5422. Julia Wedgwood to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 87–88.
Cum. Pl.
Thursday July 21t [1864] [1]
Dear friend
I hope you can come to me either later in the afternoon, or any time tomorrow. I want to go today to an invalid friend whose husband is engaged till 4 o’clock, & leaves her alone.—from 4¼ I shall be quite free, or the whole day tomorrow, that is to say I am going out of town quite late, but shall not leave this door till 5½. I hope I shall see you today or tomorrow as it will be our last meeting till the Autumn. I had a sudden invitation yesterday to fill up the place of the one which was withdrawn, & have accepted it. If you cannot come before I go, my address for a few days will be.
Leith Hill Place
Dorking
Surrey. [2]
but at any time I shd get a letter which came to me here. I return your boy’s works with very many thanks, they have interested me greatly for his own sake & still more for his mother’s, of whom they give one many glimpses. It is a window into a sort of life which one hardly gets at in any other way, for a child puts out thoughts in that form which do not receive any other. I at least being peculiarly without the power of getting at young people, find it so.– In all his delight in natural objects he reminds me of his mother. I was so entertained at one story ending abruptly because Mama did not much like it & the author was a little tired of it!
I shall be at home today after the hour I have mentioned[.]
Ever affly yrs
Julia W.
Will you return a verbal answer if you can come in the late afternoon or evening today?
Publication: Sue Brown, “Robert Browning and Julia Wedgwood: The Unpublished Correspondence,” The Journal of Browning Studies, 3 (December 2012), 41–42.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. The year was pencilled on the manuscript by Julia Wedgwood, subsequent to its return to her in 1913.
2. Leith Hill Place was bought in 1847 by Josiah Wedgwood (1795–1880), elder brother of Julia’s father, and remained in the family until his grandson, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958), gave it to the National Trust in 1944.
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