5469. Julia Wedgwood to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 155–156.
Halliwell Lane
Cheetham Hill
Manchester
(A J Scott Esqr)
Oct. 21. 1864.
I was very glad to have a double account of your visit on Sunday, whereby I can give it a stereoscope-like solidity to my mind’s eye. My mother was greatly pleased to hear so much of Italian politics as she says you told her, it being a subject especially near her heart, but she is a worshipper of Mazzini, which is perhaps what has set her perverse children on the other tack. I have had to help in getting up Bazaars for him, so I have a right to hate him, but I won’t speak of him as you do of your reviewer, [1] you arrogant personage! Do remember what a very dull thing justice is. How is the poor reviewer to put any smart writing into anything so laborious as a faithful estimate of another mind—whereas if he may best light up his own little caricature we all think him so mighty clever!
For my part, the books I love best almost seem to me to have their oddities, which however I look upon not as odd “tags & tassels” but as the prickly stems of the furze bush, which must not be rooted up by anybody who cares for those “mountain gorses ever golden—cankered not the whole year long” [2] which have done for me something of what she assigns to the flower—but if a man chooses to paint my dear furze bush at some rare season when not a blossom is to be seen, I account him neither botanist nor artist, but shall I therefore trample him under my feet, my dear brethren? You see I am making out my right to receive visitors on Sunday afternoons!
Lord Houghton has plenty of claims on your tolerance & can afford to lose the false one of being a friend of mine. I never spoke to him in my life that I remember, but he has done one deed that rather pleased me!– I wonder how the poor man put you out of patience & how large the stock was that was suddenly exhausted. I wish I could fit you out with a large store of that commodity, which I think likely to be much wanted in the next few years, if foolish gossip proves much of a drain on it. In a year or two it will wither away—the gossip I mean, not the patience, which I hope will flourish all the more for exercise, perhaps I may contribute to the good work of supplying that. I must take care where I throw my glove, as you are self-bound not to fling it into my face on your escape.– I have heard others express the same opinion as Mr Trollope on your altered looks, at least as to the fact, not with the same dismal inference, but I daresay you don’t think it dismal. I sometimes wonder that all conventional expression has arranged itself on the theory that one is glad to stay as long as possible in this world. But those hands that hold the aching head are strong links here, till they become strong & painfully stretched links in another direction, but even so I hope that invisible touch is felt by you still—for surely a fuller life only opens to a fuller exercise of that power, which is so shackled here at its best, & yet is the only joy in this world.
Have you seen Miss Cobbe’s Italics? & are they worthy of being seen, in spite of the affected title? I suppose she knows something of the subject, but I think you said she was not a knowing party. I shall be here about a fortnight.– I am glad of your rare illnesses—illness is no great evil if the right person is there, but when that is all in the past it would be a grievous trial. It consoles me much to remember my brother’s words to me in this last illness, that he was thankful to think it was unlikely he should survive our mother. Your consolation is the inversion of his, but in each case the survivor was best able to endure, I trust. Forgive me that my own thoughts lead me so much to your sacred place. I know that you are always there—but, one likes to be there alone.
Ever yr affec
FJW
Publication: RB–JW, pp. 104–106.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
2. Cf. EBB, “Lessons from the Gorse” (1841), lines 1–2.
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