3728. RB to James Thomas Fields
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 107–108.
Paris, Rue du Colisée, 3.
Feb. 4. ’56.
My dear Mr Fields.
What must you have thought of such a silence after such a kind letter as yours of the 3d Decr? It came to me only the other day in a packet from Chapman with a line to the effect that “supposing them to be all returns of thanks for my book, he doubted whether he should send them—but they were accumulating.” Had your letter borne your name on the outside, I am sure he would have transmitted it promptly. It delights me greatly that you like what I wrote—& that the reviews & your public are so generous & sympathetic. I hope you will take any opportunity of sending any other gratifying news that may occur. I should be glad, also to see your typographical performance, & how the things go in one volume,—and, indeed, whatever you choose to tell us in your own genial & pleasant way. I will, for my part, send you a photograph [1] —not from Page’s picture, however,—of which the tone is far too low, as he told me: but they work capitally here, and I will try & content you forthwith. As for “Sordello”—I shall make it as easy as its nature admits, I believe—changing nothing and simply writing in the unwritten every-other-line which I stupidly left as an amusement for the reader to do—who, after all, is no writer, nor needs be. When I get done, you shall hear,—never fear. Thank you & your friends heartily for caring about me at Mr Longfellow’s “oaken table” [2] —and do pray thank him, affectionately—I shall venture to say—for the honor & kindness he did me. And, finally, thank Mrs Fields [3] as energetically for her goodness to my wife & myself. I have borrowed my own poems from an American friend, [4] and transcribe what she desires of me; & the moment we can lay hands on my wife’s book she will copy & send the other matter. [5]
I leave myself no more room than to include her thanks and kind regards with mine. She is pretty well—finishing her poem,—whereof Mr F. will have a bargain—it is admirable, so far as I have been privileged to see. [6]
Ever yours faithfully, RB.
Best thanks for the £60—of which Chapman wrote at the same time[.]
I should <appr>ise you that the post<al ar>rangements here, between France & you, pass my comprehension—they take so insufficient a postage that I am sure you will have to pay largely: that is, they take it to-day, & in a week double, perhaps: but I won’t wait longer & you must understand & forgive me. I have written the poem on two sides of a page in case it should be meant to go in a book. We shall stay here five months longer. Would you be good enough to post the enclosed?
Address: Etats. Unis d’Amérique. / Voie d’Angleterre. / James T. Fields Esq. / (Messrs Ticknor, Fields & Co) / Boston, U.S.A.
Docket, in Fields’s hand: R. Browning. / Recd Feb 25 / a/ Mch. 6.
Publication: Ian Jack, “Browning on Sordello and Men and Women,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 45 (Summer 1982), 195–196 (in part).
Manuscript: Huntington Library.
1. As indicated by Fields’s docket on the envelope of letter 3803, the photograph was to be engraved for the revised edition of Sordello.
2. See the fourth paragraph in letter 3716.
3. Ann (“Annie”) West Fields (née Adams, 1834–1915), literary hostess, writer, and diarist, was the sixth child and fifth daughter of Zabdiel Boylston Adams, a Boston physician, and his wife, Sarah May (née Holland). She and James Thomas Fields were married in Boston on 15 November 1854.
4. Possibly Michael Arthur Castle (see letter 3666, note 3). Other Americans in Paris with whom the Brownings were acquainted, such as the Cranches and Samuel Longfellow, would have probably been named by RB since they were also known to Fields.
5. EBB’s contribution was a fair copy of “The Sleep” (1838), signed and dated Paris, June 1856. RB supplied “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix” (1845), also a fair copy, signed and dated Paris, 4 February 1856. Both manuscripts are in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. Evidently, RB enclosed his in this letter; EBB’s was sent with letter 3803.
6. RB had read the first two books of Aurora Leigh; see the second paragraph in letter 3716 and the last paragraph in letter 3724.
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