2373. RB to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 12, 344–345.
[London]
Thursday. [Postmark: 21 May 1846]
Just as I write, the weather is a little more proper for this “the blest Ascension-day of the cheerful month of May”: may you not go out therefore, my Ba? Or down stairs, at all events– We were sorry, Sarianna and I, to see the bright afternoon yesterday .. we ought to have gone, perhaps—but Mr Kenyon is good and will understand, ’spite of the spectacles. But what sonnet is that, you perverse Ba, of which you give me the two or three words,—in print,—how, where? And if I do not request and request I shall be sure to hear nothing of that American review [1] again,—so, I do request, Ba!
Last night brought Dickens’ Pictures from Italy [2] —which I read this morning. He seems to have expended his power on the least interesting places,—and then gone on hurriedly, seeing or describing less and less, till at last the mere names of places do duty for pictures of them, and at Naples he fairly gives it up .. the Vesuvius’ journey excepted. But the book is readable & clever—shall I bring it?—(or next week when everybody here has done with it)–
I know, dearest, you did not promise me that beatific vision by the gate—but was not enough said to justify me in waiting for you there? Indeed, yes—only the rain and wind seemed to forbid you,—as they did. Were your sisters pleased? I am not sure I should have been glad to meet them so—I could not have left my sister (whom nobody would have known)—and then, with that unspoken secret between us,– Also I please myself by hoping that Mr Kenyon was only relieved of a great trouble and annoyance in the present state of his anxieties by our keeping away. Poor Captain Jones—really a fine, manly, noble fellow—I am heartily sorry. As for me, since Ba asks, I am pretty well,—much better in some points, and no worse in the rest—all is right but the little sound in the head which will be intrusive—but I must walk it away presently, or think it away at worst.
For, dearest, dearest Ba, I can cure all pains at once with you to think of, and to love, and to bless. So, bless you!
Your RB
Address: Miss Barrett, / 50. Wimpole St
Postmark: 8NT8 MY21 1846 A.
Docket, in EBB’s hand: 188.
Publication: RB-EBB, pp. 718–719.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. The Methodist Quarterly Review (see letter 2361, note 2).
2. Pictures from Italy (1846), an account of Dickens’s travels in Italy, which had appeared as a series of “Travelling Letters Written on the Road” in The Daily News from January to March 1846, was published on 18 May. A review of it in The Athenæum of 23 May contained the following remark: “The substance of the small volume is not so much Italy visited by Mr. Dickens as Mr. Dickens visited by Italy” (no. 969, pp. 519–520).
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