4898. EBB to William Makepeace Thackeray

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 132.

Rome– 126. Via Felice.

[Postmark: 21 May 1861]

Dear Mr Thackeray

I hope you received my note & last poem– [1]

I hope still more earnestly that you wont think I am putting my spite against your chastening hand, into a presumptuous & troublesome fluency–

But Hans Christian Andersen is here,—charming us all, & not least, the children– So I wrote these verses.– [2] Not for Cornhill uses this month of course, .. though I send them now that they may lie over at your service (if you are so pleased) for some other month of the summer.

We go to Florence on the first of June, .. and lo! here is the twenty first of May–

With love to dear Annie & Minny, I remain

Most truly yours

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Address: Editor of the CornHill Mag. / (Messrs Smith & Elder.) / Cornhill. / London– / Angleterre.

Publication: The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray, ed. Gordon N. Ray (Cambridge, Mass., 1945–46), 4, 234.

Manuscript: Eton College Library.

1. “Little Mattie,” sent with letter 4878.

2. “The North and the South.” The poem did not appear in The Cornhill Magazine. In a letter to Theodore Tilton, RB explained: “The last poem she ever wrote, an exquisite one, was sent to his [Thackeray’s] Magazine—but I countermanded it—nor is there any publication to which I shall entrust that and the rest unless to yours [The Independent]” (see letter 4962). The manuscript EBB sent to Thackeray was later returned to RB and used as printer’s copy for Last Poems (1862). It is now at ABL and is reproduced facing pp. 144 and 145.

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