Correspondence

74.  EBB to Mary Moulton-Barrett

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 1, 65.

[Hope End]

[September 1818] [1]

When I read it over after having written it [2] I found many words renewed—also I thought that “charm” was better than “reach” in the last line of the second verse but I believed it better to leave it as it is; as I thought you would not like me to alter it before you had seen it– for my sake dearest Mamma let poor Esther go. [3]

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Berg Collection.

1. Mary Moulton-Barrett dated the original manuscript and her own copy “August 1818,” then corrected the latter to “Sept 1818.” See Reconstruction, D306–7.

2. Refers to an unpublished poem of 12 lines, “A fragment occasioned by immagining the music of the spheres,” which EBB had just written in four minutes. Note reproduced here appears on back of same sheet.

3. In “Poems by EBB,” Mary Moulton-Barrett added the words “with us to Cheltenham!——”.

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