5380. Julia Wedgwood to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 56–57.
Cumberland Place
Saturday May 14th 1864
My dear Mr Browning,
You have shewn so much kind interest in us, that I am glad to write & tell you that my Brother, [1] though not any better, & never to be so in this world according to all probability, seems now a little farther removed from the end than I thought when I saw you last. There is now almost no suffering & we hope this may continue so that there is nothing to prevent our indulging the wish, which in some illnesses might be so cruel, to keep him for some little time,—perhaps weeks, I hardly dare to hope for months.– The knowledge of your sympathy has been a great comfort to me. Your own unparalleled loss must dwarf in comparison every other separation, but I believe it is just those who have experienced the worst of that terrible wrench, who can also feel the most for [2] those who undergo a lighter form of it. You were an old friend to me long before I saw you, so that it does not seem unnatural to me to express the deep sympathy which I long have had for such a loss as yours, & which is now brought out afresh, with the thought of all such separation, as the dark shadows close around us. But there is nothing reciprocal in the way I knew you, & I need hardly say I want no response to this.
I shall be at home tomorrow from one to half past two (about the time you have called before I think) & indeed that is always my time for being at home, [3] —& if not very busy it would always give me great pleasure to see you. But I hope you & your son are enjoying this lovely Whitsuntide in the country somewhere, for I hope you have not learnt to despise our English spring.
Ever your sincere friend
Julia Wedgwood. [4]
Publication: RB-JW, pp. 23–24.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. James Mackintosh Wedgwood (1834–64), eldest son of Hensleigh Wedgwood (1803–91) and his wife, Frances Emma (née Mackintosh, 1800–89), died of cancer on 24 June.
2. Miss Wedgwood wrote and crossed out “the pain which those feel from whom.”
3. 1 Cumberland Place, Regent’s Park, as listed under her parents in RB’s address book of this period (AB-5).
4. Frances Julia (“Snow”) Wedgwood (1833–1913), eldest child of Hensleigh and Frances Wedgwood. This is the first letter of a short, but intense, correspondence between her and RB that lasted about a year. It burst forth again for another brief period with the publication of The Ring and the Book in the autumn of 1868.
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