1620. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 5–6.
[London]
Tuesday. [4] June [1844]– [1]
Ever dearest Miss Mitford, I write out of breath with joy & haste to tell you that the lodgings are vacant & at your service. [2] Am I to take them? At two guineas a week.
I do not understand why you shd not receive freely all your visitors, .. hold your court in full royal form, .. in any room you choose to select in this house,—but if you must have the sittingroom, you must I suppose,—I shall only teaze you without gaining my point. It will be delightful to see you, hear you, be with you again! Oh that I may not wake before I have dreamed out my dream.
In the meantime, I shall follow your example in writing no more than I can help.
Dearest friend,—one thing, is to be considered fixed however,—that your Jane [3] will have her meals here,—& that you yourself, at whatever hour you may choose to dine, &c, will not shun our salt. I refer to no family dinnering—but simply to the fact that your chicken & fish will be ready for you on a tray, at any hour of the clock selected by you, every day.
For my part I shall have “all the scraps” of your society—the loose odds & ends, I lay claim to, if you please—& to nothing more! I owe you too much kindness already—& I wd not hang upon you like the little old man of the mountain … allegorical for a bore. [4] Flush will come—wont he? Will you really come on Monday? & what oclock?
May God bless you!
Ever your EBB.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 415–416.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by Miss Mitford’s visit to London, which began on 10 June.
2. i.e., those in Chapel Street, where Miss Mitford had stayed on prior visits.
3. Miss Mitford’s maid.
4. EBB is confusing the old man of the mountain with the old man of the sea, a character in the tale of “The Fifth Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor” in The Arabian Nights.
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