1879. EBB to Clementia Taylor
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 147–148.
50 Wimpole Street
April 3. 1845.
My dear Madam
I cannot help thanking you for the kindness of your letter, & for the candour which is a part of the kindness. It is natural that you shd blame me, & I accept gratefully the sympathy which you do not deny me on that account.
But of one thing I may & must assure you, that I never will shrink from speaking my whole mind in my writings, in respect to the whole truth as far as I can perceive & express it,—& that although I have painfully refused a poem to the Anti Corn Law Bazaar, [1] I have not shamefully refused my poetry to any great cause of humanity,—& never will, while I live. It is only the medium of the Bazaar, from which I have receded—it is not, & could not be, the essential duty!—! if it could, I shd be still more unworthy of your generous words than I feel myself at present. The argument addressed to me was not, [‘]‘you ought not to do this duty,”—but “you will do this duty more availingly another way.” The essential duty of giving such poor service as I have to give to the League-object, I have not abandoned, & you shall see that I have not— holding as I do with you, that it is “no political object, but a question of life or death for the people,”—nay, a question of right or wrong for all humanity—for the rocks strike deep & wide. So indulgent a reader of my poems as yourself will remember that there has been already some unsolicited indication of my opinions on this subject, in my published poems. My name is there, to answer that I am not ashamed of those opinions. Ashamed—I entreat you dear Mrs Taylor, to think as gently of me, when you blame me most, as you find it possible to do,—& never to think I cd be ashamed.
I little thought on reading your first reference to the fire, [2] that you had been placed in such awful circumstances. I have great terror of fire myself, & have acted in my thoughts your horrible reality again & again. What a scene! & what a recollection! Enough to light up one’s dreams with lurid conflagrations, all one’s life after!—but I trust it may not be so with you. I shudder to think of the gap between the ladder & the wall, & cannot but feel sure that your courage & calmness in availing yourself of that dreadful resource from the dreadful death behind, would have been impossible to most women.
Let me remain, dear Mrs Taylor,
your obliged & sincere friend
Elizabeth Barrett Barrett.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. See preceding letter.
2. See previous letter, note 4.
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