5387. Julia Wedgwood to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 63.
Down. Kent. [1]
Saturday May 21st [1864] [2]
Dear Mr Browning
I cannot help sending you a line to say how glad I should be if it was as convenient to you to come to Cumberland Place any day but tomorrow, when as you see by my date I should not have the pleasure of seeing you.– I was sent down here to recover from a cold, & return on Monday, any day after that I shall be at home all the afternoon. You must not however let your kind interest in us be a tax upon you, as I daresay you have many friends who are as glad to see you as I am, though I believe not many who are more so.– It can be no new sensation to you to find your self an old friend to those who are new acquaintance to you, & I hope you have got used to our thus having you at a disadvantage.
With you we have had the power (more rare than that knowledge of your own mind) of entering into the life that was more to you than your own. But let me repeat once for all what I have said before that I know a large part of our acquaintance is essentially one sided.
I have heard so much of your kindness from others that I do not hesitate to tell you your visits have been my greatest pleasure through this painful spring, & that they could never be inopportune to me at any time,—if therefore I from time to time send you such a note as this to save myself the disappointment of missing you, you must not let yourself feel bothered or hampered for I shall always take it for granted that you have a good reason for non-appearance, & never expect to hear of it from you.
You will know that my absence from home implies a comfortable state in our invalid, [3] & an absence of all immediate fear.
Believe me your sincere friend
Julia Wedgwood.
Publication: Sue Brown, “Robert Browning and Julia Wedgwood: The Unpublished Correspondence,” The Journal of Browning Studies, 3 (December 2012), 38–39.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Miss Wedgwood was staying with her aunt and uncle, Emma Darwin (née Wedgwood, 1808–96) and her husband (and first cousin), Charles Darwin (1809–82), the great naturalist and explorer, author of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859). “In September 1842 Darwin moved the family to Down, a parish of about 400 inhabitants on the North Downs, 16 miles from London. Here … he found security in an old parsonage with 15 acres of land. Down House would be his refuge for the next forty years” (ODNB).
2. The year was pencilled on the manuscript by Miss Wedgwood, subsequent to its return to her in 1913.
3. i.e., her brother James Mackintosh Wedgwood.
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