731. EBB to Septimus Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 233–236.
[Torquay]
Thursday. [6 February 1840] [1]
My dearest Sette,
My conscience has fallen into a fit all at once, after various chronic symptoms, & is so unreasonable as to refuse to be revived unless I begin to write to you immediately. Indeed I do thank you for the dozens of ‘penny a lines’ [2] which you have sent me—none of them very long, but each proving that you think of me at odd times—which makes all even. Do believe that my not saying ‘thank you’ to each, is no proof of thankless thoughts—& do go on writing as often as you can. Any sort of nonsense does, you know—and really we ought to encourage the postage bill, were it only for patriotism’s sake.
Thank dearest Papa for me for his enclosure & the lines in the envelope—but I believe I did it my own self. Tell him too what I forgot to tell, that I have finished Shelley’s volumes [3] which, if it were not for the here & there defilement of his atrocious opinions [4] <…> [5] would have very deeply delighted me. As it is there are traces of my pencil “in a passion” as dear Georgie wd say. I have fallen out too with Shelley about his translations from Plato. [6] The general impression was, & my particular impression certainly was that he “ate Greek drank Greek” [7] —whereas it almost appears to me now that he starved upon it. At any rate he knew little or nothing of Plato—& the translations so extolled in the preface, are only wonderful from their extreme incorrectness. [8] I am wondering if any of the Critics par excellence will take notice of this. Tell me if you see it noticed anywhere–
Dr Scully came here this morning on his way to “looking in” he said “upon a meeting” at the hotel, “to consider the propriety of doing honor to Mrs Albert on monday”. [9] He means to try to persuade the people to be satisfied with a subscription dinner for the poor—instead of disturbing the invalids of the place with threatened illuminations—& I do hope he may succeed– It wd be a cruel mockery to permit such a public manifestation, in the midst of the dying—&—what many persons wd think more of, tho’ it inverts the climax,—“very bad taste”– He found my pulse in a “dead calm” (for me) this morning—at 84!! altho’ 92 yesterday,—which he called a “pretty good pulse” (for me) also. It has been decidedly quieter now for ten days, & for the most part of that time, I have slept better. But when, in order to take advantage of this calm, & give some of the strength, which my dearest Papa wants me to have, he attempted to resume the iron, back came the palpitations & forced him to let it go again .. And now he says that there is no use,—that I can not bear tonics under present circumstances. The sun is the best tonic—the sunshine with God’s blessing upon it,—the sunshine which promises to come the month after next!——
Today Mr Orange is coming to see me; and yesterday Mr Tagle, [10] in the course of his visit to Bummy, very kindly proposed of his own will, to do the same thing– He said that he knew “Miss Barrett was a dissenter”, .. “so, indeed is her father, who knows the truth thoroughly” .. but that he cd not consider such a circumstance any objection to his being admitted to talk & read & pray with me .. that he cd not clash with Mr Orange who seemed to be a very good quiet man, not given to make disturbances in any dissenting manner whatever. “That is the worst of the dissenters!” Then he told Bummy to write my ‘yes’ to him, if I said it—which of course I did, immediately & very gratefully.
We have not heard from Jamaica, which is a shame. Bro went out to the Hopeful, [11] through such a foaming sea, that I shd have been terrified if I had known anything about it before his safe return. Dr Scully told me he tried to persuade him not to go—all in vain. We have had tremendous seas & winds,—& a chimney on the other side of the house, “nodding to its fall”. [12] But nothing makes me fail to perceive the great advantages in point of shelter & warmth of this number one. My room particularly is quite a nest of a room—there being nothing at all like it, according to Dr Scully, in the whole of Torquay. During our short attack of frost, he used to stand before the fire every morning wrapt in admiration, while Crow reported the state of the thermometer.
The rock walk is falling to pieces. Indeed great rocky fragments have been hurled, in the manner of avalanches, so near some of the houses facing the quay that their inhabitants have fled—although one or two of the landlords came forwards with a generous offer of taking the responsibility .. “they wd answer for the consequences.” Tenants were unreasonable enough to run as fast as ever. Papa’s artist, Mr Mills, [13] escaped crushing, just by six inches & a half.
Did anybody tell you of my artist Mr Wyatt, being raised to the rank of chymist to Her Majesty [14] —& through no solicitation on his part? He shows an official letter, from Windsor I believe, & is a very great man indeed.
Do write & tell us all that you are all doing,—& in detail. Tell dearest Minny she is very very kind to send me so many letters, & that I do mean to write to her. My thoughts & affections are looking in upon you thro’ all the windows, by daytime & night time.
The colour has come into the cheeks of my conscience, now Sette. She is pretty well, thank you!–
May God bless you always,
Your most affectionate Ba.
Best love to my dear Trippy. I cannot hear of Mrs Pierce [15] thro’ Dr Scully, my only source of news.
Poor Arlette & Cissy are rather better. They have had very very bad coughs for a fortnight past—in my private suspicion,—the hooping cough– But Bummy does not think so–
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Gordon E. Moulton-Barrett.
1. Dated by reference to the forthcoming wedding of Queen Victoria.
2. Freelance contributors to newspapers used to be paid a penny a line.
3. EBB’s father had sent her, in January, Shelley’s Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments, ed. Mrs. Shelley (2 vols., 1840).
4. EBB took exception to Shelley’s ideas on religion. In her copy of the book (now at Princeton; see Reconstruction, A2102) she has scored through some of his passages and has written her own opinions in the margin.
5. The words “by which they are defiled” have been deleted, apparently by EBB.
6. EBB considered Shelley’s translations to be highly inaccurate; she noted 37 errors, and also complained of his failure to render the sense of a Greek pun. The tenor of her comments shows her real feeling for, and grasp of, the Greek language. A detailed listing of her notations can be found in “Elizabeth Barrett’s Commentary on Shelley: Some Marginalia,” by James Thorpe (Modern Language Notes, LXVI, 1951, 455–458).
7. We have been unable to locate the source of this quotation.
8. Mrs. Shelley’s preface claims that “Shelley commands language splendid and melodious as Plato, and renders faithfully the elegance and gaiety which make the Symposium as amusing as it is sublime. The whole mechanism of the drama … [is] given with grace and animation.”
9. Queen Victoria’s wedding to Prince Albert was to take place the following Monday, 10 February.
10. EBB’s writing is clear, but we have not traced anybody of this name. Given her habitual carelessness with names, particularly any she was not familiar with, we believe this to be a reference to the Rev. John Eagles, Curate of Kinnersley and tutor to Bummy’s nephew, John Altham Graham-Clarke. As his daughter, Emma Jane (1811–1904), was to marry Bummy’s nephew later in the year, he would obviously call on her while in Torquay.
11. Presumably the name of the packet bringing mail from the West Indies.
12. Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle IV, 129.
13. Mills had made a chalk drawing of EBB’s father that she had in Torquay, and later in Italy. In a letter of 19 November 1842, EBB mentions his being commissioned to do a fresco at Gravesend. He is thought to have been John Mills, who exhibited at the Royal Academy and the British Institute between 1801 and 1837.
14. EBB’s reference is to the painter who accompanied the Moulton-Barretts to France in 1815 (see letter 26). We have been unable to elucidate his having been appointed “chymist to Her Majesty”; nobody of that name is listed in any capacity in any department of the Queen’s Household, or in the listing of Queen’s Tradesmen, in The Royal Kalendar: and Court and City Register for the years 1839 and 1840.
15. We have not identified Mrs. Pierce.
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