1064. EBB to Catherine Scully
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 182–183.
50 Wimpole Street
Novr 27th 1842–
My dear Miss Scully, [1]
I have been unwilling both to write & to be silent—fearful at once of giving you pain & of appearing negligent in the expression of sympathy. But I do hope that in the case of your having once thought of me, you have understood my silence the right way, & believed that not one of all your friends can have been more affected by your calamity & more earnestly desirous that the Divine Hand which inflicted it, should be as powerful in consoling you as in wounding before– I have prayed for you & yours—& I have felt for you very truly—and I know well by a bitter experience in loss & anguish, how bitterly you have felt. May God bless you! & comfort you! Be sure that I shall preserve an undiminished interest in the welfare of you all.
For my own personal part it wd be unbecoming to speak of my regrets by the side of yours: and yet I may say that only one association with Torquay had remained to me clear of bitterness & pleasant through kindness, .. & that now it remains so no longer,—that pain has touched it also, & darkened it like the rest.
I hope with the whole earnestness of my heart, that neither Mrs Scully’s health nor your sister’s [2] nor your own has much suffered in your great unhappiness,—& that you will gradually recover that degree of cheerfulness which is consistent with the conviction of God’s will being best & wisest even when it works our bereavement– Presently, in the new world to which we all are so near, we shall account, perhaps, the misfortunes we suffered here, as the chiefest of the divine blessings,—& thank God first for our tears.
Dear Miss Scully, believe in the sympathy & regards of all in this house, besides in those of
your affecte friend
Elizabeth Barrett Barrett–
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: John Rylands University Library.
1. Catherine Scully (1803-76), eldest daughter of Dr. William Scully (1778-1842), who had died on 5 November, and his wife, Anna Sophia (née Rose, 1771-1846).
2. Anne Harriett Scully (1807–82).
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