SD2275. Octavia Hill to Florence Hill
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 26, 360 (in part).
Milton Street,
June 26th, 1859.
I quite trust Ruskin about his plans for me; only I wonder why he should speak so …
I haven’t any doubt that Mrs. Browning feels passionately and intensely; but probably her passion is both controlled and concealed. I think her turning away, when you spoke of England, simply showed she saw you were feeling a great deal, and she meant to help you to conceal it. Ruskin says of her that she is the only entirely perfect example of womanhood he knows. You will see her again? I wish it were possible, or would be of any use, to thank her thro’ you for all she has taught me. You know sometimes as I walk to Dulwich in the scorching sun and am doubtful, or as tiredly I return up the New Road, the sunset or moonlight speaking less to me than haunting uncertain fears about those I love, I begin repeating “Isabel’s Child” to myself. The wonderful power of contrast of wild storm without, and dream within, the glory of the child’s vision, the almost awful infinity of thought in every verse, the perfect reality of the whole, are fresh delights to me, and yet I forget them all in the perfect rest of the last verse.
“Oh you
Earth’s tender and impassioned few!
Take courage to entrust your love
To Him so named, Who guards above
Its ends, and shall fulfil,
Breaking the narrow prayers that may
Befit your narrow hearts, away
In His broad loving will.”
And numbers of other lines and verses and poems teach me day by day.
Text: Life of Octavia Hill as Told in Her Letters, ed. C. Edmund Maurice (London, 1913), pp. 146–147.
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