2168. RB to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 11, 303.
[London]
Friday Mg [9 January 1846] [1]
As if I could deny you anything! Here is the Review [2] —indeed it was foolish to mind your seeing it at all. But now, may I stipulate?– You shall not send it back—but on your table I shall find and take it next Tuesday—c’est convenu! [3] The other precious volume [4] has not yet come to hand (nor to foot—) all thro’ your being so sure that to carry it home would have been the death of me last evening!
I cannot write my feelings in this large writing, begun on such a scale for the Reviews’ sake—and just now .. there is no denying it .. and spite of all I have been incredulous about .. it does seem that the feat is achieved and that I do love you, plainly, surely, more than ever, more than any day in my life before[.] —It is your secret, the why the how,—the experience is mine: what are you doing to me?—in the heart’s heart–
Rest—dearest—bless you–
Address: Miss Barrett, / 50 Wimpole St
Postmark: None. This letter and envelope probably sent under separate cover with a copy of The New Quarterly Review.
Docket, in EBB’s hand: 95.
Publication: RB-EBB, p. 374.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by RB’s sending of The New Quarterly Review which EBB discusses in the following letter.
2. i.e., The New Quarterly Review which RB had first mentioned in letter 2161; for the text, see pp. 369–371.
3. “It is agreed.”
4. Presumably The English Review, for which RB thanks EBB the following day.
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