The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II | Page 8

we have seen the Literary
Guild actors at the Hanover Square rooms, and we have passed an
evening with Carlyle (one of the great sights in England, to my mind).

He is a very warm friend of Robert's, so that on every account I was
delighted to see him face to face. I can't tell you what else we have
done or not done. It's a great dazzling heap of things new and strange.
Barry Cornwall (Mr. Procter) came to see us every day till business
swept him out of town, and dear Mrs. Jameson left her Madonna for us
in despite of the printers. Such kindness, on all sides. Ah, there's
kindness in England after all. Yet I grew cold to the heart as I set foot
on the ground of it, and wished myself away. Also, the sort of life is not
perhaps the best for me and the sort of climate is really the worst.
You heard of Mr. Kenyon's goodness to us; I told Arabel to tell you.
But I must end here. Another time I will talk of Paris, which I do hope
will suit us as a residence. I was quite well there, the three weeks we
stayed, and am far from well just now. You see, the weight of the
atmosphere, which seems to me like lead, combined with the
excitement, is too much at once. Oh, it won't be very bad, I dare say. I
mean to try to be quiet, and abjure for the future the night air.
I should not omit to tell you in this quantity of egotism that my
husband's father and sister have received me most affectionately. She is
highly accomplished, with a heart to suit the head.
Now do write. Let me hear all about you, and how dear Mr. Martin and
yourself are. Robert's cordial regards with those of
Your ever affectionate and ever grateful BA.
* * * * *
_To Mrs. Martin_
26 Devonshire Street: Saturday, [about August 1851].
My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Day by day, and hour by hour almost, I have
wanted to thank you again and again for your remedy (which I did not
use, by the bye, being much better), and to answer your inquiry about
me, which really I could not deliver over to Arabel to answer; but the

baby did not go to the country with Wilson, and I have been 'devoted'
since she went away; _une âme perdue_, with not an instant out of the
four-and-twenty hours to call my own. It appeared, at the last, that
Wilson would have a drawback to her enjoyments in having the child,
and I did not choose that: she had only a fortnight, you see, after five
years, to be with her family. So I took her place with him; it was
necessary, for he was in a state of deplorable grief when he missed her,
and has refused ever since to allow any human being except me to do a
single thing for him. I hold him in my arms at night, dress and wash
him in the morning, walk out with him, and am not allowed either to
read or write above three minutes at a time. He has learnt to say in
English 'No more,' and I am bound to be obedient. Perhaps I may make
out five minutes just to write this, for he is playing in the passage with
a child of the house, but even so much is doubtful. He has made very
good friends with a girl here, and Arabel has sent her maid ever so
often to tempt him away for half an hour, so as to give me breathing
time, but he won't be tempted: he has it in his head that the world is in a
conspiracy against him to take 'mama' away after having taken 'Lily,'
and he is bound to resist it.
After all, the place of nursery maid is more suitable to me than that of
poetess (or even poet's wife) in this obstreperous London. I was nearly
killed the first weeks, what with the climate, and what with the
kindness (and what with the want of kindness), and looked wretchedly,
whether Reynolds Peyton saw it or not, and coughed day and night, till
Robert took fright, and actually fixed a day for taking me forthwith
back to Paris. I had to give up a breakfast at Rogers', and shut myself
up in two rooms for a week, and refuse, like Wiedeman, to be tempted
out anywhere, but, after that, I grew better, and the wind changed, and
now the cough, though not gone, is quieted, and I look a different
person, and have ceased to grow thin. But a racketing life will never do
for me, nor an