princess Theater. Henry Taylor's drama Philip Van Artevelde, first published in 1834, had been more popular in printed form than on the stage, where it had been withdrawn after six performances. Charlotte Saunders Cushman (1816–76) was a distinguished American actress who was drawing large audiences in England in the later 1840's. Previously, in the Walnut Street Theater of Philadelphia, she had acted as her own stage manager.
40 Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), the German metaphysical philosopher. A new edition of his works, prepared by his son, had been issued in Germany within the previous two years (1845–46).
41 A tear in the page makes emendations in brackets necessary here and at two more points in the same sentence.
42 The last words (those following while) are written up the right-hand margin.
43 Arnould, it appears, had been sent an advance copy of the collected edition of 1849 (see above, n. 35).
44 “In this catalogue of books which are no books—biblia a-biblia—I reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket Books, Draught Boards bound and lettered at the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacks, Statutes at Large ...”—Charles Lamb, “Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading,” The Last Essays of Elia (1833), paragraph 3. In his short whimsical autobiography, Charles Lamb speaks of his literary works “collected in two slight crown octavos and pompously christen'd his works, tho' in fact they were his Recreations, and his true works may be found on the shelves of Leaden Hall Street, filling some hundred Folios.” Lamb's essay “The Superannuated Man” contains a similar sentiment.
45 Arnould's father owned a country home called White-cross, “a lovely old house on the Thames near Wallingford in Berkshire.” (Kenyon, R.B. and A.D., p. 21.)
46 The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ed. F. G. Kenyon (New York, 1897), i, 396–403.
47 Anthony and Cleopatra i.iii.44–45.
48 The lyric chanted by Paracelsus in Act iv, ll. 450–522, of Paracelsus.
49 Grotesque is here a noun.
50 Suo flatu: [sailing] under its own breeze.
51 Kenyon, R. B. and A. D., pp. 68–69 (undated but about May 1843).
52 Ibid., p. 70.
53 Ibid., p. 141 (19 September 1847).
54 Ibid., p. 69 (undated but about May 1843).
55 Arnould wrote Domett that Browning's Pauline was “a strange, wild (in some parts singularly magnificent) poet-biography ... in fact, psychologically speaking, his ‘Sartor Resartus’. ”—Ibid., p. 141 (19 September 1847). Italics mine.
56 Ibid., p. 142.
57 Ibid., p. 24.
58 The Letters of the Brownings to George Barrett, eds. Paul Landis and Ronald Freeman (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1958), pp. 244–281 passim.
59 Kenyon, R. B. and A. D., p. 143.
60 Ibid., p. 143 also (“date torn off, but later”).
61 W. Hall Griffin, “Robert Browning and Alfred Domett,” The Contemporary Review, lxxxvii (1905), p. 104 n.; Kenyon, R. B. and A. D., pp. 24–25. Arnould died at Florence in 1886.
62 Kenyon, R. B. and A. D., pp. 23–24; Griffin, “Early Friends of Robert Browning,” p. 430.
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