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212520_The_Adve ... _Way_Through_The_World.pdf - OUDL Home

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xxviii PHILIP<br />

frain from inserting the correspondence, although the letters have<br />

already been published. It concerns the beautiful poem called<br />

" Lord Walter's Wife," printed amongst Mrs. Browning's Collected<br />

Works.<br />

" 36 ONSLOW SQUARE, April 2,1861.<br />

" MY DEAR, KIND MRS. BROWNING,—Has Browning ever had<br />

an aching tooth which must come out (I don't say Mrs. Browning,<br />

for women are much more courageous)—a tooth which must come<br />

out, and which he has kept for months and months away from<br />

the dentist? I have had such a tooth a long time, and have<br />

sate down in this chair, and never had the courage to undergo<br />

the pull.<br />

" This tooth is an allegory (I mean this one). It's your poem<br />

that you sent me months ago—and who am I to refuse the poems<br />

of Elizabeth Browning, and set myself up as a judge over her 1 I<br />

can't tell you how often I have been going to write, and have failed.<br />

You see that our magazine is written not only for men and women,<br />

but for boys, girls, infants, sucklings almost, and one of the best<br />

wives, mothers, women in the world writes some verses which I<br />

feel certain would be objected to by many of our readers. Not<br />

that the writer is not pure, and the moral most pure, chaste,<br />

and right, but there are things my squeamish public will not<br />

hear on Monday, though on Sundays they listen to them without<br />

scruple. In your poem, you know, there is an account of unlawful<br />

passion felt by a man for a woman, and though you write pure<br />

doctrine, and real modesty, and pure ethics, I am sure our<br />

readers would make an outcry, and so I have not published this<br />

poem.<br />

" To have to say no to my betters is one of the hardest duties<br />

I have, but I'm sure we must not publish your verses, and I go<br />

down on my knees before cutting my victim's head off, and say,<br />

' Madam, you know how I respect and regard you, Browning's wife<br />

and Penini's mother ; and for what I am going to do I most humbly<br />

ask your pardon.'<br />

" My girls send their very best regards and remembrances, and<br />

I am, dear Mrs. Browning, always yours,<br />

"W, M. THACKERAY."

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