3093. EBB to Dinah Mulock

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 197–198.

58. Welbeck street.

Tuesday. [Postmark: 17 August 1852]

I cannot be easy under your little note, my dear Miss Mulock– Do write me another, & say, if you can, that you feel well today, & that your fancy about the scarlet fever, as far as your actual experience goes, is at an end. There is a temptation in that note of yours to draw me to you at once. I have had more than half a mind to go to you & look in your face & see what is the matter—and my husband said this morning, “I will go”—but I am cowardly for my child, and he ought to be the same … which does not make us the braver for you, believe me, believe us.

So write. God bless you.

If you knew how I am turned round & round in this London in perpetual gyration—like a Fakir, without his prospect of ultimate inspiration by giddiness. It’s the effect of coming home for a few weeks only, you see.

And I have been hoping day after day that you would come again, or that you would write to say when you were coming again.

Ever your affectionate

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Address: Miss Mulock / 18. Camden street. North.

Publication: None traced.

Source: Transcript in editors’ file.

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