3898. EBB to Anna Brownell Jameson
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 102.
39. Devonshire Place.
Sunday evening. [19 October 1856] [1]
My dearest Moña Nina,
Ah—you did’nt come again. We disgusted you with our thirds. [2] Is’nt it so? And now you write instead of coming–
We go on tuesday morning—that is fixed now—but we have been in the greatest confusion & uncertainty, & overpowered by people coming & going, & by business that would’nt go.
Oh, to have a word with you, if only to talk of Italy, & your plans! Come to Italy, I beseech you.
No revises! No– They kept me waiting so for the last proofs, that I can only give my last moments to the revises—but I shall leave directions to let you have an early copy of the poem. It’s announced in yesterday’s Athenæum– [3]
I have been coughing away my nights & days, & feel much weakened by it,—though last night I slept, & let others sleep. We pass one day in Paris, at an hotel nearest the Marseilles station—and if, at Marseilles, the weather should be good, we shall probably take the Cornice road, & be a week or more in reaching Genoa–
Can we do anything for you? There may be time for an answer from you, if you write instantly.
May God bless you & keep you & love you dearest Moña Nina. Is this a farewell?–
You will come to Italy– Robert’s best love with that of
your loving
Ba
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Date provided by EBB’s reference to “yesterday’s Athenæum” (see note 3 below).
2. We are unable to clarify this remark, though one possibility is that EBB had invited Mrs. Jameson to be a third guest for an evening.
3. The issue of 18 October 1856 carried the announcement in Chapman & Hall’s “List of New Works Nearly Ready”: “Browning. / New Poem. / Aurora Leigh. In Nine Books. / By Elizabeth Barrett Browning. / in 1 vol. crown 8vo.” (no. 1512, p. 1283). The list also included the fourth edition of EBB’s Poems (1856).
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