Correspondence

2894.  EBB & RB to Thomas Westwood

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 242–244.

Thursday December 12th [1850] [1]

My dear Mr Westwood,

Your book has not reached us yet, and so if I waited for that, to write, I might wait longer still. But I dont wait for that, because you bade me not to do so,—and besides we have only this moment finished reading ‘In Memoriam,’ and it was a sort of miracle with us that we got it so soon. Also I have two kind letters to thank you for,—and I feel them to be enough to thank you for, (having a certain capacity for gratitude after all!) without your poems. So, thank you, dear Mr Westwood. It was kind of you to be sure that I should be interested in Landor’s letter, and I hope you will tell me, in addition, what came of it, & whether the notice appeared duly in the Examiner. [2]

13. Friday. The above sentences were written yesterday,—& hardly had they been written when your third letter came with its inclosure. How very kind you are to me and how am I to thank you enough! If you had not sent me the Athenæum article [3] I never should have seen it probably, for my husband only saw it in the reading room, where women dont penetrate, (because in Italy we cant read, you see) & where the periodicals are kept so strictly like Hesperian apples, by the dragons of the place, that none can be stolen away even for half an hour. So he could only wish me to catch sight of that article—and you are good enough to send it & oblige us both accordingly. For which kindness, thank you, thank you! The favour shown to me in it is extreme, & I am as grateful as I ought to be. Shall I ask the “Note & Query” magazine, why the Athenæum does show me so much favour, while, as in a late instance, so little justice is shown to my husband? [4] Its a problem, like another.

As for poetry I hope to do better things in it yet, though I have a child to “stand in my sunshine,” [5] as you suppose he must:—but he only makes the sunshine brighter with his glittering curls, little darling, and who can complain of that? You cant think what a good, sweet, curious, imagining child he is. Half the day I do nothing but admire him—there’s the truth. He does’nt talk yet much, but he gesticulates with extraordinary force of symbol, & makes surprising revelations to us every half hour or so. Meanwhile Flush loses nothing, I assure you. On the contrary he is hugged & kissed (rather too hard sometimes), & never is permitted to be found fault with by anybody under the new regime. If Flush is scolded, Baby cries, as matter of course—& he would do admirably for a “whipping boy,” if that excellent institution were to be revived by young England and the Tractarians for the benefit of our deteriorated generations.

I was ill towards the end of last summer, & we had to go to Siena for the sake of getting strength again—& there we lived in a villa among a sea of little hills, & wrapt up in vineyards and olive grounds, .. enjoying everything much. The worst of Italy is, the drawback about books. Somebody said the other day that we “sate here like posterity”—reading books with the gloss off them. But our case in reality is far more dreary, seeing that Prince Posterity will have glossy books of his own. How exquisite ‘In Memoriam’ is!—how earnest and true! After all, the gloss never can wear off books like that!–

And as to your book, it will come, it will come; and meantime I may assure you that posterity is very impatient for it. The Italian poem will be read with the interest which is natural. [6] You know it’s a more than doubtful point whether Shakespeare ever saw Italy out of a vision, yet he & a crowd of inferior writers have written about Venice & vineyards as if born to the manner of them. We hear of Carlyle travelling in France & Germany .. but I must leave room for the words you ask for from a certain hand below.

Dear Mr Westwood’s obliged & faithful EBB–

[In RB’s hand] and the “certain hand” will write its best (& far better than any poor “Pippa Passes”) in recording a feeling which does not pass at all—that of gratitude for all such generous sympathy as dear Mr Westwood’s for E.B.B. and (in his proper degree) R Browning.

Publication: LEBB, I, 468–470 (in part).

Manuscript: University of Syracuse.

1. Year provided by EBB’s reference to In Memoriam.

2. Landor reviewed Westwood’s The Burden of the Bell in The Examiner of 7 December 1850, pp. 782–783. He had written to him on 31 October: “This morning I have finished the second reading of your poems, and with quite as great pleasure as the first. Before night I shall embody my opinions in a Criticism of some extent, and I shall send it either to the Examiner or the Leader before three days are over” (R.H. Super, Walter Savage Landor: A Biography, New York, 1954, p. 592).

3. In the review of EBB’s Poems (1850) that appeared in the 30 November 1850 issue of The Athenæum (no. 1205, pp. 1242–44), John Westland Marston concluded: “We close these volumes by a Poet and the Wife of a Poet with deep admiration and reverence. … Mrs. Browning is probably, of her sex, the first imaginative writer England has produced in any age:—she is, beyond comparison, the first poetess of her own.” Marston is given as the reviewer in the marked file copy of The Athenæum now at City University (London). For the full text of this review, see pp. 313–318.

4. A reference to the review of Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day; see letter 2846, note 3. Notes and Queries encourages readers to submit questions that are in turn answered by fellow readers. It was first issued on 3 November 1849 and is still being published.

5. Plutarch, in his “Life of Alexander” (cap. 14), relates that when the conqueror met Diogenes, he asked if there were any way in which he could serve him. Diogenes, who was reclining in the sun, replied: “Only stand a little out of my sunshine.”

6. We have been unable to identify an “Italian poem” in Westwood’s works.

___________________