2204. EBB to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 12, 56.
[London]
[10 February 1846] [1]
Thank you, dearest Mr Kenyon! and I should (& shall) thank Miss Thomson [2] too for caring to spend a thought on me after all the Parisian glories & rationalities which I sympathize with by many degrees nearer than you seem to do. We, in this England here, are just social barbarians, to my mind—that is, we know how to read & write & think, & even talk on occasion, .. but we carry the old rings in our noses, & are proud of the flowers pricked into our cuticles. By so much, are they better than we, on the continent, I always think– Life has a thinner rind, & so, a livelier sap– And, that, I can see in the books & the traditions, & always understand people who like living in France & Germany, & should like it myself, I believe, on some accounts.
Where did you get your Bacchanalian song? [3] Witty, certainly!—but the recollection of the scores, a little ghastly for the occasion perhaps. You have yourself sung into silence too, all possible songs of Bacchus, as the god & I know.
Here is a delightful letter from Miss Martineau. [4] I cannot be so selfish as to keep it to myself– The sense of natural beauty & the good sense of the remarks on rural manners, are both exquisite of their kinds—& Wordsworth is Wordsworth as she knows him. Have I said that friday will find me expecting the kind visit you promise? That, at least, is what I meant to say with all these words!–
Ever affectionately yours
EBB.
Publication: LEBB, I, 58–59 (as [1838]).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by EBB’s reference in the following letter to RB that she had received a letter from Miss Martineau (on the morning of 10 February), and that “Mr. Kenyon has it now.”
2. i.e., Anne Thomson. For further details of her association with EBB, see vol. 10, pp. 327–328.
3. Unidentified.
4. Letter 2203.
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