2639. EBB to Sarianna Browning
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 14, 69–70.
[Pisa]
Dec. 12. [1846] [1]
Robert says that he thinks I may write a few words to you without over-boldness, [2] and as I have often silently wished to do so, the courage comes through what he says—just as, through what he has said of you, the affection has come long ago. Let me write to you then, not as to a stranger, but as a dear sister & friend, whom I love & would be loved by, for his sake & for her own .. for I have known you by your kind feeling towards me, if I have not by your face & voice .. & your gift to me, with the words written on it, lies on the table to represent this. Think how I must value it. And believe of me that whatever shall represent or express any degree of sisterly affection from you to myself I shall value while I live .. as I do the first mark of it: I need not say any more.
Of your & his father & mother, it is harder to say even so little. From the beginning I have felt ashamed before you all, of being the occasion of a sort of difficulty, perplexity & anxiety, to the person dearest to you & to me, which he was born superior to, & has incurred through an excess of generous attachment, which you well might blame though I could not, owing to it as I do & have done, the whole happiness of my life. That his father & his mother have not been severe upon it nor upon me, .. that, on the contrary, they have been gentle & kind to me .. (& one of the earliest comforts I had was an affectionate message from your father) .. has left me so deeply grateful to them both, that I leave my future life to speak what these words cannot, .. with the dutiful affection which they never shall find wanting in me. I shall not cease to remember their goodness—will you tell them so, that they may hear it in the voice of a real daughter? Such, I will be to them, whenever I can, to the extent that I may,—& of course, my best & only way of being so now, is … by making their son happy .... but I stop suddenly in that fine phrase, which sounds to my ears both unnatural & arrogant: the happiness always seems to come so necessarily from him to me!—— Yet, again, nothing makes one happy, so much as making another happy!– So my phrase may stand. For my own part, I hope to be spared the pain of giving him pain on account of my health, which improves steadily & is not likely to fail while we have such unwintry weather as this Italy gives us: and for the rest, I can understand & love him as well as if I were worthier of him, I beg you all to believe.
He calls himself better far, than he was in England, & is in very good spirits. I wish we could hear as satisfactory news of your mother’s improvement. We talk of you all every day, & I learn my easy daily lessons of the reasons for loving you more. Flush opens his eyes wide to hear of Mother Puss– He has taken to bark on every occasion, in emulation of the Italian language—pure Tuscan he thinks!
So here at last I shall end. Will you think of me as one of you .. because I have the heart of one .. and understand that instead of wishing to deprive you of any dear affection, I would add mine, .. and remain always, dear Sarianna’s (if really I may call her so) affectionate sister
Ba
Address, on integral page: Miss Browning.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Lilly Library.
1. Year determined from EBB’s correspondence to Sarianna occurring regularly in 1847 and later.
2. With this letter is a separate slip bearing Sarianna’s notation, “her first letter to me.”
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