1777. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 260.

[London]

Wednesday morning [Postmark: 4 December 1844]

My dearest friend

I cannot let today pass without thanking you for your most kind note, and for your consideration in sending Jane to talk to me of you. Everytime the post comes I hope to have a line, just to say that you think yourself better,—and, so, to add to the gladness with which I have heard that others think you better. Surely you could not doubt of my true and tender interest in your health and sickness, your pleasure and pain?– Everything in the past comes back warmly as I write your name—and the tears stand in my eyes. I would have your companionship in almost all things .. except in any sorrow. May God bless you, my dearest friend.

I have fancied that you might hear with interest Miss Martineau’s letters on mesmerism, as printed in the Athenæum,—and therefore I shall send them to you, together with the Westminster Review which contains a notice of the poems. Keep the Athenæums altogether, if you like, and keep the Westminster as long as you like. Do not hurry yourself in the reading of it. I was pleased with Jane, and liked her countenance, and her feeling manner of speaking of you. I think of you now more than ever of course,—but I will not write a long letter for fear of fatiguing you.

Your ever affectionate

& grateful

Elibet.

The medical press (for instance, the “Lancet,” I understand) attacks poor Miss Martineau most cruelly on account of her statement in the Athenæum. [1]

Address: H S Boyd Esqr / 24 (a) Grove End Road / St John’s Wood.

Publication: EBB-HSB, pp. 270–271.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. The Lancet for 30 November 1844 (p. 291) published a short extract from Miss Martineau’s article in The Athenæum (23 November) calling it “a piece of arrant trickery and scandal.”

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