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Browning and the Prince of Publishers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Michael Meredith
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Extract

Just after midnight on the 13th December 1889, George Murray Smith, London publisher and businessman, received the telegram from Venice telling him of the death of his friend Robert Browning. The night was bitterly cold and the streets deep in snow, but he decided to take the news to the editor of The Times. A cab was hard to find and he had to walk to Hyde Park Corner from his house in Queen's Gate Gardens before he hailed one, and when he arrived at Printing House Square his reception was as cold as the weather:

I found the Editor of The Times after midnight as difficult of approach as a cabinet minister. I was shown first into one room, then into another, and after being duly inspected in each room I was then invited to take a seat and wait. The time went on; at length I rang a bell and sent in a message to Mr. Buckle that if he didn't see me soon I must be gone. This produced the great man. He thanked me for the news which was quite exclusive, and there was more than a column about Browning in The Times of that morning.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 7 , Spring 1979 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

NOTES

1. Smith, G. M., The Recollections of a Long and Busy Life, unpublished typescript in the National Library of Scotland, vol. I, p. 248.Google Scholar

2. See his letter to Frances Horner, quoted in Cecil, Lord David, Visionary and Dreamer (London: Constable, 1969), pp. 181–82.Google Scholar

3. See the account of the funeral in Knight, W. A., Retrospects (London: Smith, Elder, 1904).Google Scholar

4. All figures are taken from the Smith, Elder ledgers, by kind permission of Mr. John Murray, who has also given me permission to quote from unpublished material by Browning in his possession and elsewhere. I am most grateful to him, to Mrs. Virginia Murray, and to the staff at Albemarle Street for the kindness and help they have given me in the preparation of this article.

5. Smith, , Recollections, vol. I, p. 249.Google Scholar

6. Reconstructed from the account given in MrsCrosland, Newton, Landmarks of a Literary Life (London: Sampson Low, 1893), pp. 148–52.Google Scholar

7. It is interesting in connection with this to note what RB wrote to EBB on 11 Mar. 1845: “So you have got to like society, and would enjoy it, you think? For me, I always hated it, – have put up with it these six or seven years past, lest by foregoing it I should let some unknown good escape me, in the true time of it, and only discover my fault when too late, – and now, that I have done most of what is to be done, any lodge in a garden of cucumbers for me.” Kintner, Elvan, ed., The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett 1845–1846 (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969), I, 39.Google Scholar

8. Kenyon, Frederick, ed., Robert Browning and Alfred Domett (London: Smith, Elder, 1906), p. 86.Google Scholar

9. Powell, Thomas, Pictures of the Living Authors of Britain (London: Partridge and Oakley, 1851), p. 75.Google Scholar

10. Home's comments on Sordello had appeared before in the Church of England Quarterly. He had strong views on Browning's plays; condemnation of Strafford was counterbalanced by praise of the rest, particularly The Return of the Druses.

11. Rumours that were started by Powell, according to Smith in his Recollections.

12. Smith, , Recollections, vol. I, p. 130.Google Scholar

13. Hudson, G. R., ed., Browning to his American Friends (London: Bowes and Bowes, 1965), pp. 100–01.Google Scholar

14. See his letter to Blagden, Isa, 19 10 1864Google Scholar, in McAleer, Edward C., ed., Dearest Isa (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1951), p. 196.Google Scholar

15. Unpublished letter (John Murray), 4 Nov. 1864.

16. Later amended to £1,250 for the right of publication for five years.

17. Unpublished letter (Murray, John), 4 01 1868.Google Scholar

18. Unpublished letter (Murray, John), 10 12 1867.Google Scholar The first paragraph of this extract was quoted in Kelley, Lachlan Phil, “Robert Browning and George Smith: Selection from an Unpublished Correspondence,” Quarterly Review, 299 (07 1961), 329.Google Scholar

19. Unpublished letter (Murray, John), undated but assigned to 06 1868 on internal evidence.Google Scholar

20. Unpublished letter (Murray, John), 8 07 1868.Google Scholar

21. Unpublished letter (Murray, John), 10 02 1877.Google Scholar

22. Unpublished letter (Murray, John), 18 04 1878.Google Scholar

23. Unpublished letter (Murray, John), 28 10 1875.Google Scholar

24. Unpublished letter (National Library of Scotland), 3 01 1884.Google Scholar

25. There is no mention of the Browning Society in Smith's letters to Browning, and there is no record of his having been a member. His disapproval and dislike of Furnivall is mentioned later in the article.

26. Smith, , Recollections, vol. I, p. 244.Google Scholar

27. This story recounted by Smith in the second volume of his Recollections.

28. Unpublished letter (Murray, John), 19 03 1872.Google Scholar

29. Smith, , Recollections, vol. I, p. 245.Google Scholar

30. Unpublished letter (National Library of Scotland), 27 03 1882.Google Scholar

31. Unpublished letter (Murray, John), 14 04 1875.Google Scholar

32. Miller, Betty, on pp. 242–43Google Scholar of her Robert Browning: A Portrait (London: Murray, 1952)Google Scholar, quotes extracts from letters written from Browning to Smith from 1875 to 1889 and dismisses them with the comment, “It is the privilege of a poet to be unpractical in worldly matters, but in Browning this prolonged naivete was accompanied by an almost hysterical irritation at a similar incompetence in others.” This insensitive and perverse interpretation is best answered by Smith's own comment on Browning as a man of the world, quoted earlier, and by a reminder to Mrs. Miller's readers that she quotes snippets from the letters completely out of context.

33. Reprinted in The Browning Society's Papers, III, 47–48.Google Scholar

34. For the best account, see Peterson, William S., Interrogating the Oracle (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1969), pp. 35–40.Google Scholar

35. Unpublished letter (Murray, John), 15 01 1876Google Scholar, partly printed in Kelley, , p. 330.Google Scholar

36. Kelley, , op.cit. pp. 331–32.Google Scholar

37. Quoted by Peterson, , p. 36Google Scholar, from Furnivall, F. J., “The Late Mr. George Smith,” Athenaeum, 4 05 1901, p. 568.Google Scholar

38. Unpublished letter in my collection.