SD1659. Frederick Tennyson to Mary Brotherton

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 368 (in part).

Florence

May 28th/53.

My dear Mrs Brotherton,

If this finds you still in Rome it is to acknowledge the receipt of your Volume which is unsatisfactory from its shortness but in itself fresh and melodious as the blackbirds that are fluting under my windows. It breathes throughout the character of the Writer and is not ashamed of truthfulness– How is it that of the vastly greater number of poems that you must have written, you have published such a small section? I am sure that I read several in the Athenæum deserving of being found with their fellows. Was there not one to the Vale of Sidmouth? I delivered your message to Mrs Browning. I find that is very uncertain whether they will be able to effect their voyage to Sorrento. The principal obstacle being the usual one, the want of an infinitesimal atom of all that gold that is hanging like a deluge over the World—shrieking the change of all human relations– …

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Tennyson Research Centre.

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