2057. EBB to Julia Martin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 11, 114–116.
[London]
Tuesday. [?7] [October 1845] [1]
My dearest Mrs Martin, do believe that I have not been as I have seemed perhaps .. forgetful of you through this silence. This last proof of your interest & affection for me, .. in your letter to Henrietta, .. quite rouses me to speak out my remembrance of you—& I have been remembering you all the time that I did not speak .. only I was so perplexed & tossed up & down by doubts & sadnesses, as to require some shock from without to force the speech from me. Your verses, in their grace of kindness, & the ivy from Wordsworth’s cottage just made me think to myself that I would write to you before I left England——but when you talk really of coming to see me .. why I must speak! You overcome me with the sense of your goodness to me.
Yet after all, I will not have you come!– The farewells are bad enough which come to us, without our going to seek them—& I would rather wait to meet you on the continent .. or in England again—than see you now, just to part from you. And you cannot guess how shaken I am—& how I cling to every plank of a little calm. Perhaps I am going on the 17th or 20th Certainly I have made up my mind to do it, & shall do it .. as a bare matter of duty: and it is one of the most painful acts of duty which my whole life has set before me. The road is as rough as possible .. as far as I can see it. At the same time, being absolutely convinced from my own experience & perceptions, & the unhesitating advice of two able medical men, (Dr Chambers, one of them,) that to escape the English winter will be everything for me, & that it involves the comfort & usefulness of the rest of my life, .. I have resolved to do it, .. let the circumstances of the doing be as painful as they may. If you were to see me you would be astonished to see the work of the past summer—but all these improvements will ebb away with the sun—while I am assured of permanent good, if I leave England. The struggle with me has been a very painful one—I cannot enter on the how & wherefore at this moment. I had expected more help than I have found—& am left to myself, & thrown so on my own sense of duty, as to feel it right, for the sake of future years, to make an effort to stand by myself as I best can. At the same time, I will not tell you that at the last hour something may not happen to keep me at home. That is neither impossible nor improbable. If, for instance, I find that I cannot have one of my brothers with me, why the going in that case would be out of the question<. But under> [2] ordinary circumstances I shall go. <Or if> [2] the experiment of going fails, why then I shall have had the satisfaction of having tried it, & of knowing that it is God’s will which keeps me a prisoner & makes me a burthen. As it is, I have been told, that if I had gone years ago I should be well now, .. that one lung is very slightly affected, but the nervous system absolutely shattered .. as the state of the pulse proves. I am in the habit of taking forty drops of laudanum a day, .. & cannot do with less .. that is, .. the medical man told me that I could not do with less, .. saying so with his hand on the pulse. The cold weather, they say, acts on the lungs, & produces the weakness indirectly—whereas the necessary shutting up acts on the nerves & prevents them from having a chance of recovering their tone. And thus, without any mortal disease, .. or any disease of equivalent seriousness, .. I am thrown out of life, .. out of the ordinary sphere of its enjoyment & activity, .. & made a burden to myself & to others—— Whereas there is a means of escape from these evils, & God has opened the door of escape—as wide as I see it!–
In all ways, for my own happiness’es sake I do need a proof that the evil is irremediable. And this proof (or the counter-proof) I am about to seek in Italy.
Dr Chambers has advised Pisa—& I go in the direct steamer from the Thames to Leghorn. I have good courage—& as far as my own strength goes, sufficient means.
Dearest Mrs Martin, more than I thought at first of telling you, I have told you. Much beside there is, painful to talk of—but I hope I have determined to do what is right, & that the determination has not been formed ungently, unscrupulously, nor unaffectionately in respect to the feelings of others. I would die for some of those—but there has been affection opposed to affection.
This, in confidence, of course. May God bless both of you! Pray for me, dearest Mrs Martin. Make up your mind to go somewhere soon—shall you not? … before the winter shuts the last window from which you see the sun.
Dr Chambers said that he would “answer for it” that the voyage would rather do me good than harm– Let me suffer sea-sickness or not, he said, .. he would answer for its doing me no harm.
I hope to take Arabel with me, & either Storm or Henry. This is my hope.
Gratefully & affectionately I think of all your kindness & interest. May dear Mr Martin lose nothing in this coming winter!—— I shall think of you, .. & not cease to love you.
Moreover you shall hear again from
your ever affectionate
Ba.
Publication: LEBB, I, 267–270.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. This letter falls between letter 2047, in which EBB refers to “doctors,” and letter 2062, where she discusses leaving on the “17th or 20th”; hence the conjectural date.
2. Conjectural reading, due to ink smudge.
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