SD2383. Henry Adams to Abigail Brooks Adams

Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 353 (in part).

Rome.

May. 22. 1860.

Dearest Mamma

I wrote you no letter last week because I was so busy and had to write to Charles instead. …

May. 26.

… We came back over the Campagna at sunset and I saw for the first time how it was done. … It was nine o’clock when we arrived in Rome. I had been on horseback about seven hours altogether, to say nothing of climbing about. But I rushed home, dressed, and before ten was at the Story’s. Mrs Story asked me to come up, for the Brownings were to be there. So up I went and found a mixed crowd, twenty perhaps, of poets and priests, English and Americans. I talked a little while with Mr Browning; a quiet, harmless sort of a being. Mrs B. is a great invalid and I wasn’t introduced. As I know how celebrities talk, I contented myself with looking, and didn’t ask an introduction. …

Text: The Letters of Henry Adams, ed. J.C. Levenson (Cambridge, Mass., 1982–88), 1, 149–152.

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