3877. Leigh Hunt to EBB & RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 80–81.
Hammersmith.
Oct. 7th [1856] [1]
My dear Friends,
I should have thanked you for your kind letter without delay, but Mrs Hunt had an alarming attack of illness yesterday-week, [2] and I have waited as long as I could, to see whether her recovery would proceed at a rate a little quicker, so as to enable me to fix a day for my visit. This, I grieve to say, is not the case. She does, it is true, continue to recover, but so slowly, with so many fluctuations of better and worse, and requiring such constant attention, that I must not leave her. Mrs Jago desires me to give you her kindest love, [3] and say that she hopes to have the pleasure of calling in Devonshire Place next Friday; and by that time, if not before, I trust I shall be in better luck, and able to send you a different message. Grievous indeed would it be to me, even setting aside so very grievous a drawback, to lose the few precious hours, in which I promised myself
“Infinite riches in a little room;” [4] —
not room material (no disparagement to Mr Kenyon’s apartments), but the little space of time, yclept an Evening. I wanted to talk to you of many things, “infinite” things included; and to hear what both of you had to say, and to commend.
The Poems have not yet come from the bookseller. [5] Please send him one or two επεα πτεροεντα, [6] to flap in his forgetful face.
Your most obliged
and affectionate friend,
Leigh Hunt.
To
Mr & Mrs Browning.
Address: Robert Browning Esqre / 39 Devonshire Place, / Portland Place.
Publication: Luther A. Brewer, My Leigh Hunt Library, the Holograph Letters (Iowa City, 1938), p. 362.
Manuscript: University of Iowa.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Marianne Hunt (née Kent, 1787–1857) suffered from alcoholism and its attendant bad health. She died three months later on 26 January 1857.
3. The Hunts and the Jagos were near neighbors in Hammersmith: the Hunts at 7 Cornwall Road (now Rowan Road) and the Jagos at Trejago, 8 King Street (now Hammersmith Road). In letter 3949, Hunt writes that Mrs. Jago had been very kind to the ailing Mrs. Hunt.
4. Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta (1633), line 72.
5. i.e., EBB’s Poems (1856); see letter 3871, note 1.
6. “Winged words.” This phrase occurs frequently throughout The Iliad and The Odyssey.
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