Supporting Documents

SD1675.  William Wetmore Story to Christopher Pearse Cranch

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 373–374 (in part).

Bagni di Lucca,

August 22 [-25], 1853.

Here we all are in Lucca at the Bagni Caldi. … We live in the Casa Lena built on the site of an old feudal castle, but no more like a castle now than I to Hercules. …

For society we have the Brownings, whom we find delightful, and with whom we interchange long evenings two or three times weekly, besides making excursions with them. We often speak of you together, for they remember you both with pleasure and interest—and Browning promised to give me a note to enclose herein for you, so that this husk may have a sweet kernel. They are both writing, he a new volume of lyrics, and she a tale or novel in verse, which will probably see the light of the public square next spring. What offer will Putnam make for the proof sheets of these books, and the good will of the authors, or has he any proposition to make? See, and write. …

I have just sent to Browning and obtained a note from him and his wife.…

Text: Leonora Cranch Scott, The Life and Letters of Christopher Pearse Cranch (Boston, 1917), pp. 192–195.

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