5371. RB to Kate Field
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 46–47.
London, 19 Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace,
May 5. ’64.
Dear Kate Field—(so let me call you, please, in regard to old times when I might have done it, but did not). I know well enough that there is great stupidity in this way of mine, this putting off a thing because I hope to compass some other thing,—as here—for, had you not asked for some photographs, which I supposed I could soon find time & inclination to get,—I should have thanked you at once: as I do now, indeed and with all my heart—but the review “article” [1] is wavering and indistinct in my mind now, and though it is inside a drawer of this table where I write, I can not bring myself to look at it again—not from a motive which is disparaging to you, as I am sure you understand: the general impression is enough for me, and enough for you also, if you care in the least about how I feel towards you–
The boy has certainly the likeness to which you refer—and an absolute sameness almost, in feature as well as look, with certain old portraits here, older and younger: there is not a trace of me in him, thank God!
I know that dear, teazing Isa, and how she won’t answer your questions—but sometimes, for compensation, she tells you what you never asked for,—and though I always or very often ask about you—yet I think it may have been in reply to curiosity about the price of Italian Stock that she lately described to me a photograph of you yourself and how you were .. what?. even that[’]s ever. And moreover how you were your old self with additions,—which, to be sure, I don’t require.
Give my true regard to your mother [2] and thank her for her goodness in remembering me. How you can give a thought, even, to old friends, is strange in this terrible state of yours! [3] But I wrote only to have a cordial pleasant minute’s chat with you (in the balcony, looking for fire flies in the garden, under, between us and the slanting Pitti-façade, now that it’s warm and May-like in Florence)—and I won’t spoil it, now it’s ended. [4]
God bless you,
Yours ever truly
R Browning.
Publication: Lilian Whiting, The Brownings, Their Life and Art (Boston, 1911), p. 208.
Manuscript: Boston Public Library.
1. Kate Field’s review of EBB’s Essays on the Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets (New York, 1863); see letter 5261, note 8.
2. Eliza Lapsley Field (née Riddle, 1812?–71); see letter 4708, note 4.
3. RB refers to the American Civil War.
4. This letter was enclosed with letter 5372 in letter 5373 (see the postscript in letter 5391).
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