1303. Benjamin Robert Haydon to EBB

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 210.

London

June 29 1843

Pray My dearest Friend

Distinctly understand there is nothing in the box, but papers & books & letters–

The oil is precious—& I have sent you nothing but what it is honorable to entrust to your care– I am ruined, depend on it, by this decision [1] & can only trust you will entirely recover in a short time– Weakness is never dangerous, after so long a time.

Yours ever

B R Haydon

Address, on integral page: Miss B. Barrett / 50, Wimpole St.

Publication: EBB-BRH, pp. 119–120.

Manuscript: University of Vermont.

1. Haydon recorded in his diary for 30 June that the decision to exclude him from the prize-winners had “revived all the old horrors of Execution & arrest & debt. It is exactly what I predicted, and it is, I think, intentional” (Pope, V, 293).

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