5425. Julia Wedgwood to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 92–95.
Milton Bryan
Tuesday July 26th [1864] [1]
I was pleased to have the composition of an obscure author to study this morning. I hope I shall have many such contributions to the “Epistolee Obscurorum Virorum.”– [2] I think I understand this last perfectly. Thank you for taking me at my word. It is a compliment to which women are not much accustomed, more’s the pity. Yes I believe I am true.– It was so horrible to me to find my attitude towards you looked upon as it was for a time, that this infused something of hesitation towards you—if one who loved & knew me well (neither my father or mother) could hint “a pear left basking over a wall &c.” [3] —the doubt was sometimes in my mind whether this aspect was possible from your point of view, but thank God that is past. You will repay me, will you not, for that glimpse of Hell you will entirely trust me?– I have forgiven the other, it cannot be quite forgotten but I see that the fault was in my speaking a language strange to their ear in which many misunderstandings were possible without blame. But it was not strange to you, dear friend, you knew your grey hairs would protect you from that kind of thing, if nothing else did!– You see I will not let you escape from the contrast of my exultant youth!– Ah I wish I were young—but at least I am a great deal younger than you, & will not surrender one iota of that advantage. I shall have many a day’s work to do upon this earth, when you have quitted it, & must make haste & get out of you all I want to get it done in time.
How many things remind me of you now! My Aunt [4] today, speaking of her past happiness—the passionate love whose embers give her all the warmth she needs—described it in the words of Lady Rachel Russell [5] “it wanted nothing of Heaven but immortality.”– [6] With whom were my thoughts then?– You would have laughed if you could sometimes have overheard our conversations about you. The first time she saw you, she caught a glimpse of you at some pictures, she scolded me because your appearance did not satisfy her. “Well, I saw your Mr B. & I don’t think he looks poetical at all.”– “No, I don’t think he does, particularly” said I trying to propitiate her. “Well then, why do you admire his poems? How can a man write poetry who is not poetical?[”] “I don’t know how that can be.” “But that is very foolish. You confess he is not poetical, and yet you admire his poems.”— I thought it hard to be called to account for your looks!
This is a house where I should not venture to open a newspaper on Sunday to save something much more precious than my life.– [7] I always feel muzzled here, & overflow in pen-&-ink, to the oppression of my friends, who however are not obliged to flow back again. Strait is the gate, & narrow is the way, [8] is impressed on one’s soul at every step, & I feel as if my hoop, tho’ not a very large one, wd hardly get through.— Well, narrow is the spirit that cannot bear with narrowness! And in truth I sometimes doubt whether you or they are right. I say you in a very wide sense, all you who hold that one may fetch fire from Heaven or Hell so that one’s torch burns brightly. No, I know you don’t exactly say that, but the artist mind demands intensity above every thing else, & there are some things you can’t set square with that Gospel. I cd be intense enough, if I might hate & scorn. That thirst for the Infinite in the Finite has been the source of so much disturbance in my life.– Love– I wanted to put that everywhere, to fill every cup to the brim with it, & it was simply annoying & inconvenient to others to find them all so full. So I have come to look upon your idea as for me, a temptation of the Devil. What you charge me not to do for you, I have been trying to do for every body (Xenophon’s palm-wine) [9] & my Ten thousand did not want my wine very often.
Ah no dear friend do not you be afraid of or for me. I am sheltered in the happiness of a very definite allegiance in my own house, which I would not surrender under a greater pressure than losing the luxury of our intercourse. It would be a loss—but not an intolerable one—oh, I have said all that before. But in truth I do not think I shall be tired. You saw me under the perturbation of that insult, as I must call it though it came from a noble nature, but that was something purely accidental & passing, & will not return. A life of silence as mine is (though it is so possible to forget it with you) breeds a peculiar indifference towards the opinion of the world. I know not whether it is for good or for evil, but one who never over-hears, cares little for & knows little of that surface current of opinion which expresses itself in slight remark. The result is that I simply omit that border land of the fitting from my territory, & try to settle the question between right & wrong,—& happily, it will be always easy while I have parents whose wishes bring in that element.– As for my letters, I may pour them out without any fear of entangling you in annoying gossip. Your Son I suppose is hardly old enough yet to represent “the world” in that point of view? You need not write to me as often as I to you, but you must rather often send me a letter if it is only to say “We are well.”– One grows morbidly fearful in such sad times as we have gone through. A superstitious pang went through my heart as I opened a chance book upon Burke’s lamentation over the death of his only Son! [10] I have a superstition which you must learn to put up with that I can prevent evils by speaking of them & fearing them. Alas! it has sometimes failed me.
I have changed my plans & leave here tomorrow, my address for the next fortnight is below, but do not think you are bound to make use of it—oh no I will not give in to those stupid forms.
Ever your JW.
The Crag [11]
Maenporth
Falmouth
Publication: RB-JW, pp. 47–51.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Year supplied by the mention of “Xenophon’s palm-wine” at the end of the third paragraph, indicating that this letter is a reply to letter 5424.
2. Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum (Hagenau, 1515–17), “an anonymous collection of letters in medieval Latin purporting to be written by various bachelors and masters in theology … in which they incidentally expose themselves to ridicule and to scurrilous charges” (The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble, 5th ed., Oxford, 1985, p. 322).
3. Cf. RB, “A Light Woman” (Men and Women, 1855), line 34. This line occurs in the ninth stanza, which reads:
And she,—she lies in my hand as tame
As a pear hung basking over a wall;
Just a touch to try and off it came;
’Tis mine,—can I let it fall?
4. Mary Rich (née Mackintosh, 1789–1876), half-sister of Julia Wedgwood’s mother. In 1808 she married Claudius James Rich (1786/87–1821), traveller, collector, and East India Company civil servant.
5. Lady Rachel Russell (née Wriothesley, formerly Vaughan, ca. 1636–1723) was the daughter of Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl of Southampton. She married secondly in 1669 William Russell (1639–83), son of William Russell, 1st Duke of Bedford.
6. We have been unable to trace a printed source for this quotation.
7. Both Mary Rich and Lady Inglis were “fervent Evangelicals” (see Barbara and Hensleigh Wedgwood, The Wedgwood Circle, 1980, p. 193).
8. Matthew 7:14.
9. See letter 5424. The “Ten thousand” refers to the number of Greek soldiers in the army of the rebel Persian, Cyrus the Younger, who was defeated in battle against the Persians near Babylon in 401 B.C. After the battle, the ten thousand Greeks, ultimately under the command of Xenophon, made their way back to the Aegean coast. The story is told in his Anabasis.
10. Miss Wedgwood refers to a passage in A Letter … to a Noble Lord (1796), addressed by Edmund Burke (1729–97) to the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale in defense of a government pension that both peers had spoken against. Burke’s son, Richard (1758–94), had been elected M.P. from Malton, his father’s former seat, shortly before he died. In the letter, Burke writes that his son’s career would have more than justified the granting of a pension: “Had it pleased God to continue to me the hopes of succession … I should have left a son, who, in all the points in which personal merit can be viewed, in science, in erudition, in genius, in taste, in honour, in generosity, in humanity, in every liberal sentiment, and every liberal accomplishment, would not have shown himself inferior to the Duke of Bedford, or to any of those whom he traces in his line. His Grace very soon would have wanted all plausibility in his attack upon that provision which belonged more to mine than to me” (p. 49).
11. A cottage where Miss Wedgwood’s close friend Julia Maria Sterling (1836–1910) resided. She was a daughter of John Sterling (1806–44) and his wife, Susanna (née Barton, 1804–43).
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