3529. John Ruskin to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 98–99.
Denmark Hill
Camberwell, London.
March 4th 1855.
Dear Mrs Browning
I have only not written to you because it was impossible for me to say in any manner of writing—all that I wanted to say—but I must now—though merely a line to ask if you are still at Florence—and if I may write to you there to tell you of my last visit to your dear Miss Mitford—and about her last letters to me– I have very little time for writing and I should like to know that the letter in which I gave you this account would not be lost. I am nervous about foreign letters, for I have often been made so anxious by their missing me—& my friends, and I fear that one has been lost which I sent to Dresden—to two American gentlemen [1] whom your husband was so good as to make known to me– I wrote asking them to come to Denmark Hill—but have never heard of them since, and I should be grateful if you could assure them that the letter which they sent me from your husband was not received with inattention.
I will only add to this line of bare enquiry that I have been lately reading your poems with an admiration which I fear you might be offended with me if I were to express to the full– (I am not sure by the bye—if I could)—to yourself—but at least you will permit me to thank you for the hallowing and purifying influence of their every line––a baptism of most tender thoughts, which to me—whom many untoward circumstances of life have had too much power to harden & darken into deadness & bitterness—is of unspeakable preciousness–
I trust that you may be a little pleased by some things I shall have to say of you in the book I am about just now. [2] I am going to bind your poems in a golden binding, & give them to my class of working men—as the purest & most exalting poetry in our language–
—Only—pray in the next edition—alter that first verse of the drama of exile—Gehenna & when a [3] —and I must try to coax you to send some of the long compounded Greek words, which I, for one—can’t understand so much as a syllable of—about their Greek business. Please send me the merest line to say if this reaches you– Give my sincerest regards to Mr Browning & believe me faithfully & respectfully yours,
J Ruskin.
I have just heard from one of your friends that you have a bad cough. [4] Please let me know of your health[.]
Address, on integral page: Affranchie / Mrs Robert Browning / Poste Restante / Florence.
Publication: Cook, pp. 191–192.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. John Rollin Tilton and James Jackson Jarves, as indicated by Ruskin in letter 3559.
2. We have been unable to determine which one of his works Ruskin has in mind.
3. EBB did not alter the first four lines of A Drama of Exile in the 1856 edition. The rhyme Ruskin disapproved of remained the same as in the 1853 edition: “Rejoice in the clefts of Gehenna, / My exiled, my host! / Earth has exiles as hopeless as when a / Heaven’s empire was lost.”
4. Ruskin’s source was Ellen Heaton. See SD1805.
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