1641. EBB to Thomas Westwood
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 36.
[London]
Friday– June 28. 1844.
My dear Mr Westwood,
I have certainly & considerably increased the evidence of my own death, by the sepulchral silence of the last few days. But after all I am not dead, … not even at heart, .. so as to be insensible to your kind anxiety, … and I can assure you of this, upon very fair authority. Neither is the book dead … yet. It has turned the corner of the felo de se, [1] —and if it is to die, it will be by the critics. The mystery of the long delay, it wd not be very easy for me to explain notwithstanding. I hear, Mr Moxon says … “I suppose Miss Barrett is not in a hurry about her publication”——and I [2] say … “I suppose Mr Moxon is not in a hurry about the publication.” There may be a little fault on my side, .. when I have kept a proof a day beyond the hour—or when “copy” has put out new buds in my hand as I passed it to the printer’s. Still, in my opinion, it is a good deal more the fault of Mr Moxon’s “not being in a hurry,” than in the excessive virtue of my patience or vice of my indolence. Miss Mitford says, as you do, that she never heard of so slow-footed a book. Perhaps it comes fast enough for its greeting to come. The second volume is not many sheets now from its conclusion .. and I grow anxious, .. & am certainly very tired besides .. though not ill.
I thank you my dear Mr Westwood for your enquiry—& the interest it expresses. I set, really, a value on your thoughts of kindness.
Very truly yours
Elizabeth B Barrett.
Publication: LEBB, I, 175–176 (in part).
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. “Self-destruction; suicide.”
2. Underscored three times.
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