Correspondence

491.  EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 105–106.

Sidmouth.

Saturday evening. [November 1834] [1]

My dear friend,

I did not complain even within myself of any unkindness in your silence, and can easily understand that you may have received many letters besides mine, to which you might have a painful reluctance to reply. Therefore, pray never think of writing to me because you fancy that you ought to write, instead of, because you feel that you would like to write to me.

I took your letter today to Mr Harvey, & read the passage which refers to him. He said that he had not received the money transmitted by you to Mr Bagster, [2] —& that, Mr Bagster having received it, you should apply to him for the receipt.– I am so glad to hear of the favorable reviews. Except one in the Athenæum, [3] I have seen none of them. May the countenances of all your reviewers & readers be bright upon your book; and (am I not liberal?) I will excuse them from frowning even over certain preliminary sentences which I myself once frowned over so blackly. But you have forgiven that frown of mine, have you not my dear friend?——

I send the parcel which looks the most like your Select Passages: and you ought to praise me for sending them instantly. That will prove, will it not?—that I have not forgotten you.

As you have resolved upon remaining at your present house until March, I conclude that you and dear Annie are satisfied with it. Does Mrs Mathew often go to see you? I hope she does,—and that you have other congenial & comforting society. You do not say how you feel within yourself. May all my wishes respecting you be realities!–

I could tell you a great deal about the state of the religious parties here,—& how Mr Bradney & a new chapel are standing midway between Episcopacy & Dissent. What the ultimate leaning will be I dare not presume to say: but, you know, I always think as I like!–– The Baynes’s are at Malvern: poor Harriet, I fear, ill again. But the rod of the Divine Chastener blossoms with His love!

This is a hurried letter, which you will be more glad to read than a longer one. Give my kind love to dear Annie. I thank her for her postscript, and if Arabel had not written so much at length, & if it had not been now so late, she should have had a few lines from me. You will have sympathized in our anxiety respecting our dear Papa. [4] We cant help being still anxious about him, altho’ the latter accounts have been very satisfactory. May God bless you both.

Yours affectionately

E B Barrett.

Address, on integral page: H S Boyd Esqr

Publication: EBB-HSB, pp. 207–208.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Written after Mrs. Boyd’s death.

2. Samuel Bagster (1772–1851), printer, of Paternoster Row, London, co-published Boyd’s The Fathers Not Papists with John Harvey of Sidmouth.

3. The Athenæum (no. 354, 9 August 1834, pp. 593–594) reviewed The Fathers Not Papists, saying of Boyd that “the discourses he has selected from the neglected store of ecclesiastical literature, have a high value, independently of controversial considerations.”

4. Edward Moulton-Barrett was ill in London. He later wrote to his brother, speaking of a “severe illness” with “water in the Lungs,” and saying that “the medicines I was constrained to take … destroyed for the time all the energy of body & mind & left me sometimes without the power of thought” (SD787).

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