Supporting Documents

SD2098.  Anna Brownell Jameson to Ottilie von Goethe

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 265 (in part).

Florence

July 25, 1857.

… I have a letter from Gerardine in which she tells me that poor Sybille is ill. …

Last night after sunset I went up to the villa on Bellosguardo belonging to an English lady (Miss Blagden). The Brownings, Mr. Bulwer Lytton (a son of Sir Edward) and myself formed the party. We sat on a Balcony, with the starry night above our heads and Florence spread in the valley at our feet. Mr. Lytton read us with a charming voice and expression some of his own poems of great beauty and originality. The scene was very striking on the whole and in itself poetical. We came home in the sultry midnight, and to-day have had a blessed storm with torrents of rain, which has cooled us and I hope will do no harm. …

Publication: Letters of Anna Jameson to Ottilie von Goethe, ed. G.H. Needler (London, 1939), pp. 217–218.

Manuscript: Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv.

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