MRS BARRETT BROWNING AND THACKERAY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5698, 17 October 1896, Page 3

MRS BARRETT BROWNING AND THACKERAY.

In Mrs Richmond Ritchie's article in the Cornhill, she mentions a curious episode in her father's editorial management of that magazine. Mrs Browning had sent for publication in the CorvJiill one of her poems — Lord Walter's Wife. Thackeray refused to publish it, on the ground that his public was too squeamish to permit him to insert any poom which alluded to such a thing as lawless love. Here is the letter in which Thackeray communicates his decision to Mrs Browning -. — " Who am I to refuse the poems of Elizabeth Browning, and set myself up as a judge over her ? I can't tell you how often I hare been going to write and have failed. You see that our magazine is written not only for men and women, but for boys, girls, infants, sucklings almost, and one of the best wives, mothers, women in the world, writes some verses which I- feel certain would be objected to by many of our readers. Not that the writer is not pure, and the moral most pure, chaste and right, but there are things my squeamish public will not hear on Monday, though on Sundays they listen to them without scruple. I In your poem you know there is an account of unlawful passion felt by a man for a woman, and though you write pure doctrine and real modesty and pure ethics, I am sure our readers would make an outcry, and so I have not published this poem. To have to say no to my betters is one of the hardest duties I have, but I'm sure we must not publish your verses. Igo down on my knees before cutbing my victim's head off, and say, 'Madam, you know how I respect and regard you, Browning's wife and Penini's mother; and for what I am going to do ' I most humbly ask your pardon.'" I To him Mrs Browning replied in a letter in which she puts the truth with good humour, but with uncompromising directness : — " I confess it, dear Mr Thackeray, never was any one turned out of a room for indecent behaviour in a more gracious and j conciliatory jjianner I A iso^_ J <y>nf pug tih^tjj

from your Cornhill standpoint (paterfamilias looking on) you are probably right ten times over. From mine, however, I may not be wrong, and I appeal to you as the deep man you are, whether it is not the higher mood, which on Sunday bears with the 'plain, word,' so offensive on Monday, during the cheating across the counter ? I am not a 'fast woman' — I don't like coarse subjects or the coarse treatment of any subject. But I am deeply convinced that the corruption of our society requires not shut doors and windows, but light and air ; and that is is exactly because pure and prosperous women choose to ignore vice, that miserable women suffer wrong by it every where. Has paterfamilias, with his Oriental traditions and veiled female faces, very successfully dealt with a certain class of evil? What if materfamiliae, with her quick, sure instincts and honest innocent eyes, do more towards their expulsion by simply looking at them and calling them by their names? See what insolenco you put me up to by your kind way of naming my dignities * * * * Browning's wife and Penini's mother !' "