2762. EBB to Sarianna Browning
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 15, 195–196.
[Florence]
[Postmark: 18 December 1848]
My dearest Sarianna I had all sorts of good intentions of writing to you today, & in comes a visitor just in time to make me almost too late for Robert’s getting to the post office. The more provoking it is, that he has left me all this paper to do what I please with—and what, after all, is to be done? Let me make sure of telling you (by saying it first) that he is quite well, .. better, he thinks himself, than he has been for years, and certainly with a more executive appetite than I have ever observed in him. Turkies take the place of beccaficos now, .. so that we are as revolutionary as the rest of the world. Next, .. your goodness will like to hear that I seem to be “doing very well,” although I had made a sort of duty of despair .. or rather of non-expectation, .. through the disappointments before; but the learned maintain up to this point that everything is right this time,—& certainly I seem to be well & much stronger than usual—& inclined to hope that <a> fall, head over heels, much like Louis Phillipe’s, has, in my case, righted our dynasty. Dearest Sarianna, how kindly you write, & how you must let me love you in change for all your kindness! I wish you had been able to say, though, that your dear mother did not suffer—and she seems to suffer more than the customary pain. Will you kiss her hands for me, till I can do it for myself, with my thankful love both to her & your father? Very anxious I have been about Robert’s play, & grateful to your kind uncle [1] & Mr Chorley for their consideration in letting us know the result. The play seems very much inclined to ‘run’ .. is’nt it? Though so little covetous of that sort of reputation for Robert, yet I should have been vexed by the theatrical public’s proving as asinine as usual on the occasion in question. The “poetical works”, however, are another thing,—&, for them, how much we have to thank you! [2]
Robert must go—& so must I. May God bless all of you. Think affectionately of your ever affectionate sister Ba–
Address, on integral page, in RB’s hand: Angleterre viâ France. / Mrs Browning, / New Cross, Hatcham, / Surrey, / near London.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Lilly Library.
1. Reuben Browning.
2. Apparently, Sarianna corrected proof for RB’s Poems (1849).
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