590. EBB to Lady Margaret Cocks
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 284–286.
74 Gloucester Place.
Sept. 29th [1837] [1]
My dear Lady Margaret,
I would not obey the impulse towards answering your kind & interesting letter immediately,—because I wanted to be able to tell you what I can at last, that Papa has concluded the purchase of 50 Wimpole Street, with the exception of certain legal formalities attending a completed contract. It is nearly at the top of the street towards Regent’s Park, & therefore I care the less for the narrowness of the way & the high star-raking chimneys,—& as it is very large for a London house, we have no reason for not being quite contented. The lease is for twenty four years! And so here I am, settled in London! It seems incredible, & would have been unbearable to me some years ago! But happiness has not an only path, tho’ she has an only end. And when one feels the furze under one’s feet, there is nothing for it but to put on one’s shoes.
But to return to your letter, in which I read with such soothed & gratified feelings that conviction of yours that your beloved friend is with the Supreme Love and the Friend eternal! Ah! dearest Lady Margaret! how blessed it must be for you to use those beautiful words of hers—“There is no ray of hope—then I am quite happy”. How blessed it is to feel—because there is “much affliction”, there is “joy in the Holy Ghost” [2] —because there is darkness here, there is light in God’s starry providence—because we go on our way weeping, & bearing precious seed, we shall bring our sheaves with us! [3] Blessed be God who teaches us to build up our full joy with our many sorrows! And happy are we who in the sorrow have not only the sorrow; but who, because we have taken that man of sorrows [4] to be our Saviour & our Lord, may look up thro His sorrow to His joy—which is, without sorrow, for ever & ever! Amen!——
Do tell me my dear Lady Margaret, when you write again how your beloved friend’s family continue to be. Indeed I felt with a deep sympathy every word which you wrote to me upon this subject.
As to my doxies upon dramatic poetry, I know they are not judgments upon any poetry, or condemnations of yours in particular. What you observe of varieties of taste, is very true. Tell me if you are writing anything, & what!
I cannot tell your Ladyship where my new poem is to [be] met with—except in my desk, where it lies in a brown holland bag without thought of the future. I am writing a wild tale, with “Isobel’s child” for a name [5] —& when it is done, I may think or I may not, of what is to be done with my heaps of papers. Your Ladyship would be very severe on many of them, if not on all—and I am not at all sure of the safety of the contribution to Miss Mitford’s annual! The annual is Finden’s Tableaux—& will I do not doubt pass all the annuals of the year in excellence, in spite of me. She has written the prose parts all herself. By the way, will you, if I enclose a letter to her, procure a frank for it to Reading? Our great franker, Sir William Gosset, has gone down the Rhine, & I cant go after him—(I would, if I could)—and no franker great or little, to whom we have access, remains in London behind him. And my note being of no consequence except to myself, & dear Miss Mitford’s riches being in her heart & mind, I do not like sending it without a frank as an excuse. Therefore is the circuit, at which you may smile—& the trouble to Lord Somers, at which may he only graciously smile!
Dear Lady Margaret! I confess to you that I utterly dislike Lady Mary!—— [6] She may have “considered the vanities of the world with contempt”—but so, she did, the noblenesses of the heart & intellect. She had a hard shining imagination, instead of a heart—and words studied into carelessness, beating up & down, where warm natural woman pulses ought to have beat. She never looked at beauty—had no understanding or love for the ideal. And so I cannot love her, or admire her, or have patience with her. She had too little depth for manhood,—& too little softness for womanhood. Take away the corner stone & the top stone from Horace Walpole’s imagination [7] —or rather, take away what poetry he had—& dress him up in a hoop—& there is Lady Mary Wortley Montague ready for court!!—— I never could bear her—or Horace Walpole either—and whenever I have looked at her letters, I have felt too much out of humour to be amused.
We have been in some anxiety for the last week, from the illness of our servant, which is pronounced to be small pox. Papa has had it—but none of us have any human security against the danger except vaccination—& the servant is himself a proof that the vaccinated may suffer. We have been living, & are now, in a strict quarantine, & in an atmosphere of chloride of lime & camphor. Up to this time, we are all well—and it may please God to show His mercy in allowing us to escape altogether.
Do tell me dear Lady Margaret, sometimes, something of our young sovereign. She is very interesting to me, both from her dignities & her dangers.
And you do not say a word of your own plans—whether you remain at Eastnor for a much longer time, & where it is your intention to go, & if there is any hope for me to see you early in the spring. My sister’s kind regards.
Ever your affectionate
E B Barrett.
Does Lord Somers’ health continue good? May I offer my compliments to him?—together with this petition?–
Do you see the Commeline’s much? & how are they?–
The form of the disease here, is very mild–
Address, on integral page: The Lady Margaret Cocks.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: James Hervey-Bathurst.
1. Dated by reference to the death of Lady Margaret’s friend, Harriet Baker.
2. I Thessalonians, 1:6.
3. Cf. Psalms, 126:6.
4. Isaiah, 53:3.
5. Included in The Seraphim, and Other Poems.
6. Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762), famous for her Letters (1763) and for her feud with Pope. She helped introduce to England the practice of inoculation against smallpox, which she had first encountered in Turkey.
7. Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford (1717–97), of Strawberry Hill, wit, letter-writer and author of The Castle of Otranto (1764).
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