2989. RB to Arabella Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 215.
[Paris]
[25 December 1851] [1]
Dearest Arabel,
I do not write to you so often as I used at Florence, for many reasons—all good ones; Ba is well, now—nor do you need my assurance that she is so, having seen her with your own eyes. I know, too, that she does not forget me in her letters, any more than in other actions of hers, & that she tells you, what I bid her tell—how affectionately I remember you, and how earnestly I hope to see you again before long. But, spite of Ba’s telling all this, I shall just write a word of my own, this Christmas time, to wish you from the bottom of my heart every good you may desire,—or rather, that we could desire for you. Ba can never love you more than she now does,—or, I may say,—than she always did: but I love you ever so much now as seeing is better than believing, and the evidence of one’s own senses than the testimony of another—even when that other is Ba. Don’t think me so ungrateful, therefore,—were there no other consideration,—as to stay away from England, & you, simply because it is possible that my father & sister may settle here: I shall never forget one sister in the presence of another, be assured. Ba will have given you our little news—she has been much affected by the cold, but seems better now—& I hope the worst is past. Wiedeman is quite well, quite good—as I ought to know, who have just been walking with him for some hours in the sun. I will write in a day or two to George, whose debtor I am for a kind letter,—but I have barely left myself room to do more than repeat my truest love. RB
Publication: EBB-AB, I, 447.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. Date provided by reference to letter 2988, with which this note was enclosed, and by RB’s mention of “Christmas time.”
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