2263. EBB to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 12, 165.
[London]
Friday. [20 March 1846] [1]
Dearest Mr Kenyon, if your goodnature is still not at ease, through doubting about how to make Lizzy happy in a book, you will like to hear perhaps that I have thought of a certain “Family Robinson Crusoe,” translated from the German I think, … not a Robinson purified, mind, .. but a Robinson multiplied & compounded. [2] Children like reading it, I believe. And then there is a “Masterman Ready” .. or some name like it, by Capt Marryat, .. also popular with young readers. Or [‘]‘Seaward’s Narrative,” by Miss Porter, would delight her, .. as it did me, not so many years ago.
I mention these books, but know nothing of their price,—&, only because you asked me, I do mention them. The fact is that she is not hard to please as to literature, &, will be delighted with anything.
Today Mr Poe sent me a volume containing his poems & tales collected, .. so now I must write & thank him for his dedication. What is to be said, I wonder, when a man calls you the [‘]‘noblest of your sex” [3] … “Sir, you are the most discerning of yours.”!
Were you thanked for the garden-ticket yesterday? No—everybody was ungrateful—down to Flush, who drinks day by day out of his new ‘purple cup,’ & had it properly explained how you gave it to him, (I explained that!) and yet never came up stairs to express to you his sense of obligation.
Affectionately yours always
EBB.
Publication: LEBB, I, 248–249 (as [about January–March 1845]).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by EBB’s reference to Poe’s volume, which she mentioned having received in the preceding letter.
2. The Family of Robinson Crusoe; or, Journal of a Father Shipwrecked, with His Wife and Children, on an Uninhabited Island (1814)—now known by the familiar title The Swiss Family Robinson—was a translation of the first two volumes of Der Schweizerische Robinson (Zurich, 4 vols., 1812–27) by Johann David Wyss. Masterman Ready; or, the Wreck of the Pacific. Written for Young People by Frederick Marryat was published 1841–42. Sir Edward Seaward’s Narrative of His Shipwreck, and Consequent Discovery of Certain Islands in the Carribean Sea … As Written in His Own Diary was published in 1831, and although Jane Porter (1776–1850) appeared on the title page as the editor, the tale has come to be considered as her own work of fiction. We do not know if Kenyon followed EBB’s suggestions, but see Reconstruction, M240, 249, 250, 254, 255, and 264 for examples of books he did give to “Lizzie.”
3. See note 7 in the preceding letter.
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