5512. Julia Wedgwood to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 193–194.
Cumberland Place
Xmas Day, 1864.
I have been spending this evening with Rabbi-Ben-Ezra,—with the Saturday Review’s opinion on Rabbi Perida’s style for sauce [1] —& must write my line of thanks to the last-named Rabbi for giving me that good omen on this sad Christmas Day. The other Rabbi wd almost convert one to grow old cheerfully, [2] & I need conversion to that doctrine, so it was well to have him to study on the memorial day that comes encrusted with so many old memories.
I know that to you one day hardly brings back more than another, for I doubt not you have recollections enough to clothe all the 365.– I shall put my dear book by the little green books [3] where I think he will be very happy, & out of the way of all despised Edinburgh-ites [4] —when shall I have his younger sister to keep him company? [5] I do not fancy I shall care for her quite so much as for him, but in saying that I don’t at all mean to give up my claim on an early introduction to her. I could wish a few more stitches had been taken up here & there, even still—but I carefully avoid any dissertation on the subject, which I know is transferred from the table to the highest shelf of yr mind, & not to be taken down again on any account.
How spiteful you wd think me if I were to wish you many Xmass! yet I believe that is rather my feeling—but I wont put up any prayers for your life to be prolonged till yr Edinburgh reviewer finds you a lucid writer. I will be quite content with the 30 years of life which is fairly owing you still according to your own estimate, in which time I expect the rest of yr readers will change their mind as little as I shall about you.
Farewel, dear Perida.
PS
In spite of your weariness with the subject, I shall make the remark that it seems to me an artistic fault to put James Lee into such a proletarian, to use the horrid new slang, background. Those are not the feelings of people who are earning their bread.– I suppose you meant to escape the vulgarity of chateaux, but it gives one a feeling of masquerading to read the complication of those reflections with the slight touches of background. But perhaps there is a fitness in it with some hidden meaning which has escaped the naked eye.
Monday morning—your note just come, & yes certainly however little I like you, I like your presence less, so I am very glad you did not give it me yesterday. As for my not being an old friend that depends which way you read the relationship which of us is subject & which object.– I am very sorry to hear of your cough but you must expect to be visited by the infirmities of advancing life, in every sense you are an old friend to yrs ever
FJW.
Publication: RB-JW, pp. 120–122.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. For “Rabbi Perida,” see letter 5442. Writing in The Saturday Review of 18 June 1864 (pp. 753–754), G.S. Venables concluded his notice of Dramatis Personæ with a discussion of RB’s style: “The propriety of mixing up doggrel with poetry may fairly be questioned; but in some instances Mr. Browning gives effect to two or three lines which afterwards dwell on the memory, by inserting them in the midst of careless or lumbering rhymes.” For the full text of this review, see pp. 340–343.
2. Cf. Rabbi Ben Ezra (Dramatis Personæ, 1864), stanza 1, which begins: “Grow old along with me! / The best is yet to be.”
3. EBB’s Poems (6th ed., 4 vols., 1864), a presentation copy from RB that he inscribed: “Miss Wedgwood—from RB. July 13. ’64” (now at ABL).
4. Another reference to the review of Dramatis Personæ and Poetical Works (1863) in The Edinburgh Review (see letter 5463, note 7).
5. Presumably, Miss Wedgwood has in mind Pompilia and The Ring and the Book.
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