e friend near you, to hold
your hand and look in your face and be silent, as those are silent who
know and feel. When you can write again, tell me how it is with you in
this respect, and in others.

So sudden, so sudden! Yet bereavements like these are always sudden to
the soul, more or less. All _blows_ must needs be sudden. May your
health not suffer, dear Fanny. We shall be in London in about a week
after the 16th, for we are delayed through my not having finished my
poem, which nobody will finish reading perhaps. We go to Mr. Kenyon's
house in Devonshire Place, kindly offered to us for the summer. Shall we
find you, I wonder, in London?

Yes; there are terrible costs in this world. We get knowledge by losing
what we hoped for, and liberty by losing what we loved. But this world
is a fragment--or, rather, a segment--and it will be rounded presently,
to the completer satisfaction. Not to doubt _that_ is the greatest
blessing it gives now. Death is as vain as life; the common impression
of it, as false and as absurd. A mere change of circumstances. What
more? And how near these spirits are, how conscious, how full of active
energy and tender reminiscence and interest, who shall dare to doubt?
For myself, I do not doubt at all. If I did, I should be sitting here
inexpressibly sad--for myself, not you....

Robert unites with me in affectionate sympathy, and Sarianna was here
last night, talking feelingly about you. You shall have Robert's book
when we get to England. Think how much I think of you.

Your ever affectionate
BA.

Mr. Kenyon has been very ill, and is still in a state occasioning
anxiety. He is at the Isle of Wight.

* * * * *

At the end of June the Brownings came back to London, for what was, as
it proved, Mrs. Browning's last visit to England. Mr. Kenyon had lent
them his house in London, at 39 Devonshire Place, he himself being in
the Isle of Wight; but a shadow was thrown over the whole of this visit
by the serious and ultimately fatal illness of this dear friend. It was
partly in order to see him, and partly because Miss Arabel Barrett had
been sent out of town by her father almost as soon as her sister reached
Devonshire Place, that about the beginning of September they made an
expedition to the Isle of Wight, staying first at Ventnor with Miss
Barrett, and subsequently at West Cowes with Mr. Kenyon. All the while
Mrs. Browning was actively engaged in seeing 'Au