5484. Julia Wedgwood to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 171–172.
1, Cumberland Place,
Regent’s Park. N.W.
Friday Nov 18th 64
Your last letter, which followed me here (for I returned suddenly sooner than I expected) was a very precious one to me. I had been thinking much of it’s subject—for I had been reading that mention of Miss Cobbe’s, [1] & it had wrought itself into a curious realistic dream in which I met you both at a theatre, & the double image seemed so much more natural than the single.– More natural, & more true, for I know that you are never alone. I was looking today at that Threnody of Emerson’s [2] that you praised to me in July. There is a great deal that is very beautiful in it.– I suppose if any soul could utter the love which has been sealed & sanctified by Death, we should need nothing more for the highest poetry; but I dislike the paganism in that & in so much other poetry of that kind. The implied Hades that casts its shade over the thoughts of the lost. I know that it does not fall upon your grave, & that for you there has only been a working dress laid aside, precious to you, but not precious to the wearer. This has been your rare privilege, that you had the wearer, & not as most of us, only the garment.– I do not mean that there is not the infinite in every soul, but so few of us can reach it,—we see nothing but the pattern on the veil!
Yes, I am glad you rescued those Sonnetts [sic]. I have just been reading over the last, [3] which has a sort of tone of repose in it that indicates the date you give it,—not that repose is the word, but you will understand what I mean by it.
Dear friend, I trust that for you the lamp that shines through those sonnets is bright enough in the past to keep your present clear &—no, not bright, but something removed from the frosty twilight that is the lot of the larger half of this poor world. You had no claim to be exempted from the lot of the rest of us, but I think,—nay I am sure that it has come to you in the form that you can best bear it, as you have not had to see her suffer, & you know that God can make up to her for even this short loss of you, if indeed the loss is not merely yours, & she is not much closer to you than she ever was,—as I think.
Miss Cobbe has had one effect upon me which wd surprise you & her about equally, I shd think, in raising my opinion of your tolerance, which to tell the truth could well afford to be raised. It is not a delicate touch in her sketch of your Wife though there is every intention to be respectful. [4] Well, we are not quite so far gone as the Americans in the habit of speaking of any one who has written books as if they had forfeited all right to keep their veil down, which is a heresy I particularly dislike, & I shd suppose you must detest it still more. I got hold of the Edinburgh Review the other day, & tried your pinch of snuff.– I was much amused by a good deal of it. You see they anticipate my great work of commentaries! What lengthy Scholia they will have to be if all things are to be made plain to the Reviewer.
My friends make a little preparatory public for me—not being much in your line, & yet not being content to let you alone. When am I to see your Italian heroine?– [5] I hope you are going to spend with her the time you take from dinners this winter. I am sorry going out does not suit you, but it is a very headachy amusement, perhaps you will demur to the last word!– Goodbye dear friend.–
Ever yr affly
FJW.
Publication: RB-JW, pp. 116–118.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
2. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Threnody” (Poems, Boston, 1847), in which he mourns the death of his five-year-old son, Waldo (1836–42).
3. Sonnet XLIV (“Belovéd, thou hast brought me many flowers”).
5. Pompilia, in The Ring and the Book (1868–69).
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