3834. RB to Julia Martin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 28–29.
39 Devonshire Place, Portland Place,
Aug. 14. [1856] [1]
My dear Mrs Martin,
I seem to know that you will have understood why I wrote no sooner—that I earnestly wanted to go to you, or if I did not begin to see the case desperate, I would keep the “chance” in my hands even longer: but see! Ba’s Poem went to press (a quarter of the m∙s.) a few days ago—not one “proof” has reached us yet—and there are well-nigh 10,000 lines to print: [2] I fetching & carrying all the time—which time cannot be more than a month instead of the two we had counted upon. How can I go away even for you & for this? And yet we have to go away for a week out of our month—to Mr Kenyon at Cowes,—who wishes to see us, and whom, we are in every way bound to see before we leave England again. Oh, dear Mrs Martin, in Heaven, beside there being no more sea, [3] there are no more railways, nor roads, nor tearing up one’s roots periodically—it is not only the Perpetual “Now” of Poet Cowley, [4] but the Perpetual “There”—& not elsewhere! Still, the single “elsewhere” I would admit, should be that Herefordshire I have so often longed to visit before there was apparent so kind a help to it. Do believe me very sorry & very grateful. I daresay I shall fulfil Ba’s wish, & never see Hope-end, .. well-named so—after all!
Ba is pretty well– The Boy looks pale & affected by the strange closeness rather than actual heat, though that has been remarkable also. Arabel is less weary-looking than some weeks ago .. oh, for a lodge in some vast &c. &c. [5] You must write a word & forgive
Yours faithfully ever
(and Mr Martin’s as faithfully,)
Robert Browning.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by reference to the return address.
2. The total number of lines in Aurora Leigh is 10,938.
3. Cf. Revelation 21:1.
4. Cf. the oft-repeated injunction in works by Abraham Cowley (1618–67): to “live today,” seen particularly in his translations of Anacreon (found in Poems, 1656) and the posthumously published Several Discourses by Way of Essays in Verse and Prose (1668).
5. William Cowper, The Task (1785), II (“The Time-piece”), 1.
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