Correspondence

4695.  EBB & RB to James Thomas Fields

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 52–53.

June 17. ’60.

Dear Mr Fields,

Can it be true, as F. Chapman assures me, that you are still in England? [1] If so,—you are in time to take our best thanks for your pleasant strip of journal [2] —which went to my wife’s heart—not altogether missing my own by the way.

Mr Landor bids me send you more “scraps”– I do so—unwillingly, did I not rely on your understanding & sympathy in the matter; it amuses him to write in this way,—but such water drops weaken his wine of which we have already a cupful. Beside, he leaves the publication with you,—luckily. He has himself recalled, at the last moment, some things quite as good which he now sees to be not good enough, & which I had written out likewise.

Here are two photographs [3] you will take & keep for a reminder.

Don’t think either of us so callous as we may have seemed to your instigations, so kind & tempting, to contribute to the “Atlantic”; I have very nearly (or had at one moment) the intention of giving you the next of my “Men & Women”—you all like me & are more congenial to me than the English. Would you print a whole series of such poems regularly, were I so minded? You see in what haste I scribble—it will do, however, to say what I want—& particularly, how we were delighted with the brief apparition of Mrs Fields, whom we seem to know as if we had a better right in virtue of longer acquaintanceship—which, <le>t us hope, will come some day. Best regards to her from my wife—& to yourself—& pray associate with them those of

Yours very faithfully ever

Robert Browning.

[Continued by EBB]

Dear Mr Fields,

One word I must say to thank you for the pleasure you gave me by your review of little Penini on his poney– I take it as a set-off against all the bad words which have been thrown at his mama & her congress-poems this spring. It was kind of you to look with so much benignity at our darling.

Give my regards to Mrs Fields,—with the most cordial wishes of both of us to both of you,

believe me faithfully

Elizabeth B Browning

Address, in RB’s hand: By the kindness of Mr Chapman / James T. Fields Esq. / to the care of Messrs Trübner / 60 Paternoster Row.

Docket, in hand of recipient: Mr & Mrs Browning. a/- July 28/60.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library and Boston University.

1. The Fieldses sailed from Liverpool to America on 16 June 1860. Also on board were the Stowes and the Hawthornes (see Annie Fields’s diary entries for 16 and 17 June 1860, ms at MHS).

2. Not traced, but evidently a description of Pen and his pony, as indicated by EBB below. Two and a half years later, RB refers to this description in a letter to Fields: “Yes how the Boy has grown, at the expense of the poor curls & feathers & velvet that you wrote so prettily about in old days” (13 January 1863, ms at Taylor Coll).

3. Either the same photographs of EBB and Pen that were sent to Arabella (see letter 4680, note 5) or one of those and the photograph taken of RB in January (see letter 4571, note 6).

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