3605. EBB to Maria Angélique de Gaudrion
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 236–237.
London–
Wednesday– [29 August 1855] [1]
Dear Madam [2] I hope you will pardon my delay in replying to your letter, and attribute it to the right cause, .. my time being much occupied during our brief visit to London. You address me in a name [3] which could not do otherwise than move me to an answer, even if the tone of your application had not made me willing to be open with you on your own account.
I went with my husband to witness the so-called spiritual manifestations at Ealing. I enclose to you in his handwriting an account of the impressions he received. Mine I must frankly say, were entirely different.
The class of phenomena in question appears to me too numerous not to be recognized as facts. I believe them to occur often under circumstances which exclude the possibility of imposture. That there is sometimes imposture, is natural & necessary .. for wherever there is a truth there will be a counterfeit of the truth. But if you ask me (as you do) whether I would rank the phenomena witnessed at Ealing among the counterfeits, [4] I sincerely answer, that I may be much mistaken of course, but for my own part & in my own conscience I find no reason for considering the medium in question responsible for anything seen or heard on that occasion.
Having said so much I am anxious to guard myself against misunderstanding. I consider that the idea of looking for theological teaching or any other sort of teaching to these supposed spirits, would be absolutely disastrous. Also that the seeking for intercourse with any particular spirit, would be apt to end in either disappointment or delusion. In the present undeveloped state of the subject, with the tendency to ‘personation’ on the part of the (so-called) spirits, & the difficulties on ours as well as theirs, the manifestations are apt to be so low and our apprehensions so unsteady, that we could hope to see our faces as well in a shivered looking-glass, as catch a clear view of a desired truth or lost friend by these means. What we do see, is .. a shadow on the window .. the sign of something moving without—the proof of & beginning of access from a spiritual world .. of which we shall presently learn more perhaps & I, for one, believe we shall.
You may be unaware that many persons who are called “believers” in these things, believe simply in the physical facts, attribute them to physical causes, and dismiss the spiritual theory as neither necessary nor tenable.
This is not my view however.
I enclose back to you, the letter of my dear friend, [5] knowing well the value of such a memorial. And with a most thankful sense for the sympathy which you have given to myself personally,
I remain
very faithfully yours
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Publication: The Times Literary Supplement, 28 November 1902, p. 356.
Manuscript: University of London Library.
1. This letter accompanied letter 3606.
2. Maria Angélique de Gaudrion (d. 1894, aged 69), daughter of Victor Pierre Jean de Gaudrion, a French lieutenant-colonel, and his wife Maria (née Fawcett). Miss de Gaudrion married in 1856 Frederic Merrifield (1831–1924), a barrister, who, many years later, sent this and the following letter to The Times Literary Supplement. Mme. de Gaudrion (the recipient’s mother) is mentioned in letters 1177 and 1183 where EBB spells her name Grandrion. In letter 1177, note 4, she is misidentified as the future Mrs. F. Merrifield.
3. i.e., Miss Mitford, who is referred to below.
4. In his letter to The Times Literary Supplement introducing the Brownings’ letters, Merrifield stated that both he and his wife had attended a séance conducted by Home in July 1855 and that both believed the “‘spirit hands’ … were material and a fraud” (28 November 1902, p. 356).
5. Mary Russell Mitford, as identified by Merrifield in The Times Literary Supplement of 28 November 1902, p. 356.
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