2220. RB to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 12, 91–92.
[London]
Friday Afternoon– [Postmark: 20 February 1846]
Here is my Ba’s dearest first letter come four hours after the second, with “Missent to Mitcham” written on its face as a reason; one more proof of the negligence of somebody! But I do have it at last: what should I say? what do you expect me to say? And the first note seemed quite as much too kind as usual!
Let me write to-morrow, sweet! I am quite well, and sure to mind all you bid me– I shall do no more than look in at that place (they are the cousins of a really good friend of mine, Dr White. I go for him) [1] if even that—(for to-morrow night I must go out again, I fear—to pay the ordinary compliment for an invitation to the R.S’s soirée at Lord Northampton’s–) [2]
And then comes Monday—and to-night any unicorn I may see I will not find myself at liberty to catch—(N.B. Should you meditate really an addition to the Elegant Extracts, mind this last joke is none of mine but my father’s; when walking with me when a child, I remember, [he] bade a little urchin we found fishing with a stick and a string for sticklebacks in a ditch—“to mind that he brought any sturgeon he might catch to the King”,—he having a claim on such a prize, by courtesy if not right).
As for Chorley, he is neither the one nor the other of those ugly things—one remembers Regan’s “Oh Heaven—so you will rail at me, when you are in the mood!”– [3] But what a want of self-respect such judgments argue—or rather, want of knowledge what true self respect is– “So I believed yesterday, and so now—and yet am neither hasty, nor inapprehensive, nor malevolent”—what then?
—But I will say more of my mind—(not of that)—to-morrow, for time presses a little—so bless you my ever, ever dearest– I love you wholly.
RB
Address: Miss Barrett, / 50. Wimpole St
Postmark: 8NT8 FE20 1846 B.
Docket, in EBB’s hand: 120 [altered from “119”].
Publication: RB-EBB, pp. 479–480.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Parenthetical passage is interpolated between lines. William Frederick White (1811–47), D.C.L., 1839, whose direction appears in RB’s earliest extant address book (see vol. 9, p. 394). White’s cousins were the Misses Cocker (see letter 2216, note 1).
2. As recorded in The Athenæum of 28 February 1845 (no. 957), this was “the first of the soirées for the season given by the President of the Royal Society, the Marquis of Northampton,” Spencer Joshua Alwyne Compton, 2nd Marquis of Northampton (1790–1851). Prince Albert was present, as well as “many noblemen and gentlemen, personal friends of the noble President” (p. 224).
3. King Lear, II, 4, 168–169.
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