2488. EBB to Julia Martin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 13, 164–166.
[London]
Wednesday. [15 July 1846] [1]
My dearest Mrs Martin, who are half angry with me still! Let me say that if I were to choose a fête day, it might be Innocents Day. [2] I certainly thought that you were travelling about, & certainly did not think that you were anxious & suffering. Then you had promised me to write, & I had expected it, & was vexed accordingly.
But to leave this agreeable subject of our sins, I will tell you that you quite mistook my phrase about sensible people .. quite .. & that I was far from depreciating & despairing what is a rare quality either in man or woman. Why how could you think me so silly as to despise sensible people? On the contrary! I like & admire & look up to them. Good sense arises from a nice balancing of the general powers .. does it not? It is rare, I think.
As to Mr Bevan, it is the moment for speaking of him, for I have seen him today. Mrs Hedley brought him up stairs to introduce him to me, & (thought I to myself) “I will keep away from the subject of ecclesiastical architecture”——because, you see, ecclesiastical architecture is his subject, & by no means mine, & then it is guarded by the Dragon of Puseyism, by no means my pet Dragon. Vain are human resolutions. Three minutes after I had resolved so, I was up to the chin in ecclesiastical architecture & up to the shoulders in Puseyism. Yet the man has a sensible mouth & eyes & even nose, & he talked as well as such things can be talked—& his manner is gentlemanly—& altogether he seems a cultivated person. I like him certainly. He has a good look in his face– I shall try some other day whether he can talk of anything besides ecclesiastical architecture. I am inclined to like him very much indeed—yet I do not expect much thought in him—original thinking is not in him, I fancy. But he will make no less a good husband for that—and I admire both Arabella & her mother for choosing a good true intelligent man rather than a rich man—I think the better of both of them for it. Mrs Hedley is quite radiant with contentment. As to Arabella .. I thought you knew of the former business .. it was a short engagement, but a mere fancied preference, I think .. such as a very young girl might experience without discredit. She is a sweet, affectionate creature, I do not at all doubt—& her prospects seem as bright as her eyes .. not too wrong either in the simile.
As for romance .. we will not quarrel about it .. particularly as you admit ‘old romance,’ which is as good to me as any new in the world. After all perhaps, we do not disagree to a great extent—you do not think for instance that marriage as it exists on all sides of us, is a better, happier, holier condition per se than a single life. You do not deny it to be an abomination, .. & not marriage in the right sense, at all. Well! Having such a fixed idea, it must be lawful to be ‘romantic,’ in order to the working of it out. To accept life with its conventions as to small & indifferent things, may be right .. & is wise perhaps. I should wear my mantilla like the rest of the world, & dot my is after the fashion of men. [3] But woe unto the woman or the man who takes the world’s customs into the heart & conscience, into the sensibility & ideality– Do you not think so? Of course I am talking quite generally on this word romantic——although if you like it I will talk particularly, & say that of the two or three married women whom I have called happy in my life, you are one. It is the happiest condition, when attained—& highest too—who denies that? All this I talk to you because Mr Martin is away. I assure you it is a subject on which I have thought a good deal– Now laugh! I let you! Just because Mr Martin is away, you are out of spirits, & discourse about your “body & mind,” .. as you would not do otherwise, if you were eighty!—— Is’nt it true now? Dearest Mrs Martin!–
Well! I write nonsense sometimes as if I had not a care in the world—and if you could see me through & through at this moment, you would wonder how I could write lightly at all. The truth of me is, that I have naturally a melancholy heart & a merry mind, & that one mocks at the other. Before the year is at an end, too, what with pleasure & pain & the extra glory of walking to Queen Ann’s Street, I may go mad perhaps like other people. Yet no–
Shall you have flowers in the autumn, after all? Shall you stay all the summer & autumn at Colwall? I am glad that dear Mr Martin is so well.
When I told you of dear Bummy being depressed, I left room for telling you (& avail myself of it now) that she is much better since she has been here .. which is delightful to witness. Arlette is a sensible, feeling, pleasing girl—did I tell you?– I like her.
May God bless you–
Ever I am your affectionate
Ba.
Publication: None traced.
Source: The Karpeles Manuscript Library.
1. Dated by EBB’s reference to “Mr. Bevan” (see letters 2484 and 2485).
2. 28 December is the day set aside in the Christian calendar to commemorate Herod’s massacre of first-born male children.
3. Cf. Julius Caesar, I, 3, 34.
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