909. EBB to Thomas Westwood
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 234.
50, Wimpole Street,
Feb. 5, 1842.
Dear Sir,
I fear to think what inference, unjust to my sense of your kind attention, you may have drawn from my silence. But an invalid with the reading and writing upon her hands, which seem to come to me by nature, may be forgiven perhaps, if she asks it humbly. I assure you I was and am very thankful to you for the gift of your poems [1] although the gentleman who brought them may have thought hardly of me for neither consenting to see him nor even to trust him with a note. The note I would not write until I was properly qualified to be fully grateful by reading the book, and the miserable health, or rather lack of it which, even now that I am beyond expectation better, prevents me from leaving my bed-room—shuts me out from the sight of all faces except those of my immediate friends. I hope, therefore, you will not think worse of me altogether than is absolutely necessary. I mean to try to learn humility of you, and indeed it seems to me that you have a good deal to give away among your fellow poets generally. Your book is graceful and fragrant with that feeling for the beautiful, which is beautiful in itself.
It is invidious, or is it? to praise one poem rather than another, but we all do so, and my pencil has marked my favourites. I like, among others, that song with the pretty wild measure, about the summer, and the song to spring about the “bright-vein’d flowers” (a happy epithet) [2] .... but all this is too long.
With a warm sense of the kindness of what you say of my poetry, which of course is heightened by what I have learnt, through this book, of the value of your opinion.
Believe me, dear sir,
Sincerely yours,
Elizabeth Barrett.
Publication: None traced.
Source: Kenyon Typescript, British Library.
1. Westwood’s Poems (1840) formed lot 1206 of Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A2446).
2. “An Expostulation to Summer on Her Premature Departure” (pp. 77–79) and “A Song of Spring” (pp. 163–168).
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