2375. EBB to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 12, 346–348.
[London]
Thursday. [21 May 1846] [1]
Dearest, when your letter came I was cutting open the leaves of Dickens’s ‘Letters from Italy’ which Papa had brought in—so I am glad to have your thoughts of the book to begin with. Before your letter came I had sent you the review, as you will find. What charges, what charges! And the sonnet was purely manuscript, & for the good of the world should remain so. Oh—you cannot care for all this trash—such trash!– Why I had a manuscript sonnet sent to me last autumn by “person or persons unknown,” .... “To EBB on her departure from England to Pisa”. [2] Can you fancy that melodious piece of gossipping? Then a lady of the city .. famous, I believe, for haberdashery, used to address all her poems to me—which really was original .. for she would write five or six “poems” on an evening, & sweep them up & send them to me once a fortnight, upon faith, hope & charity, seaweed & moonshine, cornlaws & the immortality of the soul, & take me for her standing muse, properly thou’d & thee’d all through. What good vengeance it would be upon your unjust charges, if I set you to read a volume or two of those “poems” … which all went into the fire—so you need not be frightened.
And today I had a rosetree sent to me by somebody who has laid close siege to me this long while, & whom I have escaped hitherto .. but who has encamped, she says, “till July” in 16 Wimpole Street. [3] She writes too on her card .. “When are you going to Italy”?
Ah!—you, who blame me (half-blame me) for “seeing women”, do not know how difficult it is to help it sometimes, without being in appearance ungrateful & almost brutal. Just because I am unwell, they teaze me more, I believe. Now that Miss Heaton .. oh, I need not go back, but it was not of my choice, be sure. You being a man are different,—& perhaps you make people afraid & keep them off. They do not thrust their hands through the bars where the lion is, as they do with the giraffe. Once I had this proposition—‘If we may’nt come in, will you stand up at the window that we may see?’ Now! —And there’s the essence of at least ten m∙s. sonnets!—so don’t complain any more.
As for Mr Kenyon, he had his ‘collation,’ I understand—& he said that he was expecting Mrs Jameson & sundries—but he referred to some [‘]‘friends from the country who would not be so mad as to come,” & whom I knew to be yourselves. You were quite, quite right not to come. Today you are right too .. in thinking that I—was out. I was in the park nearly an hour, Arabel & Flush & I: & perhaps if tomorrow should be fine, I may walk in the street,—so think of me & help me. This is my last letter before I see you again, dear dearest. Oh—but I heard yesterday .. & it was not a tradition of the elders this time .. it was “vivid in the pages of contemporary history” … in fact one of my brothers heard it at the Flower Show & brought it home as the newest news, .. that “Mr Browning is to be married immediately to Miss Campbell”. [4] The tellers of the news were “intimate friends” of yours, they said, & knew it from the highest authority——
Laugh!– Why should not they talk, being women? My brother did not tell me, but he told it down stairs—and Arabel was amused, she said, at some of the faces round. At that turn of the road they lost the track of the hare. Not an observation was made by anybody.
May God bless you– Think of me. I am ever & ever
Your own
Ba.
Address: Robert Browning Esqre / New Cross / Hatcham / Surrey.
Postmark: 10FN10 MY22 1846 C.
Docket, in RB’s hand: 179. [5]
Publication: RB-EBB, pp. 719–720.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Date provided by postmark.
2. We are unable to provide further information regarding this “manuscript sonnet.”
3. Unidentified; however, The Post Office London Directory for 1846 gives John Clendinning, a physician, at 16 Wimpole Street.
4. Unidentified; see RB’s explanation in letter 2380.
5. See the docket in the preceding letter.
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