3415. EBB to Sarah Anne Clarke

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 217.

Via Bocca di Leone 43–

Monday morning [?14] [May 1854] [1]

My dear Miss Clarke [2]

I am very very sorry .. twice sorry—once for me, & once for my child,—who has such a bad cold that I dont dare to let him go out today for the sake of any pleasure.

Thank you for wishing to see him, & thank you besides for the papers which are very interesting to me– If you should have others while I am in Rome, will you remember me & allow me to look over them?

Most truly yours

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Harvard University.

1. Conjectural dating based on EBB’s reference to Pen’s cold, which she also mentions in letters 3420 and 3422.

2. Sarah Anne Clarke (1808–96), sister of James Freeman Clarke, was a landscape painter and portraitist. She is listed in the Brownings’ address book of this period (AB-3) at 17 Trinità di Monti.

___________________