Correspondence

4380.  EBB to Ada Shepard

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 26, 116.

[Rome]

[7 April 1859] [1]

How I thank you for your little note—and the relief it gives me. May God bless all and bless and keep that dear, sweet Una, whose lovely face as I saw it last has been so painful to me to think of. You are very good, very comprehending—but a touch of common human sympathy is worth nothing at such a moment to poor Mrs. Hawthorne. If it is, she must be very large-hearted indeed. I hope and trust that the medical judgment will prove to be quite wrong. The youth and vitality of the patient will go far and stand long against disease.

Let me subscribe myself

Affectionately yours,

Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

You need not take the trouble of sending—we will send.

Text: Elizabeth Porter Gould, The Brownings and America (Boston, 1904), pp. 63–64.

1. Dated by reference to SD2256, in which Miss Shepard writes on 7 April: “I had a sweet little note from Mrs. Browning, this morning, in answer to one which I wrote her to tell her about Una, after the doctor’s visit last night.”

___________________