3433. Adelaide Sartoris to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 244–245.
Casino Chiappa
Bagni di Lucca
16th June /54.
Dear Mrs Browning– I write this word to tell you that I am here at last & feel very tantalizingly near you—pray pray don’t go away from Florence but on the contrary come here & summer. I have a very little house, but in it there is one little room where I can put up a friend. Will you come? I can take in you & your husband only by turns I am sorry to say—but should be so glad if I thought either he or you would come & see me? I am greatly charmed with the country—& should enjoy it of all things “did any other heart but share in my emotion” [1] —but I am alone with a new governess whom I found waiting for me & these are depressing circumstances—the more so that in the one day I have been here she has cried a great deal & makes me feel as if I were a very unkind woman. How is dear little Pennini? the better for leaving Rome? Ginny [2] wrote me word that you seemed so happy to be at home again– I wish you would write me a little note to say what you really will do? Hatty, whom of course I saw to the last, is very anxious you shouldn’t go away—dear Mrs Browning, how glad I should be if I thought, you would come here for your summer, or at least a part of it– I have quite a tender remembrance of the pleasant days at Rome & I should be very glad to think that you & your husband look back upon them kindly! pray send me an answer & believe that I am affectionately both of yours
Adelaide Sartoris
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Yale University.
1. Cf. Shelley, “Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples” (1824), line 18.
2. Virginia Vaughan.
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