3849. EBB to Sarianna Browning
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 41–42.
[Ventnor]
[Postmark: 28 August 1856]
My dearest Sarianna I have your letter today,—the second we have received since we came here, near a week ago!– So sorry I am, you did not get your newspaper this time! Robert thought he would be back yesterday (from our dinner in the woods, of which he has told you!) before the post went out, but we were later, as a matter of course.
How surprised you will have been at our sudden transit to this place! You see, we had to come to the island—that was a necessity,—and only the drive from Ryde [1] & the price of the lodging were to pay for beside—poor Arabel standing there, .. almost kneeling .. with her beseeching eyes,—& the advantage to Penini being obvious. He had all but let off eating in London,—& Robert had to threaten him (.. that he should’nt go at all ..) to make him swallow a mouthful on the morning of our coming away. Looking so ill too! I began to be really uneasy. Now, we have changed all that—the child has lost the blue circles round his eyes, and there’s a shade of rose in his cheeks. He is in a state of chronic ecstasy, .. is scarcely to be reined in from rushing headlong into the sea—(he fell in over-head once!) and what with crabs and “mine uncles,” [2] (who are of opinion that “never was such a little fellow for pluck,”) the world seems to have suddenly grown larger to him. The worst is, that, through his excess of spirits, he exhausts himself, .. & last night could’nt sleep .. or if he slept at all, dreamt of the lobsters eating him! The earth has suffered a sea-change, [3] for little Peni.
Dearest Sarianna, you have done wonders in the economies at Versailles. Really, you have beaten Italy, for cheapness. Here, we are in the merest closets of rooms, most uncomfortably furnished—not a shutter—only muslin curtains. I hang up shawls to keep the morning-light from staring the sleep out of Peni & me. Robert does’nt mind so much. Thirty five shillings a week for an acorn of a sitting-room, a bedroom & dressing room, & Wilson’s room upstairs. And it’s to be dearer presently, in the winter—the winter being the season here. But I like the place much. The country is very English & beautiful of its class—& I enjoyed to my heart, the green dewy shadows yesterday. Yesterday, & today, too, it has been of a pleasant temperature—otherwise we have had it so cold, that I have fallen upon medicated cotton again, & all the melancholy necessities of winter. We are likely to stay till the end of next week.
If I were you, I wd stay at Versailles as long as I could. So glad I am that the dearest Nonno is pleased. It seems to me that the books can be no test of expense of consequence to Paris, seeing that they were sent by railroad & not by water– M. Milsand sent Robert a delightful letter. My love to him whenever you see him.
Your loving
Ba–
Address, in RB’s hand: France. / À Mademoiselle / Madlle Browning, / Hôtel de Lyon, Rue du Hazard, / Versailles. / No 22.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Lilly Library.
1. A seaside town on the northeast coast of the Isle of Wight, 12 miles north of Ventnor. The Brownings probably travelled by means of “Through Tickets,” from London Bridge Station to Ryde via Portsmouth, which were advertised in The Daily News of 21 August 1856 (p. 1). First-class one-way tickets to Ryde cost twenty shillings, sixpence (second-class, five shillings less) and were “inclusive of all charges, railway, omnibus, steam-boat fares, and pier dues.” The advertisement also noted that “fast coaches in connexion with the steam packets run from Ryde … to Ventnor … almost every hour of the day.” EBB implies that John Kenyon paid for the tickets.
2. George, Henry, and Octavius Moulton-Barrett.
3. Cf. The Tempest, I, 2, 401.
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