4835. EBB to Emelyn Story
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 336.
[Rome]
[?22 February 1861] [1]
My dear Emelyn: I write by Robert’s command to explain that he has had a fit of remorse about leaving Mr. Perkins’s table at nine, scarcely waiting for the dessert. He thinks that he has not the face for it, and all the more that it is a novelty to him to dine there at all.
Will you therefore, says Robert, have the great goodness to let Mrs. Lodge [2] know, in case she should rely on him for walking? Plainly he is in a scrape, and runs away, throwing all the explanations on me!
He will get to you afterwards, later in the evening.
Affly yours,
E.B.B.
Tell dear Edith to believe how much she pleased me to-day and Saturday.
Text: Isabel C. Clarke, Elizabeth Barrett Browning: A Portrait (London, [1929]), p. 296.
1. Conjectural dating based on EBB’s reference to RB’s dining at the Perkinses and that “it is a novelty.” See letter 4834, in which RB accepts Mrs. Perkins’s dinner invitation.
2. Anna Sophia Lodge (née Cabot, 1821–1900), daughter of Henry Cabot (1783–1864) and his wife, Anna Sophia (née Blake, 1796–1845). She married in 1842 John Ellerton Lodge (1807–62), a wealthy Boston merchant.
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