3226. EBB to Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 161–163.
Casa Guidi– Florence.
July 15– [1853] [1]
I dont know, my dear Mrs Gaskell, whether I ought to write to you, but, as it would be difficult for me to help it, I follow the morality of the world in doing what is easiest & pleasantest whether it is right or wrong– I had just finished “Ruth” when my dear great-hearted friend Mr Kenyon, who finds the directest way of giving pleasure by instinct, sent me your letter to himself. Hear the “echoes in the hills”!– [2] The combination of a very strong feeling towards you, with the assurance of your kind feeling towards me, is too much for reserve .. carries me at once over every thought of our being strangers in the flesh to one another– And I write. I thank you from my heart for your sympathy & appreciation– I love & honour your books .. especially ‘Ruth’ which is noble as well as beautiful, which contains truths purifying & purely put, yet treats of a subject scarcely ever boldly treated of except when taken up by unclean hands– [3] I am grateful to you as a woman for having so treated such a subject– Was it quite impossible but that your Ruth should die? I had that thought of regret in closing the book. Oh, I must confess to it. Pardon me for the tears’ sake!
Shall I spell out to you the name of my child– Robert Wiedeman Barrett .. So, he was christened! ‘Robert’ from my husband, because there is a family necessity for Robert to follow Robert. But I wont have two Roberts in our house .. I strongly object to the confusion .. & the pollution .. (which “confusion” means in the Hebrew, you know) [4] .. So I call him by his second name Wiedeman, which was the maiden name of my husband’s mother, German by extraction– It was well to give him that saint’s name,—for she passed from the world as our baby entered it, turning the joy into grief– The association was strong & tender .. too bitter at first not to be very tender afterwards– You see it is not a fanciful name, caught up for fantastic reasons, &, this time, you will be able to read it, wont you? I shall like you to remember the name of our child. He is good & loving, and has it in his face .. the faint spiritual little face shut up in golden ringlets, .. yet with plenty of sound, loud, silver-ringing earth-joy, which makes the house happy .. dear darling!
We are forced to give up our summer visit to England this year, but next summer we hope & mean to be in London– Will there be a chance of seeing you then, dear Mrs Gaskell? I write for my husband as well as for myself. He is not a thick & thin novel-reader like me, but he was absorbed in your Ruth & feels all my feelings on it–
May God bless you & strengthen your hands & heart to do more good work for the world’s grateful use! Make room, meanwhile, in a kind thought, for one who, if she had seen your face, might boast of being your friend—why not now therefore?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Address: Mrs Gaskell / Plymouth Grove / Manchester. [Endorsed in lower left corner by Peter Campbell Scarlett.]
Publication: Ross D. Waller, “Letters Addressed to Mrs. Gaskell by Celebrated Contemporaries,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 19 (January 1935), 42–43.
Manuscript: John Rylands University Library.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Cf. Shelley, “Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici” (1822), line 14.
4. EBB probably has in mind the Hebrew word “tevel.” One of its definitions in John Parkhurst’s An Hebrew and English Lexicon, without Points (1778), a copy of which EBB owned (see Reconstruction, A1813), is given as: “A mixture or confusion of species by bestiality, Lev. xviii, 23.—or of relation by incest, Lev. xx. 12” (p. 53, definition V).
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