721. EBB to Julia Martin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 216–217.
Torquay–
Thursday [ca. 1840] [1]
My dearest Mrs Martin,
I cannot delay offering to you & dear Mr Martin our true & affectionate sympathy upon the loss you have sustained, & which I am but too sure must grievously have affected you. May the God of all consolation who comforts by teaching us the meaning of affliction, have consoled & be consoling you & more & more day by day. The blessed consciousness of having been enabled to surround an object so beloved with every token of love, & comfort desirable from love, to the last hours of life will be strong with you & very reviving. When you can write without jarring any painful feeling, do let me hear from you,—& say particularly how dear Mr Martin is. [2]
I had heard of the sad illness—but only when it was hopeless & within a few days of the end. There wd have been a selfish want of consideration for you in writing to you then—altho’ I have longed ever since to lay my sympathy beside you.
There was something too about Miss Hanford’s illness. How is she? Tell me when you do write. It has come into my head at moments that she & you might all come together here for a little time. The climate might reestablish her strength—& the change wd do you and Mr Martin good—& the sight of you wd do good to me—for I must find room for that little bit of selfishness.
And I do so the more willingly because it goes to prove what I wd have you believe at all times but now more than usual, how very truly I regard you.
This is no answer to your kind letter long ago,—except in the spirit of it. I am tolerably well—not worse, nor essentially better. Bummy & both my sisters desire to be united in love to you—& ever believe me dearest Mrs Martin
Your affectionate
Elizabeth B Barrett
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. This letter must have been written some time between the end of November 1839 (i.e., after letter 718) and June 1840, when Bummy left Torquay.
2. We cannot clarify the loss EBB speaks of; the reference to Mr. Martin suggests that it might have been the death of one of his three sisters.
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