969. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 4–5.
[London]
June 3. 1842.
My very dear friend,
I disobeyed you in not simply letting you know of the publication of my English Poets, because I did not know myself when the publication was to take place—and I hope you will forgive the innocent crime & accept the first number going to you with this note. I warn you that there will be two numbers more at least. Therefore do not prepare yourself for perhaps the impossible magnanimity of reading them through!
And now I am fit for rivalship with your clocks, Papa having given me an Æolian harp for the purpose! Do you know the music of an Æolian harp, & that nothing below the spherical harmonies, [1] is so sweet & soft & mournfully wild? The amusing part of it is (after the poetical) that Flushie is jealous & thinks it is alive, .. & takes it as very hard that I shd say “Beautiful” to anything except his ears.!!
Arabel talks of going to see you—but if you are sensible to this intense & most overcoming heat, you will pardon her staying away for the present–
We have heard today that Annie proposes to publish her miscellany by subscription; [2] & altho’ I know it to be the only way, compatible with publication at all, to avoid a pecuniary loss, yet the custom is so entirely abandoned except in the case of persons of a lower condition of life than your daughter, that I am sorry to think of the observations it may excite. The whole scheme has appeared to me from the beginning most foolish—& if you knew what I know of the state & fortune of our ephemeral literature, you wd use what influence you have with her to induce her to condemn her ‘contributions’ to the adorning of a private annual rather than the purpose in unhappy question. I wish I dared to appeal through my true love for her to her own good sense, once more.
My very dear friend’s
affectionate & grateful
EBB
If you do read any of the papers, let me know, I beseech you, your full & free opinion of them.
Address: H S Boyd Esqr
Publication: LEBB, I, 105–106.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Richard Lovelace (1617–57), “Gratiana Dauncing and Singing” (1649), line 20. For a description of an Æolian harp, see letter 965, note 15.
2. See the previous letter. If anything came of this project, the volume must have been published anonymously, as neither the British Library catalogue nor The English Catalogue of Books lists any work under either her maiden or married name.
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