935. EBB to Fanny Dowglass [1]
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 292–296.
50. Wimpole Street.
March 31. 1842.
My dearest Fanny,
The sight of your letter pricks my heart through! What have you thought of me? What can you have thought of my unkindness, before your kindness, growing too strong for it & yourself, induced you to write to me? I am ashamed—quite cast down before you. And now it is too late to try to prove to you that if you had delayed writing two days, you would have heard from me at last! Every assurance of the kind must look suspicious & of a disreputable aspect!
Nevertheless do believe as far as you can that not without thought, not without love, if without word or sign, this long interval has passed. I love you dearest Fanny & your dear mother affectionately as I ever did: & all that you have told me in your tender forbearing way of your illness & the result it leads to & of your wish to see me—& not to reproach me!—has touched me very nearly. You are ill & going away! May God’s will be accomplished in the fulness of His love– “Yet not alone” [2] —yet not afar! These words will always be true for you in blessing & blessedness while God is truth.
But I had thought, had hoped, you were so well & so much strengthened! I had hoped that your constitution had cast off its bands & freed you into a comparative health which might endure. And now comes this disappointment even as others have done! But dearest Fanny, I must not moan over you who belonging to the family of the Great hearts [3] never moan for yourself—there being indeed far more good cause for the cheerfulness than for the moaning with my dear hopeful friend—& I shall now turn my head backwards & tell you the story you are kindly desirous of hearing about my own tongue-tied self.
In the first place—last summer I was better. The unspeakable agonies of the year before passed as agonies will [4] —it was not the divine will that I shd die so– The latter part of the winter, passed in weakness & depression, yet passed too, & with a certain dreary staleness: & then in the summer, to my own surprise I rallied & was better in health, & caught eagerly at the first possibility of leaving that dread<ful> place. My medical friends & indeed all my other friends wd scarcely admit it to be a possibility,—& I was argued with & persuaded against & talked to in every manner of eloquence to no use. Certainly I may judge now that it scarcely looked like a possibility! I had only just attained to being lifted from the bed to the sofa for an hour in the day without dead fainting fits which were once apprehended to be dangerous: & it did seem like a sort of mania to insist upon travelling two hundred miles for the sake of spending a winter in London, in the state I was in then! [“]Nevertheless,[”] said the medical man, [“]you must take her, if she insists.” You know (in other words) working oneself into a fever through obstinacy, is an evil of evils.
And so, Fanny, if I had died on the road,—dear Dr Scully wd have dedicated to my memory in his secret soul, an epitaph exalting my obstinacies above all obstinacies, even female, he ever had the privilege of knowing.
On the other hand, I was self-justified (applaud my self-righteousness) in the resolve I came to .. not instant thought, as well as through suffering. Apart from the weight which lay day & night upon my body & soul in that miserable place, so that every sound beneath my window was as “the waters going over my soul”, [5] & every separate breath a separate pang—apart from every personal consideration––& yet what a life it was, shut up face to face with the greatest grief of one’s life .. & yet what a life it was, never for a whole year to bear to look even at the sky—& I could not bear it in that place!—but apart from every personal consideration, there was poor Papa, obliged to be in London & his hearth made desolate to him for me & by my means. He had not one daughter with him—to pass the rest which I cannot speak of more even to you—he was dreary for my sake & through me! I felt it all miserably! The change was blessing & blest to me—& I thank the Blessed Giver who when His hand was heaviest, moved it softly in this last Paternal caress!
Moreover the improvement in my health which began last summer has gradually increased rather than diminished– I have grown fatter, stronger .. do not look at all as I did! My voice has come back to me which had fainted to a whisper,—I have not had one attack this winter: & I walk every day from the bed to the sofa where I pass two hours. My impression is, my belief is, notwithstanding the uncertainty of the complaint, that I am essentially better—that I may, if it so please God, praise Him in my life. Ten times a day the thought has touched the very quick of my heart, that if I died, the dearest in the world to me wd be the happier for it, in some manner—able at last to live together. To make an effort therefore to get away & get home was imperative upon me—& whatever the consequences had been to myself personally I never shd have had one regret for what was called my self-willedness. You will understand everything my dearest Fanny, just as it happened.
Well! Papa sent a patent carriage down for me & went himself to Exeter as he was afraid (poor dearest Papa!) to see me set off, but he met me at Exeter & travelled the rest of the way with us. Ten days we spent upon the road. I suffered in the manner that was apprehended by renewed & increased spitting of blood, but not to the extent—& altho’ exhausted day after day to fainting & speechlessness I came into London perfectly alive & inclined to remain so. Indeed I am a marvel to myself for this winter past. The restoration to my family flushed my spirits back to what they never thought to be again—it was the opening of the dungeon to the captive! I looked at the chimney pots & at the smoke-issuing of this London .. all I cd see from my bed .. with the sort of exaltation & half-incredulity with which you have looked at the Alps! I could believe again in a smile!
You are very very kind to care to come & see me. Dearest Fanny—I see nobody– I tell you, heart to heart, that I love you & shrink to see you—the more, not the less, because I love you! Ah—you will understand that.
Angela Owen was in the house not many days ago & she asked earnestly to see me & she is my cousin .. & I loved her much once & love her still at this moment, but I could not see her.
Still .. will it be possible not to see you my dearest dearest Fanny! I think I cannot let you be so near a whole month—or you going away! & not see you! I think I shall not find it possible. Tell me when you come to St Johns Wood, & let us write a little more one to another– Will you answer this letter soon? Will you let my silence be as if it had not been?
For indeed I cannot justify it. At Torquay I thought .. [‘]‘if ever I get to London I will write to her”—and when I was in London & the fatigue had worn away, other reasons arose for “putting off, putting off” .. as is always the way with unkind idle silent people! So I will not apologize! I deliver myself up to you rather, bound hand & foot, to be dealt with according to the measure of your … mercy! ‘Not justice’, dearest Fanny I beseech you.
What makes me most of all ashamed is that you shd have heard I have been writing. Writing .. and not to you!! But as to my writing, it has only been some papers in the Athenæum on literary matters, a slovenly sort of survey of the Greek Christian poets, which I was asked to write .. because perhaps, the Athenæum rejoices in its cruel soul over the confusion of all poets, christian or profane–
You asked me once—& this reminds me of it,—to send you some of my MS poems—but your letter was never read until four or five months after it was written, & when read, the poems, such as they were, lay in a chaos of illegibility & I who only cd read, had no strength to transcribe them. Otherwise believe me I never cd neglect a request of yours—still less one which I cd not receive without an emotion of thankfulness for the affectionate interest it expressed. I will look out .. even now .. for one or two things—if you care <…> to such a late hour, to have them– [6]
Dearest Fanny, tell me a little more particularly of yourself! Have you pain? Is the cough bad? the expectoration returned? Do you sleep at nights? And my dear dear Mrs Dowglass! I recognized her handwriting at once & felt glad through all my shame. Ask her to try to go on loving me. I say “go on” in my vanity, because I thought once in the same, that she did love me a little! Dearest Fanny, may the great God-Love in the Filial Love be with you perceptibly as He must be indeed!—making known to you as the end of suffering, the enjoyment of Him, even as the beginning of wisdom is His fear.
We were concerned for poor Mr Drummond,—in hearing of his loss, which has been generally accounted more sudden than you represent it.
May I ask if it is true that he has united himself to the Puseyite party (as it is called) in the church of England. [7] I lie here separated in the body from all the visible churches—as if almost my gravestone were between me & them–
Ever your as ever
affectionate EB Barrett
commonly called
Ba–
We are all together here—all on earth– I returned early in September last.
Address: Miss Dowglass. / Dr Thompson’s / Albury / Guilford.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: University of Texas.
1. This friend was, like EBB, troubled with health problems, and she spent considerable time in Italy for that reason. The two corresponded in the 1840’s and ’50’s, but none of Fanny’s letters has thus far surfaced. Miss Dowglass is mentioned only indirectly in the voluminous correspondence which EBB conducted with Mary Russell Mitford during that time. From the tone of this and other letters from EBB to Miss Dowglass, one surmises a long and fairly close friendship, probably based on ties between their families, but specific details are lacking.
2. Cf. Numbers, 11:17.
3. In the second part of Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1684), Mr. Great-heart was the guide of Christiana and her children to the Celestial City.
4. i.e., those following the deaths of Sam and Bro.
5. Cf. Psalms, 69:1.
6. Any verses EBB may have sent with this letter are not now preserved with it.
7. Malcolm Henry Drummond had died on 25 March, aged 21. He was the eldest surviving son of Henry Drummond, M.P. (1786–1860), of Albury Park, and his wife, Lady Henrietta Drummond (née Hay, 1783?–1854). Drummond was an enthusiastic adherent of Edward Irving and a co-founder of the Irvingite Church, in which he was ranked as apostle, evangelist and prophet. As he paid for the erection of an Irvingite church in Albury, and remained an active member of the movement almost to the end of his life, his purported union with the Puseyites was obviously just rumour.
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