1771. EBB to Julia Martin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 243–246.
50 Wimpole St.
Tuesday. [26 November] 1844. [1]
My dearest Mrs Martin
I thank you much for your little notes; & you know too well how my sympathy answers you, “as face to face in a glass,” [2] for me to assure you of it here. Your account of yourselves altogether, I take to be satisfactory—because I never expected anybody to gain strength very rapidly while in the actual endurance of hard medical discipline. I am glad you have found out a trustworthy adviser at Dover—but I feel nevertheless, that, you may both trust & hope in Dr Bright, [3] of whom I heard the very highest praises the other day. He stands side by side, says Mr Kenyon, with Dr Chambers, & has had the most various practice & experience of almost any. You shd have heard Mr Kenyon praise him. But he has bad health, .. has had it long, .. & went to Italy as much for his own account as on Sir William Follet’s, [4] whom he sent there by the way—& he said to a friend of Mr Kenyon’s the other day, that he shd put him on the same regimen he was observing himself; the same which he recommends in all cases where there is the slightest tendency to an affection of the chest & lungs, .. viz, not to touch either wine or meat for six months. Still, he cant be very ill, as he continues in full activity among his patients.
Now really, I dont know why I shd fancy you to be so deeply interested in Dr Bright, that all this detail shd be necessary. What I do want you to be interested in, is in Miss Martineau’s mesmeric experience, for a copy of which in the last Athenæum, [5] I have sent ever since yesterday, in the intention of sending it to you. You will admit it to be curious as philosophy, & beautiful as composition—for the rest, I will not answer. Believing in mesmerism as an agency, I hesitate to assent to the necessary connection between Miss Martineau’s cure, & the power; and also, I am of opinion that unbelievers will not very generally become converts through her representations. There is a tone of exaltation which will be observed upon—& one or two sentences are suggestive to scepticism. I will send it to you when I get the number. I understand that an intimate friend of her’s (a lady) [6] travelled down from the south of England to Tynemouth, simply to try to prevent the public exposition—but could not prevail. Mr Milnes has, besides, been her visitor. He is fully a believer, she says, & affirms to having seen the same phenomena in the East—but regards the whole subject with horror. This too appears to be Mrs Jameson’s feeling——as you know it is mine. Mrs Jameson came again to this door with a note, & overcoming by kindness, was let in on Saturday last,—& sate with me nearly an hour, .. & so ran into what my sisters call ‘one of my sudden intimacies,’ that there was an embrace for a farewell. Of course she won my affections through my vanity (Mr Martin will be sure to say—so I hasten to anticipate him) & by exaggerations about my poetry—but really, & although my heart beat itself almost to pieces for fear of seeing her as she walked up stairs, I do think I shd have liked her without the flattery. She is very light .. has the lightest of eyes, the lightest of complexions,—no eyebrows .. & what looked to me like very pale red hair—& thin lips of no colour at all. But with all this indecision of exterior, the expression is rather acute than soft; & the conversation in its principal characteristics, analytical & examinative,—throwing out no thought which is not as clear as glass—critical, in fact, in somewhat of an austere sense. I use “austere” of course in its intellectual relation—for nothing in the world cd be kinder, or more graciously kind, than her whole manner & words were to me. She is coming again in two or three days, she says. Yes—and she said of Miss Martineau’s paper in the Athenæum, that she very much doubted the wisdom of publishing it now,—& that for the public’s sake, if not for her own, Miss M. shd have waited till the excitement of recovered health had a little subsided. She said of Mesmerism altogether that she was inclined to believe it, but had not finally made up her convictions. She used words so exactly like some I have used myself that I must repeat them, .. “that if there was anything in it, there was so much, it became scarcely possible to limit consequences, & the subject was awful to contemplate.”.
But now observe, my dearest Mrs Martin, how this subject is making way among the master-minds of the country, & how (where attention has been given to the phenomena) the very doubts expressed are full of belief!– We are to remember that Cuvier & La Place were believers [7] —& that the philosophers of our country & times are passing gradually & with a slow unwillingness, over to the continental persuasion. For my own part I have seen no more than you, only I have heard far more evidence,—and I believe quite against my wishes, being, instead of attracted, infinitely repelled by all the facts. Mr Kenyon told me yesterday that Miss Martineau’s apocalyptic housemaid was declaring events as they happened ten miles off—& that there is an apocalyptic cook at Dover (dont be frightened) who “utters” everything passing in all the neighbouring houses, everyday. If your medical attendant shd be called Sanchy [8] or some name of that sound & another spelling, he can tell you a good deal of the same sort of thing. Now I advise you to smooth out your credulity,—for you will certainly be forced to put it to use in this case, erelong.
On Saturday I had some copies of my American edition, which dazzle the English one,—& one or two reviews, transatlantically transcendental in “oilie flatterie.” [9] And I heard yesterday from the English publisher Moxon—& he was “happy to tell me that the work was selling very well”—& this, without an enquiry on my part. To say the truth, I was afraid to enquire. It is good news altogether. The Westminster Review wont be out till next month.
Wordsworth is so excited about the railroad that his wife persuaded him to go away to recover his serenity—but he has returned raging worse than ever. He says that fifty members of Parliament have promised him their opposition. He is wrong I think—but I also consider that if the people remembered his genius & his age & suspended the obnoxious act for a few years, they wd be right. [10]
George went on circuit today, to return on friday or saturday.
May God bless you both.
Most affectionately your
Ba.
Address: Mrs James Martin / Dover.
Publication: LEBB, I, 216–219 (in part).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Day and month provided by postmark.
2. Cf. I Corinthians 13:12.
3. Probably Richard Bright (1789–1858) who was appointed “Physician Extraordinary” to the Queen in 1837. He had a reputation as one of the leading consultants in London.
4. William Webb Follett (1798–1845) became Attorney-General in April 1844, although soon after, his health forced him to spend time on the continent where he remained until March 1845.
5. The first article in a series by Miss Martineau on her experiences with mesmerism appeared in The Athenæum on 23 November (no. 891, pp. 1070–1072).
6. Unidentified.
7. Georges Léopold Chrétien Frédéric Dagobert, Baron Cuvier (1769–1832) and Pierre Simon, Marquis de Laplace (1749–1827), both scientists. The latter was known as the “Newton of France.”
8. Perhaps William Sankey, a physician in Dover, who is listed in The Medical Dictionary for Great Britain and Ireland, for 1845.
9. We have not located the source of this quotation.
___________________
