2287. EBB to John Kenyon

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 12, 202–203.

[London]

Thursday: [2 April 1846] [1]

I send back your Reichenbach, [2] dearest cousin, of whom the wonders are inscrutable. Whoever is stopped before Dr Elliotson’s miracles by the miraculousness, will be stopped here [“]à portion”. [3] Your Reichenbach is not certainly, it appears to me, by nature a sceptic. He seems to have faith enough in a way, not only to move mountains, [4] but to make them leap.

Also .. here are those letters of yours which I forgot to return– I expect to have a visit from Mr Browning today– From Miss Mitford yesterday I heard that she thought of coming to town for a fortnight .. but not, I suppose, directly. You do not go so soon of course—or I should have seen you .. heard from you– Keep Hector & Andromache as long as you like–

Your affectionate

EBB.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Dated by EBB’s references to Miss Mitford’s proposed visit (mentioned in letter 2291), and RB’s visit of 2 April.

2. Karl Ludwig von Reichenbach (1788–1869), Austrian chemist and industrialist, first applied the terms “creosote” and “paraffin” to physical properties he found in beechwood tar. EBB is probably referring to Abstract of “Researches on Magnetism and on Certain Allied Subjects,” Including a Supposed New Imponderable (1846), translated and abridged by William Gregory from Reichenbach’s Untersuchungen über den Magnetismus und damit Verwandte Gegenstände (1845). Most of Reichenbach’s theories concerning the effects of magnetism on sensitive persons, and his efforts to prove the existence of a unique natural force he named “od,” were refuted by German scientists in the 1860’s.

3. “In part.”

4. Cf. I Corinthians 13:2.

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