5580. Julia Wedgwood to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 248–249.
1, Cumberland Place,
Regent’s Park. N.W.
Thursday Ap. 20th 1865
Was I glad to see my dear books yesterday, [1] do you think?—not so glad though as when I received an ms from the same hand a week or two ago, [2] which I wanted to write at once & thank you for, but thought it better to wait till I had the larger help of your writing, though it cannot for me quite equal the smaller. But I knew you would know all the relief & satisfaction that wd come to me with your letter—yes relief, for I knew how near I had come to all misconceptions & distrust—rather of myself than of you—made me doubt whether one cd pass through such a strait & narrow way quite safe from the ditch on each side—but you have given me that deep satisfaction, of feeling that it is possible. I think you very clever to understand such a person as I am, which is an intoxicating compliment for you,—but you see other people can be obscure as well as you!
Dear friend, I thought I shd have missed you terribly, & I do miss you but I have not regretted giving up the great pleasure of yr visits, & I shall not. Some parts of our intercourse have been almost the best of life to me—specially when you have spoken of your wife—& these do not pass away. Oh if she had been here when we met! —But I will not be so heartless as to bring in my wish into company with your grief, which must move alone.
I have your Photograph [3] now to keep company with hers, & I hope one will find it’s way to your American friend to enable him to compare the real & ideal. [4] I have felt much tempted to give myself one more sight of the original before we leave town for the summer in 10 days time, but I thought that perhaps my asking you to give it me wd frustrate the object with which I asked you not to come,—so I must fill up that need with the 3 volumes. I have put them on the shelf with the green ones [5] that they may be as close together as the two writers always have been in my mind—and always will be, throughout the large part of life in which my thoughts are busy with you. Farewel. I must stop writing—it seems difficult,—but you know everything I am saying, I think, before you read it. Heaven guard you from all further sorrow!– I do not see that it can give you much that has been as yet withheld.
Yrs ever affly,
FJW.
Publication: RB-JW, pp. 138–139.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
2. Given that the “ms” must refer to letter 5564, we are unable to explain this remark.
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