2984. RB to Edward Moxon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 201.
Paris, Avenue des Champs Elysées, 138.
[17 December 1851] [1]
My dear Moxon–
No sooner had I sent off my letter to my sister, than I got, by next day’s post, your kind note. I am very sorry to have been frightened for nothing, like most frightened people in this world. I was right, however, in counting upon your promptitude,—for, you see, you did write to me immediately on the receipt of my packet. Since then, I have duly been put into possession of your very liberal remittance. [2] I do hope that you will be no loser by your very handsome behavior. You gain my best thanks, at all events, for it—whatever they may be worth. I will spare no pains with the proofs, [3] or anything else I can do in connection with the matter.
I also have to thank you for the communication of Talfourd’s sonnet [4] —an evidence of his old kind feeling which has much gratified me. I will trouble you to forward to him (since, I suppose, he transmitted the paper by you) the accompanying little note of acknowledgement. (No—I won’t trouble you, on second thoughts) [5]
The bitter cold weather cannot but affect my wife’s chest—but not so as to disquiet me– Do you ever run over to Paris? Our little band box apartment has not even the hole in the wall, that I had hoped never to be without, when the question was where to stow a friend for a night: but accommodations abound, and we would have a merry evening, at all hazards. Meantime, believe me,
with many thanks, My dear Moxon,
yours ever faithfully,
Robt Browning.
Publication: NL, pp. 52–53.
Manuscript: Huntington Library.
1. Dated by RB’s reference to letter 2985.
2. £50, as reported by EBB in letter 2992.
3. Of RB’s introductory essay for Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley.
5. Parenthetical sentence is squeezed in as an afterthought.
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