288. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 2, 113–114.
Hope End.
Saturday. March 15th [1828] [1]
Dear Sir,
I received your letter last night: and if an “untoward event” (as the King’s speech says of Navarino!) [2] had not prevented my having the carriage, I should have been with you this morning! As long as my selfish gratifications only, had to suffer, I could, & did, wait for the expected reward of my patience; but there is no enduring to expose my own sincerity to suspicion, & above all, to pain your feelings, for the sake of a formality. Having felt & expressed this, warmly,—& being permitted to “do as I like”, I will be at Ruby Cottage on the earliest day I can,—ready to receive your “at home” or to submit to your “not at home”, just as you may be inclined to be forgiving or the contrary. I do hope you may not leave Malvern, & that this interview may be the first of many agreable ones. It will give me great pleasure to be introduced to Mrs & Miss Boyd,—&, with regard to yourself, I need not say how sincerely glad I shall be to lose my unknown correspondent, upon the one condition (the only one I could admit!) of gaining a personal friend.
And, so, you intended to leave me a letter (full of reproaches, of course!) as a legacy? That would have been very hard-hearted—& totally undeserved! You say I might have asked some of our mutual acquaintances to have introduced me to you. I might & would have done so, if I had met you in company with them: but how could I take the liberty of asking persons with whom I am not very intimate, at whose house I have only called four or five times, to go with me a mile off, for the purpose of making such an introduction? [3] I assure you that, until within this fortnight, I had not seen any individual of the family you allude to, for six months.
I am grieved that you should seem hurt at my having passed you on Thursday, & having gone into Sir Charles Knowles’s house. If you knew how strong an impulse almost made me stop the carriage, when I heard of your being so near—& how my courage failed at the idea of introducing myself there, you would not blame my inclinations. I went to Malvern to see our relation Mrs Trant, who, meeting me in the garden, said, that Lady Knowles’s carriage was at the door,—on the point of setting out to Hope End. My mother has been lately suffering from indisposition: & as, on that morning, she was not in a state to receive visitors, without being the worse for the exertion, I went in a hurry to beg they would defer their drive our way.
I hope to be at Ruby Cottage almost as soon as this note,—but as I may possibly be delayed, it shall go. Pray dont be very solemn, & critical, & awful, with me at first! I am not half so brave in conversation as on paper—& you may Dido me, [4] in a moment!
Thank you for the longest letter you ever wrote in your life, & which you did me the honor of addressing to me! It amused me particularly! I might arrest you on several charges of High Treason if I had time, just now. But I have not,—& must,—at least for this morning,—leave the modern Greeks to fight their own battles out, & even Homer (proh pudor!) [5] to be drowned in coniac!
Believe me
very sincerely yours
E B Barrett.
I never did read the Dialogues on matter & spirit.
Do you know Hume’s “sceptical solution of sceptical doubts”? [6] &c &c. I think you cannot!——
How can you libel your poetical tastes as you do? Do you wish to make game of my credulity? Exercise the interminable argumentatives as you will—you will never make me say “I believe Mr Boyd prefers sound to sense”—unless indeed I could add, “Credo, quia impossibile![”] [7]
Thank you for the interesting prolegomena. I like Mr Barker, so far, very much!—— This scribble of mine does not pretend to answer your letter as a whole—but only that irresistible part, dated Thursday!—— I am ashamed of sending such a disjointed hurried scrawl!——
Address, on integral page: Hugh Stuart Boyd Esqr / Ruby Cottage / Malvern Wells.
Publication: EBB-HSB, pp. 25–26.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year 1828 determined from EBB’s reference to the King’s speech.
2. On 20 October 1827, the French, Russian and British fleets took up station off Navarino, intending only a show of strength. However, the Turkish fleet opened fire, the Allied ships returned it, and after a four-hour battle, the Turkish fleet had been badly damaged. In the Speech From The Throne at the opening of Parliament on 29 January 1828, the Lord Chancellor said “a collision, wholly unexpected by His Majesty, took place, in the port of Navarino, between the fleets of the contracting powers and that of the Ottoman Porte. … His Majesty deeply laments that this conflict should have occurred … but he still entertains a confident hope that this untoward event will not be followed by further hostilities” (The Annual Register for 1828, p. 23).
3. i.e., the Trants.
4. i.e., “silence me” (see letter 284).
5. “For shame.”
6. A reference to David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748). Section IV was entitled “Sceptical Doubts concerning the Operations of the Understanding” and Section V “Sceptical Solution of these Doubts.”
7. “I believe, because it is impossible” (Tertullian, De Carne Christi, 5).
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