2957. EBB to Euphrasia Fanny Haworth
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 114–115.
London.
September 24. [1851] [1]
My dear Miss Haworth, I do hope you have not set us quite on the outside of your heart with the unfeeling & ungrateful. I say “us” when I ought to have said “me”—for you have known Robert & you have not known me, and I am naturally less safe with you than he is .. less safe in your esteem– We should both have gone to enquire after your health, if he had not been attacked with influenza, & unfit for anything until the days you mentioned as the probable term of your remaining in town, had passed. I waited till he should be better, & the malady lingered. Now he is well, & I do hope you may be so too. May it be!– Bear us in mind & love, for we go away tomorrow to Paris, .. where however we shall expect you before long. Thank you, thank you for the books. I have been struck & charmed with some things in the ‘Companion’ .. especially .. may I say? .. with the ‘Modern Pygmalion’, which catches me on my weak side of the love of wonder. [2] By the way, what am I to say of Swedenborg & mesmerism? So much, I could, .. the books have so drawn & held me .. (as far as I was capable of being drawn or held, in this chaos of London) that I will not speak at all. The note-page is too small—the haste I write in, too great.
God bless you, & goodbye– Robert bids me give you his love (of the earnestest) and I have leave from you (have I not?) to be always
affectely yours
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
The books are left for you at Mr Kenyon’s. Robert frightens me by observing too late that the ‘companions’ you desired to have before you left town .. Is it possible that I should have done so very wrong? Thank you, thank you for all your kindness– And I dont specify the little green book? [3] The truth is I am tipsy today with haste–
Address: Miss Haworth / 46 [sic, for 45]. Onslow Square / Brompton.
Publication: LEBB, II, 21 (in part).
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Fanny Haworth’s short story, “Morwell, or the Modern Pygmalion. A Tale for Dusk,” appeared in The Ladies’ Companion of 1 April 1851 (pp. 130–132).
3. Probably Miss Haworth’s St. Sylvester’s Day, and Other Poems (1847), which contained sonnets to both Brownings; the copy in the British Library is bound in green.
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