4765. RB to Reuben Browning
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 200–201.
Florence,
Oct 20. ’60.
My dear Reuben,
I wrote to you a week since begging you to let me know, with your usual kindness, the amount of the Octr Bank Div. in order that I might draw for it with the previous balance in my favour—being about to go to Rome. I also enclosed Arnould’s warrant for Boddington’s delivery of the Shipmoney. I am going to trouble you further, if you can bear it. My wife has sent a few poems to a New York Paper for which they pay her 100 dollars each. They sent a draft for the first $200 which I cashed here, at considerable loss: a month ago they wrote as follows—“We neglected to ask how you preferred to receive money, and the Publisher suggests that there is some risk in sending drafts as before—risk of miscarriage by mail. This Office, therefore, has placed to your Credit Two hundred Dollars—which you may draw at such time and in such way, as you prefer.” [1] I find that by drawing here I lose even more than by the first method—the Bankers saying that as they can’t tell the actual exchanges they must protect themselves by rating the dollar at its lowest possible value—& they advise me to “draw in England.” Will you have the goodness to draw, on the part of Robt B, for this sum on Joseph H. Richards, Office of the Independent, 5 Beekman St New York? We apprise him that we have used your intervention to do so in a letter despatched to-day. Will you finally deduct faithfully every incidental expense and, adding the remaining money to the Divs, let me know the amount? I will just add that it will be advisable to draw at once, as we shall soon have to receive another such sum. Don’t you think they treat us well in America? If you only knew what they offer us for a little more than we are inclined to give them! This very letter contains an offer of 2600 [2] dollars a year for an amount of labour which would cost my wife or myself one morning a week!
We are very well– I mean my wife is—but Pen has had the worst cold & cough I remember to have plagued him & us. He is getting well, however—to our great relief.
Don’t imagine I forget your letter of criticism & enquiry about “The Blot in the Scutcheon” &c[.] [3] The fact is I have not got a copy of my things—but I keep your letter in my desk & will satisfy you on the first opportunity. My wife’s kind love goes with that of
Yours affy ever R Browning
Docket, in unidentified hand: drawn & recd to A Belmont 26 Oct 1860 £200.
Publication: The Independent (New York), 23 May 1895, p. 1.
Manuscript: R.H. Taylor Collection.
2. Underscored twice.
3. This letter has not surfaced. RB acknowledged receiving it in letter 4301.
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