1691. Harriet Martineau to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 104.
Tynemouth
Friday [Postmark: 16 August 1844]
Dear Miss Barrett
My thanks for your last have been delayed by my efforts for our poor patient.
You beg to know how we decide. —For the Sanatorium, if he can be moved. Renewed bleedings seem to have brought him too low for recovery,—even transient:—to judge by a feeble scrawl in pencil yesy,—directed in a strange hand. —I doubt whether he can be carried any where else than to his grave: but the Sanatorium will be open—to a case of such singular distress—at a guinea a week! I don’t mean to stop for the money. It must & shall be raised:—will be, no doubt, with little effort,—so awful a case of desolation is it.
I can now only thank Mr Kenyon & you—(wh I do very heartily,)—& say that I am, at present, better than usual, thank you.
Yours ever
H. Martineau
My poor patient’s address is
“Mr J. W. Langtree [1]
10. Egremont Place
New Road.”
There he lies, forbidden to move & speak,—ice betwn the shoulders,—& the case perfectly desperate. Not a relation nearer than the back woods of Canada,—not a friend in London but those I have sent to him,—& in utter destitution. —But he will be cared for now.–
Address: Miss Barrett / Wimpole St / London.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. James William Langtree, who, according to The Gentleman’s Magazine (March 1845), died on 1 February 1845 at Devonshire House, New Road, aged 25. See letter 1674 for Miss Martineau’s earlier appeal to EBB for assistance. Chorley also responded to Miss Martineau’s solicitation on behalf of Langtree. He called Langtree’s story “one of my most pathetic recollections,” and explained that “among others of the few who were as ready as they were abundant to help was my dear, genial friend, John Kenyon.” Chorley’s account related that Langtree was placed in the Sanatorium in New Road, and that “he was sustained there during many weary months of decay” before his death and subsequent burial in the Marylebone burial-ground (Henry G. Hewlett, Henry Fothergill Chorley: Autobiography, Memoirs, and Letters, 1873, pp. 72–76).
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