The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) eBook

Frederic G. Kenyon
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 600 pages of information about The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2).

The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) eBook

Frederic G. Kenyon
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 600 pages of information about The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2).
about to travel with her young niece.  Therefore we are five travelling, Wilson being with me.  Oh, yes, Wilson came; her attachment to me never shrank for a moment.  And Flush came and I assure you that nearly as much attention has been paid to Flush as to me from the beginning, so that he is perfectly reconciled, and would be happy if the people at the railroads were not barbarians, and immovable in their evil designs of shutting him up in a box when we travel that way.

You understand now, ever dearest Miss Mitford, how the pause has come about writing.  The week at Paris!  Such a strange week it was, altogether like a vision.  Whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell scarcely.  Our Balzac should be flattered beyond measure by my thinking of him at all.  Which I did, but of you more.  I will write and tell you more about Paris.  You should go there indeed.  And to our hotel, if at all.  Once we were at the Louvre, but we kept very still of course, and were satisfied with the idea of Paris.  I could have borne to live on there, it was all so strange and full of contrast....

Now you will write—­I feel my way on the paper to write this.  Nothing is changed between us, nothing can ever interfere with sacred confidences, remember.  I do not show letters, you need not fear my turning traitress....  Pray for me, dearest friend, that the bitterness of old affections may not be too bitter with me, and that God may turn those salt waters sweet again.

Pray for your grateful and loving
E.B.B.

[Footnote 149:  This letter is of earlier date than the last, having been written en route between Orleans and Lyons; but it has seemed better to place the more detailed narrative first.]

To Mrs. Martin [Pisa:] November 5, [1846].

It was pleasant to me, my dearest friend, to think while I was reading your letter yesterday, that almost by that time you had received mine, and could not even seem to doubt a moment longer whether I admitted your claim of hearing and of speaking to the uttermost.  I recognised you too entirely as my friend.  Because you had put faith in me, so much the more reason there was that I should justify it as far as I could, and with as much frankness (which was a part of my gratitude to you) as was possible from a woman to a woman.  Always I have felt that you have believed in me and loved me; and, for the sake of the past and of the present, your affection and your esteem are more to me than I could afford to lose, even in these changed and happy circumstances.  So I thank you once more, my dear kind friends, I thank you both—­I never shall forget your goodness.  I feel it, of course, the more deeply, in proportion to the painful disappointment in other quarters....  Am I, bitter?  The feeling, however, passes while I write it out, and my own affection for everybody will wait patiently to be ‘forgiven’ in the proper form, when everybody shall be at leisure properly.  Assuredly,

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The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.