1772. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 246–247.
[London]
Thursday morning [Postmark: 28 November 1844]
My dearest friend,
I should thank you gratefully for the kind words you say to me about the ‘Drama of Exile,’ if I could speak or think of anything just now,—except of your being unwell. Arabel assures me that you look very well,—but still it is impossible for me to hear of your suffering under any kind of indisposition, without pain and anxiety. I have been thinking my dearest friend, that if you had a sofa in your room, and were to lie on it now and then, in order to change your position, it might be found pleasant and useful. Will you try it? Arabel says there is a comfortable sofa in your drawingroom, which might be removed to your room without the least difficulty. Nothing appears to me more certain than the fact of your retaining one position, as you sit on that chair, far too undeviatingly. Think of the sofa when you think of me. There shd be plenty of pillows on it, so as to keep your head raised—and, in this way, you would obtain repose, without the debilitating effects of a bed.
Yes! I well remember and always bear in mind your ‘zeal with knowledge’ [1] concerning Æschylus.
May God bless you, dearest Mr Boyd! Will you direct Jane to write me a short note just to say how you are. Send me a message by her just to say so, without taking the trouble of regularly dictating. If there is anything which I or mine can do for you, .. if there is anything which I can get for you in any way, do please me by speaking.
Am I not always
Your affectionate & grateful
Elibet?–
Mr Burges applies to me through Mr Kenyon to know whether you would like to have a copy of a treatise of Apuleius ‘De Deo Socratis,’ edited by a young man of promising ability & attainments, called Mr Buckley. [2] Answer at your leisure.
Address: H S Boyd Esqr / 24 (a) Grove End Road / St John’s Wood.
Publication: EBB-HSB, pp. 269–270.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Cf. John Davies of Hereford, The Scourge of Folly (1611), p. 42.
2. Theodore William Alois Buckley (1825–56) who was a protégé of George Burges and the translator of De Deo Socratis (1844). Burges sent EBB a copy of this work; it formed part of lot 931 of Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A72).
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