3239. Elizabeth Clementine Kinney to EBB & RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 200–201.
[Florence]
[late July 1853] [1]
Dear Mr & Mrs Browning.
Thanks to your “sundry nothings in the way of work,” out of which has come something—something welcome—for me. It was really obliging on your part to think of us & our interests, & tell us of you & yours, so promptly, so pleasantly. Your cordial invitation is veritably a temptation; but, I see you snugly roosted on the mountain-slope; or sitting on your eggs among the chestnuts, or brooding over the fledgelings of your literary nest, so lovingly, so contentedly that it would seem a pity to set all a fluttering by our untimely approach. Nevertheless, the prospect of such mischief is so enticing, that I am not sure that I can or will resist it: more probable is it that—true to my lawless nature—I shall be wicked enough to perpetrate the friendly outrage. But, you must know that I am courageous in my sports & not afraid of being “made game of”; so if your “Pelican” puts me in his pouch he will find that he has there no fish out of water, but a wild bird who knows how to escape from his “long bill.” As for our American cries if they are not as poetical, they are no less ambitious than are those of Italy, “The Eagle” being an oft aspiring name; & if their bills are not as long as the Pelican’s they know better how to make the pocket their prey. But this bird-talk makes me fly, & I almost feel myself now perched on a chestnut bough within reach of your voices, charmed to muteness by your songs & now flying to your side to catch some quaint, original note & bear it away to my native woods. Or, what is better, I fancy us there together, browning in the summer air under the trees, which seem to us fugitives from the blazing world like “the shadow of a great rock in a weary land[”]– [2] Whether anything will come out of either your letter or my fancying, will be for your good friend & mine, Mr Kinney to decide: & he finds himself already so much improved, that his need of the woods & mountains of Lucca is now more moral than physical. I am sure that it would be good for us to be there, for “as iron sharpeneth iron so a man the countenance of his friend.” [3] So we may be selfish enough to break in on your mental incubations; when I cannot say but perhaps during the August moon as the moonlights of this month are now among our silvery recollections.
We have made the agreeable acquaintance of your friends the Cottrel[l]s. What a love of a woman she is! What a real artist is he! & what a jewel of a collection of art they have. Mrs C. lent me Miss Mitford’s Recollections of Literary Life for its notice of you—plural– I had never seen that living lyric Pan is Dead; nor, How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix, [4] that dramatic lyric which has such a spring in it that it makes the reader burn, as made Roland his rider, & so much of pathos, that one finds his eyes wet after it. As to Christmas Eve & Easter Morning they don’t come; tho’ Mr K has searched the book stores & sent a wishful note but unanswered to Mr Lytton. So I can only hope that Christmas will come. So shall we if we can[—]meantime, do take (or give me) another “pleasant refreshment”. Mr K joins me in heart regards to you both; un baiser pour le petit garçon. [5]
Publication: Bosco, p. 76 (in part).
Source: Author’s draft at Columbia University.
1. Dated by Mrs. Kinney’s references to letter 3234.
2. Isaiah 32:2.
3. Cf. Proverbs 27:17.
4. Recollections of a Literary Life (1852) featured a chapter on EBB and RB entitled “Married Poets” (I, 266–291), which included RB’s “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix” (I, 287–289) and extracts from EBB’s “The Dead Pan” (I, 275–282). RB’s poem was published in Poems (Boston, 1850), the work Mrs. Kinney reviewed for the Newark Daily Advertiser (see letter 3227, note 8).
5. “A kiss for the little boy.”
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