507. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 138–140.
Sidmouth.
Wednesday. [24 June 1835] [1]
My dear friend,
If you will let me call you so still!!!——
I never “treated you so” before—did I? and therefore there is more hope of my pardon—is there not? and the ingratitude looks less like the ingratitude of a reprobate—does it not? But alas! I cant hear you give gracious answers to all these questions,—and so it must be with a great deal of trembling that I put my heart upon its knees on this sheet of paper, humbly to ask your pardon.
Yes: indeed! More than a fortnight has past since I received your kind and beautiful present. Do believe—call up all your kindness to make you believe it—that I was very very much pleased & obliged & surprised to receive that present—a new phenix, with the smell of incense so sweet in its feathers! And I would have written immediately to thank you, dear friend; only I did not like to write until I could tell you of the time being fixed for Annie’s visit to us. We have been in more uncertainty than you would like me to tell you of, with respect to our staying at Sidmouth; I should make such a long letter of it; and only last week, Arabel’s letter of invitation went to Annie. Annie’s answer we have expected daily—and are wondering very much at its not coming.– I hope that she will come soon to us,—and I need not say how glad I shall be to see her amongst us once more! If we did not write to ask her to come immediately, the fault was not indeed in me or Arabel. At one time, the pleasure of asking that, seemed an impossible thing—why, I might tell you—but it is a long story, and I am in a merciful humour!
To return to your present. How it surprised me! The ‘atonement’, with the ‘Greek Article’!! [2] and on such beautiful paper, & with regard to one copy, in such resplendant binding!! Thank you again & again! but you should have sent me only one copy—if indeed I deserved even that one.
I thought it probable that we should leave Sidmouth today, if not sooner—yet here we are still, tho’ still, with an extreme uncertainty before us! And we have removed from Belle Vue to our ancient house upon the beach! And Storm & George & Papa are come! All the waves that have gone over us, & upset our tranquillity, I will not count to you. But you know what spasmodic people we are in our plans!—and would wonder at nothing, after all my counting.
Will you wonder any more, when I tell you that I am reading Dr Brown’s Philosophy [3] —shall have read it tomorrow—and like metaphysics better than ever, & am beginning to think it quite as demonstrative as mathematics the beloved!– I am reading besides, Anthony Collins, [4] and Luther, on the will. [5] All this much reading will account for a little madness on my part; and so you will forgive me for persisting to think that Calvinists did not make the difficulties.– When you write, tell me what was the remedy prescribed by Mrs Lowry, [6] for palpitation of the heart.
If a very humble friend of yours may do what an exalted friend of yours has done—in the same manner as the Bishop of London has recommended “Gathercole’s Letters,” [7] to his clergy; will I recommend to you the “Letters of Rabshakeh Gathercoal” [8] —a facetious answer to the Bishop’s friend, by a once [9] dear friend of yours, Mr Beverly of Beverly. It is a clever & amusing book. Do procure it, & have some parts of it read to you.
With regard to the Bishop’s charge, I do hope that you have not ceased saying αι αι [10] about it!—— Such a book—such in its vulgarity, & virulence & falsehood—recommended by a bishop!!! and by an editor of Æschylus!!! I scarcely know where the greater wonder lies!—— But I do know that a tongue which has borne to move in praise of such a book, has licked the dust by something baser than a metaphor.
As to the recantation, it is no recantation. I cannot call it one.
But I must not tire you any more. I must remember my propensity to write longer than you like to read—and say good bye.
And dear Miss Boyd who are so kind as to remember me, will you receive my remembrance in return—and come between Mr Boyd’s dagger, and Mr Boyd’s (indeed [11] she is so!)
obliged & affectionate friend
E B Barrett.
Are you quite well? Do you often see Mrs Mathew? I am very very glad to think of Miss Boyd being with you. Let me have a letter of forgiveness very soon. Georgie has come back confirmed in a frailty to which there was, previous to his departure for Glasgow, a strong leaning. He is a dissenter—& much grown & improved besides!!! [12]
We are all well! By the way, if I had been ill, as your letter suggests, I should have expected no scolding for it.
Address, on integral page: H S Boyd Esqr / 3. Circus Road / Regent’s Park / St John’s Wood / London.
Publication: Weaver, pp. 414–415.
Manuscript: Huntington Library.
1. This letter is postmarked 25 June 1835 but was written on the previous day, a Wednesday.
2. A second edition of Boyd’s book was published in 1835 with the addition of “an essay on the Atonement.” This gift, however, did not appear in Browning Collections.
3. Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1820), by Thomas Brown (1778–1820), Professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh University.
4. Anthony Collins (1676–1729), friend of John Locke, was the author, inter alia, of Defence of the Divine Attributes (1710), Discourse of Free-Thinking (1713) and A Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion (1724).
5. Possibly his “Bondage of the Will.”
6. Rebecca Lowry (née Delvalle, 1761–1848), was the second wife of Wilson Lowry (1762–1824), Boyd’s father-in-law.
7. Letters to a Dissenting Minister (1833), by Michael Augustus Gathercole.
8. The Posthumous Letters of the Rev. Rabshakeh Gathercoal, Late Vicar of Tuddington (1835), by Robert Mackenzie Beverley (1796?–1868).
9. Underscored four times.
10. “Woe, woe.”
11. Underscored three times.
12. Underscored six times.
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