Correspondence

693.  EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 150–153.

Torquay.

May 21st 1839.

My ever dear friend,

I am very very sorry to understand from Arabel that you are not pleased with me for not having noticed even by a message the “three or four” letters which you have written to me. When did you write to me three or four letters? I am conscious of having in my possession only one unanswered letters which I was about to reply to at the end of January when the bad attack came on and prevented my writing at all for a very long time. That was the last writing project in my head!—& if I did not carry it into effect quite as soon as I was able, & as I did write to others, it was because I do know that you are not apt to be made uncomfortable by epistolary silences, & that the pleasure of our correspondence is rather more on my side than yours, notwithstanding your kindest feelings towards me. Lately I have been waiting for your return from Hampstead—& the cause of my sending no message is to be found in my intention of delivering it myself. You think this explanation dull enough. So be it—but pray dont think me ungrateful towards you or forgetful of you,—because, while I am alive, I can never deserve such a reproach; & there is a degree of painfulness in being supposed to deserve it, corresponding to that degree in which I value your regard.

Thank you my dear friend for the very kind opinions you sent me of the stanzas on LEL [1] —& on the care you took to give me pleasure by letting me know Leigh Hunt’s of my poetry generally. Did it strike you that his criticism had two faces—one of them far from being as gracious-looking as the other? “Miss B– sits as a queen” &c &c “but her poetry is too elaborate” &c. [2] Now if “and” were substituted for “but” (and it sounds so much more natural in the place, that I can’t help fancying its not being so an “error in the report”) the first apparently complimentary clause becomes a mere illustration of the objecting second clause. Is Major Campbell, the Calder Campbell who is a poet? [3] Arabel did not say.

I have a confusion of poems running about in my head—a chaos of beginnings & endings & little pieces of middles, which are not likely to end in an Iliad, & so help Atheism to an argument. I shd be glad to be allowed to get them (not in the character of an Iliad) into some little nutshell of my own—but Dr Barry insists upon my not writing, and as you taught me passive obedience a long time ago I have been practising it like a St Aylmer [4] —not that I mean to do so all this summer, if it pleases God to spare me through it. I ought to say with a deep felt thanksgiving, how much better I am—wonderfully better to everybody who saw, & most of all to myself who felt, the manner in which I seemed to hang by a thread between life & death, & for two months at a time, the latter half of the past winter. The weakness was excessive—& indeed I have not even tried to stand up, since January—but everything is “in good time” Dr Barry says,—& it is planned for me to go upon the sea before the present week closes, which would be a “vision of delight” [5] for me if it were not for the fatigue. It was a true kindness in you my dear friend, to warn me of not suffering my natural affection (so naturally strengthened by the tenderness of some most dearly beloved) to bind me down too closely to the earth. The exercise of love, even of human love, is a suggester of God—& may God forbid, that what He permits as a suggestion shd be monstrously transfigured into an intervention, by the heart of His creature. Not that my heart has not often so transfigured it! I know that it has! Pray for me that it may not again! It is a foul sin, to sin by love, against Love!—even as if we used the mystic faces of the cherubim which enshadowed the Jewish altar,––the lion’s the bull’s & the eagle’s faces––to bow down before the beast, & blaspheme the altar’s God.

Do try to remember that you have not written three or four unanswered letter to me yet—& write one as soon as you can. I was glad to hear of your excursion to Hampstead, [6] —& hope that it made you fancy yourself two years old again—although as to the question of your settling there, it seems pleasanter for us in Wimpole Street that you should not entertain it. You see while you are fancying yourself two years old, my fancy is suggesting to me a renewal of our old intercourse,—and how many cups of coffee & pages of Gregory you & I are still likely to discuss. But “all goeth but Goddis’ will” according to the ancient verse [7] —and the fulfilment of God’s will is better, yes, & happier, than all that goes.

Arabel often mentions you in the long letters her long affection makes me so grateful for. It has been very very trying & disappointing to me never to have seen her all these months—and dreary ones they have been to me. But now, being in the summer & the sunshine, I would rather think of pleasures to come than of sadnesses past—and I am willing to believe that no obstacle in the common course of things can keep us apart much longer. My dearest Papa has visited me again & again—but I want Arabel—& I long to be tied fast to him & her & all of them––so that the words “we” & “us” may be used in their dear home sense. If I had my own way I shd be in London by this time,—before this time. I have not my own way—& everybody fancies that I could not yet bear the removal—and so there is no use in kicking against the goad.

Upon consideration I begin to be of opinion that a gynocracy [8] is the next best thing to a republic—and I do not despair of you, a thinking man, being at one with me in this opinion,—notwithstanding your favorite project for the future of which Arabel has told me––the combination-government,––consisting of the Pope’s head & Mr O’Connell’s tail. By the way, until I was assisted to it by your ready memory, I never for a moment suspected Dryden of loitering in Mr O’Connell’s verses. [9] Certainly they had been “agitated” enough, to shake Dryden out of them—to say nothing of the “emancipation” from metres & meaning!—— Do let me ask one more question, notwithstanding this long letter. When Popery becomes the state-religion of England, is it to stand? [10] —or may we look forwards to a little Mohammadism and Heathenism?– Answer this—and believe that I balance my misfortune of being “a female and a whig,” by the abundance of truth with which I remain

Your affectionate friend,

E B Barrett.

Poor Mr Barker! I felt so very sorry and memory-struck in hearing of his death. [11] Have you heard any details?

Not knowing who is with you at present, I can send my remembrances to nobody.

Address, on integral page: H S Boyd Esqr / 3. Circus Road / St John’s Wood / London.

Publication: EBB-HSB, pp. 231–233.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. “L.E.L.’s Last Question,” printed in The Athenæum, 26 January 1839 (no. 587, p. 69).

2. We have been unable to locate the source of these comments.

3. They were one and the same. Major Robert Calder Campbell (1798–1857), who was in the service of the East India Company from 1817 to 1836, was the author of The Palmer’s Last Lesson, and Other Poems (1838). The Athenæum described him as a graceful writer of minor prose and poetry.

4. Presumably a reference to John Aylmer (1521–94), Bishop of London, the tutor of Lady Jane Grey and an opponent of the doctrine of transubstantiation. He was of an “arbitrary and unconciliatory disposition” (DNB), and his uncompromising zeal in enforcing the laws and orders of the church made him unpopular with both Papists and Puritans. His enemies made trouble for him at the court of Elizabeth I, and he attempted to secure translation to the see of Winchester or Ely. He was unsuccessful in this, and had to endure continued attacks.

5. Blake, The Four Zoas: Night the Seventh (1797), line 276.

6. Probably to see his old friend and mentor, Mr. Spowers.

7. EBB used this quote as the motto for “An Island” in The Seraphim. In letter 619 she said it was from “an old poet whose antiquity has buried his name.”

8. i.e., petticoat government (OED).

9. We have been unable to trace any published verses by O’Connell.

10. See letter 484, note 2.

11. Barker, Boyd’s friend and EBB’s one-time correspondent, had died on 21 March. He had engaged in litigation to establish his claim to the family estates; this ruined him, and he died in poverty. A lengthy obituary notice appeared in The Gentleman’s Magazine (May 1839, pp. 543–547).

___________________

National Endowment for the Humanities - Logo

Editorial work on The Brownings’ Correspondence is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This website was last updated on 3-28-2024.

Copyright © 2024 Wedgestone Press. All rights reserved.

Back To Top