3801. EBB to Euphrasia Fanny Haworth
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 244–246.
3. Rue du Colysée.
Saturday– [14 June 1856] [1]
My dearest Fanny I was just going to write to you to beg you to apply to Chapman for Robert’s book, when he came to stop me with the newspaper. So your sad, sad note did not tell me first. [2] Thank you, my dearest Fanny, for having thought of me when you had so much weary thought—it was very touching to me that you should. And I am vexed to have missed two post-days before I told you this—the first by an accident and the second (today) by its being a blank post-day—but you will know by your heart how deeply I have felt & feel for you. May God bless you & love you– If I were as He to comfort, you should be strong & calm at this moment. But what are we to one another in this world? How weak, how far, .. we all feel in moments like these–
Still I should like to know that you had some friend near you, to hold your hand & look in your face & be silent, as those are silent who know & feel– When you can write again, tell me how it is with you in this respect .. & in others.
So sudden! so sudden. Yet bereavements like these, are always sudden to the soul, more or less. All blows must needs be sudden. May your health not suffer, dear Fanny. We shall be in London in about a week after the sixteenth, for we are delayed through my not having finished my poem .. which nobody will finish reading perhaps. We go to Mr Kenyon’s house in Devonshire Place, kindly offered to us for the summer. Shall we find you, I wonder, in London.
Yes– There are terrible costs in this world. We get knowledge, by losing what we hoped for,—& liberty, by losing what we loved. But this world is a fragment .. or rather a segment—and it will be rounded presently to the completer satisfaction– Not to doubt that, is the greatest blessing it gives now. Death is as vain as life—the common impression of it, as false & as absurd. A mere change of circumstances– What more? And how near these spirits are, how conscious, how full of active energy & tender reminiscence & interest, who shall dare to doubt? For myself, I do not doubt at all. If I did, I should be sitting here inexpressibly sad, for myself, not you.
There is so much, so very much I am anxious about you, and yet that I cannot ask yet. Dearest Fanny, your last long letter, which I did not answer, I read with the greatest sympathy, the deepest,—but I could not but rejoice then, and now, that you have escaped the most bitter of miseries, a miserable marriage– To be fastened to an unworthy man, [3] is a worse fate, be sure, than to lose the worthiest & most beloved by death—because death is not loss. May He who died that it might be so with us, sweeten the thought to you of death .. and life .. which is harder–
Robert unites with me in affectionate sympathy, & Sarianna was here last night talking feelingly about you– You shall have Robert’s book when we get to England. [4] Think how much I think of you–
Your ever affectionate Ba.
Mr Kenyon has been very ill—& is still in a state occasioning anxiety– He is at the isle of Wight.
Delayed after by the fêtes. [5]
Address: Angleterre. / Miss Haworth / 45. Onslow Square / Brompton / London.
Publication: LEBB, II, 234–235 (in part, as [17 June 1856]).
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. This letter is postmarked 16 June 1856, a Monday.
2. Fanny Haworth’s mother had died. Her death was recorded in The Times of 10 June 1856: “On the 7th inst., at 45, Onslow-square, after three days’ illness, Euphrasia, widow of Thomas Haworth, Esq., of Barham-wood, Herts., aged 76.”
3. We have been unable to identify Miss Haworth’s “unworthy” suitor.
4. Miss Haworth inscribed both volumes of RB’s Men and Women (1855): “E. Fanny Haworth from Robert Browning” (Reconstruction, C394).
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