3570. EBB to Anna Blackwell

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 192–193.

138– Avenue des Champs Elysées–

July 4— [1855] [1]

Dear Miss Blackwell,

I suppose the sin lies with our concierge—but, however this may be, your letter was too late. We waited in vain for a summons from you yesterday, & your kind intentions towards us went to pave the celestial city, [2] .. if there’s need of any pavement there. At night, at eleven oclock, arrived your instructions as to what we should do at two p.m.!!

One kindness of yours is not however thrown away—I mean the gift of your book. [3] Thank you, dear Miss Blackwell. Looking hastily between the leaves (as people read at Paris) I see evidences everywhere of sensibility, & elevation of sentiment– You are very good to me—& I am

Most truly your’s

Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Address: À Mademoiselle / Mademoiselle Blackwell. / Rue Chateaubriant. 3. / Champs Elysées.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

1. Year provided by postmark.

2. An allusion to Dr. Johnson’s epigram: “Hell is paved with good intentions” (James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 1791, I, 484).

3. Poems (1855). This copy sold in Browning Collections, lot unspecified (see Reconstruction, A252; now at Princeton).

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