4046. Alfred & Emily Tennyson to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 138–139.
| [In Emily Tennyson’s hand] | Tent Lodge |
Sept 14th [1857] [1]
My dear Mrs Browning,
There came a hearty smile of joy at your kindness although unhappily the question must have a somewhat graver answer. Alfred has not been well here. Our friends are so kind we have not liked to leave, as for health’s sake we ought to have done a month ago. [2] He has been better of late but still he is not well. [3] We both of us sighed for the south and we ought to have followed the instinct which led us thither. We who live in England can bear a great deal of sun, rather I should say can rejoice in it. Last year we were in cold misty Wales [4] and now we are here and both years we had better have been in France or Italy. Whether we go still further north I cannot say. We are expected in Scotland [5] but I have more faith in English doctors than Scotch & for my own part I am not sure if mere change of air will restore Alfred & if he will not have to put himself under a London doctor. The country ones have done their best.
We so often think & talk of you & wish so heartily we could be with you. Yes, I love and admire Frederic so well myself I am very sorry for you that you are parted from him but still more am I sorry for him. I believe you scarcely know how much you were to him much as you are used to be to so many.
You have faith in Alfred or I dare not say to you he has talked over & over again of writing to you about your Poems. Then he said ‘I had so much rather speak about them’ & so the days & months went on & he never said one word of all the admiration he felt no not even thanked you for your precious gifts. [6] Do not think him ungrateful, you will not I am sure.
I wish you had heard Enid & Merlin. [7] Mr Browning’s words were so encouraging to him but then the worst of it is, a grain of dispraise from almost any one outweighs even your praise and people come & say these old stories will not do & he so far believes them that he stops work for months perhaps for years, and life is so short.
He bid me say, how very much he felt the kindness of your enquiries. He is gone to Wastwater [8] and desired I would write immediately or I would wait for a line from himself.
Yes I do hope to see your little boy very soon[.] Our boys are healthy and merry and quite simple children with small inclination for anything but play, & I feel it should at present be indulged that they may have what chance we can give them of gaining strength to bear the weight of <very I will not say over> [9] over-sensitive nerves that may have descended to them & that many signs make me believe have descended & I cannot wish it otherwise.
Farewell dear Mr & Mrs Browning[.] God keep you three well & happy and bring you some day soon to
your affectionate
Alfred & Emily Tennyson
I hope I may before long be able to write again & tell you he is well & at work[.]
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by Emily Tennyson’s references to letter 4041.
2. The Tennysons were staying at Tent Lodge, near the head of Coniston Water in the Lake District, where they had spent part of their honeymoon in 1850. It was the home of their friends James Garth Marshall (1802–73) and his wife, Mary Alicia Pery (née Spring Rice, 1812–75).
3. In a letter of 15 September 1857, Emily Tennyson reported that her husband “is gone to London today to try to get his toothache cured” (The Letters of Emily Lady Tennyson, ed. James O. Hoge, University Park, Pennsylvania, 1974, p. 114).
5. They were expected by the Duke and Duchess of Argyll at Inveraray Castle (see The Letters of Emily Lady Tennyson, p. 112).
6. One of the gifts was a copy of Aurora Leigh (see Reconstruction, C6) and presumably the other was a copy of Poems (1856), though such a presentation copy has not been traced. The Tennysons received their copy of Aurora Leigh “from Mr. Browning” on 27 November 1856 (Lady Tennyson’s Journal, ed. James O. Hoge, Charlottesville, Virginia, 1981, p. 79).
7. See letter 4041, note 7. “Merlin” was published as Vivien in 1859, later as Merlin and Vivien.
8. Wastwater, or Wast Water, the deepest lake in the Lake District, some ten miles N.W. of Coniston Water.
9. Phrase in angle brackets is interpolated between lines.
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