585. EBB to Ann Rachel Commeline
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 276–280.
London
August 19, 1837
My dear Miss Commeline,—I could not hear of your being in affliction without very frequent thoughts of you and a desire to express some of them in this way [1] and although so much time has passed I do hope that you will believe in the sympathy with which I, or rather we, have thought of you, & in the regard we shall not cease to feel for you even if we meet no more in this world! It is blessed to know both for ourselves & for each other that while there is a darkness that must come to all there is a light which may; and may He who is the light in the dark place [2] be with you [now] & always! causing you to feel rather the glory that is in Him than the shadow which is in all beside—that so the sweetness of the consolation may pass the bitterness of even grief! Do give my love to Mrs Commeline and to your sisters, and believe me, all of you, that the friends who have gone from your neighbourhood have not gone from my old remembrance, either of your kindness to them, or of their own feelings of interest in you.
Trusting to such old remembrances I will believe that you care to know what we are doing and how we are settling. That word which has now been on our lips for years, which it is marvellous to think how it got upon human lips at all. We came from Sidmouth to try London & ourselves, & see whether or not we could live together. And after more than a year & a half close contact with smoke we find no very good excuse for not remaining in it; and Papa is going on with his eternal hunt for houses—the wild huntsman in the ballad is nothing to him, [3] all except the sublimity—intending very seriously to take the first he can. He is now about one in particular but I won’t tell where it is because we have considered so many houses in particular that our considerations have come to be a jest in general. I shall be heartily glad, at least I think so, for it is possible that the reality of being bricked up for a lease time may not be very agreeable. I think I shall be heartily glad when a house is taken and we have made it look like our own with our furniture and pictures and books. I am so anxious to see my old books! I believe I shall begin at the beginning & read every story book through in the joy of meeting & shall be as sedentary as ever I was, in my own arm-chair. I remember when I was a child spreading my vitality not over trees & flowers (I do that still—I still believe they have a certain animal susceptibility to pleasure & pain; “it is my creed,” & being Wordsworth’s besides I am not ashamed of it), but over chairs & tables & books in particular, and being used to fancy a kind of love in them to suit my love to them. And so if I were a child I should have an intense pity for my poor folios quartos and duodecimos to say nothing of the armchair shut up all these weeks & months in boxes, without a rational eye to look upon them. Pray forgive me if I have written a great deal of nonsense—“Je m’en doute.” [4]
Henrietta has spent a fortnight at Chislehurst with the Martins, [5] & was very joyous there & came back to us with that happy triumphant air, which I always fancy people “just from the country” put on towards us hapless Londoners.
But you must not think I am a discontented person and grumble all day long at being in London. There are many advantages here as I say to myself whenever it is particularly disagreeable and if we can’t see even a leaf or a sparrow without soot on it, there are the parrots at the Zoological Gardens & the pictures at the Royal Academy; and real live poets above all with their heads full of the trees & birds & sunshine of paradise. I have stood face to face with Wordsworth & Landor. And Miss Mitford, who is in herself what she is in her books, has become a dear friend of mine, but a distant one. She visits London at long intervals & lives thirty miles away.
I am happy to say that dearest Papa is very well, not at all a Londoner in his heart & pining I fear sometimes for his old dear rural occupations but still very well and generally in good spirits. When the hunt is over he will be perfectly contented I trust. Alfred is just now in vacation time but otherwise in attendance at the London University. Henry at a private tutors in Germany: Georgie hard at the law & my brother Sam studying sugar canes in the West Indies and put into the high places of authority on account of my dear uncle’s feeble state of health of which I am sure you will be sorry to hear. He had some intention of changing the climate & of coming to England by [way of] America but his medical advisers were against it & thought it would be a risk & so he remains in Jamaica although his wife has been obliged from a succession of alarming attacks to return here. Our last accounts of him were improved & yet I fear there is but too much room for a continued anxiety. She whom we have seen very few times for she has arrived only lately and resides with her family two or three miles away down in Westminster, appears to be very gentle and amiable, and I do not doubt notwithstanding some recollections which I cannot nor wish to help, [6] that we shall estimate & love her–
Henrietta desires me to “pass” her kind love to your sister Maria together with a confession that she is perfectly ashamed of her own neglect in not replying to the kind note she received from her at Sidmouth. Notwithstanding appearances neither your sister nor the drawing is forgotten. Arabel has begun oil painting & although without a master is making very quick advances.
Bro & I were studying German together all last summer with Henry before he left us to become a German, and I believe this is the last of my languages for I have begun absolutely to detest the sight of a dictionary or grammar, which I never liked except as a means, & love poetry with an intenser love, if that be possible, than I ever did. Not that Greek is not as dear to me as ever, but I write more than I read, even of Greek poetry, & am resolute to work whatever little faculty I have, clear of imitations & conventionalisms which cloud & weaken more poetry (particularly now-a-days) than would be believed possible without looking into it.
Your brother [7] is with you I believe. What is he doing? I hope something. Do give my kind regards to him & tell him that not long ago Papa saw at a window what he fancied to be a bust of our dear friend Sir Uvedale Price & very strikingly like. It proved upon enquiring to be a head of Canova. [8]
I was glad to see Lady Margaret Cocks once this spring and once last year & to think her looking well and in good spirits. We have had several happy meetings with Mrs James Martin and always found her the same as agreeable & as kind. She was last heard of at Geneva and I understand that in consequence of the Miss Martins spending the winter in the South of France, it is more likely that she & Mr Martin should remain with them than return to Colwall this year.——
As to society in London I assure you that none of us have much & that as for me, you would wonder at seeing how possible it is to live as secludedly in the midst of a multitude as in the centre of solitude. My doves are my chief acquaintances & I am so very intimate with them that they accept & even demand my assistance in building their innumerous nests. Do tell me if there is any hope of seeing any of you in London at any time. I say “do tell me,” for I will venture to ask you, dear Miss Commeline, to write me a few lines in one of the idlest hours of one of your idlest days just to tell me a little about you & whether Mrs Commeline is tolerably well. Pray believe me under all circumstances,
Yours sincerely and affectionately,
E B Barrett.
P.S. Kindest remembrances and regards from Papa & all of us. My eldest brother you know is at home. He still draws occasionally.
Publication: LEBB, I, 53–56 (in part).
Source: Kenyon Typescript, British Library.
1. Miss Commeline’s father, the Rev. James Commeline, Sr., Rector of Redmarley D’Abitot, had died on 8 May, aged 75.
2. Cf. II Peter, 1:19.
3. “The Wild Huntsman” (1796), one of the earliest of Sir Walter Scott’s published poems, was an imitation, rather than a translation, of “Der wilde Jäger” (1786) by Gottfried Augustus Bürger (1748–94). The huntsman of the title was so much addicted to the pleasures of the chase that he profaned the Sabbath by hunting on that day—hence the comparison with Edward Moulton-Barrett’s search for a house.
4. “I suspect it.”
5. As James Martin and his wife were in Switzerland, “the Martins” here must mean the Miss Martins, his sisters.
6. i.e., affectionate remembrances of Sam’s first wife.
7. The Rev. James Commeline, Jr., who succeeded to the rectorship of Redmarley D’Abitot after his father’s death.
8. Antonio Canova (1757–1822), Italian sculptor, probably best known for his “Perseus with the Head of Medusa.”
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