5096. RB to Frances Davenport Perkins
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 103–104.
19. Warwick Crescent, Harrow Road,
July 11. ’62
My dear Mrs Perkins,
I feel your kindness deeply—always have so felt it & so believed in it. Since your husband was here I have only seen him twice, I think—wholly through my own fault or, rather, misfortune—he called on me immediately on his arrival. One day, I hope to see you all quietly & happily. I certainly am not unhappy now, and mean to do the best I can for all three of us whose interests are one—just this word in reply to what may be in such a friend’s mind as yours.
With this you will get the Hair [1] you ask for, & which I give with all my heart. Also, three photographs for your sister & mother as well as yourself: if I can ever procure the one with the Boy which you ought to have had, it shall be kept for you. I send also the poor room in “Casa Guidi,” & Pen on his pony—(the pony is here, & little changed, but Pen’s self is quite another from the old one with the curls & pretty dress, as your Husband will tell you—he is strong, however, much grown, very good & less & less like me, I rejoice to say)[.]
Should you ever care to write to me, half a pageful of news of yourself & your family, be sure you will bring back many an incident of the happy old days: I shall see you over again at Villa Lustrini [2] or meet you in the doorway at Casa Dies. I daresay I was often tetchy & impatient enough, when I used to mount guard after my blundering fashion over what’s gone now.
I suppose you will mainly live in Italy—where, when I seem to have the right, I hope to die—but that will probably be a very long while first. I am going to see Pen into the world before I think of leaving England—but I may, indeed in all likelihood must, travel with him a year or two hence, & who knows but I shall meet you? Expect me then as now to be
Yours affectionately &
gratefully
Robert Browning–
Give my love to your Sister & Mother [3] with the things I send.
Address: Mrs Charles Perkins.
Publication: The Month at Goodspeed’s Book Shop, October 1936, pp. 55–56 (in part).
Manuscript: Trinity College, Hartford.
1. RB enclosed a lock of EBB’s hair wrapped in a piece of paper on which he wrote: “For Mrs Bruen—from RB.” It is now preserved in a small garnet-bordered gold locket with a glass face (see Reconstruction, H481).
2. The Perkinses’ residence in Florence, which is listed in the Brownings’ address book of this period (AB-4). Casa Dies, on Via Gregoriana, was their most recent residence in Rome.
3. Mary Ann Bruen (née Davenport, 1793–1892) and Mrs. Perkins’s younger sister, Mary Lundie Bruen (1828–86).
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