SD1771. Thomas Wentworth Higginson to Unidentified Correspondent
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 376 (in part).
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September 1854
[Barbara Channing has returned from Italy] with an atmosphere of art and wonder about her; and Brownings and Kembles are familiar as household words in her speech …
She brought home a few notes from her, i.e., E.B.B. … Almost all of them related to her child and this gives a charm to them. … The little Browning boy is beautiful, with a broad brow and blue eyes wide apart, fair curling hair and great dignity as well as gaiety; five years old and a great love of drawing already shown. These traits are not just like those of her noble “Philip, my King!” which most have supposed to be addressed to her own child—have you seen it? … Barbara seems on the whole to have loved her very much and found her more attractive than him; he is very bright and talkative, observing everything and attentive to everybody; she, dark, little, quiet, and reserved, with black ringlets round her face, but not becoming to her; looks older than she is, and invalid-like; shows traces of her sufferings and has a subdued intensity of manner. … She is very modest and even timid when her own poems are spoken of; whereas R.B. talked very coolly of his and defended the alternatives in last edition; not that he was egotistical; but perfectly childlike and free. His male friends say that he seems more American than English: but she is more interesting.
Text: Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846–1906, ed. Mary Thacher Higginson (Boston, 1921), pp. 65–66.
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