1892. EBB to Julia Martin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 172–175.
50 Wimpole Street
April 26 1845.
My dearest Mrs Martin,
After one word of thanks to you for your welcome & agreeable letter, & one thought of envy turned over my shoulders towards the Pyrenees, from my sofa, I make haste to tell you that our dear Ægyptians, if not at their father’s house, are on their country’s shores, & about to endure the agonies of quarantine in a creek in the Thames. A hundred & ten days have they been struggling with ‘head winds’,—& the progress, something like that immortal snail’s, which used to put me to pain in my “Compound Division” days of unallieviable arithmetic!– Shirts worn out, & stockings, are the consequences—they wrote most forlornly from Plymouth,—& Stormie seemed half inclined to do the rest of the voyage in a steamer. But no—there has been a vain appeal to the Board of Trade. Because flax is in the ship, they are afraid of the plague, notwithstanding the hundred days intermission, & nobody is to be permitted to leave her until the quarantine be fully kept at the London Lazaretto. [1] And so they are waiting for the east wind to give them leave of departure from Plymouth—& we cannot hope to see them face to face for above a fortnight. But I have no breath to complain, I am so relieved. I was growing restless at nights, & when the wind blew, as you went away,—only far less generally unhappy than I thought I should be. It is strange. And just after you went, we had letters from them from Carthagena, [2] .. where they had been forced to put in, having been driven round & round so circularly, that, after leaving Alexandria on the first of January, they were off Sicily early in March!—the consequence of which was that they were out of provisions & water & had to be put on allowance. So they touched at Carthagena to take in supplies, & left letters for us which saved us great anxiety. What should we have done to have waited all this time in silence? And although the letters were so expressive of disaster & delay, they were written in great spirits, & spoke of nothing more melancholy than of the death of my gazelle by a broken leg, & the thinness of Resolute, Henry’s great dog, who when they went away was “tout rond,” [3] —something like Flush! Thus, you see, the long waiting was broken through—and the arrival at Plymouth (where they had to put in after all—after having come up the channel to Beachy head [4] ) arrested our hope-sickness from going too far. They are well & blythe, tho’ raging against Boards of Trade in general. I know that you will be glad for us & them. And now I may reiterate my most disinterested opinion that the whole scheme was full of foolishness, & not by any means good for as much as it has cost. If they had landed in Sicily, it wd have been different: but to be shut up for six months in a small merchant’s vessel away from all the civilities of life,—where was the advantage? Tell Mr Martin I could argue it with him for an hour—& then he might argue my side for me with somebody else. I know he must think with me at the bottom.
We have been shocked by very melancholy news from Ireland,—the sudden death, .. in her confinement, .. of Laura Chaloner, [5] Lady Butler’s daughter who married only last year. We have heard no particulars, only the fact,—& I am thinking with great compassion of the poor mother & father & husband. Happily for me I never saw her—& even Henrietta & Arabel only did so once & for five minutes: & that was last year, in her first bridal joy, poor thing! So joyous, they say she was! Dear Bummy will be affected to hear it,—only she cannot, I think, know very much of her.
How glad I am that upon the whole you are doing well with your excursion; which, as a theory, was so right & wise. We have had an almost unbroken sweep of east winds, except for the last two days,—but our weather has lately been bright & hot, & I have recovered a little of my strength lost in the cold. In a day or two, if the wind keeps peaceable, I shall be getting down stairs, & trying to push out of my shell a little. Ah—but if you knew what a body I have! Nobody knows. Nobody knows what it is to have so much vital will in one, & such a deathly impotence all round it– But certainly I feel stronger when I stand up, than I did two months ago when I tried,—& the heart will get right again I suppose.——
I am very sorry to say that poor Lady Margaret Cocks [6] is unwell with some affection of the chest of which she speaks rather despondingly. She is in Lower Berkeley Street & wrote to propose to come to see me,—& then, again, to speak of her cough, & how she cd not come,—& how her illness must “at best be a lingering one.” I am very sorry,—only hopeful that she may speak rather from low spirits than from the unexaggerated state of the case. With any tendency to such an affection how cd she think of living at Malvern? She might as well build a cottage under a Upas tree. [7] Did you hear that she had been unwell? I have written to Miss Commeline, but did not hear in reply. Mrs Deane’s [8] letters I have for you. Thank you for letting me see them.
I have had heaps of letters since I saw you yourself—& most of them pleasant enough. Sometimes when I consider that the very same people who write kindnesses to me might write malice hatred & all uncharitableness just with the same ease & by the same opportunity .. it makes me think more brightly of the world. Nobody has pleasure in writing to tell me that I’m a detestable poet—& if the misanthropists were justified, certainly somebody would. Would’nt they now? Many must think so. And even if they did’nt, there wd be a temptation to say so. I begin to think it the next ‘best of all possible worlds,’ [9] after all. I have had the kindest letters from Mrs Sigourney, the American poetess .. & from Mr Lowell of Boston—& from Mrs Coleridge, the poet’s daughter, [10] —besides those from “uneducated young men” behind counters &c, which give me a feeling scarcely less pleasant for being so different. Miss Martineau has written twice, in two succeeding days, & sent me violets gathered herself in the Birmingham lanes. [11] She is perfectly well,—better, she says, than she ever felt in her life before, .. but indignant to the utmost degree with the Athenæum. By the way, try to see the few last numbers of the Ath. & read how the controversy has been continued. You will find it, I imagine, at Pau. [12] She says (that is, in her letter to me) there are three cases of clairvoyance in Birmingham, & the question of Mesmerism floats victoriously down the stream everywhere.
Here I end! May God bless you dearest Mrs Martin. With my love to Mr Martin,
I remain your ever affectionate Ba–
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. The brothers eventually arrived home in early May; see letter 1905.
2. An historic seaport in S.E. Spain.
3. “Quite plump.”
4. A prominent point on the south coast of Sussex, 3 miles S.W. of Eastbourne.
5. Laura Mary Chaloner (née Butler), the fourth daughter of Sir Thomas Butler, had married Robert Chaloner in February 1844. The Barretts had news of her death as early as 22 April and went into mourning (Surtees, 22 April 1845).
6. Lady Margaret Cocks’s address is given as 4 Lower Berkeley Street in EBB’s address book (see vol. 9, p. 386). The London Directory for 1845 gives this as the residence of Admiral and Hon. Mrs. James W. Deans Dundas, M.P. for Greenwich.
7. i.e., in a place where nothing good could happen, after the fabled Javanese tree, the juice of which contains a poison.
8. The wife of the Rev. Thomas Dean, Curate of St. James’s Church, Colwall, near Hope End. (See Diary, p. 12n.) EBB consistently misspells the name. For EBB’s letter to Miss Commeline, see no. 1876.
10. EBB had mentioned these letters to Kenyon in letter 1884.
11. Letters 1883 and 1886.
12. In S.W. France, known in the nineteenth century as a health resort.
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