5438. Julia Wedgwood to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 104–106.
Cumberland Place
Saturday. August 12th [sic, for 13]. 64 [1]
Well here I am you see, having retired from one side of the great blue street just as you I suppose, came to the other, a measure the delicacy of which wd be scarcely appreciated <by> our gossiping friends as it deserves!
Possibly we may have been opposite neighbours for a day or two, as you were only to make Paris your first halt. I looked across that silent highway & wondered whether you were unconsciously meeting me in that glance. Oh that dear blue road! how it leads ones soul far away—further away than the white wings can go that are always flitting across it, or the whiter wings that flap above it, into a more distant country than any that is accessible by its silent path!– I wanted nothing there but to wander on the slippery needle leaves among the rich pine smell, & watch the faint blue flush into sapphire through brown stems that blotted out as much as I chose of the glitter & glare—& of the life too, for I could hide an American war-frigate with a twig of some few inches, when I wanted to shut out everything but shade & quiet.– It has been rather my way through life to hide the mighty distant with the tiny near. I am Gothic, not Greek, I cling to small details. I abhor a general view of things!– This is the only explanation of the interest I have taken in various minute personages who have come across my way.– Perhaps one of those dry insects will come & fly near me now, by post, & blot out—oh many things may be blotted out for me, by an insect’s wing. Now that instead of Falmouth harbour with its dissolving view of shipping, & its lighthouse that was an eyesore by day & a fallen star by night—I have the burnt up lawn & dusty Park trees to look at, [2] & for the slippery pine-leaf floor not even “carpet stripes” [3] but dusty boards denuded of carpet– I want my unseen world to brighten, that world in which we have approached each other rather closely– Oh do not count on my generosity, I have none. I want that to be all on your side, & if I ever turn away from the friend who has helped me up a steep bit of the road, he may be sure it is because my own legs are strong again, as I feel them growing, with every fresh turn. I am capricious & gusty, you are different, you say, & I believe you then let me take my wayward course, which today sets towards you, & tomorrow may set away from you, & turn no more!
How strangely you haunt me. I fell in with an ardent admirer of yours in those Cornish regions, a clever young rugby master, full of enthusiasm & chatter, who borrowed Dramatis Personæ & gave his views on previous volumes. Perhaps I may have been the more tolerant of his youth & prosperity on account of some latent sympathy between us in that quarter. Coming up, I read a sentimental novel, the sort of thing you could not look at if the tortures of the Inquisition were brought to bear upon you, & find it peppered with scraps from your writing & the writing which is dearer to you than your own.– I go into a Cornish farm house, & find a picture of her. I see the volume you gave me on the shelves.– [4] Oh dear friend it is a comfort to think you have had the sea to swim in & I may spend my drops of water according to my own fancy.– Down in Cornwall I had enough to do with them, it is a very friendly region to me as I told you, but indeed I hardly wanted anything there but sea & sky. I hardly opened a book there, now I am wandering from one dusty book shelf to another to see if I can find what may replace those wide books that sometimes say so much, & sometimes turn to me blank paper, when no fire within brings out the sympathetic ink.
Today all writing is more or less blank & my head aches & my heart is tempted to keep it company, but I remind it how bad a counsellor & friend that aching companion has proved, & force it into neglect of all duties of sympathy.– Oh the strange shifting of incoherent reproach in the thoughts of the Dead.– Sometimes “why am I so unkind, enjoying the sunshine that cannot reach him” [5] & then almost the same moment “why is he so unkind leaving me without a word.”– But that is not a thought that can find any foothold in your memory, I know.
London is in the state I most enjoy, not a dear friend to be seen at any price! I was much oppressed by them in the last fortnight when I was supposed to be “So melancholy all alone.” [6] They tell me I ought to go & see the old pictures but it gives me a fit of moral dyspepsia to think of pictures. I shall be here for some time & even if I leave it letters will follow me.– I must make your wife my companion till my head gets strong enough to walk up hill again.– You remember that one called Confessions [7] —that is such a favorite of mine. I don’t mean in a critical spirit but it is an utterance that has a great interest for me. In that Cornish farmhouse I was speaking of somebody pointed out the “De Profundis,” [8] which is what I like best in that volume. But I care perhaps too exclusively for herself in her poems, those which are merely artistic have less interest for me, out of all proportion to their real merit.
Now I must not overflow my 4d for even if I could scrape together the larger sum I am sure so fat a letter wd take away all your appetite, & you wd leave it till a convenient season, which spoils the flavour of a letter & which is a treatment I promise you shall be put upon none of yours by yr affec
FJW.
Publication: Sue Brown, “Robert Browning and Julia Wedgwood: The Unpublished Correspondence,” The Journal of Browning Studies, 3 (December 2012), 42–44 (as 12 August 1864).
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. 12 August 1864 was a Friday.
2. In Regent’s Park.
3. RB, “Dîs Aliter Visum” (Dramatis Personæ, 1864), line 110. Miss Wedgwood uses the phrase as RB does in the poem: “… We meet: you tell me, now, / By a window-seat for that cliff-brow, / On carpet-stripes for those sand-paths” (lines 108–110).
4. The previous month RB presented Miss Wedgwood with EBB’s Last Poems (1862), The Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets (1863), and Poems (6th ed., 4 vols., 1864), which included Aurora Leigh. See Reconstruction, C43, C60, and C105.
5. Her late brother, James Mackintosh Wedgwood.
6. Cf. Aaron Hill (1685–1750), “Celia to Amintor” (Works, 1753), line 6.
7. EBB’s “Confessions” (Poems, 1850).
8. EBB’s “De Profundis” (The Independent, 1860).
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