3408. EBB to Robert S. Chilton
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 205.
Rome–
May. 1854.
Dear Sir
We have great pleasure in acknowledging your letter of sympathy by sending our autographs [1] —the greater pleasure, let me say, that we can do so through the intermission of such a common friend as Mr Page, who both as an artist & a man has so much of our admiration & reverence–
I have ventured to give you a different autograph from the one you asked for—because I would not seem by even so slight an act to plainly authorize the supposition which it has pleased the public very legitimately to take up, that the “Portuguese Sonnets” are other than the translations they pretend to be. Certainly it would be hard to find the original Portuguese, I admit–
With our united thanks to Mrs Chilton & yourself for the sympathy you give us, allow me to remain
faithfully yours
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. EBB is responding to letter 3301. A catalogue of Chilton's collection of autographs and manuscripts, privately printed in 1898 for an exhibition in Cleveland, Ohio, indicates that EBB sent the sonnet “Finite and Infinite” (Poems, 1850), and that on the same leaf RB copied out “Incident of the French Camp.” See Reconstruction, D278 and E192, now at ABL.
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