Correspondence

620.  EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 21–22.

[London]

Monday morning. [26 March 1838] [1]

My dear friend,

I do hope that you may not be very angry,—but Papa thinks and indeed I think that as I have already had two proof sheets of forty eight pages, and the printers have gone on to the rest of the poem, it would not be very welcome to them if we were to ask them to retrace their steps. Besides I would rather—I for myself, I—that you had the whole poem at once and clearly-printed before you, to insure as many chances as possible of your liking it. I am promised to see the volume completed in three weeks from this time,—so that the dreadful moment of your reading it, I mean the Seraphim part of it, cannot be far off; and perhaps, the season being a good deal advanced even now, you might not on consideration wish me to retard the appearance of the book except for some very sufficient reason. I feel very nervous about it—far more than I did, when my Prometheus crept out the Greek, or I myself out of the shell, in the first Essay on Mind. Perhaps this is owing to Dr Chambers’s medicines! or perhaps to a consciousness that my present attempt is actually, & will be considered by others, more a trial of strength than either of my preceding ones.

Thank you for the books! and especially for the editio rarissima, which I should as soon have thought of your trusting to me, as of your admitting me to stand with gloves on, within a yard of Baxter. [2] This extraordinary confidence shall not be abused.

I thank you besides for your kind enquiries about my health. Dr Chambers did not think me worse yesterday, notwithstanding the last cold days which have occasioned some uncomfortable sensations—and he still thinks that I shall be better in the warmer season. In the meantime he has ordered me to take ice—out of sympathy with nature I suppose,—and not to speak a word,—out of contradiction to my particular, human, feminine nature!

Whereupon I revenge myself you see, by talking all this nonsense upon paper & making you the victim.

To propitiate you, let me tell you that your commands have been performed to the letter,—& that one Greek motto (from Orpheus) is given to the First Part of the Seraphim, and another from Chrysostom to the second. [3]

Henrietta desires me to say that she means to go to see you very soon. Give my very kind remembrance to Miss Holmes [4] —& believe me

Your affectionate friend

E B Barrett.

I saw Mr Kenyon yesterday. He has a book just coming out. I shd like you to read it. If you would, you would thank me for saying so!–

Address: H S Boyd Esqr / 3 Circus Road / St John’s Wood.

Publication: LEBB, I, 57–58 (as 27 March 1838).

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Letter was postmarked 27 March 1838, which fell on a Tuesday.

2. Richard Baxter (1615–91), best known for The Saints’ Everlasting Rest (1650), and his Paraphrase of the New Testament (1685), which resulted in his being tried and imprisoned on the charge of libelling the Church.

3. The two mottoes selected by EBB were, respectively, “Σῳ δε θρονῳ τυροεντι παρεστασιν πολυμοχθοι Αγγελοι” (“Long-suffering angels stand by the fiery throne,” Fragmenta, III, 9–10, in Hermann’s 1805 edition of Orphica) and “Ετερως γαρ ουκ οιδα φιλειν, αλλ ᾽η μετα του και την ψυχην εκδιδοναι την εμαυτου” (“For otherwise I do not know how to love, except that I also surrender my life,” from St. John Chrysostom).

4. As letter 551 indicates that Boyd knew Mrs. Mary Anne Holmes, this was probably her sister-in-law. Repeated references to her suggest that she was caring for Boyd in some way, perhaps as housekeeper, now that his daughter was no longer living with him.

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