2875.5. EBB to Charlotte Agassiz
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 16.
Casa Guidi.
Friday morning. [30 August 1850] [1]
My dear Miss Agassiz, [2] certainly I should go to thank you myself for your goodness to our child, as well as to return Madme Tassinari’s visit & your own—but I am so much too weak still, to bear more than to be carried in & out of the carriage, that it is not possible for me to attempt a visit of any kind. I write this note lest my husband should not find you at home, & lest we should go away to Siena (where medical advice sends us tomorrow for change of air) in the worst species of the ill-odour of ingratitude. Do believe that we are none of us .. not even little Wiedeman .. mindless of your goodness to us– He was in ecstasies last night with the present you made him, & kissed first the coachman & then the horse. I tried to persuade him that you had sent it as a reward for his having been particularly good all day, but I am afraid he did not attend much to this reasoning of mine, having still very loose notions upon morals.
Will you offer my best compliments to Madme Tassinari, with my hope that on our return I shall be able to do some justice to myself by returning her visit?
And then, dear Miss Agassiz, we shall see much more of you, I do hope–
With thanks for all your kindness,
believe me most faithfully yours–
Elizabeth Barrett Browning–
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Dated by EBB’s reference to the Brownings’ leaving for Siena “tomorrow,” 31 August 1850, for the summer.
2. Charlotte Louisa Susanna Agassiz (1822–1900), was the daughter of Jean Gabriel Agassiz and his wife, Charlotte (née Valloton). On 20 August 1857, at St. Barnabas District Church, London, she married Alexander Charles Brice (1818–89), East Indian merchant. Their eldest of four children was Alice Louise (b. 1858).
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