SD1665. Emelyn Story to Maria Lowell
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 370–371 (in part).
Bagni di Lucca
July 14th [–?17] 1853.
My dearest Maria,
Your dear delightful letter received a few days since was much welcome …
When I wrote you last I said that we had no friends or acquaintances here with the exception of the Lees (since gone) but now the Brownings are here they mean to be here all summer & we shall see them very often. Yesterday we spent the morning with them & were greeted in a truly cordial & most friendly manner. They both asked for you & James & desired to know what we could tell them about you. Mr B. said that he felt ashamed not to have answered James’ letter sooner but that it was his way he could not write & was “not a man to be judged in his friendship by his works– While she Mrs B. being of an opposite temperament was quite inexcusable if she didn’t at once answer a letter–”
He said that James had been very thoughtful in enclosing the receipt for house rent as he found a slight difference & some 19 scudis in Centofanti’s account of it. He did not however discover this difference until he had dismissed Centofanti & had found out that he was the betrayer of the Madais– It seems the Madais were rival lodging-house keepers & that C. pretending interest went to their meetings & then betrayed them to the monks of Santa Maria Novella hoping thus to ruin them.
Mrs Brownings cough has a bad sound but on the whole she is looking better than when we saw her last. The child struck me as a very interesting little fellow & Browning himself was as full of excitement & fun as possible– She sometimes reminds me of you as she stuffs her handkerchief into her mouth to keep from laughing too heartily at Browning’s stories & imitations, it always ends, as with you, in her giving up to it & having a severe fit of coughing after–
We are to make some country excursions together– … I forgot to say that the Brownings spoke of going back to Rome with us in October. Can you resist us all? …
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Harvard University.
___________________
