3495. RB to Elizabeth Clementine Kinney
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 23.
[Florence]
[ca. December 1854] [1]
I won’t concede for a moment, on accounts of any counter balance of mental qualities that my wife may have, that her “form is shattered by disease.”ii [2] … I see well enough yet—as Benedick says—without spectacles, & yet see nothing of the matter. [3]
Publication: None traced.
Source: Extracts in recipient’s hand at Columbia University.
1. Approximate dating suggested by Mrs. Kinney’s journal entry of 6 January 1855, in which she discusses the impact on RB of her letter to the Newark Daily Advertiser, published on 26 August 1854 (see SD1798). The second week of September would have been the earliest the Brownings could have seen that issue. But given that Mrs. Kinney made journal entries from October through December without mentioning RB’s reaction, we place this letter later in the year.
2. From Mrs. Kinney’s letter to the Newark Daily Advertiser; see SD1768 in vol. 20. At this point in Mrs. Kinney’s extracts, she wrote: “etc. quoting from my letter, & adding” (see SD1798). The letter that prompted Mrs. Kinney’s in the Daily Advertiser appeared in The Home Journal (New York) of 15 July 1854; see SD1733 in vol. 20.
3. Cf. Much Ado About Nothing, I, 1, 189–190.
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