1827. EBB to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 49.
50 Wimpole Street
Wednesday. [29 January 1845] [1]
Dearest Mr Kenyon
I write one word lest you shd be cudgelling me in your brains, [2] .. the worst form of the quotation if not of the knouting generally. Mr Newnham’s book [3] shd have been sent to you as I read your note,—only that I lent the book before reading it myself, to my friend Miss Bordman, who wanted it for practical purposes .. viz .. to learn how to have teeth drawn in a mass, without being hurt by the operation. So I let her have the book. When it comes home, you shall have it, .. be sure.
Mrs Jameson sate with me nearly an hour yesterday—& a pleasant hour it was,—considering that it was not one of your’s. She tried to persuade me that the ‘Vestiges of the Creation’ was the most comfortable of books, & that we shd think ourselves happy in our condition of fully developped monkeyhood—but I was too proud & discontented to be found persuadable in these things.
So I am to begin to write out all the poems again——am I?– Do you mean that I should write them all out again? do you wish it? And am I to end in carrying my own donkey.? Dont call me impertinent—for I am thinking of being obedient in some things,—“fit & few.” [4]
Ever affectionately yours, & ever
gratefully!
EBB–
Address: John Kenyon Esqr / 40 York Terrace / Regent’s Park.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Dated by EBB’s reference to Mrs. Jameson’s visit and the projected second edition of EBB’s Poems (1844), both of which are mentioned by EBB to Miss Mitford in a letter written the previous day.
2. Cf. Hamlet, V, 1, 56.
3. See letter 1823, note 7.
4. Cf. Paradise Lost, VII, 23.
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