5547. Julia Wedgwood to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 217.
Cumberland Place
Feb. 10th 1865
I am so sorry dear friend to think of even such a slight malady in your house. [1] Yes, we have all had it, but I think you shall not come for a week or two.
We are the centre of a large clan of young cousins running in & out & it is well to be cautious.– I am sorry your boy has managed to put it off so late, as it is always worse with the age. I cannot bear to think of all that illness—even the most trifling—must recall to you. Perhaps the more trifling, the more overwhelming in association, for all anxiety drags one’s thoughts too imperiously into the future to leave much energy for the past, but the slight occasions of life seem made to be steeped in association:—& all illness especially must wake to peculiar vividness what never slumbers with you.
But I know that your past is mirrored in your future, & the mere edge of land that divides the blue sky from the blue sea is small.
I was thinking of you the other day in looking at a photograph of your poor old Lear, [2] & hearing more of his horrible children. Poor old man! I am afraid there was no Heaven in his past to be reflected in his future.
I wonder if you will be dined to death before I see you again. I shall compose an Ode on the sad occasion, or don’t you think one might make it into an Epigram? as the Quarterly to Keats &c [3] (please don’t tell me the Q. never killed Keats, I hate having the old legends disturbed) [4] —so whether we love, or whether we hate we kill all the same.
Farewel dear friend.
Publication: RB-JW, pp. 126–127.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Pen’s measles.
2. Walter Savage Landor.
3. Julia Wedgwood refers to Byron’s epigram “John Keats,” particularly the first stanza:
“Who kill’d John Keats?”
“I,” says the Quarterly,
So savage and Tartarly;
“’Twas one of my feats.”
(Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, ed.
Thomas Moore, 2 vols., 1830, II, 506.)
4. See letter 866, notes 7 and 8.
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