1372. EBB to Julia Martin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 311–313.
[London]
Sept. 4th 1843. finished Sept. 5th
My dearest Mrs Martin, Since it wd really give you any sort of pleasure to hear from me I will not wait a day before I write,—having waited many under a different impression. I knew how painfully you were occupied, & feared that ‘all the uses of this world’ might seem to you weary & unprofitable, [1] inclusively of such letters as I could write! and this not from a doubt of your kindness, but because of my sympathy with your anxiety—because I knew that when a deep anxiety is written us, everything else falls into a parenthesis, & becomes, for the time, apart from our interests. Your dear invalid [2] is however better for the time, .. tranquil I am happy to hear,—& I hope earnestly without much suffering—and even if you have not the blessing of much steady hope for a complete restoration, dearest Mrs Martin, you have satisfaction & cause for thankfulness, as you admit, in the serenity of her actual state. Is she confined to her bed? or only to the sofa? The changes of the weather from cold to heat, scarcely seasonable cold, & more than seasonable heat,—are trying to an invalid under her circumstances– We have been very hot within these few days—and I am quite rejoicing in having the thermometer back this morning to 66 instead of the 78 of the day before yesterday—and hoping besides that the tremblingness of your handwriting, which I shake my head over, might have been caused in some degree by the heat which has passed away, but while it lasted, was likely enough to render your deep anxiety & long watches more overcoming to your nerves than they necessarily would be in another temperature.
Dearest Mrs Martin––it is useless speaking—you will not mind me! and yet I cant help entreating you not ‘to spend & be spent’ quite & altogether in devotion upon your poor invalid! Remember how you owe yourself, nerves, spirits, & all, to Mr Martin—& how if you are worn out, there will be no re-making you,—you will put yourself out of your own power to re-excite & let your wings grow again as guardian angel! Do walk out .. were it only to walk in again .. & struggle against being unduly depressed. And this I say, moved to it by the sight of your trembling letters, & a certain repressed tone which makes me anxious about you. May God bless & comfort & cheer you all. When we are pained to look round, we can look up & hope on. If we suffer, it is some latent good which we suffer—and to believe that it is good, is only believing that God is good.
I have had a great gratification within this week or two in receiving a letter, nay, two letters from Miss Martineau, one of the last strangers in the world from whom I had any right to expect a kindness. Yet most kind, most touching in kindness, were both of these letters—so much so that I was not far from crying for pleasure as I read them. She is very hopelessly ill, you are probably aware, at Tynemouth in Northumberland, suffering agonies from internal cancer, & conquering occasional repose by the strength of opium,—but “almost forgetting” (to use her own words) “to wish for health, in the intense enjoyment of pleasures independent of the body.” She sent me a little work of hers called “Traditions of Palestine”– Her friends had hoped by the stationary character of some symptoms that the desease was suspended—but lately it is said to be gaining ground—& the serenity & elevation of her mind are more & more triumphantly evident, as the bodily pangs thicken.
And now, all this have I written without telling you a word about our—poor dearest Bummie. She bore up better than might have been expected [3] (uncle Hedley told us) and was even able to see some of her Cheltenham friends before she left the place, which she did with poor Arlette for the continent immediately or almost immediately after the last duties were paid. She is now at St Germains from whence Papa heard from her this morning—a brief letter & almost entirely confined to matters of business—but she says that they are living in a very retired manner as is most acceptable to their feelings. She is at an hotel—L’Hotel d’Angleterre. The plan, I gathered from uncle Hedley, was, that she shd remain there for a month or two, & then move into Paris for the winter, where she will be .. probably with the Hedleys; or in any case near them, & under circumstances most favorable for the recovery of her spirits. I say her spirits—but dear Arlette’s is the desolate position– I feel most pitifully for her. She is “desolate,” as she says, poor thing, of herself!– The extraordinary point is her father’s [4] determined absence & silence. Can you conceive, that apprized of the hopeless character of the illness, he answered, at last that he was about to move up the Rhine towards England, naming the towns in a leisurely manner as if he were determining a tour of pleasure; & that not a word has been received from him since.? There is some reason of course—if he is not petrified to the heart—& indeed I do not doubt that there must be some almost sufficient reason. Still, the suspence of what poor Bummy calls “the anguish of rendering up her account of her charge,” is a heavy aggravation of her suffering position; as the silence & separation must be to Arlette’s. By turns I wonder & am angry. He is a kind amiable person, & fond of his family,—without ever having been remarkable for what is called sensibility.
And now I am going to tell you what will surprise you if you do not know it already. Stormie & Georgie are passing George’s vacation on the Rhine!– You are certainly surprised if you did not know it!– Papa signed & sealed them away on the ground of its being good & refreshing for both of them, & I was even mixed up a little—with the diplomacy of it, until I found they were going, & then it was a hard terrible struggle with me to be calm & see them go! But that was childish—& when I had heard from them at Ostend I grew more satisfied again, & attained to think less of the fatal influences of my star. They went away in great spirits—Stormie “quite elated” to use his own words: and then, at the end of the six weeks, they must be at home at Sessions; & no possible way of passing the interim cd be pleasanter & better & more exhilarating for themselves. The plan was to go from Ostend by railroad to Brussels & Cologne, then to pass down the Rhine to Switzerland, spend a few days at Geneva, & a week in Paris as they return. The only fear is that Stormie wont go to Paris. We have too many friends there—a strange obstacle! [5]
Dearest Mrs Martin, I am doing something more than writing you a letter I think.
May God bless you all with the most enduring consolations– Give my love to Mr Martin, & believe also, both of you, in my sympathy. I am glad that your poor Fanny [Hanford] shd be so supported. May God bless her & all of you!
Dearest Mrs Martin’s
affectionate Ba.
I am very well for me—& was out in the chair yesterday.
Address: Mrs James Martin / Woolla’s Hill / near Tewkesbury. [Last word deleted by postal authorities and amended to read Pershore.]
Publication: LEBB, I, 151–152 (in part).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Cf. Hamlet, I, 2, 133–134.
2. Mrs. Hanford.
3. Her niece, Arabella (“Cissie”) Butler, had died on 12 August.
4. Richard Pierce Butler.
5. A reference to Charles John’s shyness. In letter 1105, EBB had told Miss Mitford how he was “so unfortunately nervous as to shrink from general society & observation .. to refuse even to dine down stairs when women dine here”.
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