3807. EBB to Jane Wills-Sandford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 251–252.
[Paris]
Wednesday evening. [25 June 1856] [1]
My dearest Jane
I have come home from seeing my invalid friend [2] who could’nt get to see me, & am rather dead than convalescent myself. Mr Wills [3] seems to me to have possibility in him—there are some excellent touches in him at moments, but there is a general want of grasp & artistic shaping which indicate inexperience, not defect of ability, in the writer. I dare say he will write himself out clearly at last, but we all have to struggle for it. You told me to say what I thought. I think besides, that we shall be very glad to see him in London.
How good you were to my Penini today, & how much he must have teazed you! It was his own strong wish to go, & after what you said I would not deny him.
Your ever affectionate
EBB.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Dating based on EBB’s reference to seeing her “invalid friend” (i.e., Lady Elgin). In letter 3809, EBB reports that she and RB went “to Lady Elgin’s the other evening.”
2. Lady Elgin.
3. Probably William Gorman Wills (1828–91), playwright and portraitist, who was a son of James Wills, poet, Miss Wills-Sandford’s father’s cousin. Wills had some success as a painter—he was commanded by Queen Victoria “to draw the royal grandchildren”—but he made his reputation as a dramatist, with such works as Charles I (1872), which starred Henry Irving in the title role (ODNB). Wills corresponded with RB in the early 1880’s.
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