Correspondence

2426.  RB to EBB

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 13, 68–69.

[London]

Friday Mg [Postmark: 19 June 1846]

I shall hardly be able, I am afraid, to get your letter .. if one should come thro’ your dear goodness, my own Ba … before I go out .. having to meet the Procters’ party in Town: so I will just write my joy at its being little more now than twenty-four hours before I shall see you, I trust. The day is cool and nearer rain than I fancied probable—but, oh the task-work, Egyptian bondage, that much going-out would be to me, who am tired (unreasonably) beforehand on this first and most likely last occasion during the year. It is a pity that I am so ignorant about Hahn-Hahn’s books—one, Faustina, [1] I got last night, but have neither heart nor time to “get it up” in a couple of hours.

Something you said on Mrs Jameson’s authority, amused me—the encomium on my grace in sitting still to see the play and not jumping on the stage to act too! as if it were not the best privilege one finds in being “known” never so little, that it dispenses one from having to make one’self known: when you are shipwrecked among Caribbee Indians you are forced to begin professing “I can make baskets, and tell fortunes, and foresee eclipses—so don’t eat me!” And even there if they threatened nothing of the kind, I should be content to live and die as unhonoured as one of their own cabbage-trees.

I must go now—the day gets hotter, but then our day draws nearer– All my heart is yours, best of dearest loves, my own Ba, as I am your own–

RB

Address: Miss Barrett, / 50. Wimpole Street.

Postmark: 5EV5 JU19 1846 A.

Docket, in EBB’s hand: 210.

Publication: RB-EBB, p. 801.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Gräfin Faustine (1841). For RB’s comments, see letter 2429.

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