SD2342. Annie Adams Fields to Louisa Adams and Sarah Adams

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 344.

Rome

February 21st 1860

Dear Sisters,

It is just a week since we left Lissie and Florence behind us. We think and talk of her often …

Mr and Mrs Browning are living here this winter and this week we passed the afternoon with them. She has been ill and hardly yet goes out. Her voice quivers over her words still, as the light over a lamp when the air rushes too swiftly out. Her energy is so much greater than the power. But Browning himself is so strong, so tender and so free in every motion and tone that you could lean on him as on a rock but find within a woman’s heart. Their child too is beautiful and noble. Just what you could wish their boy child should be. Hamilton Wild had just finished a portrait of him on horse-back which pleased them very much and is certainly as like as can be. I don’t wonder it struck his artist fancy to paint the child because we were fortunate enough to find him out one day on the Pincian hill before we were told who he was and felt at once that no two children in the world could be like this one. It must be the Brownings or a Brownie and it proved the first. Browning is now the only person who has much influence over Mr Landor and to him he is as obedient as a child. Mrs Browning says they call him their son. …

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Massachusetts Historical Society.

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