982. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 28–29.
[London]
July 7th 1842–
My very dear friend,
How you praise me! & how almost vain-glorious & quite well-pleased you make me by such praise! I did not dare to hope that you would prove half as easily satisfied: & the candour in regard to the first paper gives to this expression of your satisfaction a full ‘queen’s head’ of additional value—talking sovereigns rather than letter-stamps! You may imagine how pleased I am, when I assure you that I shd not have been either surprised or offended, though you had thrown me up from the first paper as unreadable!
The fourth did not appear on saturday, nor is likely to do so for several saturdays more. The British Association is rampant just now in the Athenæum. In the meanwhile I am turning to my review of Wordsworth, [1] —the king-poet of our times: and in the meanwhile (only yesterday) I have received some precious cuttings & leaves out of his garden, which I commissioned Mr Kenyon to get for me as for himself, [2] but which the poetical Majesty was graciously pleased to send me as to myself.
Arabel hopes to know your Maitlands [3] & so complete her knowledge of their family—& she desires me to give you her love & her congratulations on the safety of Francis. Poor wretch—Norfolk Island is scarcely safety: prolonged agony it certainly is. [4] Do you observe that there has been more shooting? & that while the tyrants of the earth sit serenely on their thrones, no breath of tobacco pipes turned against them,—our liberal, blameless queen cannot stir abroad without their being shot at her out of pistols! [5] It is a national dishonor. I am very angry, very sorry, & very ashamed—only not unto death. [6]
It gave me great pleasure to hear that you permitted your wonderful Memory to minister to you again from the old Greek fountains. As quite an old friend & half a Greek one let me too come in for a remembrance,—while I remain dearest Mr Boyd’s
unchangeably affectionate &
grateful E B Barrett.
Yes! I have observed that same trochee-ending monotony in Otway [7] & others of the later dramatists—just as you say!
Address: H S Boyd Esqr / 21. Downshire Hill / Hampstead.
Publication: EBB-HSB, pp. 247–248.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. For details of EBB’s review of Wordsworth’s Poems, see letter 980, note 13.
2. See letter 979. Presumably, during this visit to Royal Mount, which took place in early July (see SD1177), Kenyon signed the visitors’ book: “John Kenyon (on behalf of Elizabeth Barrett)” (ms at Dove Cottage).
3. Not identified.
4. On 29 May, while driving through Green Park with the Queen, Prince Albert noticed a man apparently pointing a pistol at her. It was agreed that the same route would be followed the next day, when John Francis did fire his weapon without harm to Her Majesty. He was tried and sentenced to death, but The Times of 4 July announced the commutation to transportation and hard labour for life. On 8 July, the paper announced his removal to Gosport, to await passage to Norfolk Island, a penal settlement some 800 miles E. of Australia.
5. A repetition of her comment, in the previous letter, about the Austrian emperors. The most recent of Victoria’s would-be assassins had used a pistol loaded with gravel and pieces of pipe (see letter 981, note 2).
6. Numbers, 35:25.
7. Thomas Otway (1652–85) was the author of several plays, the first published being Alcibiades (1675), followed by Don Carlos in 1676; he is now best known for Venice Preserv’d (1682). Dryden asserted that the latter “contained not one line that he would be author of” (DNB). EBB, in the last of her papers on The Book of the Poets (The Athenæum, 13 August 1842), spoke of “Otway, master of tears, who starved in our streets for his last tragedy—a poet most effective in broad touches; rather moving, as it appears to us, by scenes than by words.”
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