5772. RB to Robert Barrett Browning
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 94–95.
151. Rue de Grenelle,
Friday. [15 June 1866] [1]
Dearest Pen,
Thank you very much for your kind and satisfactory letter. I very well know you would have liked to see Nonno again,—but you would have been miserable to see that kind-hearted man who never hurt a fly in his life suffer for twelve hours, more or less, acute pain—knowing you could not lighten it in any way. I told you what he said about you the day before—“Oh, don’t I love him! Give him my love!”– It was very unusual for him to talk in that way. If you loved him too,—as I am sure you did,—why, try and do as he wished, and be a distinguished, good man,—and an honour to his name, which is yours likewise. He will be buried to-morrow, Saturday, at 12 o’clock: I wish you, particularly, to row as usual,—it is good for your health and right: but if you please, in memory of what is going on here, read by yourself in the morning those last chapters which he had read to him a few hours before his death: first, St John’s Gospel. 1st Chaptr up to verse 34: then Daniel, 9th Chaptr to verse 20: then, Ezra, Chapr 9th beginning at verse 5 to the end, and last—“what is more proper,” he said, “to a person in my circumstances—John, Gospel, Chap. 14 and three next chapters.” It can do you no harm to hear what an extraordinarily learned and able man like Nonno, who might have been a great man had he cared a bit about it, found a comfort to him in, I suppose, the greatest sufferings he ever underwent in his long life.
Sarianna will arrange matters here, and come and live with us as soon as she can: you will like that as much as I. I shall write to-morrow and tell you whether I return on Monday, as I hope. I believe you will have no time before then,—but, if it suits you, I should like you to go to Thompson’s, [2] and order a mourning suit, to last the summer, for yourself—and another, of a like kind, for me (he has my measure too recently to want another—): [3] I want them as soon as possible, you know. Tell him why I was unable to go & pay his bill—and bid him include it in the new one: I shall get any letter you write to-morrow—not after, I think. God bless you,
Yours ever affy
RB
Milsand sends his kind love to you—Sarianna, of course: Milsand has been doing every thing for us: but you know him. Love to Willy & Mrs B. [4]
Publication: LRB, pp. 97–98.
Manuscript: British Library.
1. Dated by RB’s reference to the burial “to-morrow, Saturday,” 16 June 1866.
2. J. Thompson, 32 Spring St., Paddington, as listed in the 1869 Post Office Directory.
3. Passage within parentheses is interpolated.
4. Mary Bracken and her son, Willie.
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