699. EBB to Lady Margaret Cocks
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 162–165.
3 Beacon Terrace, Torquay.
June 12th 1839.
My dear Lady Margaret,
I have mislaid your letter, & cannot remember the address which I think you gave me in it. Therefore I shall enclose what I am going to write in a cover to Lord Somers—and gladly do I begin to write, to renew the intercourse so long broken between us, & to thank you for keeping your interest in me so kindly unbroken.
That I am better is very true; & very wonderful in my own eyes it is, that I am as well as I find myself at this time. The winter has been very trying to me––and repeated attacks have brought & kept me so low that since October I have never walked without support, & since January never in any way. Indeed at that time & afterwards the state of debility, induced not merely by the complaint on the chest but by an incidental & unaccountable attack of jaundice, was excessive. No baby could be more helpless—only,—my voice having quite sunk away to a whisper,—I had not the baby’s privilege of screaming. My own impression was that I should never rally—and indeed my physician, Dr Barry, a very able & kind helper to me, told a relation of mine that until March with its cold were past, he could not give any opinion as to consequences. But here is summer again!—and I am on the drawing room sofa & very much better—and from the last stethoscope examination, my chest is reported to be in a decidedly improved state—so that my prospects now are of going upon the sea almost immediately to gather a little strength from the external air & sunshine—and I am quite willing to be sanguine while God’s providences will let me.
The joy of the summer comes however less (oh far less) from the sunshine than from the hope which I hold as fast as a child does its flowers, of being again with my beloved Papa & Arabel & all those who have hitherto found it impossible to be here with me. I want very much to go to London—I must do it, if it is not otherwise arranged, so that I may still be with them. Nothing is settled—& people look grave when I talk of London. Well! I do not mind about London—but I am self-willed upon one point––I must be with them.
Dearest Papa has been here, by a month at a time, & not unfrequently—and my sister Henrietta & my eldest brother have never left me. Miss Clarke too is here. There is kindness on all sides—but most kindness above––because there is the infinite Capacity of Love!– How coldly we stand beneath that Sunshine! Oh!—is it not true that we should look up & stretch out our hands, crying unto God, not for more gifts but for more gratitude—? The gifts are many––we cannot count them. The gratitude is very scant.
My dear Lady Margaret, that the one hour a year upon which I may talk to you & hear you talk should have gone by in silence for me, this year, makes me regretful indeed. I had heard of your visit to Wimpole Street before your letter reached me.
Do write again when writing is not a great trouble—& say dear Lady Margaret as much about yourself as I may hear. While I live I must care for you & yours & for whatever is of interest to you– Are you writing anything? or reading books that please you?
I have been dumb with my pen almost all the winter—& even now am under an awful medical ban in regard to any sort of composition. Books too have been ordered away—but they, being faithful friends, would’nt go—so that now Dr Barry restricts his disapprobation to a shaking of the head when he happens to see one larger than usual.– I am about too, in spite of the ban, to contribute again to Finden’s Tableaux—a vow having been vowed to that effect months ago, to my dear friend Miss Mitford, in the case of her retaining the editorship. There will be three other poets—–I mean besides me—(all poets you know, in virtue of office)—and Miss Mitford will write the whole of the prose. What my subject is, I have no imagination of yet—& am only today beginning to expect the suggestive sketch. You will hope that whatever heroine may fall to my share, may have longer petticoats than she had last year. [1] So do I, most earnestly & decorously–
We have a house in the warmest situation of Torquay, which just now is scarcely an advantage. But the windows quite seem to hang over the beautiful bay, and our ears are as familiar as its rocks are, with the sound of its waters. And when I go to bed—where I always am at half past six, there is a crimson or golden sunset waiting for me, ready to be seen from my pillow, & pressing so heavily upon the opposite hills that they seem forced (for ease) to throw upon the intervening waves, some of the glory. This is nearly all I know of Torquay. Henrietta has mixed with the society, & liked a good deal of it; but Dr Barry’s face is the only one I have seen thro’ the winter. For four months I never left my bedroom at all—and the sight of a stranger having been from first to last forbidden to me,—I have had no chance of pleasure from the locality, except by means of the soft & mild temperature, which certainly does appear to agree with my shattered hapless chest.
Poor LEL. How soon she sang her last song!– Miss Mitford has heard dreadful intimations of the cause of her death! [2] There was a dark woman with children in the castle, & the supposition is that the poisoning was intentional. Any supposition is better than the common one pointing to suicide! but however it was, the newly-made wife’s heart was ready to break before it ceased to beat. That is said to be rendered clear by letters kept from publication.
My paper is at an end. I could write much more, but will not today. May God bless you my dear Lady Margaret!
Your affectionate
Elizabeth B Barrett.
I quite remember Mr. Martin—Mr. Joseph Martin [3] ––& something of the general subject of our conversation. Was’nt it about Jove & fate? Or was it of Homer’s recipe for making ghosts? [4] I see double after all.– Miss Clarke & Henrietta beg, both of them, their very kind remembrances.
My dear Mrs Martin (of Colwall) wrote to my sister not long ago. I always love her–
Addressed and franked by Lord Somers: London June Seventeenth / 1839 / The Lady Margt Cocks / Neen Savage / Cleobury / Bewdley / Somers. [5]
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: James Hervey-Bathurst.
1. A reference to the brevity of Ellen’s tunic in “The Romaunt of the Page” (see letter 636, note 4).
2. Rumours abounded regarding the cause of Mrs. Maclean’s death, so soon after her marriage. The obituary notice in The Athenæum (5 January 1839, p. 14) attributed death to “medicine taken improperly, or in too large a quantity,” but gossip hinted at suicide or murder, rather than accidental death. The rumours were fuelled by there having been no post-mortem examination and the knowledge that her husband had destroyed two letters written just prior to her death. (See L.E.L.: A Mystery of the Thirties, by D.E. Enfield, 1928.)
3. Joseph Martin (1776–1867), a barrister, was the elder brother of James Martin, EBB’s neighbour in the Hope End days.
4. References to ghosts abound in both The Iliad and The Odyssey, making it difficult to explain EBB’s remark. The “recipe” may have been vengeance: Achilles slew twelve Trojan prisoners and cast them on the funeral pyre of his dead comrade Patroclus (Iliad, XXIII, 175–183).
5. On the front of the envelope, EBB wrote “The Lady Margaret Cocks ..” This inscription was crossed out, apparently by Lord Somers at the time of franking.
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