1823. EBB to Julia Martin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 39–42.
[London]
Saturday. [25] Jan. 1845 [1]
My dearest Mrs Martin
I believe our last letters crossed & we might draw lots for the turn of receiving one—so that you are to take it for supererogatory virtue in me altogether, if I begin to write to you as ‘at these presents.’ But I want to know how you both are,—& if your last account may continue to be considered the true one– You have been poising yourself on the equal balance of letters, as weak consciences are apt to do: but I write that you may write—& also a little, that I may thank you for the kindness of your last letter which was so very kind.
No indeed, dearest Mrs Martin! If I do not say oftener that I have a strong & grateful trust in your affection for me, & therefore, in your interest in all that concerns me, .. it is not that it is less strong & grateful. What I said or sang of Miss Martineau’s letter, was no consequence of a distrust of you, but of a feeling within myself, that for me to show about such a letter was scarcely becoming, & in, the matter of modesty, nowise discreet. I suppose I was writing excuses to myself for showing it to you,—I cannot otherwise account for the saying & singing– And, for the rest, nobody can say or sing that I am not frank enough to you, to the extent of telling all manner of nonsense about myself which can only be supposed to be interesting on the ground of your being presupposed to care a little for the person concerned. Now am I not frank enough? And by the way, I send you the Seraphim at last, by this day’s railroad. [2]
<Thursday–> [3]
To prove to you that I had not forgotten you before your letter came, here is the fragment of an unfinished one which I send you, to begin with—an imperfect fossil letter, which no comparative anatomy will bring much sense out of—except the plain fact that you were not forgotten. Well– I am glad, considering everything, that you remain longer at Dover. The place evidently agrees with dear Mr Martin, & as it is not disagreeable to you in other respects, why the wisest plan appears to stay on,—& especially now, when the year is at the raw, unripe period, .. as sour as a young apple, & as given to set the whole being of the body on edge!– George had a letter yesterday from uncle James, which quite edified me from its brilliancy & delightedness with the Parisian world. Except Miss Martineau, who calls herself ‘very happy’ in the glories & beneficencies of mesmerism, I do not read many letters from people making such a profession of high contentment. The moaning & grumbling are dreadfully preponderant,—are they not—? dreadfully, & often, to my apprehension, shamefully! But this letter from Paris, was very bright to be sure. Such lives as they are leading there, .. to listen to them!! Such glories on all sides, & such economies in the purse! such perfect felicity, in fact, for ‘dix sous’. [4] And not only the ‘best possible world,’ [5] to live in,—but the best imaginable world .. which is a step above possibilities & Voltaire’s hero. And then, dear Bummy is said to be in good spirits, which is delightful news—only if it is so, & if they all go living on upon white satin & Lyons velvet, they cannot be expected, any of them, to think of coming back to England again—it will be immodest to expect such a thing.
From Alexandria, we heard yesterday that they sailed from thence on the first of January—and the home passage may be long.
The changes in Mary Minto on account of Mesmerism, were merely imaginary as far as I can understand. [6] Nobody here observed any change in her. Oh no. These things will be fancied sometimes. That she is an enthusiastic girl & that the subject took strong hold upon her, is true enough, & not the least in the world, according to my mind, to be wondered at– By the way, I had a letter & the present of a work on mesmerism, Mr Newnham’s, from his daughter, who sent it to me the other day, in the kindest way, ‘out of gratitude for my poetry’ as she says, & from a desire that it might do me physical good in the matter of health. [7] I do not at all know her—. I wrote to thank her, of course, for the kindness & sympathy, which, as she expressed them, quite touched me; & to explain how I did not stand in reach just now of the temptations of mesmerism. I might have said that I shrank nearly as much from these ‘temptations’, as from Lord Bacon’s stew of infant children for the purposes of witchcraft– [8]
Well—then I am getting deeper & deeper into correspondence with Robert Browning, poet & mystic,—& we are growing to be the truest of friends– If I live a little longer shut up in this room, I shall certainly know everybody in the world. Mrs Jameson came again yesterday, & was very agreeable—but tried vainly to convince me that the ‘Vestiges of Creation’ which I take to be one of the most melancholy books in the world, is the most comforting, .. & that Lady Byron was an angel of a wife. I persisted (in relation to the former clause) in a ‘determinate counsel’ [9] not to be a fully developped monkey if I could help it—but when Mrs J. assured me that she knew all the circumstances of the separation, though she cd not betray a confidence, & entreated me ‘to keep my mind open’ on a subject which would one day be set in the light, .. I stroked down my feathers as well as I could, & listened to reason. You know, or perhaps you do not know, that there are two women whom I have hated all my life long—Lady Byron & Marie Louise. [10] To prove how false the public effigy of the former is, however, Mrs Jameson told me that she knew nothing of mathematics, nothing of science, & that the element preponderating in her mind, is the poetical element—that she cares much for my poetry!!. How deep in the knowledge of the depths of vanity must Mrs J. be, .. to tell me that!—now must’nt she? But there was, .. yes, & is .. a strong adverse feeling to work upon—& it is not worked away.
Then, I have seen a copy of a note of Ld Morpeth to H Martineau to the effect that he considered the mesmeric phenomena witnessed by him (inclusive, remember, of the languages) to be “equally beautiful, wonderful, & undeniable”—but he is prudent enough to desire, that no use shd be made of this letter. [11] The girl “J–” is engaged as nurse in the Liddell family, & Mrs Wynyard the mesmerist has left or is just now about to leave H Martineau on other mesmeric business. She (HM) goes from Mr Gregg’s house at Windermere (& he is mesmerising her now) to Liverpool,—& does not return to Tynemouth. The conduct of Mr Greenhough has naturally produced an alienation between them.
And now no more for today.
With love to dear Mr Martin,
Ever believe me
your affectionate
Ba.
Publication: LEBB, I, 237–239 (in part).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by EBB’s reference to Mrs. Jameson’s visit on Tuesday, 28th January, as reported to Miss Mitford in letter 1826.
2. See letter 1808, note 2.
3. Altered from “Wednesday.”
4. “Ten sous.”
5. Cf. the teaching of Dr. Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide that “all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.”
6. Mary Minto’s experiments in mesmerism date as early as 1843.
7. Human Magnetism; Its Claims to Dispassionate Inquiry. Being an Attempt to Show the Utility of Its Application for the Relief of Human Suffering (1845) by William Newnham (1790–1865).
8. See Sylva Sylvarum: Or Naturall Historie in Ten Centuries (1627) by Francis Bacon, Century X, 975.
9. Acts 2:23.
10. In letter 1206, EBB had expressed her dislike of Lady Byron and Marie Louise to Haydon.
11. See letter 1807.
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