4079. EBB & RB to Harriet G. Hosmer
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 190–191.
| [In RB’s hand] | Florence. |
Oct. 19. ’57.
Dearest Hattie,
You know whether or not we are glad to hear from you, and more glad to expect your very self to come, and most glad of all to hope to be along with you at Rome this winter—we do hope that, and mean that, as seriously as you wish we should, if there is any believing the words of your mouth—only, if you really were to arrive at the last of October as you promise, there would be no persuading Ba to start then or before the end of November—for, I’ll tell you we went to the Baths of Lucca two months and a half ago, and first of all, our friend Mr Lytton, who came a few days after us, had an attack of Gastric fever that laid him up for six weeks—next, Penini caught it, a twelve days’ business only, (he’s well now), and last our maid performed her little piece of feverishness, till we had enough of it, so we intend to run no risks. Still, you may be detained later than you expect, and we may gain courage as the chilly weather approaches—in any case I assure you we hope, as I say and mean—to go to Rome this winter, and we’ll settle all about it when you come here—will that do? I shall count on your writing from Paris as you promise—so as to be able to reckon days and nights and keep my arms open to the proper width for the jump into them from the railway carriage, which I also count on.
Isa has gone to Leghorn and I shall follow her thither this evening and return in her company to-morrow. Won’t she rejoice in you! Mrs Jameson is in this very town next door to us and she sent her especial love to you last night. I shall leave Ba room to put in a word—Ah! won’t we have a time of it! It’s too good to prove true, that’s the word: But you’re a darling and I shall soon k… gross thought! Rather shall soon exemplify the contraction and protrusion of the orbicularis oris [1] —let me practice it now in bidding you Good-bye,
Yours affectionately,
Robert Browning.
[Continued by EBB]
Ba’s best love—and as Robert won’t wait––dearest Hattie—at Florence now, and Rome afterwards.
E.B.B.
Publication: Harriet Hosmer, Letters and Memories, ed. Cornelia Carr (New York, 1912), pp. 93–94.
Source: Typescript at Radcliffe Institute.
1. The Latin name given to the “numerous strata of muscular fibers surrounding the orifice of the mouth” (Henry Gray, Anatomy of the Human Body, 25th ed., Philadelphia, 1950, p. 358).
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