Correspondence

3436.  EBB to Barbara Channing

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 249.

Casa Guidi

Sunday– [25 June 1854] [1]

My dear Miss Channing I will do something better for you than the enclosed if you care for it, [2] when we shall be all together at the Baths of Lucca– Mrs Sartoris brought away the accompanying handkerchief from your house, [3] & Lizzie left the other with us. Do thank Mr Perkins for his kind note & the information he gave us—but the house in question is too small & too dear—you see we require the “impossible” in poet-fashion, nevertheless we may attain to something next to it as the season is advanced.

If you should hear by accident of an apartment with two good bedrooms, a dressing-room, a servant’s bedroom, kitchen, & three sitting-rooms, at fifty or at most sixty scudi, be so charitable as to write a word to me here.

My Penini is better, but we must find cool air for him as the summer advances–

Ever most truly yours, dear

Miss Channing,

Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Harvard University.

1. Dated by EBB’s reference to Mrs. Sartoris. As letter 3437 indicates, she made a “little run to Florence” from Bagni di Lucca at this period.

2. Perhaps an autograph by EBB.

3. The Brownings were with Mrs. Sartoris at Miss Channing’s on 24 June; see the third paragraph in letter 3477.

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