2902. Charles Eliot Norton to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 3–4.
Cambridge. (N.E)
Febr’y 5th 1851.
My dear Mr Browning
I hope that you will have received a letter from me before this note reaches you. Posts are quicker nowadays than private hands, and special messengers are used only for special purposes.
So I give this note to my two sisters and to my brother in law Mr Bullard [1] that through its means they may have the pleasure of knowing Mrs Browning and you.
And this will be the crown of your kindness to me,—for my pleasure will be hardly less than theirs. In their visit to Florence I shall live over again my own,—and with my pleasantest recollections of it you and Mrs Browning will always be associated.
I have entrusted two little books to my sister for you. [2] They will show you what some of our poets over here are doing. One of them is an especial favorite of mine,—I wish you might like it as well.
I hope (& my hope is both for this present time while I am writing, and for the future when my note comes to you) that Mrs Browning and your little boy are well,—and, I beg you to believe me, always, with kindest regard,
Most faithfully Yours
Charles Eliot Norton.
Address: Robert Browning Esqre / Via Maggio / Florence.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: University of Virginia.
1. William Story Bullard (1813–97), of the Boston shipping company Bullard, Lee and Co., was married to Norton’s eldest sister, Louisa (1823–1915). Norton had two other sisters: Catherine Jane (1824–77), who was travelling with the Bullards, and Grace (1834–1926).
2. One of these books was certainly The First Ten Cantos of the Inferno of Dante (Boston, 1843), an English verse translation by Thomas William Parsons (1819–92), American poet. It bears Norton’s inscription on a fly-leaf: “For Robert Browning from his friend C.E.N. Febr’y 5th 1851. Cambridge (N.E.).” This volume sold in an unspecified lot in Browning Collections and is now at Texas. The other book was probably Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Evangeline: a Tale of Acadie (Boston, 1850). Inscribed by Norton, “For Mrs. Browning,” this volume sold in Browning Collections; see Reconstruction, A1480.
___________________
