4942. RB to David & Eliza Anne Ogilvy
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 195–196.
Florence,
July 29. ’61.
Dear Friends, Thank you from my heart for your goodness and sympathy– I can hardly say more, but this, as I mean it, says something.
I go away from Florence—next Thursday—for many a year. I pass only a day or two at London with Arabel Barrett, then return to France for some quiet months with my family—eventually I shall reside in London, I suppose—but my plans are very rough—only consistent in their main purpose: I shall devote myself to Peni, & do what I can to make my own work less unworthy of its old advantages: do not believe I am “prostrated” or unmindful of the alleviations which I thank God for. There was no pain,—above all, no least expectation of the parting which to her would have been the acutest of pains. She was sure up to the last that the attack differed in nothing from the many she had recovered from. I believed this to a certain degree, but (as it now seems to me) disbelieved it at the bottom of my soul. Your old acquaintance Dr Wilson was called in for the first time,—he looked gravely at the symptoms,—she reassured me—“The way with them all,—so I was told all those years ago,—what is there new in hearing that my lungs are affected?– You will see!” And Wilson confessed she was better, that the case was exceptional, & so on—till the end. She told me smilingly “This is exaggerating the case!”—when I was warming her feet a few minutes before she died—but I can’t tell you now. This much I ought to trust to your affectionateness, as it is my own chief comfort. She went into the presence of God fearless as his own child, that she was. I could have wished no better for her or myself, if the end was to be.
During my two or three days stay with Arabel B. I may hardly see anybody else—there will be an aftertime when I shall be happy indeed to see you—you know it must be so. I am to be heard of in Paris, 151. Rue de Grenelle, Faubourg St Germain.—or at Chapman’s.
Pen is her very child, with something of her spirit in him—he tries hard to “comfort me”, he says—& finds his own comfort in that: he is changed,—so considerate & dear. He is very well in health & so am I.
God bless you both, & keep you for each other: how your children must be grown! I shall see them one day. I will give you a photograph—perfect, the one likeness that exists, [1] taken just before we left Rome.
Ever yours affectionately,
Robert Browning–
Publication: EBB–EAHO, pp. 172–174.
Manuscript: Eton College Library.
1. See letter 4940, note 3. The Ogilvys’ copy is now at Eton (see Reconstruction, F50).
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