1791. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 289–290.
[London]
Monday. [23 December 1844] [1]
My dearest Mr Boyd
I wish I had a note from you today—which optative aorist, I am not sure of being either grammatical or reasonable! Perhaps you have expected to hear from me with more reason. Your last note I have turned over & over in my thoughts, feeling almost as uncomfortable in it as I am afraid you do in your new chair. I was sorry that the lumbago should haunt you so pertinaciously; and I was sorry too, that you should have been “evil-entreated” to give four guineas for a piece of furniture which did not suit you. For the first, we must, I believe, wait for the passing of the east wind and of the cold belonging to it. Nobody can flourish much in this weather, I know by experience. But for the chair, .. it is different; & I am not a little vexed with my own part in persuading you to your destruction. Dearest friend,—why did you take the chair, if, upon trial, you felt that it would not suit you? I agree at once that you must know what is most comfortable to yourself– I do not talk in favor of your chair, ‘ex cathedrâ’—I submit like a chairwoman. And I suggest moreover that you shd allow Arabel to ask the people to take it back and make you another according to your own direction, which they could not object to do. My individual opinion, perhaps, is that if you would lean your head backward instead of forward upon your chest, your general health would very much profit by it; & that any slanting back of the chair which permitted this change, would be desirable on account of it. You are not aware how much you droop, in sitting, & how the circulation & the digestion may both be impeded by this continued position. You are, however, aware, that I am infinitely impertinent, & that I ought to sit on the stool of repentance for it, instead of on any chair whatsoever.
I fancied that you would be struck by Miss Martineau’s lucid & able style. She is a very admirable woman—& the most logical intellect of the age, for a woman. On this account it is, that the men throw stones at her, and that many of her own sex throw dirt—but if I begin on this subject I shall end by gnashing my teeth. [2] A righteous indignation fastens on me. I had a note from her the other day, written in a noble spirit, & saying, in reference to the insults lavished on her, that she was prepared from the first, for publicity, & ventured it all, for the sake of what she considered the truth—she was sustained, she said, by the recollection of Godiva. [3]
Do you remember who Godiva was—or shall I tell you? Think of it—Godiva of Coventry, and peeping Tom. The worst & basest is, that in this nineteenth century there are thousands of Toms to one.
I think however, myself, & with all my admiration for Miss Martineau, that her statement & her reasonings on it are not free from vagueness & apparent contradictions– She writes in a state of enthusiasm, & some of her expressions are naturally coloured by her mood of mind & nerve.
May this Christmas give you ease & pleasantness, in various ways, my dearest friend! My Christmas wish for myself is, to hear that you are well! I cannot bear to think of your suffering. Are the nights better? May God bless you. Shall you not think it a great thing if the poems go into a second edition within the twelvemonth? [4] I am surprised at your not being satisfied. Consider what poetry is,—& that four months have not passed since the publication of mine,—& that, where poems have to make their way by force of themselves, & not of name nor of fashion, the first three months cannot present the period of the quickest sale. That must be for afterwards. Think of me on Christmas Day, as of one who gratefully loves you.
Elibet
Address: H S Boyd Esqr / 24. (a) Grove End Road / St John’s Wood.
Publication: EBB-HSB, pp. 272–273.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. This letter is postmarked 24 December 1844; Monday was the previous day.
2. Cf. Matthew 8:12.
4. EBB’s Poems (1844) did not go into a second edition.
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