SD1391. Margaret Fuller to Caroline Sturgis Tappan

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 288 (in part).

[Florence]

[ca. 17–] 30 December [1849]

<***> I do not know what to write about him; he changes so much; has so many characters; he is like me in that, his father’s character is simple and uniform though not monotonous more than are the flowers of spring, flowers of the valley. …

We have got your frightful news from Boston. Certainly there is no place like Boston for unexpected horrors. Imagination cowers, faints and dwines away in the attempt to depict Dr Parkman being murdered, Dr. Webster murdering. Mr Browning was here yesterday and inspired by this occasion we exchanged our chronicles of the kind. When you first showed me Pippa passes I did not foresee what pleasant hours I should pass with the writer, only that writer I never see. We talk too fast; he is too entertaining for us to get really acquainted. …

Publication: The Letters of Margaret Fuller, ed. Robert N. Hudspeth (Ithaca, New York, 1983–94), 5, 301–307.

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