Correspondence

3902.  John Forster to EBB

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 107–108.

Many many apologies I owe you, My dear Mrs Browning, for an omission which yet I hope you will, with your unvarying kindness & consideration for me, be not unwilling to forgive. When I first received your letter, dated in the middle of last month, I had no opportunity of speaking to Dickens on the subject yet; nor did I see him for that purpose till the day before a somewhat important event in my life of which you have heard, and which you, I well know, will rejoice to be told has made me very very happy. [1]

Since that day we have been in every part of this wonderful country of lake, stream, & mountain [2] —which, if you & Robert have not thoroughly explored, you must some day—and might the Fates be only so propitious as to give you for fellow travellers a certain old and dear friend and his life-companion!

Then came the difficulty of writing—for I knew you had left Cowes yet did not know whether you had returned to your old address in London. At last came yesterday a note of Procter’s to hand, in which he tells me that you are again in Deve Place, but adds the news—very heavy & unwelcome to my heart—that you meditate an immediate return to Paris. —And so, for the present perhaps (for we shall not return till the close of the present week), we may not meet; and the introduction I have been counting upon with such pleasure must wait till you return, or we go over to you; and I shall not yet be allowed to gratify the longing I have had to see again the dear little Penini to whom I send my most affectionate love.

But at any rate I can answer the question your note put to me, and this without another moment’s delay. Dickens desired me expressly & emphatically to say to you that he would himself read, and with every wish to accept, any papers which Dr Castle might send to Household Words for acceptance [3] (let him specially name himself in writing as introduced by you), but he had this doubt in reference to the particular papers proposed (on Phrenology), that the subject did not make him sanguine as to their adaptability for H Words, because, as he expressed it, what was most capable of popular treatment in such a subject is already, he imagines, thoroughly known. Still, by all means, he added, let the papers come, & I will myself read & decide respecting them.

Now let me not close this hurried note witht most affectionate regards & love to you & all of you, in which my wife heartily joins. I still desperately hope we may meet before you go. —I am all eagerness (need I say) to read Aurora Leigh—the name which heralds so much delight Procter has been so kind as to whisper to me! Should you write me a line, tell me what you think of our dear Kenyon? —And why is not his brother with him?

My dear Mrs Browning, & my dear Mr B,

I am ever (we are ever) Most affecly yours

John Forster

Address: Immediate. / Mrs. Robert Browning / At John Kenyon’s Esqre / 39 Devonshire Place / New Road / London.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Berg Collection.

1. His marriage to Eliza Ann Colburn (née Crosbie) on 24 September 1856.

2. The Lake District.

3. Michael Arthur Castle (1818–85) published several books and pamphlets on phrenology, primarily in French and German, including Die Phrenologie (Stuttgart, 1845) and Phrénologie spiritualiste: nouvelles études de psychologie appliquée (1862). We have been unable to trace any articles on phrenology in Household Words.

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