SD1460. Charles Eliot Norton to Norton Family
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 307 (in part).
Florence
Friday eveg. Decr 6th 1850
My dearest Friends
As I promised in the letter which I sent to you yesterday from Pisa to begin another to you to-day I will not go to bed without writing at least a few words, for it is too late to write much as the clock is just striking eleven. We returned from Pisa this afternoon. I have been spending the eveg most pleasantly with Mr & Mrs Browning, and since my return from their rooms I have been reading for an hour on my own. …
Saturday morng. I have just had the great pleasure, my dearest Friends, of receiving from Rome your letters of Novr 3d & 5th,—and as they contain much to which you will desire an early answer, I will send off this letter to you to-day … I think, my dearest Jane that you had better come abroad for five or six months with William & Louisa. Louisa would need some friend with her,—and you are the one who would make her happiest. …
Two hours later. A knock at my door interrupted me and my Italian master entered and with him a man bringing me a packet of letters, those from you of the 12th Nov’r bringing me your plans … The pleasure or advantage I might gain from two or three months in Europe is not for more than a moment to be thought of in comparison with the happiness of being with you, dearest Louisa, at your wedding, and with you, dearest Father & Mother & Grace after Louisa, and William are gone. …
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Harvard University.
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