SD2271. Kate Field to Eliza Riddle Field

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 26, 359 (in part).

[Rome]

[ca. March 1859]

Mr. Browning is the person whose good opinion I am most anxious for, and to whom I am already very much attached. He feels music, and I should like to sing before him. There is something about him that I fancy marvelously. Last night he said to me, “You are very ambitious; you are the most ambitious person of my acquaintance.” I laughed and asked him how he arrived at such a conclusion. “Oh, I can tell by your eyes,” he said. “How so?” I asked. “I can detect it in their glisten,” he replied. “Well,” I said, “it is no great crime to be ambitious, is it?” “No, indeed,” he returned; “I admire it; I would not give a straw for a person who was not.”

Text: Lilian Whiting, Kate Field: a Record (Boston, 1899), p. 94.

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