1337. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 256.

[London]

Friday. [?28 July] 1843 [1]

My very dear friend,

I write in haste to thank you for the additional stanzas to Flush’s poem– They amused me very much, but are not, I beg to explain, so strictly historical as the rest, .. Flush being the most disinterested as well as the most faithful of friends– If he consents, he says, ever to go out of doors, it is because it is necessary to his health,—or, perhaps to leave his mistress’s homage at the feet of Mr Boyd.

I must observe however that the new stanzas are very spirited .. & better-spirited than mine,—& that the conclusion of the last one is all the more in my style, that it is densely obscure.

Most affectionately yours

EBB.

Address: H S Boyd Esqr / 24 (a) Grove End Road.

Publication: EBB-HSB, p. 260 (as 1843).

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Dated by the publication on 22 July of “To Flush, My Dog,” to which Boyd had proposed additions.

___________________