1038. EBB to Fanny Dowglass & Frances Dowglass
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 131–132.
[London]
Wednesday– [ca. November 1842] [1]
My dearest Fanny, what can I say? how answer, a note which touched me so directly on the apple of the heart as your last did?– May God bless you comfort you love you with the Love out of which all other love comes & to which it is but faint reflection:—even with the Love which gave Christ Jesus & withholds nothing afterward!– My dearest ever dearest Fanny, my dearest Mrs Dowglass, may God love you even with the love wherewith He loved Christ Jesus when He gave Him to teach love to the world!——
I shall try to be glad that you are going. It is best & wisest, I do not doubt—“and the blue sky bends over all.” [2] In the meantime, take courage my dear dear Mrs Dowglass—& put away all thoughts of this stethoscope & look upward to the place of hope– The stethoscope is not an infallible searcher—that I have ‘heard sain’ [3] by several medical men who trusted much to it: and I know in my own case besides several others, that differences of opinion have been elicited from the very same instrument. Congestion & tuberculation will equally produce unsatisfactory responses—to an ear resting on the stethoscope—& congestion is the much less serious evil. In my own case ‘extensive tuberculation’ was declared by one physician while by two or three others the existence of anything beside congestion has been stedfastly denied, positively denied—& circumstances at present seem quite to confirm the softer judgment. Who is Dr Williams? [4] I almost wish you had seen somebody more “base common & popular” [5] —; I quite wish that you wd both throw aside any submission to the mournfulness of his opinion. Not that you my dearest Fanny, account it as mournfulness—not that you are troubled by any of these things! I know it well! But those who love you are weaker through the love—& even for you who are strong, it is right & reasonable to consider your case correctly & without undue exaggeration.
I leave you in God’s hands—trusting you with him as one of His own beloved. However He may decree it as to your health in the body—your happiness your safety He will care for– His truth is your surety. Love me dear Mrs Dowglass—think of me & pray for me my dear Fanny!—sometimes,—my beloved friend—as one weaker & more erring than yourself yet always your
affectionate, most
affectionate
Ba
I shall hear—shall I not?—when you are abroad, I mean—at the new home?
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Huntington Library.
1. Dated approximately by handwriting and stationery. This letter must fall between letter no. 935 and that dated [ca. June 1843].
2. Coleridge, Christabel (1816), line 331.
3. Cf. Chaucer, The Romaunt of the Rose, line 2969.
4. Charles James Blasius Williams (1805–89), a specialist in disorders of the chest, was one of the founders of the Brompton Consumption Hospital in 1841.
5. Henry V, IV, 1, 38.
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