What I Remember, Volume 2Trollope, Thomas Adolphus
History
What I Remember, Volume 2
Trollope, Thomas Adolphus
Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Trollope, Thomas Adolphus, 1810-1892
Here is also one other little memorial, written not by "Elizabeth
Barrett Browning," but by "Elizabeth Barrett." It is interesting
on more than one account. It bears no date, save "Beacon Terrace
[Torquay], Thursday," But it evidently marks the beginning of
acquaintanceship between the two exceptionally, though not equally
gifted girls--Elizabeth Barrett and Theodosia Garrow. It is written on
a sheet of the very small duodecimo note paper which she was wont to
use many years subsequently, but in far more delicate and elegant
characters than she used, when much pen-work had produced its usual
deteriorating effect on her caligraphy.
* * * * *
"I cannot return the _Book of Beauty_" [Lady Blessington's annual] "to
Miss Garrow without thanking her for allowing me to read in it sooner
than I should otherwise have done, those contributions of her own
which help to justify its title, and which are indeed sweet and
touching verses.
"It is among the vexations brought upon me by my illness, that I still
remain personally unacquainted with Miss Garrow, though seeming to
myself to know her through those who actually do so. And I should
venture to hope that it might be a vexation the first to leave me, if
a visit to an invalid condemned to the _peine forte et dure_ of being
very silent, notwithstanding her womanhood, were a less gloomy thing.
At any rate I am encouraged to thank Miss Fisher and Miss Garrow
for their visits of repeated inquiry, and their other very kind
attentions, by these written words, rather than by a message. For I am
sure that wherever kindness _can_ come thankfulness _may_, and that
whatever intrusion my note can be guilty of, it is excusable by the
fact of my being Miss Garrow's
"Sincerely obliged,
"E. BARRETT."
* * * * *
Could anything be more charmingly girlish, or more prettily worded!
The diminutive little note seems to have been preserved, an almost
solitary survival of the memorials of the days to which it belongs.
It must doubtless have been followed by sundry others, but was, I
suppose, specially treasured as having been the first step towards a
friendship which was already highly valued.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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