2577. EBB to John Kenyon

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 13, 330.

[London]

[2 September 1846] [1]

Dearest Mr Kenyon

I am ashamed not to have sent the Faun before,—but Hyperion I did send– [2]

You see me in distress– I have lost Flush again, & now “man delights not me nor woman either” [3] —at least I care very little for “books going off” & such sublunary things. Yet we shall have him again– They only want ransom– Oh—I hope to have him tonight, & then I may go out tomorrow perhaps– Now, I have not the heart–

In any other circumstances, your “want of energy” would make me smile– Dearest cousin, my theory of you is the most opposite–

& ever I am your affectionate EBB–

Address: John Kenyon Esqre / 40 York Terrace / Regent’s Park.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

1. Dated by EBB’s references to Kenyon’s writing for a book he lent her and to Flush being stolen, both of which she mentioned in the preceding letter to RB.

2. Perhaps a reference to Keats’s Hyperion, or possibly Kenyon had loaned EBB a copy of Longfellow’s Hyperion, a romance (1844). According to EBB’s comment in letter 2608, the “Faun” refers to The Fawn of Sertorius by Robert Eyres Landor (see letter 2599, note 2).

3. Hamlet, II, 2, 309.

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