3302. Frances Anne Kemble to EBB

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 31.

33 Via della Mercede

Sunday [18 December 1853] [1]

My dear Mrs Browning—I shall not after all have the pleasure of seeing you this evening and I am very much disappointed—but in the agony of excitement I was in yesterday (for the selfish giving way to which I have not ceased to blame my self) I forgot entirely that I had promised to remain at home to receive an old fellow lodger of mine—as she is very badly off in this pleasant world—old blind paralytic and very poor[.] I will not put her off even to come to you and so I lose the great pleasure I had anticipated this evening—but you will surely allow me to claim what you had offered me so kindly another time—& be sure I shall be prompt to do it—perhaps if I send in the evening any day to ask if you will let me come you will deal truly by me and reject me if you do not wish to see me– I have just received more news about my children in another american letter good news that go nigh to break my heart like those of yesterday– I do not know how to thank you for your kindness to me or how to apologize to you for my want of self command pray forgive my having distressed you so unwarrantably and believe that I am very gratefully your’s

Fanny Kemble

I write this to both of you for I was greatly touched by the compassion you bestowed on me[.]

Address: Mrs Browning / 43 Via Bocca di Leone / Terzo Piano.

Publication: George S. Hellman, “Some Unpublished Papers of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine, 132 (March 1916), 531–532.

Manuscript: Scripps College.

1. Date provided by Fanny Kemble’s reference to her “agony of excitement,” which EBB describes as “an agony of sorrow” towards the end of letter 3299.

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