3395. EBB to Anne Hooper

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 193.

Via Bocca di Leone 43–

Wednesday. [19 April 1854] [1]

Dear Mrs Hooper, [2]

Will you allow me to defer for a few days the pleasure you offer me?– I have had such a bad headache today & yesterday that even if I were less engaged than I am just now, I should prefer on every account listening to the reading when I can give it better attention.

Your’s very truly

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Address: Mrs Hooper / Hotel de l’Europe.

Publication: None traced.

Source: Transcript in editors’ file.

1. Dated by EBB’s reference to her “bad headache.” In letter 3389, she complains of a headache as the result of her outing to the Vatican on Easter, 16 April.

2. Anne Hooper (née Sturgis, 1813–84), of Boston, the third child and second daughter of William F. Sturgis (1782–1863) and his wife Elizabeth Marston (née Davis, 1783–1864). She married in 1832 Samuel Hooper (1808–75), Massachusetts state congressman and later member of the U.S. House of Representatives. The Francis George Shaws were her second cousins, as was Russell Sturgis (1806–87)—a close friend of William Wetmore Story. In 1865 she ordered a copy of Story’s bust of EBB (see his letter to George Moulton-Barrett, 17 April 1865, ms at Berg), which was later (1931) presented by her family to the Boston Athenæum.

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