Correspondence

1167.  EBB to John Kenyon

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 349–350.

[London]

Saturday evening [?4] [March 1843] [1]

My dear cousin

Your books go to you at last—but I kept them that I might overwhelm you, in sending them, with the MSS you asked for– [2] Will you, by the way, think it dreadful malice of me to take your request in such literal earnest? I have misgivings already—& by tomorrow morning I may have remorse.

But, dear Mr Kenyon, if I send you so much, it is not to force you to read it all—I am not as bad as I seem– Read what you please, what you have time for, .. & I promise never to ask you how little or how much that is– The “Pan is dead” belongs especially to you, [3] being suggested entirely by your paraphrase; [4] and once upon a time, a few weeks ago, I had a temptation of my familiar to send it to you, … But then, I thought of your occupied time & of my double darkness in manuscript,—&, so thinking, I refrained magnanimously from the overt act. For my commission of it now, you must blame, if you please, your own kindness rather than my hirudinism .. as Horace helps me to call it!– [5]

I had a few hurried words from our dear Miss Mitford this morning, to tell me that the subscription is supposed to amount to some twelve hundred pounds. It is a secret .. royally commanded to be a secret.: but I must let you know of the queen’s giving twenty five pounds,—& reading, in earnest interest for Miss Mitford, every word of her letters to Miss Skennet [sic, for Skerrett],—who holds Miss Burney’s office at the palace– Now dont tell the secret, dear Mr Kenyon!

Ever affectionately yours

EBB

Keep the papers as long as you like. I am not likely to want them–

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Dated by the reference to Queen Victoria’s contribution to the subscription for Miss Mitford, alluded to in letter 1168.

2. A letter written by EBB to her brother George on 31 March 1843 indicates that EBB sent Kenyon the manuscript of “The Dead Pan” and some sonnets. See letters written to Kenyon in mid-March 1843 for EBB’s reaction to his comments on the poems.

3. Published in Poems (1844) and dedicated to Kenyon. A draft of the poem—perhaps that now sent to Kenyon—is at BL (see Reconstruction, D186).

4. “The Gods of Greece” in The Keepsake for 1843 (pp. 77–80).

5. “A leech [hirudo] that will not let go the skin, till gorged with blood” (Ars Poetica, 476, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough).

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