SD1981. Ellen Twisleton to Elizabeth Cabot

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 254 (in part).

3. Rutland Gate.

Friday. Oct. 17. 1856.

My dearest Bunny,

… Sunday noon we went to call on the Brownings, & saw Mrs B:—she looked ill, had a sharp dry cough, & said she had not slept for a fortnight, & they are off on Saturday to Florence, by rail & by sea. Tuesday morning, I went again for five minutes, to see if she would let me do any errands for her, but no: then I saw them both, he writing for dear life, she correcting proof-sheets of her new poem,—which is to be a sort of novel in verse, she said, of nearly 11,000 lines, divided into books & called Aurora Leigh. The male mind shudders all over, at the prospect of a poem longer than Paradise Lost! We asked them on Sunday to come here on any day they would fix, but she was not well enough; & besides, she said they were both too fearfully busy, & it is doubtful if Browning even manages to return Edward’s call. …

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Harvard University.

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