1790. EBB to Julia Martin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 286–289.
[London]
Wednesday. [18 December 1844] [1]
My dearest Mrs Martin, Hardly had my letter gone to you yesterday, when your kind present & notlet arrived. I thank you for my boots with more than the warmth of the worsted—& feel all their merits to my soul (each sole) while I thank you. A pair of boots or shoes which “cant be kicked off,” is something highly desirable for me in Wilson’s opinion; & this is the first thing which struck her. But the ‘great idea’ ‘á propos des bottes’ [2] which occurred to myself, ought to be unspeakable, like Miss Martineau’s great ideas, .. for I do believe it was, … that I need’nt have the trouble every morning, now, of putting on my stockings.
Well– If I dont blush for myself (which I ought, you will say) I do blush for my thermometer. I am very much surprised at the advantage your’s seems to have over it. Do you mean that your thermometer, early in the morning & out of the sun, & beyond the influence of the fire, never once fell below fifty nine, during these days of severe frost?– Mine was at fifty five early one morning, when the fire had gone out accidentally in the night—& such a thing had not happened to me before for several years– Also it stood at fifty eight during two whole days, not-withstanding the fire. You must be very warmly situated where you are, and if I were you I would remain where the ‘lines have fallen to you,’ [3] & refuse the risk of a change. The vicissitude is trying too– Today it is so hot that I feel inclined to go into the passage for a little air—the thermometer at sixty five,—& the fire all but out. If Wilson had not remonstrated, it wd have been quite out, in fact,—for the heat is oppressive to me, .. & it is from pure love to you that I am wearing your boots. Such pretty boots! and fitting me to the extreme degree!– How kind of you, dearest Mrs Martin!
My voice is thawing too with all the rest. If the cold had lasted I shd have been dumb in a day or two more—& as it was, I was forced to refuse to see Mrs Jameson (who had the goodness to come again) because I could’nt speak much above my breath. But I was tolerably well & brave upon the whole– Oh—these murderous English winters!– The wonder is, how anybody can live through them.
I had a letter from Eliza Giles this morning, & she speaks cheerfully of herself & her mother & her dog Tiney, & honorably of her “kind husband” [4] —& she says that Mrs Best is elated just now, by the queen dowager having commanded a dedication to herself, of the new work called ‘Six thousand years ago,’ which was shown to her majesty in manuscript. There was no solicitation on the author’s part– Majesty improvised the grace without any prompting. It is very long since I looked at anything written by Mrs Best,—& what I remember, was so like the literature of the tracts, (not of Oxford) that it did not incline me to read more in the same relation—but she may have improved perhaps– [5]
Eighteen or twenty thousand pounds, left to the Baroness by Mr Wall, [6] .. instead of the five thousand a year, we heard of! so says Eliza Giles. And speaking of money, did I tell you, or Mr Martin, that Rogers the poet at eightythree or four years of age, bore the bankrobbery with the light hearted bearing of a man ‘young & bold’—went out to dinner two or three times the same week, & said witty things on his own griefs. [7] One of the other partners went to bed instead,—& was not likely, I heard, to “get over it”– I felt quite glad & proud for Rogers. He was in Germany last year,—& this summer, in Paris—but he first went to see Wordsworth at the Lakes. It is a fine thing when a light burns so clear down into the socket,—is’nt it? I, who am not a devout admirer of the ‘Pleasures of Memory’, [8] do admire this perpetual youth & untired energy—it is a fine thing, to my mind. Then, there are other noble characteristics about this Rogers. A common friend said the other day to Mr Kenyon—“Rogers hates me, I know. He is always saying bitter speeches in relation to me,—& yesterday he said so & so. But,” he continued, “if I were in distress, there is one man in the world to whom I would go without doubt & without hesitation, .. at once .. & as to a brother––and that man is, Rogers.” Not that I would choose to be obliged to a man who hated me,—but it is an illustration of the fact that if Rogers is bitter in his words, which we all know he is, he is always benevolent & generous in his deeds. He makes an epigram on a man, & gives him a thousand pounds—& the deed is the truer expression of his own nature. An uncommon development of character, in any case!– May God bless you both!–
Your most affectionate
Ba.
Turn the page.
I am going to tell you, in an antithesis, of the popularizing of my poems. I had a sonnet the other day from Gutter Lane Cheapside, [9] .. and I heard that Count D’Orsay [10] has written one of the stanzas of ‘Crowned & Buried’ at the bottom of an engraving of Napoleon, which hangs in his room. Now, I allow you to laugh at my vaingloriousness, & then, you may pin it to Mrs Best’s satisfaction in the dedication to Dowager Majesty. By the way .. no—out of the way,—it is whispered that when Q Victoria goes to Strathfieldsee [11] —(how do you spell it?) she means to visit Miss Mitford—to which rumour, Miss Mitford (being that rare creature, a sensible woman—) says, .. “May God forbid.”
Mr Lough (the sculptor) & his wife dine here today, [12] & Reynolds Peyton & somebody else.
You are to understand the love of all “in full,” sent in every letter. During those cold days, Flush refused to leave my room, even to have his dinner—“it is very bad for him,” they said—“very bad! He shd be turned out into the passage & made to run about there.” Flush looked into my face, & moaned piteously.
Was’nt that understanding? reason? Ask Mr Martin.
Publication: LEBB, I, 221–223 (in part, as [December 1844]).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by internal references.
2. “About nothing; irrelevant.”
3. Cf. Psalms 16:6.
4. Eliza Wilhelmina Giles (née Cliffe, 1810–48), a friend and neighbour from Hope End years who had married in 1844. EBB’s address book of this period shows her living at Waterford.
5. Mary Catherine Best (née Cliffe, died 18 February 1883 at Leamington Priory, aged 81) was the author of Six Thousand Years Ago: or, the Works of Creation Illustrated (1844). Evidently, the request for a dedication was received too late to appear in the 1844 edition, but an undated edition accessed in 1850 by the British Library does contain the following dedication: “To Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Adelaide, This Little Volume, Written with the View of Proving Scripture to be the Basis of Science, is By Especial Permission, Most respectfully Dedicated, by Her Obliged and Dutiful Servant, the Authoress.” Mrs. Best was also the author of Illustration of the Prophecy of Hosea, 1831, (see Diary, p. 110).
6. William Wall of Worcester died on 5 October 1844 at Great Malvern at the age of 79. He was a successful businessman of considerable wealth, derived principally from banking. The reference to the “Baroness” is unclear; an inspection of Wall’s probated will shows that he left all of his estate to members of his immediate family, none of whom was a baroness. Eliza Giles’s source was possibly her sister-in-law, a member of the extended Wall family.
8. Samuel Rogers, The Pleasures of Memory, A Poem (1792).
10. Alfred Guilluame Gabriel, Count D’Orsay (1801–52), a Bonapartist, painter, and sculptor. EBB may have heard this from Kenyon who was acquainted with Lady Blessington, D’Orsay’s great friend.
11. Sic, for Strathfieldsaye. See letter 1762, note 5.
12. John Graham Lough married Mary North (1807–88) in 1832. After the death of EBB’s father, Lough executed a memorial for the Barrett family which is located in the parish church of St. Michael and All Angels in Ledbury.
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