5463. RB to Julia Wedgwood
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 147–149.
[London]
Oct. 17. ’64
I shall always have time for you, time enough to say one or two words which shall be good as so many hundreds,—and that or any quantity of written matter you should have too, if it were not that the nearness puts out my voice much as sunshine does a fire: when no sun is obtainable, I think of the coals. One or two words will be enough from me to you—not from you to me, however,—because & because!
I called yesterday and spent a delightful half hour with your Mother. Let it mortify your proud-flesh, if you have any,—I did not, and shall not go to see her because you tell me to do so, but from a real pleasure it gives me– It would seem intrusive if I repeated my visit next Sunday, or I should do so: I leave the proprieties under your direction now & always, but, inasmuch as I would please you if I could by calling on almost anybody (—don’t throw your glove into Mr Hume’s den, though!) [1] —it is but fair to say that this does not count for a corvée. [2]
My boy, whom you enquire about, is a healthy, big fellow for his fifteen years—and there’s no salvation in it, as assurance against a fever, or a sore-throat: I am pale, and used to be thin, and never had a serious illness in my life: two bad sore-throats I remember—my mother nursed me in the first, and I wrote “Paracelsus” as soon as I recovered—I remember I was a little lightheaded one long night, and fancied I had to go through a complete version of the Psalms by Donne, Psalm by Psalm! Fact! Yes, I had another slight touch of something unpleasant in the head which came on, one Good Saturday as I sat reading the revise of “Pippa Passes”—and my hair was cut off, but I soon got well: I wrote in bed such a quantity of that “Hippolytus,” of which I wrote down the prologue, [3] but forgot the rest, though the resuscitation-scene which was to have followed, would have improved matters: I also conceived the whole of “The Blot in the Scutcheon,” & put it down easily in five days; then I had a worse than ever sore-throat and was cured by Father Prout forcing himself into my bedroom and making me drink hot spiced wine,—my servant Alessandro protesting “Questo pretaccio vuol ammazzare il Signore!–” [4] I could not get sleep for the pain, and my wife took my head in her two little hands, in broad daylight, and I went to sleep at once, and woke better, & next morning, an imposthume burst, not much of a thing but enough, and I was well—and that’s sixteen years ago and more. [5] Yet I have just heard that Trollope [6] was so struck by my altered looks last year that he warned George Barrett of what was to soon come, who wrote to his sister Arabel to enquire, who replied that she didn’t notice anything particular. And here am I spared to read the “Edinburg” this morning. [7] The clever creature rummages over my wardrobe of thirty years’ accumulation, strips every old coat of its queer button or odd tag & tassel, then holds them out “So Mr B. goes dressed now!”. Of the cut of the coats, not a word. I had fancied that the bug-holes of that crazy old bedstead were plugged-up at this time of the day,—but no, here is the nastiness on one again!—or rather off already, for to smash it would make things worse. See how I enlarge my boundaries—the two words I meant to write, the two hundred I have written! Keep well, & come back soon! I dined where I met Houghton on Friday: I was put out of patience by him lately, [8] but all is right again for the quarter of an hour: & next time, I shall remember he is a friend of yours.
God bless you
RB.
Publication: RB-JW, pp. 101–103.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. A reference to Daniel Dunglas Home (1833–86), whose last name RB habitually misspells.
2. “Duty.”
3. “Artemis Prologuizes” (Dramatic Lyrics, 1842). In Euripides’ Hippolytus, the title character is killed through the machinations of his vengeful father, Theseus. In RB’s plan for the poem, he departs from Euripides and follows Ovid’s version, in which Hippolytus is saved by Artemis and revived by Aesculapius. See The Poems of Browning, vol. 2, ed. John Woolford and Daniel Karlin, 1991, p. 106.
4. “This damn priest wants to kill the Master!”
5. RB’s illness occurred in the late summer of 1848 (see letters 2747 and 2748).
6. Doubtless Thomas Adolphus Trollope, whom George would have met during his visit to Florence the previous autumn.
7. An unsigned review by William Stigand (1825–1915) of RB’s Poetical Works (3 vols., 1863) and Dramatis Personæ (1864) appeared in the October 1864 issue of The Edinburgh Review (pp. 537–565). For the full text of this review, see pp. 344–354.
8. See the third paragraph in letter 5367.
___________________
