Correspondence

5517.  RB to Julia Wedgwood

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 196–197.

19. W.C.

Dec 31. ’64.

Well, this is to be a long “week,” indeed. I had to go to the friend’s dinner, [1] and suffered from it so as to have kept the house the next four days. I am much better now: thank you for writing the other note as well as this.

I only sent the single book, [2] and not the collected things, because there’s a new edition printing, [3] —the last I shall scratch commas out of,—and so the fitter for the shelf.

If by any chance you don’t return before next Sunday—since to-morrow is to be abolished—please tell me.

Affectionately yours ever

R Browning.

You are quite right in your criticism [4] —since I misled you into thinking the couple were “prolétaire[”]—but I meant them for just the opposite—people newly-married, trying to realize a dream of being sufficient to each other, in a foreign land (where you can try such an experiment) and finding it break up,—the man being tired first,—and tired precisely of the love:—but I have expressed it all insufficiently, and will break the chain up, one day, and leave so many separate little round rings to roll each its way, if it can.

Publication: RB-JW, p. 123.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

1. John Forster’s.

2. Dramatis Personæ (2nd ed., 1864).

3. Poetical Works (4th ed., 3 vols., 1865) was published by Chapman and Hall on 25 March 1865.

4. Of “James Lee”; see letter 5512.

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