62. EBB to Arabella Graham-Clarke (aunt)
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 1, 54–55.
[?Hope End]
[ca. January 1818] [1]
My sweetest old Maiden aunt
I take up a bad pen with the intent of fulfilling my promise th’o according to custom to skim over it with that idleness which is so peculier to me, th’o perhaps “rude am I in speech” [2] yet I can justify myself by repeating I do not love you less. If I might with the leave of Fancy transport myself, thro’ her abodes to the no less delightful ones of Fenham I could easily suppose you all in the library, you, painting some tremendous caricature, or cracking some of the favorite jokes, as
“My life and soul your nose is broke,
And all your teeth are down your throat”
(I quote from memory); Jane composing that which makes “you sick” at least me. Charlotte with a grave face & a pair of spectacles painting or at that much admired loom. Grandmama reading the newspaper to Grandpapa, who I will suppose is sitting in the great arm chair lending an attentive ear——
I will say nothing of James, for I fancy by his long silence he still is hugging his golden chains, in defiance of the Muse, Apollo, and all the other deities!—
You will here my dearest Bum suffer me to break the coarse black worsted thread of this paper,—And tho’ in defiance of Fashion, I shall neither say this letter is a “wretched,” or a “shabby scrawl” I do not think the less. I will however allow that to be judged by you, who will always be loved & remembered by your attached niece
Ba——
Henrietta is very much offended with Lotte for not remembering her promise; she has grown quite fat, and rosy and is at present only troubled with a cold—
EBB
[Continued by EBB’s mother, immediately after the word “cold”] which is nearly well. I never saw a child so improved, since my mother left us—
Address, on integral pag: To / The dear Bum / of Fenham.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Lady Elisabeth Cooper.
1. Dated by internal references. Bummy and EBB’s grandmother, Mrs. Graham-Clarke, were no longer at Hope End, where they had spent the recent holiday season. There is a reference to the presence of “Grandpapa,” who died later in 1818.
2. Othello, I, 3, 81. In this and subsequent Shakespearean quotations, the line numbers correspond to those used in The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston, 1974).
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