708. EBB to Theodosia Garrow
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 189–190.
Beacon Terrace
Wednesday– [mid-August 1839] [1]
My dear Miss Garrow,
I was too tired upon my return from the voyage yesterday, [2] to do more than feel very much pleased & honored too, by Mr Landor’s gift. [3] Thank you for conveying it to me—& forgive me for not answering your note until now– The Admiral’s daughter is the second of the “Two old men’s tales”. [4] I read it upon its publication several years ago, & was much struck with its passion & intensity, & “shed tears as fast” as Landor could, though mine wanted the embalming qualities of his— .. the “medicæan gums”– [5] Miss Boyle is to [be] envied. By the way I never heard [of] the book attributed to her,—or to a female writer at all– Surely she is not the State Prisoner Miss Boyle, Mr James’s friend. [6] Not that I know anything of the Prisoner except from a review. [7]
If it shd be fine tomorrow
“There yawns the sack & yonder rolls the sea” [8]
& I am afraid I shall not escape being a victim. But in the case of the wind being a little rough, or a cloud being broad enough for an excuse, I shall be delighted to see you & your sister dear Miss Garrow—then—or any other day. [9]
And believe me on all days
Most truly yours
Elizabeth B Barrett.
I shall venture to write to Mr Landor to Bath trusting to his name for including the advantage we need, of his address.
Docket, at top of page 1, in an unidentified hand: 1840. Miss Barrett.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Despite the 1840 docket (probably written some time after receipt, perhaps by Miss Garrow’s husband-to-be, T.A. Trollope), we think it impossible for the letter to have been written then—the prostration suffered by EBB following the successive deaths of Sam and Bro precluded any boating excursions in 1840. EBB was making such outings in August 1839.
2. A letter of 16 August 1839 (SD1024) says that EBB “bears her excursions upon the water (which are as frequent as the weather will permit,) with less fatigue to herself.”
3. If our dating assumptions are correct, this would have been Landor’s Andrea of Hungary and Giovanna of Naples (1839), mentioned in letter 710; the book formed lot 847 of Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A1388).
4. Two Old Men’s Tales: The Deformed, and The Admiral’s Daughter (anon., 2 vols., 1834).
5. Cf. Othello, V, 2, 351.
6. Mary Louisa Boyle (1810–90) was the author of The State Prisoner; a Tale of the French Regency (2 vols., 1837). George Payne Rainsford James (1801–60), novelist and historian, the author of Henry Masterson (1832), The Gypsy (1835) and Attila (1837), was described as Miss Boyle’s “literary godfather” (see Mary Boyle: Her Book, ed. Courtenay Boyle, 1901). The book EBB had not heard of was perhaps Miss Boyle’s just-published novel, The Forester: A Tale of 1688 (3 vols., 1839).
7. The Athenæum of 25 March 1837 (no. 491, p. 214) had described The State Prisoner as “an agreeable and well-written novel.”
8. Byron, The Corsair (1814), line 1509.
9. In letter 738, EBB tells Kenyon that she saw Miss Garrow “three times during the summer.”
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