SD2025. Lydia Maria Child to Sarah Blake Shaw

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 263 (in part).

Wayland,

Dec. 20th 1856.

… “Get work,” says Mrs. Browning; “Be sure tis better than what you work to get.” Again she says: “I count that Heaven itself is only work to a surer issue.” What a wonderfully alive book is that Aurora Leigh! With what a grand unconsciousness does that episode of Marian Erle ride over all conventional distinctions! “The book is in my heart, lives in me, wakes in me, and dreams in me. My daily bread tastes of it.” I never before fully realized how truly great Elizabeth Browning is. I must procure her other poems, and make a study of them. I don’t believe her husband’s writings would ever take hold of me. Such a cast-iron hardness in the style; and if the thoughts indicate that he is an oracle moved by Apollo, it seems to me it is by the confusion of the utterance, rather than its inspiration.

I thank you for offering to send me Mrs. Browning’s notes; but I dont think it is worth while. I have no curiosity to know authors personally. Let her stay on her Olympian height, as Aurora Leigh. I dont care to have her come down and chat with me. …

“The thing is plain.

I play at Art, make thrusts with a toy-sword,

Amuse the lads and maidens.

Compliments

to smile or sigh at.

I smiled that all this youth should love me;

Then sighed again, less generously,

To think the very love they lavished so

Proved me inferior. The strong love me not—”

You see Aurora Leigh will keep in my head. Strange, is it not? that a woman of her mighty intellect should believe that God walked about in Nazareth, ate, drank, & digested? Those old Catholic bishops of the first centuries, two thirds Pagan in their creed, have arms that reach far, to bind such souls! …

Publication: The Collected Correspondence of Lydia Maria Child, ed. Patricia G. Holland and Milton Meltzer, Kraus Microform, Millwood, New York, 1980, letter 969.

Manuscript: Harvard University.

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