1509. EBB to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 170–171.
[London]
Jan. 26. 1844.
My dear cousin,
I am very very sorry that you shd be unwell so long, & cant wait any longer without telling you so, though it is more likely, I fear, to do good to me than to you. This delightful weather seems to reproach us both for not being in the lanes giving hunt to the spring flowers,––for it must be spring,—there is no believing that the door is only just shut upon Christmas—and, as you say, Dan Frost [1] deserves every imaginable compliment for being so agreeable as to stay away. I am well,—considering it’s myself—and I do wish or rather I do hope soon to hear you make a still better profession. You see .. if you had but stayed in London, you wd not have caught that influenza!
Miss Mitford has been full of sympathy, painful sympathy, for her friend Mr Walters, who has lost his eldest daughter by fever, as you saw perhaps in the papers [2] ––but she appears to be not otherwise than well, & talks of Miss Brougham as talking with her,—in a letter this morning. And speaking of letters, you .. though not a woman, .. may be supposed by a woman to have a little curiosity about the document in a golden frame which you had the goodness to send me a few hours ago—so I will tell you that it was from Mrs S C Hall who is going to edit a magazine “adapted to the female capacity,” and desires my “support” to prevent it from being too sensible. [3] Perhaps I may do what I can, but I am or fancy myself so busy just now with my coming book that it must not be directly.
I heard yesterday that the booksellers had applied to Mrs Trollope for a fourth series of Widow Barnaby. [4]
May God bless you! Do be better & let me hear it: But dont think of coming to see me until you are so perfectly well as to run no risk by it.
Ever affectionately yours
EBB.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. “Master” or “Sir” Frost (cf. Spenser’s Dan Chaucer in The Faerie Queene, IV, ii, 32, 8).
2. John Walter was the proprietor of The Times. His daughter’s death was announced in the paper on 17 January.
3. Mrs. Hall edited Sharpe’s London Magazine, the first number of which appeared in November 1845, but it contained no contributions from EBB during its first year.
4. No fourth instalment appeared, although Punch, in its December 1843 number, facetiously listed “The Barnabys Nowhere; being the ultimate sequel of ‘The Barnabys’” under “Books Received.”
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