3640. EBB to Arabella Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 282–284.
[London]
Monday. [1 October 1855] [1]
My own beloved Arabel your letter was the greatest comfort possible. I like Peni to be with you—and that’s the deepest expression of my love for you–
But we miss him—oh, so much!—you may fancy. Yes, & you too, dearest. I felt desperate that saturday. It was like throwing my head out of the window after my heart.
Keep him till thursday if he likes to stay, of course. Dear darling, I knew he would have out-bursts of grief & re-actions of love before the day was out.
Dearest Arabel, Wilson goes away on wednesday, [2] & we think it excellent that he shd not see her again. Perhaps before he comes home you had better let him understand that she is gone—(just for the week be allowed)—or use your discretion.
Miss Heaton & Jane Sandford have been here today, &, between the visits, I have been horribly busy– No Tennyson since you went. Yesterday we had the two Ros[s]etti’s for six hours instead—only they happily came after dinner. Ros[s]etti brought us a sketch of Tennyson reading Maud on our sofa, done from recollection, in pen & ink. Excellent!– [3]
Also, today, I have been over to Moules [4] buying dinner napkins, a table-cloth, & winter-frocks for my Peni– The last was a comfort. I wonder if people who have many children, love them in any proportion as I do that child.
What of Papa? Do write every day about Peni, I beseech you. How perfect & tender you always have been to me in all shapes. And is’nt he a shape?
The time drives me before it. Love me– Robert’s dear love– Best love to George & all of them, dear things.
Your ever & ever attached
Ba–
Say how you are yourself—mind– Dont let Penini teaze himself about writing to me. God bless you–
Mr Stratten quite displeased me yesterday by his sermon—view of the war—of our chosen island & enormous glory! & no word of the alliance.
Publication: EBB-AB, II, 175–176.
Manuscript: Gordon E. Moulton-Barrett.
1. Date provided by EBB’s reference to Pen’s staying with Arabella (see letter 3637, note 2). The only Monday of his stay was 1 October 1855.
2. For her confinement. She would travel to East Retford, Nottinghamshire, where her family lived.
3. This sketch of Tennyson, dated 27 September 1855, and inscribed by Dante Gabriel Rossetti: “I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood,” sold as lot 11 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, H114). It is reproduced facing p. 304. Nineteen years later, RB wrote the following note and put it with the sketch: “Tennyson read his poem of Maud to E.B.B., R.B., Arabel and Rossetti, on the evening of Thursday, Septr. 27, 1855, at 13 Dorset St., Manchester Square. Rossetti made this sketch of Tennyson as he sat reading to E.B.B. who occupied the other end of the sofa. R.B., March 6, ’74, 19 Warwick Crescent. μεταπιπτοντος δαιμονος” (“My genius having been supplanted by another”). RB was mistaken about Arabella’s presence, as indicated by letter 3642, in which EBB writes to her: “I do wish you could have heard him [Tennyson] read.” Also, besides D.G. Rossetti, his brother William Michael Rossetti was present, and the latter remembered that another person was there as well: “either Madox Brown, or else Hunt or Woolner” (Dante Gabriel Rossetti: His Family-Letters, with a Memoir, 1895, I, 190). Tennyson thought that “five or six people” heard him read (see SD1866). D.G. Rossetti described the event in a letter to William Allingham (25 November 1855–8 January 1856): “I never was more amused in my life than by Tennyson’s groanings and horrors over the reviews of Maud, which poem he read through to us, spouting also several sections to be introduced in a new edition. I made a sketch of him reading, which I gave to Browning, and afterwards duplicated it for Miss S[iddal]. His conversation was really one perpetual groan” (ms at Morgan). Rossetti’s brother, William Michael Rossetti gave this account: “My brother made two pen-and-ink sketches of him, and gave one of them to Browning. So far as I remember, the Poet Laureate neither saw what Dante was doing, nor knew of it afterwards. His deep grand voice, with slightly chaunting intonation, was a noble vehicle for the perusal of mighty verse. On it rolled, sonorous and emotional. … After Tennyson and Maud came Browning and Fra Lippo Lippi—read with as much of sprightly variation as there was in Tennyson of sustained continuity. Truly a night of the gods, not to be remembered without pride and pang” (Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1895, I, 191). A copy of Maud, and Other Poems (1855), now at the Berg, is inscribed by Tennyson: “Robert & Elizabeth Barrett Browning from A Tennyson,” to which RB added: “Thursday, September, 27. 13 Dorset St. Manchester Sq.”
4. A silk mercer in Baker Street.
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