5409. Julia Wedgwood to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 77–78.
1, Cumberland Place, N.W.
Sunday June 27th [sic, for 26] [1864] [1]
Dearest friend.
Your letter has been a gleam into the darkness of my mind today—perhaps the more steady a gleam in that region, because as you say yourself, it is the utterance of a mind opposed to all authoritative forms of traditional belief, such as most rest on at moments like these, but which have no support for me. I prize the intense conviction of the minds which can rest in these forms, but I prize more—at least, I find more possibility of approach towards—those minds which can retain the hope of the future amid the complex suggestions of intellectual doubt, & the distrust of that mere wish which forms so large a part of the faith of most people. What opposite needs converge to this desire of an Immortality!—you need it, I know, for the continuation of an intercourse which only needed this element for perfection, while I feel– But I will not let my thoughts revert for a moment to the mistakes of an irrevocable Past. I can rest on the present while it is enriched by intercourse with you. I trust that mistakes will not come in here, that our communion may find its limits in the natural action of your many other claims, & not in any withering influence from me, but I dread myself, for I know there is in me an exacting spirit that dries up all the love and kindness which it needs so terribly.–
I take you at your word, I do want this bond to life now, for the time. You must remember that it is on my side essentially an old friendship. And if, as I think in spite of your words, there is something fugitive in it if I fear that the mere accident (as I feel it for all it’s influence on my feelings towards you) of your being a man & my being a woman is inimical to it’s long existence in this personal form, you must remember that what I had before I knew you, perhaps the larger part of your mind, I should still have after our intercourse had ceased. But it is very welcome to me that you think differently. Will you come and see me on Thursday or Friday? & let me know when?
I ventured to show your letter to my mother, without explanations she might have made the natural mistake which I wished to guard against. She was startled at the unusual course I had taken, her’s is a mind to perceive very clearly the many objections to it, but as she saw I had lost nothing in your eyes by it, she was satisfied. Wednesday is the dreary day that is to remind us of the mere garment of the spirit that has passed from us. [2] I find a peculiar need for forgetting that part of it! Farewell, dear friend
yours ever
Julia W.
Publication: RB-JW, pp. 31–32.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. In June 1864, the 27th was a Monday. The year was pencilled on the manuscript by Miss Wedgwood, subsequent to its return to her in 1913.
2. James Mackintosh Wedgwood was buried on Wednesday, June 29th, in Hampstead Parish churchyard.
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