583. EBB to Julia Martin

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 270–274.

London

August 16th [1837] [1]

My dearest Mrs Martin,

It seems a long long time since we had any intercourse—and the answer to your last pleasant letter to Henrietta, must go to you from me. We have heard of you that you dont mean to return to England before the spring—which news proved me a prophet, & disappointed me at the same time—for one cant enjoy even a prophecy in this world without something vexing. Indeed I do long to see you again dearest Mrs Martin, & should always have the same pleasure in it, & affection for you, if my friends & acquaintances were as much multiplied, as you wrongly suppose them to be. But the truth is that I have almost none at all, in this place—& except our relative Mr Kenyon, not one, literary in any sense. Dear Miss Mitford, one of the very kindest of human beings, lives buried in geraniums, thirty miles away. I could not conceive what Henrietta had been telling you, or what you meant, for a long time—until we conjectured that it must have been something about Lady Dacre—who kindly sent me her book, & intimated that she wd be glad to receive me at her conversazione’s—and you know me better than to doubt whether I would go or not. There was an equal unworthiness & unwillingness towards the honor of it!

Indeed dearest Mrs Martin, it is almost surprising, how we contrive to be as dull in London as in Devonshire—perhaps more so—for the sight of a multitude induces a sense of seclusion which one has not without it,—and besides, there were at Sidmouth many more known faces, & listened-to voices than we see & hear in this place. No house yet! And you will scarcely have patience to read that Papa has seen & likes another house in Devonshire Place—& that he may take it, & we may be settled in it, before the year closes. I myself think of the whole business indifferently. My thoughts have turned so long on the subject of houses, that the pivot is broken—& now they wont turn any more. All that remains is, a sort of consciousness, that we should be more comfortable in a house with cleaner carpets, & taken for rather longer than a week at a time. Perhaps after all, we are quite as well sur le tapis [2] as it is. It is a thousand to one, but that the feeling of four red London walls closing round us for seven eleven or twenty five years, would be a harsh & hard one—& make us cry wistfully to “get out”. I am sure you will look up to your mountains, & down to your lake, & enter into this conjecture.

Talking of mountains & lakes, is itself a trying thing to us poor prisoners. Papa has talked several times of taking us into the country for two months this summer—& we have dreamt of it a hundred times in addition,—but after all we are not likely to go I dare say. It wd have been very delightful—& who knows what may take place next summer. We may not absolutely die, without seeing a tree! Henrietta has seen a great many. You will have heard I dare say, of the enjoyment she had in her week at Camden House. [3] She seems to have walked from seven in the morning to seven at night,—& was quite delighted with the kindness within doors & the sunshine without! I assure you that fresh as she was from the air & dew, she saluted us amidst the sentiment of our sisterly meeting, just in this way—it was almost her first exclamation—“What a very disagreeable smell there is here!”!—— And this, altho’ she had brought geraniums enough from Camden, to perfume the Haymarket!

I suppose Mr Martin—give my kindest regards & condolences to him—is looking with the utmost scorn at England & her elections. We for Marylebonne, have done our duty [4] —but we confess to a good deal of national dishonor, as regarding our decisions generally. Papa’s face has been growing longer & longer. We should have to lay our head in the dust, if it were not for Mr O Connell’s tail: and altho’ I for one, am not fond of thickening his honors (I think the pence are quite thick enough) yet it is plain that if it were not for him, all the young Queen’s smiles could not keep Lord Melbourne in office. [5] The worst of it is, that notwithstanding his remaining in office, his majority will not be strong enough to reform manfully. For instance, the lashing of the tail wont pass the Church rate bill. [6] Papa cries out for the ballot. I would rather have good done by any other means—and write of any other subject than politics—altho’ you may not think so, after all this!——

Have you seen in any paper the marriage of Annie Boyd? We were at the ceremony a fortnight ago in Marylebonne Church—& saw the bride in orange flowers & Brussels lace & a “dark green travelling carriage,” just as all respectable brides must be. At the end of ten days, we had the surprise! of hearing that she was “immeasurably happy”!– May it be so, at the end of ten years!– And I do hope in God, it may be so. She has married an amiable young man, a Mr Hayes, an Irishman, & he & she & Mr Brown a very rich bachelor from who he has expectations, are all to live together in a beautiful house in Regent’s Park—with footmen & carriages & horses “to correspond”. In the meantime, Mr Boyd remains for the present at St John’s Wood, perfectly contented, if not rather pleased, with his independent solitude—enlivened by all the friends, he can think of asking to stay with him.

We had a letter from dearest Bummy yesterday—& I grieve to say she has had the influenza bad enough to occasion a three days confinement to bed, & is still very weak. Arabella Gosset & her husband & two babies paid her a visit on their way to Kinnersley, from whence they go to Ireland for the winter. And so, did uncle John—& so did uncle Richard,—& his two poor children, [7] committed to her guardianship, are with her. She says that they are sweet docile children, & willing to be happy, now that the pang of their father’s separation from them, is over. They cried themselves to sleep, the night before he went away!– Poor little creatures! I feel as if I could love them very dearly!– The governess—a Swiss—is much approved of. Dear Bummy does not say that she likes Frocester very much, & I have my own opinion on that subject. Indeed I felt very averse to her going, from the very first rumour of it: and now that the Hedleys have gone back to Torquay for another year, & perhaps longer, by the desire of their medical adviser, it is difficult to help regretting that she should have quitted it just before that arrangment was made. She says in jest,—but, to my mind, with some earnest feeling at the bottom of it—“I think they will have to put my feet in the village stocks, to keep me here!” She has not seen her nephews.

We heard too yesterday from Eliza Cliffe who mentions that the Peytons are going to Aberys[t]with for a short time, for which she is glad on account of Mrs Peytons spirits, & that the Heywoods are going abroad, or talk of it,—for two or three <years.> Other news there is none. Only that the Cliffes have themselves been wandering ov<er the> Welsh mountains—either on or behind ponies—I could not clearly make out which—& I mercifully hope the latter, on account of the ponies. It seems strange & v<ery> foolish, that we should have lived for so many years, where we did, & never <saw> Wales—except from the top of Coome hill. [8] In our present low estate, we were perfectly satisfied & not a little pleased, on finding ourselves—which we have done once this summer—drinking tea under an elm at Hampstead. The invitation came from Mrs Orme a former governess of ours, who has a school there, & was in holiday time when she asked us. You cant think how we enjoyed it—notwithstanding that Mr Kenyon—he altho’ a resident in London, thinks nothing of flitting into Wales or Devonshire once a month—laughed to scorn the “Cockneyism”. Nevertheless, the country—yes! the country at Hampstead, is very pretty,—& we looked away from the Police keeping guard on the heath, to the “breezy heath” itself, & liked it all very much indeed. And so would you, if you had been shut up in prison for nearly two years. “To this complexion” would the verriest mountaineer of you all, “come at last”, [9] —if you had been smoke dried the proper length of time!——

I am happy to announce to you that a new little dove has appeared from a shell—over which nobody had prognosticated good—on this 16th of August—1837. I and the senior Doves appear equally delighted—& we all three, in the capacity of good sitters & indefatigable pullers-about, take a good deal of credit upon ourselves.

Henry has left Switzerland, & is now at Kirchheim—but whether he is likely to remain there, I cannot say. The probability appears that he will not,—for I grieve to tell you that Mr Nieder has written to complain of his “seule faute” [10] self willedness, & to intimate in short that he cant by any means manage him, “aimable” as he is. He took it into his head to part company with Mr Nieder in Switzerland! of course Papa is displeased & disappointed—and he did speak of having him home at once—but I do not know the ultimate resolve. I am sure you will not mention what I have told you. Do not, even in your letters here. From Jamaica, we continue to have very good accounts. Sam’s conduct is exemplary, & he is in high favor with his uncle. Mrs Barrett has arrived. Her health quite revived during the voyage, and she looks well now, altho’ too feeble for much exertion. You know we never saw her before. She received us very affectionately—& I like her manner which is calm & gentle & perfectly unaffected.—— [11]

Arabel has begun oil painting, & without a master—and you cant think how much effect & expression she has given to several of her own sketches, notwithstanding all difficulties. Poor Henrietta is without a piano—& is not to have one again, until we have another house. This is something like .. ‘when Homer & Virgil are forgotten”.– Speaking of Homer & Virgil I have been writing a Romance of the Ganges, in order to illustrate an engraving in the new annual to be edited by Miss Mitford, Finden’s tableaux for 1838. It does not sound a very Homeric undertaking—I confess I dont hold any kind of annual, gild it as you please, in too much honor & awe—but from my wish to please her, & from the necessity of its being done in a certain time, I was “quite frightful”, as poor old Cooke [12] used to say, in order to express his own nervousness. But she was quite pleased—she is very soon pleased—& the ballad, gone the way of all writing, now a days, to the press.——

I do wish I could send you some kind of news that wd interest you—but you see scarcely any—except all this selfishness is in my beat.

Dearest Bro draws & reads German, and I fear is dull notwithstanding. But we are every one of us, more reconciled to London than we were. Well! I must not write any more. Whenever you think of me dearest Mrs Martin, remember how deeply & unchangeably I must regard you—both with my mind, my affections & that part of either, called my gratitude!–

Henrietta’s kindest love & thanks for your letter. She desires me to say that she & Bro are going to dine with Mrs Robert Martin, tomorrow. I must tell you that Georgie & I went to hear Dr Chalmers preach, three Sundays ago. His sermon was on a text whose extreme beauty wd diffuse itself into any sermon preached upon it—God is Love– His eloquence was very great, & his views noble & grasping. I expected much from his imagination—but not so much from his knowledge. It was truer to Scripture, than I was prepared for, altho’ there seemed to me some want, on the subject of the work of the Holy Spirit, on the heart—which work we cannot dwell upon too emphatically. “He worketh in us to will & to do” [13] —& yet we are apt to will & do, without a transmission of the praise to Him. May God bless you.

Address, on integral page: À Madame / Madame Martin / Poste Restante / à Geneve [14] / La Suisse / Switzerland.

Publication: LEBB, I, 50–53 (in part).

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Dated internally by EBB herself.

2. “On the carpet.”

3. i.e., at Chislehurst; see letters 584 and 585.

4. In the August general election, two Liberals had been returned for St. Marylebone.

5. Melbourne’s administration had been returned with a narrow majority, and was being kept in office largely through O’Connell’s support.

6. The church rate was a tax levied in each parish for the benefit of the parish church, for upkeep of the fabric, clerical salaries, and other expenses. It was strongly opposed by the Non-Conformists, who had conscientious objections to supporting the Church of England. However, efforts to abolish the tax did not succeed until 1868.

7. John Altham Graham-Clarke and Richard Pierce Butler; the latter was the widower of EBB’s aunt Charlotte, who had died in 1834. His two daughters, Arlette and Cissy, were, as EBB indicates, now in the care of their aunt, Arabella Graham-Clarke (“Bummy”).

8. Coombe Hill, some 450 feet high, about 3/4 mile N. of Hope End, had been a favourite excursion and picnic site when the family lived there.

9. The last line of Garrick’s epitaph on the actor James Quin (The Life of David Garrick, Esq., by Arthur Murphy, 1801, II, 36).

10. “Only fault.”

11. Anne Elizabeth (née Gordon), Samuel Moulton-Barrett’s second wife.

12. Probably Jack Cook, one of the outdoor staff at Hope End.

13. Cf. Philippians, 2:13.

14. This line was crossed out, apparently by Geneva postal personnel, who then wrote below the original address: “à Lausanne.”

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