SD1800. Journal Entry of Elizabeth Clementine Kinney

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 371 (in part).

[Florence]

Jan 29th / 55.

Poor Mrs Browning, I learn, is very much worse than usual this winter, has a dreadful cough & cannot leave her room. She never goes out in the winter; but this severe cold has reached her indoors, & I fear much the consequences. Her husband, strangely enough, will never allow that she is ill; but now he must see & feel it. She is the frailest-looking of mortals, & I only wonder she has lived so long. For the past year she has been engaged on a long poem; but she told me the other day that no one could read the manuscript it was so illegible: so, should she be taken away, the four thousand lines she has written already on her poem would be lost. God preserve her precious life!

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Columbia University.

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