5457. Julia Wedgwood to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 140–142.
| After Oct. 17th at | Milton Bryan |
| A J Scott Esq [1] | Tuesday, October 11th, 1864 |
Halliwell Lane
Cheetham Hill
Manchester
Many thanks, dear friend, for your specimen of Fan-language, which presented me with a new & interesting phase of the Apologia controversy. But I don’t give my consent to any hieroglyphics on the subject! You must treat us respectfully & not fling us torn scraps of meaning, leaving us to supply the gaps (which however I can always do)—as was suggested at the time of the Civil Service examination controversy, [2] if I remember rightly, by way of testing the shrewdness & imagination of the candidates, & it did not seem to me such a bad idea.– Dont give us any more Palimpsests without the chemical test, that makes all the difference.– But I’m afraid you are in too great a hurry to get away from us to take any pains about our opinion of you being a correct one. Wait a few weeks, till I come to London & bid you goodbye, (for I am not after all returning home just yet.)– Ah no, you wd not wait an hour if you could help it!—& yet you don’t know what Purgatory may be in store for you, you may be shut up with Saturday reviewers, or Methodist preachers, for all you know to the contrary– I wonder which you wd like the best.– Poor old Landor! & so he has gone to that land in which he had not much interest! There is something grand in that carelessness for one’s own experience, in any form, but the Pagan nature perplexes one. I hope after his purgatory he will be admitted to the ashphodel [sic] meadows, [3] with Pericles [4] & his other friends, to whom I shd think he had afforded much entertainment if they have any means of getting at our poor utterances. It must be a strange sort of interest to see a virtual contemporary having lost his way on the stream of Time, & committed the anachronism of coming into the world 2000 years too late & I shd think his friends wd give him a hearty welcome after his long wandering.– Well, I suppose he went through this world without whining & moaning, & I have a kind of respect (with whatever reserves) for anybody who does that for 90 years—even at the best of things, much more with an ungrateful wife & children. We are all so miserably weak!
And so you are to find your little Florence grown into a grand lady [5] when you pay her your next visit.– No, I think you will not pay her a visit till her day of grandeur has come & gone. It seems to me like a gleam of sunshine passing over that memorial tablet [6] that my sisters [7] described to me.– Or torchlight rather than sunlight perhaps—some passing light that falls on a particular spot, & brings out whatever one most looks to see there. I am glad you did not go there this year—it is too soon, & too late. Oh how places can hurt one! But I hope or rather know that you are armed against the worst hurts.
I shall not be in town next Sunday or for several Sundays, but if you are in our regions you will go & see my mother won’t you? who will feel pleasure at seeing you in the midst of that dreary return to a life that is emptied of everything almost.– Ah dear friend how I hope you may not survive your son, is he strong and healthy?– And yet I daresay it wd not be so terrible to you remembering who he wd join—otherwise the grief of a parent is almost too hard!– I am going to pay a visit to another great friend of mine, who is also an aged man! a race in which I chiefly take delight. His wife [8] I like too, but she is too adoring & Cameronian, & has spoilt her husband.
I daresay I shall have a line from you with the address which I give accordingly.
I am spending such a tranquil visit here with two old ladies [9] & two cats, our time seems chiefly spent in prayers & meals & the day is half gone, before one can do anything else. We have a bit of youth to contemplate in the kitten, but I almost supply that to these ladies. I feel as if the sleepy Dutch atmosphere must infect my letter, but as I consider you rather unappreciative of the sleepy Dutch element in life it will not be the worse reading for you on that account, if you ever get through it. To be sure, I have no means of enforcing that result & had accordingly better not make it too long.
Do you see anybody in Paris?– I hear Lord Houghton is somewhere in France, hearing his footman say French verbs every morning, he writes to his children, & finds him a better pupil than them. I think that trait is pleasantly characteristic of him. I saw such a rapturous honeymoon letter from Mr Woolner [10] —or did I write you of that?– Miss B. C. does not find everybody of my opinion about her statuette. [11] I am glad to see, she has been asked for it for a vignette for a book of philanthropy. [12]
Now dear friend I will release you. Mind & not to be near C P [13] without going in.
Ever affectionately yrs, F J Wedgwood.
Publication: RB-JW, pp. 96–99 (as 10 October 1864).
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Alexander John Scott (1805–66), Scottish preacher and literary scholar.
2. Until 1855 civil service appointments in Great Britain “were made by nomination, with an examination not sufficient to form an intellectual or even physical test. … In 1855 a qualifying examination of a stringent character was instituted, and in 1870 the principle of open competition was adopted as a general rule” (EB). During the latter half of 1855 there was much public discussion concerning the specifics of the examinations.
4. Alluding to Landor’s Pericles and Aspasia (2 vols., 1836).
5. An agreement between the Italian government and Napoleon III, “known as the September Convention, was signed on 15 September 1864,” and among its provisions Italy “would transfer its own capital from Turin to Florence within six months” (Edgar Holt, Risorgimento: The Making of Italy, 1815–1870, 1970, p. 280). Florence was Italy’s capital from 1865 to 1870, after which time Rome became the permanent capital.
6. EBB’s memorial tablet over the entrance to Casa Guidi (see letter 5019, note 1).
7. Katherine Euphemia Wedgwood (afterwards Farrer, 1839–1934) and Hope Elizabeth Wedgwood (1844–1935).
8. Ann Scott (née Ker, 1805–87), daughter of Alan Ker (1761–1828) and his wife, Ann (née Dow, 1765–1822). She married Alexander John Scott in 1830 at Greenock, Scotland.
9. Lady Inglis and Mary Rich.
12. A Book of Golden Deeds (1864), by Charlotte M. Yonge (1823–1901). The vignette of Hilary Bonham Carter’s statuette of Florence Nightingle appears on the title-page.
13. Cumberland Place.
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