1465. EBB to John Kenyon

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 100–101.

[London]

Dec. 22. 1843.

Thank you my dear cousin, both for the book & the inscription. To receive this gift from you is to complete the pleasantness of a very pleasant association—as well as the gratitude connected with it– [1]

But I do hope I shall see you before you set out for Devonshire. My voice has not come back to me, nor has my cough gone away, but I am better in both respects & have the prospect of being able to talk a little in a day or two—if you should not determine to set out before the end of them. Can you lay your hand on Milnes’ Poems so as to lend them?

Gratefully & affectionately yours

EBB–

Oh yes!– I read the ‘Song of the Shirt’ & felt all the power of it. It is not every man—is it?—who can prick so into the heart with a needle—but Hood is an extraordinary writer—with far more serious genius than the world pauses to recognize when he sets it a laughing over his puns– What tragic passion he throws into that ‘sti[t]ch sti[t]ch’ before he has done with it! [2] ——enough to make two or three “successful” modern tragedies–

And now I remember that it is’nt necessary for a post[s]cript to be double the length of one’s letter—a “late remorse”! [3]

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Harvard University.

1. A copy of Miss Martineau’s new book, now at ABL (see Reconstruction, A1555).

2. “The Song of the Shirt,” a passionate protest by an overworked and underpaid seamstress, was published anonymously in Punch (16 December, p. 260), The Athenæum (16 December, p. 1116) and The Times (16 December, p. 5). The refrain “Stitch! stitch! stitch!” appears in verses 1, 4 and 11. Thomas Hood (1799–1845) was better known for his parodies and satirical verses.

3. Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto the Fourth (1818), stanzas 137, line 9.

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