SD1717. Mary Brotherton to Frederick Tennyson
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 364 (in part).
16 Via S. Isidoro
Febr 14 [1854]
My dear Mr Tennyson,
Mr Hemans desires to thank you very much for all the facilities you have kindly given him for writing his review of your poems. …
I have a most strange fact to impart to you that I hardly know how you will receive– But I do think you know enough of me to believe in my integrity at all events. —About ‘writing Mediums’—I was certainly very sceptical, but a short time ago I, by way of jesting experiment, tried if the pen would move in my hand, as the Thackeray girlies said it did in theirs, without their volition. It did move, & traced many uncouth marks—then some English words—then an English distich: “Heart & soul be still. God is Life & Will” (wh Mrs Browning pronounces ‘Swedenborgian’)—all certainly without any conscious volition of mine. At last, in 2 or 3 days I—or rather the pen—wrote a Latin word! a language of wh I am totally ignorant, (as I am indeed of all but my own—except that I can read french, and talk 20 words of bad Italian). The first word I wrote was “Periculo”—wh I was obliged to ask Augusto to explain to me. I wrote some other Latin words—then began to scrawl certain strange characters, wh A. pronounced to be Greek! …
Publication: Letters to Frederick Tennyson, ed. Hugh J. Schonfield (London, 1930), pp. 115–118.
Manuscript: Harvard University.
___________________
