Correspondence

3880.  EBB & RB to Reuben Browning

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 83-84.

Oct. 10. 1856.

My dear Reuben,

We have been hoping for the pleasure of seeing you to-morrow (Saturday) and I certainly thought nothing would deprive us of it. But we must throw ourselves on your mercy. My wife has so bad a cough that I am at my wits end to imagine how I shall get her thro’ the long journey that lies before us. It is not the cold, she suffers from so much as the fog and mist in the air. Can you understand and forgive this, and give us the pleasure rather of your own company, with that of your wife, [1] at any time that may suit you? We shall leave London in about a week, if possible—we have still an enormous quantity of work to do. I am obliged to be very pressing for my account—it is absolutely necessary for me to know what my actual means are before I set out. Do please have the goodness to write the (too few!) figures that will be necessary—that I may regulate my measures accordingly. There is another Divd now due, (at the Bank,) which shd go in the account. Forgive all this trouble (which is, after all, given you in your own interest as much as mine) and believe me, Yours

affectionately ever, RB.

[Continued by EBB]

Dear Mr Browning,—being forced to forfeit our pleasant expedition for tomorrow, will not Mrs Browning & yourself make me amends by coming as Robert proposes .. so that I may know your wife, .. & as many of the children [2] as you could bring?

affectionately yours

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Publication: None traced.

Source: Transcript in editors’ file.

1. Margaret Browning (née Lewis, 1820–81). She had married Reuben Browning on 21 August 1848 at Camberwell Christ Church.

2. Reuben Browning and his wife, Margaret, had five children at this time: Josephina Rubina Christiana (1846–95), Robert Reuben (1849–87), Michael (1850–93), Thomas Henry (1851–93), and William Henry (1855–89).

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