For attacks on her Italian politics Mrs. Browning was prepared, as the foregoing letters show; but one incident caused her real and quite unexpected annoyance.  The reviewer in the ‘Athenaeum’ (apparently Mr. Chorley) by some unaccountable oversight took the ‘Curse for a Nation’ to apply to England, instead of being (as it obviously is) a denunciation of American slavery.  Consequently he referred to this poem in terms of strong censure, as improper and unpatriotic on the part of an English writer; and a protest from Mrs. Browning only elicited a somewhat grudging editorial note, in a tone which implied that the interpretation which the reviewer had put upon the poem was one which it would naturally bear.  One can hardly be surprised at the annoyance which this treatment caused to Mrs. Browning, though some of the phrases in which she speaks of it bear signs of the excitement which characterised so much of her thought in these years of mental strain and stress, and bodily weakness and decay.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Jameson

(Fragment) [Early in 1860.]

I remember well your kindness to it.  Nothing was said then about the ‘fit arguments for poetry,’ and I recovered from it to write ’Aurora Leigh,’ of which, however, many people did say that it was built on an unfit argument, and besides was a very indecent, corrupting book (have I not heard of ladies of sixty, who had ’never felt themselves pure since reading it’?) But now, consider.  Since you did not lose hope for me in ‘Casa Guidi Windows,’ because the line of politics was your own, why need you despair of me in the ‘Poems before Congress,’ although I do praise the devil in them?  A mistake is not fatal to a critic? need it be to a poet?  Does Napoleon’s being wicked (if he is so) make Italy less interesting? or unfit for poetry historical subjects like ‘The Dance’ or the ‘Court Lady’?  Meanwhile that thin-skinned people the Americans exceed some of you in generosity, rendering thanks to reprovers of their ill deeds, and understanding the pure love of the motive.[77] Let me tell you rather for their sake than mine.  I have extravagant praises and prices offered to me from ‘over the western sun,’ in consequence of these very ‘Poems before Congress.’  The nation is generous in these things and not ‘thin-skinned.’

As to England, I shall be forgiven in time.  The first part of a campaign and the first part of a discussion are the least favourable to English successes.  After a while (by the time you have learnt to shoot cats with the new rifles), you will put them away, and arrive at the happy second thought which corrects the first thought.  That second thought will not be of invasion, prophesies a headless prophet.  ’Time was when heads were off a man would die.’  A man—­yes.  But a woman! We die hard, you know.