3140. EBB to Ellen Heaton
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 254–255.
Paris–
Thursday night. [21 October 1852] [1]
My dear Ellen,
As you told me to write before the fortnight was out, I write, although it can but be in the briefest way possible. Indeed, we go on saturday morning & I am writing on thursday night, & you may fancy how many last words are to be said & last looks taken & last affairs done in Paris as in London! I shall take a long breath when we get into the quiet of steam-carriages & Rhone-boats. That will be pure repose.
I am all the better for the sunshine & temperate light air of Paris, & have been able to go out every day. The cough is decidedly beginning to yield to change of climate, & perhaps in the south it will quite go away. My spirits rise with the thought of the resumption of our wild wandering gypsey habits, & of the sight of my Florence again. Yet it is a sort of wrench to go away from Paris, where the people are most cordially & touchingly kind, & where there is a strong charm for both of us in the number of resources & the attractive society–
We were on a balcony on the boulevard when Louis Napoleon entered on saturday, & we witnessed with our usual good fortune that grandest of spectacles. If I had apprehended the significance of it after the ordinary English fashion, I would have rather hid my eyes in the dust than looked—but, to my mind, he rode there as chief of the French democracy,—he could not have ridden there except for the will of the people. It was a magnificent sight indeed–
We go at ten oclock on saturday & shall be in Florence a few days afterwards, though we mean to creep slowly in the sun along the shores of the mediterranean, through Nice & Genoa–
So now good bye—may God bless you! Be happy & prosperous– How very glad I shall be of any joy of yours which I shall hear of!–
My husband’s best regards with the true love
of your affectionate friend
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Address: Angleterre– / Miss Heaton / 31. Park Place / Leeds.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection.
1. This letter is postmarked 22 October 1852, a Friday.
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