5416. Julia Wedgwood to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 83–84.
1, Cumberland Place, N.W.
[1 July 1864] [1]
Dear friend
I send you a few of my papers. I am glad to think they will not interest you on their own merits. There is nothing of that mawkish self-revelation in them I was so anxious to keep from you in other things. Indeed if I judge rightly of my powers, whatever there may be in them is best employed in criticism, tell me what you think—for I believe, one judges best of these slight attempts apart from all contemplation of the objects of criticism, which were worthless in most cases.
I have thought so much of your Past since yesterday. I felt after you were gone that one might defy the adage in certain cases, & call some men happy before their death, for their [sic, for there] are <possessions> [2] which no event can touch, & which are enough to make a happy life, whatever the evening brings with it.
Do you remember she quotes that to add “and no man unhappy” [3] —& I think that is the truest version of it. What a senseless question to put, do you remember!
Ever affly yrs
P.S. The papers started on their way to you, but may or may not reach you today. They are not very strong, poor things! I wish they could gain vigour from a short stay with you!
Publication: Sue Brown, “Robert Browning and Julia Wedgwood: The Unpublished Correspondence,” The Journal of Browning Studies, 3 (December 2012), 39–40.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. The date was pencilled on the manuscript by Miss Wedgwood, subsequent to its return to her in 1913.
2. Interpolated above “lives,” which has been crossed out.
3. Cf. Aurora Leigh (4th ed., 1859), 5, 74–77: “The Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase, / ‘Let no one be called happy till his death.’ / To which I add,—Let no one till his death / Be called unhappy.”
___________________
