Correspondence

1331.  EBB to Benjamin Robert Haydon

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 251–252.

[London]

Friday Morng [21 July 1843] [1]

My dear Mr Haydon

I willingly make the admissions you insist upon. I know very little of the world, .. scarcely anything in a social sense—and except as one judges of without, from within. I admit moreover that an opposition to all superiority, .. perhaps a hatred of it, .. is of the world, worldly.

Whenever you like to send for the boxes, you can have them; and for one reason I shall be very glad to lose the guardianship of them & of the “immortal oils.” May the last flow onward like Aaron’s oils [2] .. from the head to the skirts of the garment!–

Your Mr Foggo’s modesty does really amuse me. Thank you for letting me see his catalogue .. which I return to you with the other, lent before. [3] The judgments run against the decision of the commissioners both here I observe, & out of doors I understand.

Keep Orion. You are special enough yourself to care for epics!

Ever faithfully yours

Elizabeth B Barrett.

Long live Alexander! May he be strong & prevail!–

Do you mean to say that Wilkies Life, the second volume of it I mean, … is still with you? If so, & you have done with it, will you let the bearer have it? I shall fall into the lion’s den, [4] should the bookseller discover that I have not returned it to him.

Thank you much for the sight of Napoleon’s relic, which is herewith returned. [5]

Publication: EBB-BRH, pp. 133–134.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. This letter is a reply to Haydon’s of 20 July (no. 1330).

2. Cf. Psalms, 133:2.

3. Assumed to be The National Gallery; Its Pictures and Their Painters ([1843]) and Results of the Parliamentary Inquiry Relative to Arts and Manufactures (1837), both by George Foggo (1793–1869), secretary of the National Monuments Society.

4. Cf. Daniel, 6:12.

5. The piece of willow sent with letter 1302.

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