5553. RB to Julia Wedgwood
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 221–222.
The Athenæum Club
Saturday Eg [18 February 1865] [1]
I know you will like to hear that the boy is quite well, and, since many days, going about his work as usual: the illness began,—so far as one could see,—& ended in three days,—altogether a capital case, said the doctor—who took his leave a week ago. The risk is now—exposure to cold would bring on serious disorders: but we shall take care. I was long ago enjoined to cast aside fear of infecting people myself—the infection not being transmissable by other than the patient,—unlike in this to scarlet fever, &c. That is the fact,—but I shall not go to you yet, all the same.
What you said about Keats, is truer than as you say it: because I believe Keats did have death accelerated, if not induced, by that criticism. He did not put finger in eye, nor bully—but certainly felt strongly, what we feel strongly: don’t believe a man of average sensibility is ever insulted by a blackguard without suffering enough: despise it? yes,—but you feel the slap in the face, too: and, in this case, to feel anything unduly was to spill the fast-lessening life: “the seeds of death were in him already,” say the foolish people:—why quicken them under a melon-glass then? Next, his personal discomforts were infinitely increased—that is, his death was hastened—by poverty: he had terrible fears, wanted to go abroad as ship-surgeon, to write reviews, anything to get money and keep off want & indebtedness: this came, or was not hindered coming, by the criticism which stopped the sale of his books—what poor fraction could have fallen to his share, when, at least six years after his death, I sent to his publisher [2] and got a copy of each first edition?—no second having been called for even then: lastly, from what Severn told me, his irritability at last almost amounted to madness,—don’t suppose that joking about such a person’s pestle & mortar, & so on, did not drop hell fire on the sore-place.
Goodbye: it would do you no harm to write me, since my exile is like to be long, mi pari [sic, for pare] a me. [3]
Yesterday I dined where they were talking about the Davenport Brothers: [4] said the daughter of our host, “I always think of the Plymouth Brethren—what are they?”—“A religious sect.”—“Oh,—and what are the Yarmouth Bloaters?”—“Plainly the salt of the earth” said
Yours affectionately ever,
Robert Browning.
Publication: RB-JW, pp. 128–129 (as [1865]).
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Dated by RB’s references to Pen’s health and Keats, both topics being discussed in letters 5547 and 5558.
2. John Taylor (1781–1864), who with his partner, J.A. Hessey (1785–1870), published Endymion (1818) and Lamia … and Other Poems (1820). The former sold as lot 799 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A1348). Years later, RB mentions acquiring both volumes in a letter to T.J. Wise (3 March 1886), ms at Harvard).
3. “It seems to me.”
4. Ira Erastus Davenport (1839–1911) and William Henry Davenport (1841–1877), magicians from Buffalo, New York, had been performing in England since September 1864. Their illusions were considered by some to be the result of supernatural assistance, though the brothers did not affirm or deny the claim. They had recently been in the news when one of their performances at Liverpool was interrupted by a skeptical crowd. See The Times, 16 February 1865, p. 10.
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