2789. EBB to Sarianna Browning
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 15, 267–268.
[Florence]
May 2. [1849] [1]
Robert gives me this blank & three minutes to write across it. Thank you my very dear Sarianna for all your kindness & affection. I understand what I have lost .. I know the worth of a tenderness such as you speak of, and I feel that, for the sake of my love for Robert, she was ready out of the fulness of her heart, to love me also. It has been bitter to me that I have unconsciously deprived him of the personal, face-to-face shining out of her angelic nature for more than two years,—but she has forgiven me, and we shall all meet when it pleases God, before His throne. In the meanwhile, my dearest Sarianna, we are thinking much of you; and neither of us can bear the thought of your living on where you are. If you could imagine the relief it wd be to us, to me as well as to Robert, to be told frankly what we ought to do, where we ought to go, to please you best, you & your dearest father, you would think the whole matter over & use plain words in the speaking of it. Robert naturally shrinks from the idea of going to New Cross under these circumstances of dreary change; and for his sake England has grown suddenly to me a land of clouds. Still to see you & his father, & to be some little comfort to you both, would be the best consolation to him, I am very sure—and so, dearest Sarianna, think of us & speak to us– Could not your father get a long vacation? Could we not meet somewhere? Think how we best may comfort ourselves by comforting you– Never think of us, Sarianna, as apart from you—as if our interest or our pleasure could be apart from yours.
The child is so like Robert that I can believe in the other likeness—and may the inner nature, indeed as you say, be after that pure image! He is so fat & rosy & strong that almost I am sceptical of his being my child. I suppose he is, after all. May God bless you, both of you. I am ashamed to send all these letters, but Robert makes me. He is better, but still much depressed sometimes; and over your letters he drops heavy tears. Then he treasures them up, & reads them again & again. Better however on the whole he is certainly. Poor little babe, who was too much rejoiced over at first, fell away by a most natural recoil, (even I felt it to be most natural) from all that triumph—but Robert is still very fond of him, & goes to see him bathed every morning & walks up & down on the terrace with him in his arms. If your dear father can toss & rock babies, as Robert can, he will be a nurse in great favour.
Dearest Sarianna, take care of yourself, & do walk out. No grief in the world was ever freer from the corroding drop of bitterness, .. was ever sweeter, holier, & more hopeful, than this of yours must be. Love is for you, on both sides of the grave, and the blossoms of love meet over it. May God’s love too, bless you! Your ever affectionate sister.
Ba
Address, on integral page, in RB’s hand: Angleterre viâ France. / Miss Browning, / New Cross, Hatcham, / Surrey, / near London.
Publication: LEBB, I, 402–403.
Manuscript: Lilly Library.
1. Year provided by postmark.
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