846. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 117–118.
[Torquay]
August 26th 1841
My very dear friend,
I have fluctuated from one shadow of uncertainty & anxiety to another, all the summer, on the subject to which my last earthly wishes cling—and I delayed writing to you, to be able to say, I am going to London. I may say so now—as far as the human may say “yes” or “no” of their futurity. The carriage, a patent carriage with a bed in it, & set upon some hundreds of springs, is, I believe on its road down to me—and immediately upon its arrival, we begin our journey. Whether we shall ever complete it, remains uncertain—more so than other uncertainties. My physician appears a good deal alarmed, calls it an undertaking full of hazard, & myself the “Empress Catherine” [1] for insisting upon attempting it. But I must. I go, as “the doves to their windows,” [2] to the only earthly daylight I see here. I go to rescue myself from the associations of this dreadful place. I go to restore to my poor Papa, the companionship of his family. Enough has been done & suffered for me. I thank God I am going home at last.
How kind it was in you, my very kind & ever very dear friend, to ask me to visit you at Hampstead! I felt myself smiling, while I read that part of your letter,—& laid it down, and suffered the vision to arise of your little room & your great Gregory [3] & your dear self scolding me softly as in the happy olden times, for not reading slow enough. Well—we do not know what may happen! I may (even that is possible) read to you again. But now—ah my dear friend—if you cd imagine me such as I am!—! You wd not think I cd visit you!—— Yet I am wonderfully better this summer—& if I can but reach home & bear the first painful excitement, it will do me more good than anything—I know it will! And if it does not,—it will be well even so!–
I shall tell them to send you the Athenæum of last week, where I have a “House of Clouds”, [4] —which Papa likes so much that he wd wish to live in it if it were not for the damp. There is not a clock in one room—that’s another objection! How are your clocks? Do they go? and do you like their voices as well as you used to do?
I think Annie is not with you—but in case of her still being so, do give her (& yourself too) Arabel’s love & mine. I wish I heard of you oftener. Is there nobody to write? May God bless you.
Your ever affectionate friend
EBB
Address: H S Boyd Esqr / Devonshire [sic] Hill / Hampstead / London.
Publication: LEBB, I, 88–89.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Assumed to be a reference to Catherine I (1683–1727), who had insisted on campaigning with her husband, Peter the Great.
2. Blake, Jerusalem; The Emanation of the Great Albion (1804), XXX, 13.
3. A 1690 edition of Gregory Nazianzen’s works; it was given to EBB by Boyd, and formed lot 718 of Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A1093). It is now at Wellesley.
4. The issue of 21 August (no. 721, p. 643).
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