5563. Julia Wedgwood to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 229–231.
1, Cumberland Place,
Regent’s Park. N.W.
March 1st 1865 [1]
I have been intending to write to you for several days, dear friend, to say—what I do not say willingly—that it would be better than [sic, for that] we did not meet again just now, at least that you did not come here. I have such confidence in your unselfish kindness, that I believe I might say this, & no more, & you would withdraw from me only what I ask you to withdraw, leaving me the kindly feeling in the consciousness of which I can face a loss that is not small. But I feel a great desire for something more than the friendly acquiescence which I know I should have from you at any rate.– I want your sympathy, the support of your longer experience & more matured judgment, & so I tell you the simple truth, which yet could hardly be said to any one else without risk of misconception—that I have reason to know that my pleasure in your company has had an interpretation put upon it that I ought not to allow. I have no doubt the fault has been mine, in uncautiously allowing it to be known that I made an object of your visits. You will feel at once that it is a mistake which must be set right by deeds, not words. I am reflecting on myself, not upon you. You have only accepted a position into which I invited you—remember I invited you. Your attitude has been response from the beginning. In anything now that I may wish otherwise you have no responsibility. I have drawn it upon myself. It is no use asking myself how far such an opinion would affect me if I had no one to consider but myself, for there are others to consider. Tell me, am I not now doing what you would wish, if you were in their place? They know that I am the author of all that is peculiar in our intercourse, but I cannot explain this to those others who impute to me anticipations irreconcilable with that fact. I have no reason to think your attitude is misinterpreted, but perhaps all the more for this I ought to be careful to correct the view they have of mine. Am I not right, dear friend?
I think it would be affectation in either of us to assume that this can be to one of your age, quite what it is to one of mine,—still more when one considers that the age of the friendship is so different too, though in another direction. You are to me the friend of years, I only of months to you. Yet I know this is not nothing to you, you will feel as much as I wish about it. Do not exaggerate what it is to me. I have had your sympathy, your friendship, through the darkest part of life. You know in some degree how dark it was, in what a delirium of sorrow I turned to you, you know too I hope, how fully you satisfied that need. Nothing like that can recur, I believe; some part of it will never depart from me, but there, is the temporary in it too, & that grows lighter, & though no friendship ever grows less precious, it—or at least the outward evidence of it—grows less necessary. Do not you think of me. If I did not anticipate this I at all events took my chance of it. I rejoice to think how much I shall still be able to enter into your mind. I am not anxious at all about the way you will take this, yet I want a letter from you, to say what I know you will say, that you are with me in it. I do not mean that you see all the involved reasons that there are for my surrendering so much, that is not necessary as I put no onus of decision upon you, but I mean that knowing that I see them, you think me right at whatever cost to undo my own work. Let me soon have that full major chord to content my ear, which can be satisfied afterwards with silence.—though if you can still let me see what you promised it will be an even greater pleasure to me than it would have been while I was in the habit of seeing you. Dear friend I spin out my letter in reluctance to say goodbye, but it must be said—you know all that it means from me, all you have been to me [2] & how my thoughts will twine round you & yours.—& yet you know too that I am not giving up more than I can afford, you must believe both facts, it wd pain me almost equally that you cd doubt either. And so you will strip away almost all the pain of this last goodbye,—for yr ever grateful FJW.
Publication: RB-JW, pp. 132–134.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. This letter may have been sent two days later (see letter 5481, note 2).
2. The depth of Julia Wedgwood’s affection for RB is evident in a letter to her from her close friend Julia Sterling, who writes four days later: “Your heart must be torn out by the roots” (see SD2757).
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