SD2571. Lydia Maria Child to Theodore Tilton
Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 345 (in part).
Wayland,
April 11th 1862.
… I cannot sufficiently thank you for your kindness in sending me Mrs. Browning’s Poems, and her photograph. The latter pains me, but still I like to have it. There is so much experience of suffering written in that face! It hardly seems possible that so frail an envelope could have held such a mighty soul. How strong she was, yet how full of all womanly sympathy and gentleness! She seems to have approached, nearer than any other person I know of, the ideal standard of perfection in a human being; that is, a harmonious apportionment of the masculine and the feminine elements in character.
I have not had time yet to read all the poems in the vol. you sent; but in those I have read I find her characteristic wealth of poetic imagery, and her broad range of thought forever floating toward the infinite. Your Memorial is exceedingly interesting; worthy of its lofty theme. I thank you very cordially for sending it to me. It will be precious to me, both on account of the profound reverence I feel for her memory, and the lively interest I take in you and your noble doings. …
Publication: The Collected Correspondence of Lydia Maria Child, ed. Patricia G. Holland and Milton Meltzer, Kraus Microform, Millwood, New York, 1980, letter 1401.
Manuscript: Buffalo and Erie County Public Library.
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