2628. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 14, 44–46.
Pisa.
Novr 19 [1846] [1]
My dearest Mr Boyd I do not know whether you have expected to hear from me, but certainly I expected to write to you long before this. Silent or speaking however, I have borne with me a constant remembrance of & gratitude for your sympathy & goodness to me,—and in looking back through all these thick vapours of dreamland to the friends whom I best love in England, your name stands among the very first. Indeed I seem to be living in a dream—life is so different to me from what it ever was. Can it be possible, I think to myself, that creatures on this side the grave, can be so happy? I am very happy, very strangely happy, in every possible respect except in the anger left behind where I do not like to think of it—but here, the constant companionship & tenderness of the best & most gifted of human beings, has transfigured life to me. No woman was happier in her choice—no woman. And after above two months of uninterrupted intercourse, there is still more & more cause for thankfulness, .. & more & more affection on his side. He loves me better everyday, he says .. & indeed I believe. Thank God for me that He should let me be so happy, .. & “according to Lowth’s version” “smile a little, before I go hence to be no more seen.” [2] If the world ended for me at this moment, I may now say the grace of life with satisfied lips, having tasted so much of its sweetness. It was worth the endurance & even the survival of all my trials, to have lived these last two months—so much do I thank God for them. My health improves still, too.
We saw Nôtre Dame in Paris, & the wonderful cathedral at Bourges, where the painted glass windows (of which the secret is lost) tortures the sun into giving out solemn & glorious oracles. We had a delightful journey through Provence, in the very steps of the Troubadours, to Marseilles—and made a pilgrimage from Avignon, to the fountain of Vaucluse where Petrarch lives still, through the strong memory of the great scholar & poet. The fountain, shut up in everlasting walls of rock, is full of beauty .. the little river flashing from it like a green singing-bird,—& we sate upon stones, in the middle of the water till Flush dashed through it to look for me. As to Pisa, it is a majestic, silent city, built of marble & backed by the purple mountains. We like it very much, & have rooms in an ancient college built by Vasari, & close to the gorgeous Duomo, the Campo Santo, & Leaning Tower. I am able to walk out every day through the mildness of the climate, & to sit in the sun to watch the lizards—and the other morning Robert caught me a gigantic gras[s]hopper, exactly like Anacreon’s. [3] For the rest, we see nobody, but read & write & talk & never are tired of those three things. Sometimes too, we talk of you, and I teach my husband my affection for you, which cannot be a difficult lesson– Do think of us together as of two persons who have reason to love you gratefully. For me, the last sympathy you gave me, did not touch me least, of all you have given me in the course of my life– May god bless you my dearest friend– Shall I have a word from you sometimes? Say how you are. I am
your grateful & most affectionate
Elibet–
Will you have the enclosed put into an envelope & send it to Arabel? I hope you will see much of my dearest Arabel– How I miss her, for all the happiness!
Address, on cover sheet: H S Boyd Esqre / 24 (a) Grove End Road / St John’s Wood.
Publication: EBB-HSB, pp. 280–282.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year determined from the Brownings’ residence in Pisa in November 1846.
2. Cf. Psalm 39:13. EBB seems to be referring to Select Psalms in Verse (1811) by Robert Lowth (1710–87), Bishop of St. David’s, of Oxford, and of London, successively; however, Psalm 39 does not appear in “Lowth’s version.”
3. An allusion to Anacreon’s ode “Ad Cicadam,” or “To the Cricket.”
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