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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
In the Huntington Library of San Marino, California, recent research has come upon twenty unpublished letters of Elizabeth Barrett to Hugh Stuart Boyd. These letters were purchased from Charles Sessler, the Philadelphia bookseller, in August, 1925. They are presented here numbered according to their placement in the Library file (HM 49104929).
1 See the letters to Miss Commeline in The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ed. by Frederick G. Kenyon, I, 7, 26, 53, 240.
2 “Ce poëte comique, qui n'est ni comique ni poëte.” See “Athéisme” in Dictionnaire Philosophique, Moland ed. of Oeuvres, xvII, 469.
3 See the first word of his opening speech, Act III. The expression is common in the play. See Achille to Clytemnestre (III, V), Ægine to Iphigénie (v, i), Iphigénie to Clytemnestre (v, iii).
4 This sentiment is significantly the same as that expressed in the sestet of Wordsworth's sonnet, “Great men have been among us.” For characteristic expressions of her admiration for “the great poet”, see her letters to Boyd: Sept. 14,1842 and Oct. 31, 1842.401
5 The family of Edward Barrett was made up of two daughters, Henrietta and Arabel, and eight sons, Edward (Bro), Charles (Stormie), Samuel, George, Henry, Alfred, Septimus (Sette), and Octavius (Occy).
6 The epigram entitled In Somnum, reads :
7 John Jebb (1775-1833) was bishop of Limerick 1822-33. He was the author of several books. The one referred to here may have been his Sermons on Subjects Chiefly Practical (London, 1815; 2d ed. 1816; 3d ed. 1824).402
8 Job 19:25.
9 Lady May Shepherd is not given in De Brett's or in Burke's The British Peerage. Might this be Lady Mary Shepherd (1777-1847), wife of Sir Samuel Shepherd and writer of philosophical treatises?
10 Henry George Bohn (1796-1884). It may have been his Classical Library to which Miss Barrett refers. See the Oxford Companion to English Literature, p. 96. The following mention of Gregories and Chrysostom indicates the works of St. Gregory Nazianzen and of St. Chrysostom, owned by Boyd. See his Seleçt Passages of the Writings of St. Chrysostom, St. Gregory Nazianzen, and St. Basil (1810).
11 On Sir John Roe
12 The reference may be to James Kidd (1761-1834), the Presbyterian divine whose eight published works contain A Course of Sermons (1808) which might well have appealed both to Miss Barrett and to her father.
15 Letter Ix presents a problem. On the envelope are written 1831 and Janry 1831 in an undetermined hand. We doubt that Boyd was at St. John's Wood in 1831, although we know that he was there in 1835. Furthermore, in a letter published by Kenyon, addressed to Boyd from 74 Gloucester Place on the Christmas of 1836, we find certain expressions which are reproduced in Letter Ix and probably would be reproduced only in a letter written at nearly the same time. In the letter given by Kenyon we read: “I am much obliged to you for the two copies of your poem, so beautifully printed, with such ‘majestical’ types, on such ‘magnifical’ paper, as to be almost worthy of Baskett himself.” In our letter we406
14 It should be noted that Letter x is the first one dated by Miss Barrett's own hand.
15 This note is the final one written at Hope End.
16 Nicolo Paginini (1782-1840), Italian violinist and composer.
17 Sir Humphrey Davy (1778-1829), English chemist known for his invention of the miner's safety lamp.
18 Gaius Marius (155 B.C.?-86), the “honest soldier from the country” who became consul of Rome.
19 Probably the First Baronet (1747-1829). In 1794 he wrote “An Essay on the Picturesque”, describing the view from the Malvern Hills. For a quotation from this work, see Blackwoods, October, 1833.
20 The context here suggests that the poem was Prometheus Bound. Her first translation of the drama was published in London in 1833. She was never satisfied with this translation, which she told Home was written “in twelve days, and should have been thrown into the fire afterwards— the only means of giving it a little warmth.” She published a retranslation of the drama among the Poems of 1850. For additional comments, see Letter xvIII and in the Kenyon edition, I, 16, 18, 21, 135, 188.
21 The Fathers not Papists: or Six Discourses by the Most Eloquent Fathers of the Church: with Numerous Extracts from Their Writings. Tr. from the Greek by H. S. Boyd. London, Samuel Bagster, 1834.
22 I Peler 2:7. For the following reference to “the earthquake”, see I Kings 19:12. Mrs. Boyd's last words were, “Precious Jesus.” Whether or not her husband questioned these words because his wife was a Jewess, his thought that they were merely an ejaculation stirred Miss Barrett. Her religious nature is manifest in many of her letters. For example, vide her letter to Boyd, Dec. 4, 1842.
23 Psalm 46:10.
24 Is this a playful inversion of Horace's ridicule of “a man's head upon a horse's neck”?— Ars Poetica, v. 3.
25 The mention of metaphysics suggests the Scottish metaphysician Thomas Brown (1778-1820). The reading may have been in his Lectures on the Philosophy of the Mind. Recall Elizabeth Barrett's An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems (London : James Duncan, 1826).
26 Anthony Collins (1676-1729) was a deist, an intimate friend of John Locke. He wrote Use of Reason (1707). From Martin Luther's Table-Talk, CCLXII (1569), H. L. Mencken (New Dictionary of Quotations, p. 1295) extracts the following: “Mankind has free will,
27 Charles James Blomfield (1786-1857). He edited five of the plays of Æschylus.— Michael Augustus Gathercole, in 1833 published his Letters to a Dissenting Minister of the Congregational Independent Denomination, containing remarks on the principles of that sect. Robert Mackenzie Beverley, in 1835, replied with his satire: The Posthumous Letters of the Rev. Rabshakeh Gathercoal, late Vicar of Tuddington, now first published, with explanatory notes, and dedicated to the Lord Bishop of London.—For Rabshakeh (“chief of the cupbearers”) see II Kings 18 and Isaiah 37.
28 The Seraphim and other Poems (London: Saunders J. Otley, 1838). This was Miss Barrett's first original work of any importance. Miss Barrett translated the Prometheus Bound in 1832.
29 Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), known as “The Liberator.”
30 “My book” was The Seraphim and other Poems. The reference is to the words of the Watchman in the opening lines of Æschylus' Agamemnon. John Stuart Blackie's transla-418
32 Ibid.
33 As this letter indicates, Miss Barrett's health had grown worse. On June 21, 1838, she wrote Boyd: “My health remains … very precarious.” Her weakness was increased by Dr. Chamber's remedies. It was at last decided that she must remove to a warmer climate for the winter. The place decided on was Torquay. She wrote just before her departure from 50 Wimpole Street.
The heaviness which marks this letter was justified. On July 11,1840 Elizabeth Barrett's favorite brother Edward was drowned in Babbicombe Bay. She who had loved the sea at Sidmouth was now broken by it. Torquay became for her a place of horror. She was rescued from “this dreadful place”, as she wrote Boyd on Aug. 28, 1841, in a carriage especially made for her, “a patent carriage with a bed in it, and set upon some hundreds of springs.” And then she adds: “Thank God I am going home at last.”