2072. EBB to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 11, 136–137.
[London]
[23 October 1845] [1]
“And be forgiven” .. yes! and be thanked besides—if I knew how to thank you worthily & as I feel .. only that I do not know it, & cannot say it. And it was not indeed “doubt” of you (.. oh no!—) that made me write as I did write: it was rather because I felt you to be surely noblest, .. & therefore fitly dearest, … that it seemed to me detestable & intolerable to leave you on this road where the mud must splash up against you, & never cry ‘gare.’ [2] Yet I was quite enough unhappy yesterday, & before yesterday .. I will confess today, .. to be too gratefully glad to ‘let you be’ .. to “let you have your way” .. you who overcome always! Always, but where you tell me not to think of you so & so!—as if I could help thinking of you so, & as if I should not take the liberty of persisting to think of you just so. ‘Let me be’– ‘Let me have my way’. I am unworthy of you perhaps in everything except one thing——& that, you cannot guess. May God bless you– Ever I am yours.
The proof does not come!
Address: Robert Browning Esqre / New Cross / Hatcham / Surrey.
Postmarks: 10FN10 OC24 1845; 12NN12 OC24 1845 B; 1AN1 OC24 1845 H.
Docket, in RB’s hand: 71.
Publication: RB-EBB, pp. 246–247.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Date provided by postmark and EBB’s statement in the following letter that she “wrote briefly yesterday.”
2. “Look out,” or “out of the way.”
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