3000. EBB to Thomas Westwood
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 247–248.
138 Avenue des Champs Elysées. Paris.
Jany– 26. 52
My dea<r Mr> Westwood,
I am really afraid of thinking what you may have thought of me through this silence—when I have been to England too, found your volume of new poems, [1] and attained to reading & appreciating them, together with the power of thanking you earnestly for the pleasure they have given me! Do you know what it is, after an absence of years from England to be siezed on by one’s friends, so lovingly that one would’nt for the world cry out, & yet so tightly & insistingly that one cant stir to left or right to go about ones daily duties? Then, since we arrived in Paris, there have been absorbing influences also. From day to day I have put off writing to you, meaning everyday to write—and so I mean to ask you, in fine, to forgive me, whether I deserve it or not—will you?
I thanked you long ago for the poems when I heard of them in Italy as your gift to me. More warmly must I thank you now when I have read them. <They> seem to me in advance of your former books, .. having more vigour, more life, a closer grain, while retaining your old characteristic grace & delicacy. Accept upon the same grounds, my husband’s thanks with mine, in addition to our united warmest wishes for your prosperity in literature, & out of it, & beyond it.
I cant help calling your attention to a fact sufficiently conclusive, I think, of the truth & sincerity with which I assured you of our having no influence with reviews & reviewers. Which fact is simply that the journal to which you once particularly referred, has not noticed, either for good or evil, my last poem which appeared somewhere in April or May. [2] Ecce signum! [3] I hope you observed this for yourself, and absolved me straightway of any possible charge of slackness of good offices towards you, of which I should so much regret to be suspected.
We remain here until early in April next, & then may go .. or stay .. we know nothing. We are winged creatures & apt to use our wings, & not sit long upon our bough. Our dear Italy tempts us a good deal, & friends in England are pulling at our skirts. Then Paris is very brilliant & charming, full of resources for people who love repose or who care for animation, .. accomplished also, in all manner of social liberties, whatever may become of the political. We like it very much, & if we had but the sun of Italy, I should find no objection. But the winter has been an exceptionally cold one, people tell us, and we have had some miserable days by the thermometer, for which I am the worse of course.
Flush, however, triumphs in his return so far north: his hair has grown again & his youthful vivacity is restored. How is your Flossy? Is the rheumatism a foe put to rout? I hope so. And may I hope besides, that some one a good deal dearer to you than Flossy .. your mother, [4] I mean .. may be quite well?–
Our child is learning a third language, by the way of becoming perfectly unintelligible in any.
With my husband’s regards & best wishes,
I remain, dear Mr Westwood,
most sincerely yours
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Publication: Dorothea Mary Benson, Lady Charnwood, An Autograph Collection (London, 1930), pp. 150–152.
Manuscript: British Library.
1. The Burden of the Bell (1850).
2. EBB refers to the The Examiner, which never reviewed Casa Guidi Windows. She had written of her lack of influence with that periodical in letter 2859.
3. “Behold the proof.” I Henry IV, II, 4, 169.
4. Mary Westwood. In the 1841 England census her age is given as 60.
___________________
