3498. EBB to Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 26–27.
Casa Guidi. Florence.
Decr 11th 1854.
My dear Miss Jewsbury [1]
I receive at last (after two years) & at the end of the world here in Italy, the note you wrote to me long ago with a book [2] which I have not read, .. no, nor received yet, in order to read– Having thrown your bread upon the waters, [3] you hear of it after many days indeed!
The fact is that letters & books accumulate for us at our booksellers, .. where, among all the devils, there being never a clairvoyant, he classed your communication with the rest,—(nobody spelled from a rapping spirit, Geraldine Jewsbury!) & set it down as “unimportant.” So that your ‘Adopted child’ has had time to grow up since your kindness thought of me, just as my “baby” has grown, .. alas! out of his babyhood. Still, the thought that you have had thoughts for me .. me & mine .. is as green & pleasant as ever it could be,—nay, pleasanter, I may say. I wont spoil it by the consideration (consideration spoils quantities of things!) that since then, you have had time to forget me quite.
For my husband remembers well the “tramping” from Chelsea, [4] and I remember well sitting by you on the sofa & feeling or fancying that you liked me a little, & being sure that I liked you. [5] I am somewhat of what is commonly called a mystic, and believe in spherical attractions. The jet of blue light from the ends of your fingers played freely into mine—or I thought so, which came to the same thing. Try that we may meet this next year in London—may we? shall we? We are really going to London next summer.
And though my Penini (the fairy name he has given himself) is no longer a baby, I hope he may not have outgrown your compliments– Really he is a darling,—and if his ringlets are longer & he has learnt to read, still his eyes are as blue & his simplicities as genuine. We dont cram him & spoil him, & pull the feathers out of his angel-wings,—no, indeed!–
I have read books of yours, [6] dear Miss Jewsbury (though not yet the ‘Adopted child’),—I have sate by you on a sofa,—and, last, are not you associated in our minds with Mr & Mrs Carlyle .. the third reason for thinking pleasantly of you! Will you, whenever you see or write to them, mention our names?
And, with our united regards & affectionate wishes & thanks, believe me, yourself,
most truly yours always
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
In looking over my note I find I have left the poor ‘Adopted child’ in a thick fog still, & not explained that the book was not sent to me with the letter but is waiting for me in England.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury (1812–80), novelist and literary critic, met EBB during the Brownings’ 1851 London visit. She had been a reviewer for The Athenæum since 1849.
2. As EBB indicates below, Geraldine Jewsbury’s The History of an Adopted Child 1853). It was issued for the Christmas market by Grant & Griffith in late November 1852. EBB collected it during her visit to London in 1855.
3. Cf. Ecclesiastes 11:1.
4. i.e., from the Carlyles’ house. Miss Jewsbury was friends with both, though particularly close to Jane Carlyle.
5. They had met in 1851 at John Kenyon’s; see letters 2931, 2934, and 2971.
6. She had written three novels by this time: Zoe (1845), which EBB discusses in letter 2165; The Half Sisters (1848); and Marian Withers (1851).
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