BARRETT LETTERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 55, 2 September 1937, Page 22

BARRETT LETTERS

AUCTIONED IN LONDON

LIGHT ON RELATIONSHIPS

The most important collection of Browning letters and manuscripts to be sold since the dispersal of Robert Browning's own collection in 1913 brought the high price of £3656 at Sotheby's recently, says the "New York Times." It'"consisted mostly of letters written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Long treasured by the late Lieutenant Colonel Harry Peyton Moultoh-Barrett, nephew of Mrs. Browning, much of the material has never been published and many of the letters throw, new light on the, relationship that existed between Elizabeth . and her stern Victorian parent,-Edward Barrett, .. Bernard Quaritch, a London dealer, paid £950 for this group—the most expensive in the sale. It Includes a collection of letters written by Elizabeth to her favourite sister, Arabel. In one of these Elizabeth, writing after her marriage, told of her constant devotion to her father despite his refusal to become reconciled to her union with the poet. "I should think it my duty to accept any alms of kindness from him," she wrote. "I kiss his hands and feet at any moment," Later, notwithstanding six years of happiness with Browning, her feelings for her father seemed to have changed little. Describing Browning's unceasing devotion— "only possible to a man of a very uncommon nature such as his"—she concluded:—

"The worst is I keep<> dreaming of papa." '■ A group of letters to her brother George brought £340. The'most interesting of these written just before her elopement and, posted on September 19, 1846, entrusted him with the task of communicating the tidings to the family and described her courtship with Browning.

A KEATS PURCHASE.

Dr. A. S. W. Roseiibach, American collector, paid £050 for John Keats autographs and a Keats manuscript included in the sale. The manuscript, consisting of the last sixty lines of "I Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little Hill," had been inscribed to Mrs. Browning by an admirer.

The letter of Elizabeth Barrett, written just before her elopement with Robert Browning, is described as being written in a nervous, hurried hand. Dated "Thursday or Friday," it reads:

"Dearest George:

"Go to your room and read this let:er—and I entreat you by all that we

botk hold dearest, to hold me still dear after the communication which it remains to me to make to yourself .and to leave to you in order to be communicated to others in the way that shall seem best to your judgment. And oh, love me George, while you are reading it—love me—that I may findpardon in your heart for me alter 'it is read. '

"Mr. Browning haS been attracted to me for nearly two years—at first I could not believe that he (who is what you know a little) could care for such as L except in an illusion and a dream. I put an end (as I thought) briefly to the subject. I felt certain that a few days and a little more light on my ghastly face, would lead him to thank me for my negative, and I bade him observe that if my position had not been exceptional, I should not have received him at all.

WAS NOT DISMAYED.

"With a protest he submitted—and months passed on so. Still he came continually and wrote (though observing my conditions in the form) with every breath I drew in his presence that he loved me with no ordinary affection. , - ' "But I believed that it would be a wrong to such a man, to cast on him the burden of my sickly life, and to ruin him by his own generosity . . His answer was . . . not the common gallantries which come so easily to the lips of men . . . but simply that he loved me. ... ■ "He told me that, with himself also, the early freshness of youth had gone by . . . and that throughout it he had not been able to love any woman— that he loved now for the first time and the last But he would not, he said, torment me. He would wait, if I pleased, twenty years, till we both should grow old, and then at the .latest . . . too late . . I should understand as he understood himself now '. . . and I should know that he loved me with an ineffaceable love. He dJd not ask me to dance or to sing . .but to help him to work and to live ... to live a useful life and to die a happy death.... I have resolved to give my life to one who is in my eyes the noblest of all men. . ' "George, dear George, read the enclosed letter for my dearest Papa, and then . . . breaking gently the news of its contents give It to him to read. Also, if he would deign to read this letter addressed to you ... I should be grateful. Iwish him in justice, and beseech him in affection, to understand. , . ,'. If. in this crisis I were to do otherwise than what I am about to do there would: be a victim without an expiation and a sacrifice without an object. My spirits would have festered on in this enforced prison. . . also I should have wronged another—l cannot do it," •■■•