Correspondence

3372.  EBB & RB to Edward Chapman

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 159-160

March 30, ’54.

Dear Mr Chapman,

Many thanks for the account—my books will creep on, perhaps, & my wife’s run on, no doubt. But I have only time to say a word about what presses more immediately. We want you to do us a bit of a favour. My wife’s sister is much interested in the Ragged-Schools <, she formed a few years ago and are now flourishing>. [1] She wants us to help, by contributing a poem a-piece which she would print and sell, at a bazaar that will take place on the 19th Inst—(the nineteenth of April.) Now we should like to give her the paper and printing into the bargain. Here are the poems. Will you kindly get two or three hundred copies struck off, in the simplest fashion, with as much taste as is consistent with cheapness—so that they may be sold, say, at sixpence a copy? No covers, you know, or any thing but the plain sheetful, simply doubled into shape—making the best show you can for little we want to spend. Will you have the goodness to get this done at once (otherwise all our labor will be thrown away) and charge the same, [(]together with the postage of this heavy letter) to our account—not on any consideration allowing Miss Barrett to interfere—except to correct the proof which you can send her with the copy. Please also to keep the said copy clean—as she will sell the m.s. as an autograph, with other ware of a like character. [2] You must consider, at once, us and the charity and the benevolent public who want as much for their pence as possible.

I write fast for the post—but should you see Forster, tell him I have just ascertained by a letter from Mr Kenyon that a letter of his, directed to me a month ago has been lost—to my sorrow.

Ever yours faithfully,

Robert Browning.

[Continued by EBB]

Dear Sir, my idea is that two or three hundred copies would be inadequate to the purpose, & that the expense attending double the number would be very slight– The female side of a house, however, is inapt at calculations. Will you judge between us & decide on what seems to you best– The sale is to take place at the Baker Street Bazaar. Be so good as to let my sister have the proof.

Publication: NL, pp. 70–72.

Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.

1. EBB deleted the phrase within angle brackets.

2. The manuscripts of EBB’s “A Plea for the Ragged Schools of London,” dated 20 March 1854, and RB’s “The Twins,” dated 30 March 1854, did not sell at the Ragged Schools bazaar. They were retained by Arabella, who at a later date probably gave them to her maid, Betsy Hingson (née Bonser, 1828–72). In 1908 they sold at Sotheby’s as the property of her husband’s second wife, Annie Hingson. The manuscripts are now at the Pierpont Morgan Library (see Reconstruction, D872 and E475).

___________________