5411. RB to Julia Wedgwood
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 78–80.
[London]
June 27. ’64.
Dear Friend,
I will call on Thursday at about 4 o’clock. When you most feel the inadequacy of the best we can know on the matter in your mind now, ask yourself fairly how it would be with you if you could suddenly attain to absolute conviction about it, in the sense of your desire,—if the whole relations of this world would not be changed to you, and life, as you now find it prescribed, rendered no longer possible: one may assume, then, that for probational or educational purposes, to ourselves, more than the yearning we have, and the corroborative facts which, by various processes, I think we may have, is inexpedient and out of the present harmony: if you object, that one might also reverse the experiment, and see in like manner the whole scheme of our life changed by attaining to the opposite conviction of the nothingness of this hope,—I answer that this theory involves, I must think, a crime against humanity, while the other is consistent with wisdom and benevolence—therefore the likelier hypothesis. Last night I was talking with a friend who read aloud a passage from Dr Newman’s Apology [1] in which he says that “he is as convinced of the existence of God”—an individual, not an external force merely—“as of his own existence”: [2] I believe he deceives himself and that no sane man has ever had, with mathematical exactness, equal conviction on those two points—though the approximation to equality may be in any degree short of that: and looking at the practical effects of belief, I should expect that it would be so: I can see nothing that comes from absolute contact, so to speak, between man and God, but everything in all variety from the greater or less distance between the two. When anyone tells me that he has such a conviction, I look at a beggar who holds the philosopher’s stone according to his profession. Do you see the bearing of all this as I seem to see it? How, remaining beggars,—or poor at least,—we may at once look for the love of those to whom we give our mite, though we throw it into the darkness where they only may be: fortunately the experiment on our faith is never a very long one.
I am glad that you showed my letter [3] to Mrs Wedgwood. You know well what is the way of the world with any exceptional mode of proceeding: if one wears a white cap instead of a black one, or calls at a house at 10. rather than 5:p.m.—it has something to say and smile about. It is for you to determine when it is right that I should see you. I thought myself too plainly a sort of tombstone, to be scribbled over when so many blank walls spread on every side: yet a friend of yours & mine did, out of fun, write a silly name on me some months ago, which was read & repeated by various people: to be sure, it came rather of following than departing from the ways of the world, in this instance—seeing that being bidden by our hostess to take a lady down to dinner, I did so—and when the lady told me she would not sit by so & so, I let her sit away from him—whence all this! [4] All I say is, or repeat rather—I shall be happy to have your confidence and your friendship: and when you talk of what may be “inimical” to it, and of the chances which are natural, I can only remind you that circumstances guard me against many of these,—that the veriest weathercock may rust and hardly turn again,—and that I see a plain line to the end of my life on which I shall walk, unless an accident stop all walking; I shall not diverge, at least.
Do not let us talk more about this: but, once for all, and for truth’s sake, and because you refer to a doubt again,—believe in the complete equality of our relation, and that, from the beginning of my acquaintance with you, I was aware, in proportion to my knowledge of you, that it might greatly interest and advantage me: but of course, it is not, because I may know where pictures are, that I knock at the gallery door daily: now you have thrown it open, let me tell you I like pictures and do not stand before them merely from a wish to wipe the dust from their frames.
And now, this is a letter! and I do not write letters,—and I shall not, if you please, write many such, for we can & will talk about everything that interests us: and there is lightness in this, because if you take my arm you must keep my pace, and hope: [5] do you know, a phrenologist told me when I was about sixteen that I had absolutely no hope at all in the head of me—and so it really was in those days. But I do think I see light at the far end of the passage. Not that I should like you at all to stand in my place so far on from the entry: you should live, step by step, up to the proper place where the pin-point of light is visible: nothing is to be overleaped, the joy no more than the sorrow, and then, your part done, God’s may follow, & will, I trust. I am sure you already see much to do, and the comfort of it. Care, too, for your health, in mere fairness to those you love—such sadness grows out of mistake about their interest there! There are people that should know better who hold one’s glass heart in their hand—throw it up & catch it again with the pavement underneath. You will not do so: let me find that on Thursday—and know me ever for
Yours affectionately
RB.
Publication: RB-JW, pp. 33–36.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864) by John Henry Newman (1801–90) appeared in seven weekly pamphlets beginning in April, followed by publication as a book in June.
2. Cf. Newman, Apologia, Part 6, p. 291: “If I am asked why I believe in a God, I answer that it is because I believe in myself, for I feel it impossible to believe in my own existence (and of that fact I am quite sure) without believing also in the existence of Him, who lives as a Personal, All-seeing, All-judging Being in my conscience.”
5. Underscored three times.
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