Correspondence

1789.  EBB to Julia Martin

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 283–286.

[London]

Tuesday– [17 December 1844] [1]

My dearest Mrs Martin,

Flush has just come to lay his head on my knee & protest against the writing of any more letters today. And yet with Flush & the post time, .. viz the Dog and the Hour, [2]  .. against me, I cant help writing to congratulate both of you & myself upon the breaking of the frost if not on the changing of the wind– As to the wind, it is nailed to the “orient gates” [3] I suppose, as a scarecrow for the comets. I cant think of any other reason for an east wind of such a continuance– Only a thaw having come, a west wind may come—there is hope for us. And dear Mr Martin has been brave in the face of the cold, if I may trust his delightful letter which gave me so much pleasure that I hope he will write me another. Tell him so. And tell me if he is as much better as he wd make me understand,—or if any of it is virtuous romancing. I was very happy in reading that letter, & none the less that I was able to think of you at the same time—which I hope you wont dishonour by comparing with the theft achieved by a lady’s third hand, sworn to by the Soho Bazaar people & righteously condemned by the Morning Chronicle. [4]

In sending you the Martineau papers, you understand that I am not to be set down as a convicted disciple– The logic, especially of the last articles of Saturday, appeared to me scarcely consequent enough for conviction,—and although believing the main facts to be facts, & her testimony to be most true & faithful, & herself as noble a woman as ever lived or wrote, my own impression is that this publication is as a whole inexpedient & not calculated to assist the cause. I cannot describe to you moreover the state of uncomfortable suspense in which I am, about Mesmerism. I would give a great deal, not to believe a word of it: & I believe, in spite of my repulsions. Some people say .. “If there’s anything in it, the devil is in it”——and my feeling is something approaching to that. If I believe, I tremble. Not that, in so many words, I set it down for Satanic influence—do not mistake me—: but that there is something horrible & cold to me in the whole matter & mystery—like the undressing of the soul from its familiar conventions & the plunging of it, shiveringly, into a new element. In fact the whole Temple of Human nature seems rent from the top to the bottom, [5] & to tremble before the flood of the agency. They may well call it,—as some mesmerists do,—a modification of death.

I send you this note which I received three days ago, [6] from Miss Martineau. It is written in her own handwriting this time, & proves her, I think, the noble creature she is. I had written her just a few words of sympathy, under the impulse of what I heard from Miss Mitford, of the atrocious things said of her (H.M.) in the Lancet & elsewhere, [7]  .. & from the idea that under such circumstances, a word of sympathy from woman to woman, might not be unwelcome. I admitted to her that I did not feel convinced of her cure being necessarily connected with the mesmerism,––I told her that, .. because it is always best to be open, .. but I said besides what I felt, of the respect we must all feel for one who dares to speak the truth as she conceives of it, at so much personal risk. You see how she answers. She is a noble woman, we must acknowledge. I admire the moral heroic beyond most things. But the papers, Mr Kenyon says, has [sic] produced no serious impression anywhere. Some are moved with horror, & some with laughter, but scarcely anybody, who was a sceptic, is made a believer by the reading.

Little Johnie Hedley is here on his way to Paris, & we have had from the latter place some good news lately. Dear Bummy is said to be looking well with improved spirits,—and uncle Hedley himself is better, .. only (which I do not like so much) in the hands of the Homœopathists!. Now did I tell you that before?

The Eldon Memoirs quite annoy me. [8] What littlenesses, to make a great man!– The gradual preparation of his grandson for the overwhelming honour & glory of being “commonly called Lord Encombe,” [9] would just suit ‘Punch’ in his department of the ‘Complete Letter Writer’ [10] – It is impayable! The glory of being ‘My Lord’ must be something like Miss Martineau’s incommunicable mesmeric idea; and I, poor plebeian, certainly had no notion before of its prodigiousness. Had you? No—to be sure!–

Lord Brougham, they say, means to be Lord Chancellor, on Ld Lyndhurst’s approaching retirement, [11] —& if he is’nt, there is to be what is called classically “a regular flare up.” It is understood among the best informed, now, that the place which he wished some time ago to create, &, as the calumny went, for his own uses, was by no means destined for himself but for Ld Lyndhurst. He wanted from the beginning, nothing but the chancellorship—being a moderate man. His activities feed on him in the meantime. The last number of the Law Review contains no less than five articles from his pen!– [12] What do you think of O’Connell? Does your admiration flag at all? —How did he behave on the federal point? & who had the best of it, himself or the Examiner? [13] You know he never was my hero—& now I am glad of it.

I shall not write any more today, & shd ask your pardon for the dulness already written. Let me have Miss Martineau’s letter, when you write– I am in no hurry for her’s .. whatever I may be, for your’s. Love to dear Mr Martin.

Your ever affectionate

Ba–

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Dated by EBB’s reference to the “breaking of the frost” and “the changing of the wind” both of which she mentions in the preceding letter.

2. Cf. Macbeth, I, 3, 147.

3. Cf. Spenser, The Faerie Queene, I, v, 2, line 10.

4. An account of a Mrs. Trywhitt stealing a microscope was recorded in The Morning Chronicle on 6 December 1844, although there was no mention of a “third hand.” However, The Examiner of 7 December 1844 (pp. 770–771), noting the details of the event, asked “Had she a third hand?” and concluded by stating that “It is not often that we have to remark on a leaning against the rich in the administration of justice, but when we do detect it, we certainly feel as much called upon to notice it as the other more common bias. The one injustice is as bad as the other.”

5. Cf. Matthew 27:51.

6. The note of “three days ago” is letter 1786. But it seems, from EBB’s comments, that she is actually sending the prior letter from Miss Martineau (no. 1781); this assumption is strengthened by the fact that it is in Miss Martineau’s own hand, whereas letter 1786 is not.

7. See letter 1777, note 1.

8. See letter 1780, note 5.

9. Viscount Encombe was the lesser title conferred on John Scott when he was created Earl of Eldon in 1821. His grandson, also John Scott (1805–1854), bore this courtesy title from 1821, as the heir presumptive, until he succeeded his grandfather in 1838.

10. This column first appeared in July 1844 and ran until the end of the year. Evidently, the column was popular enough that an illustrated edition was advertised in The Athenæum for 28 December 1844.

11. Brougham was Lord Chancellor only once, from 22 November 1830 to 21 November 1834. Lyndhurst succeeded Brougham in 1834 until April 1836, and held the post again from September 1843 until July 1846 when he was succeeded by Charles Christopher Pepys (1st Earl of Cottenham).

12. Articles in The Law Review did not have by-lines; however, EBB probably learned of Brougham’s authorship from her brother, George. The DNB states that Brougham, about this time, “continued to press the subject of law reform as president of the Law Amendment Association and director of its organ, the Law Review.”

13. O’Connell was a proponent of repeal of the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland accomplished in 1801. “During his imprisonment a movement had originated in the north of Ireland in favour of federalism as opposed to simple repeal.” Eventually, however, O’Connell “withdrew his offer of co-operation with the federalists, and again declared in favour of repeal pure and simple” (DNB). O’Connell’s support of the repeal movement brought criticism from The Examiner from mid-September through mid-December 1844.

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