4033. RB to Edward Bulwer-Lytton

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 125.

Bagni di Lucca,

Aug. 27. [1857] [1]

Dear Sir Edward,

You have now done with me, I believe, to your happiness & mine: your son is decidedly convalescent—tho’ very much reduced—and, it is hoped, may drive out to-morrow: he has a good appetite and does not lose an inch of ground: under these circumstances, he will be able, I have little doubt, to begin writing to you himself in a day or two. Poor fellow—he has had a luckless holiday—three weeks in bed! And there have been days when we felt apprehension indeed: but that is over—and nothing worse will remain (I trust) than .. shall I whisper such a matter to the Author of “Money”? [2] —than a sad length of doctor-&-medicine-man’s bill to confront presently. That is easily remediable, however, so accept the true congratulations of my wife &

Your’s faithfully

Robert Browning

Publication: BBIS-10, pp. 138–139.

Manuscript: Lord Cobbold.

1. Year provided by RB’s reference to Robert Lytton’s illness.

2. A comedy by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, written for William Charles Macready; it opened at the Haymarket on 8 December 1840.

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