658. EBB to Lady Margaret Cocks
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 70–71.
50 Wimpole Street.
Saturday. [4 August 1838] [1]
My dear Lady Margaret,
I trust that it has seemed to you rather strange than unkind that I have not written to you before. Indeed it was my intention to do so—and then sometimes I waited to be better & sometimes to see the end of very uncertain plans, but never I fear for a sufficiently availing reason to justify this long silence before the kind interest you have expressed in me, & in which it gives me so much pleasure to believe.
I am better—with a betterness however very dependent, to speak humanly, upon the wind, & upon the degree of repose & freedom from emotion in the body & mind. The cough & expectoration of blood continue—though not with violence enough to demand the application of leeches, made so frequently some time ago: and I have had no return of the acute pain in the side. Dr Chambers—the sincerest of physicians! has told me that there seems to be no ulceration of lungs, & that he has grounds for hoping for my ultimate complete recovery. But he has made an essential condition of my leaving this part of England for the winter– He wd not, he said, be answerable as to any result if I attempted to stay here. And so, I am going—sad at heart, since I am going at the same time from my family—to Torquay for the winter & autumn months.
But to stay at the risk of my life wd be wilfulness & foolishness at once: and indeed this necessity of going has assumed the gentlest form it could. I go direct to my uncle Hedley’s house, there to remain until my aunt Bell, Miss Clarke, leaves Gloucestershire for Torquay on purpose to be with me. In the midst of so much kindness, lamenting wd be out of place even if it did not imply unthankfulness. I shall be quite as happy as I can be under the circumstances. And I shall hold fast the hope of seeing my dearest Papa occasionally, & of having my sisters with me alternately—& my brother will be my escort there. We go by sea. I am unable to bear the motion of a carriage,—& a sea voyage does not, Dr Chambers thinks, involve any risk. But indeed to a helpless being like me, whose migrations have for so many months been from the bed to the sofa, it looks in importance & hazard very much like an expedition to the North Pole. But I suppose it is not like it, after all!——
My book has been the means to me of a good deal of pleasure– It has pleased some whom I cared to please: and the half dozen reviews which I have seen, have all treated me graciously more or less. What gratified me particularly was Professor Wilson’s graciousness in the last Blackwood—in the article called Christopher’s cave. It pleased me very much to be taken into a cave in company with Mr Milnes who was born a crowned poet, by perhaps the first poetical critic of the day, to say nothing of being praised there besides. But it is not all praise—nor is the praise so emphatic as that of some other critics! But even blame, hard critical blame, in that cave, would have seemed praise to me!!—— [2]
I know that the book is full of faults. Tell me the whole truth of your impression of it– you may, & without disappointing me. I have a kiss ready for every rod! [3]
And do say dearest Lady Margaret, as much of your own self as I may hear! If you write after a week or ten days, I believe it must be to Torquay––Robert Hedley’s Esqr Torquay. May God bless you! How all of us need blessing of God! always! but we feel the need sometimes more deeply than at other times! I feel it now!
Your affectionate
EBB.
My sisters beg to be very fondly remembered to your Ladyship. They are quite well.
Addressed and franked by Lord Somers: Tewkesbury Augst fifth / 1838 / The Lady Margt Cocks / Neen Savage / Cleobury / Bewdley / Somers / [and on reverse of envelope in EBB’s hand:] The Lady Margaret Cocks.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: James Hervey-Bathurst.
1. Dated by the frank.
2. The article in Blackwood’s (see previous letter, note 3) was generally favourable (“pregnant with lofty thoughts”; “In ‘The Seraphim’ there is poetry and piety—genius and devotion”; “passages of deep pathos”), but Wilson said of the smaller poems “they are all disfigured by much imperfect and some bad writing—and the fair author is too often seen struggling in vain to give due expression to the feelings that beset her, and entangled in a web of words.”
3. Cf. Two Gentlemen of Verona, I, 2, 59.
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