3088. EBB to Fanny Dowglass
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 191–192.
58 Welbeck street.
Saturday morning! [14 August 1852] [1]
My ever dear friend, I dont know what you will think of me. I am living in chaos just now, and the spirit of confusion turns me round & round in such perpetual giration that I forget which is the right & which the left– I made a mistake therefore about your letter, & thought it referred to a saturday farther off than the one I am writing on. Do forgive me, & believe that to neglect you consciously would be as hard for me as not to consciously love you. Both are impossible.
And now at last, to thank you for your affectionate kindness in wishing to be troubled with us. You tempt us indeed—but the truth is that no temptation can take us to Albury at present, & if we can go hereafter, it will not be to sleep there– In the case of a possibility of getting down to you for a few hours, that shall be done—but I can really answer for nothing. To give you a notion of your position, your invitation makes the eighth which we have received from kind friends urging us to go to them into the country, [2] .. and we cant go to anyone up to this moment—we cant get away from London. Ask a fly in a spider’s net to emancipate himself on the window-pane—he can do it as soon as we can. It is the disadvantage of coming to one’s country after such long intervals, that one attains, in the doing it, no sort of liberty of will, or power of choice. Also, I am in tribulation about my child’s nurse, & in bondage to the child consequently.
So vexed I was at the rain that day!– And to make it worse I was not well enough to brave it. So I missed you!
I throw myself, altogether, on your goodness, to make me forgiven for my delay in sending this note. Robert is scolding me for the carelessness of it, a<nd I> am ashamed properly, do believe!
Love me too, in spite of all my faults .. which you have done hitherto indeed–
Your ever affecte
Ba
Accept my husband’s regards.
Address: Miss Dowglass / Mrs Smitheman’s / Albury Heath / Albury / near Guildford.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Huntington Library.
1. This letter is postmarked 16 August 1852, a Monday.
2. Six of the other seven invitations came from the John Paines, John Kenyon, Camilla Crosland, the James Martins, Miss Mitford, and the Alfred Tennysons. One may have also come from Henrietta.
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