Correspondence

1157.  EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 334–335.

[London]

Feb. 21. 1843.

Thank you my very dear friend, I am as well as the east wind will suffer me to be—& that indeed is not very well; my heart being even fuller of all manner of evil than is necessary to its humanity. But the wind is changed, & the frost is gone, .. and it is not quite out of my fancy yet that I may see you next summer. You & summer are not out of the question yet– Therefore you see, I cannot be very deep in tribulation. But you may consider it a bad symptom that I have just finished a poem of some five hundred lines in stanzas, called “The lost Bower” [1] and about nothing at all in particular.

As to Arabel she is not an icicle. There are flowers which blow in the frost—when we brambles are brown with their inward death—& she is of them, dear thing. You are not a bramble though—and I hope that when you talk of “feeling the cold” you mean simply to refer to your sensation and not to your health. Remember also dearest Mr Boyd, what a glorious winter we have had! Take away the last ten days & a few besides, and call the whole, summer rather than winter– Ought we to complain really? Really no!

I venture another prophecy upon the shoulders of the last, though my hand shakes so that nobody will read it.

You cant abide My Cry of the Human, & four sonnets– They have none of them, found favor in your eyes– [2]

In or out of favor,

Ever your affectionate

EBB

Do you think that next summer you might, .... could, .. or would, .. walk across the park to see me—supposing always that I fail in my aspiration to go & see you? I only ask by way of hypothesis. Consider & revolve it so– We live on the verge of the town rather than in it—& our noises are cousins to silence—& you shd pass into a room where the silence is most absolute. Flush’s breathing is my loudest sound—& then the watch’s tickings—& then my own heart when it beats too turbulently– Judge of the quiet & the solitude!

Address: H. S Boyd Esqr / 21 Downshire Hill / Hampstead.

Publication: LEBB, I, 124–125.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Published in Poems (1844).

2. EBB’s prophecy was correct; see the following letter for Boyd’s comments.

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