698. EBB to Edward Hill Weale
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 162.
Torquay
June 11th 1839.
Dear Mr Weale
It is hard for me to say how very much I admire the beauty of your gifts & how truly I thank you for the kindness. The water colour drawing is extremely beautiful & suggestive. The moonlight in it cannot be said to have “no business there”—for it comes like a spirit upon the ruin .. the place for spirits .. & reconciles us to desolation. You have done what is said to be impossible “painted a thought”! And I am satisfied to hear in the silence of your picture, Spenser’s very own voice ..
“O Mulla mine, I whilome taught to weep” [1]
.. looking, with that moonlight on it, as if it wept still!
Thank you again & again!–
I have written out some suggestions for paintings—as you asked me to do. Should you like any of them & wish for more, I shall be very glad to purvey for you again. These passages are all from the old poets—& you will not I think on that account, care less for them. [2]
You left behind you, believe me, many pleasant recollections .. even for me, .. who was excluded from your society so much & necessarily. Do give my kind regards to Mrs Weale,
& believe me
Most sincerely yours
Elizabeth B Barrett.
Think of my forgetting to thank you for your legacy of Coleridge. It was too bad in kindness to leave it—but you did not leave it to be uncared for.
Browne, the writer of Britannia’s Pastorals, is very graphic—more definitely so than most poets are. He is a poet too, to be read in Devon. Forgive this shaking handwriting–
Publication: BC, 4, 162 (in part).
Manuscript: The Karpeles Manuscript Library.
1. Faerie Queene, IV, xi, 41, 9, slightly misquoted. The picture for which EBB is thanking Weale is presumably the one of Spenser’s residence in Ireland, which she mentions in letter 695 as having been promised her. She also says in that letter that Weale intends “to commence a series of graphic illustrations of English poetry”; her 12 pages of extracts obviously relate to this project.
2. With the letter EBB encloses 12 pp. (258 lines) of suggestions on subjects for further paintings. These include 34 extracts from poems by Chaucer, Prior, Spenser, Browne, and Fletcher, with occasional remarks by EBB.
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