SD2485. Sarianna Browning to Euphrasia Fanny Haworth
Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 299 (in part).
151, rue de Grenelle St Gn
July 23d [1861] [1]
My dear Fanny,
I have not had the heart to write to you before. This sad blow prostrated me. So unexpected and overwhelming. True, I knew that her health had been declining the last two years, yet I had been so long accustomed to look on her as sustained by different laws than those of ordinary mortality, that I never seriously apprehended danger. Then, too, they said she was looking so well, and she wrote so cheerfully. She bore the journey from Florence to Rome extremely well, and though Robert would not let her undertake the journey to Paris, (for which I now feel particularly thankful) yet she gave it up reluctantly, and said in her last letter to me that Robert was too nervous about her, and she believed she could have borne it safely. Then, you know the rest– An attack of congestion of the lungs, less severe than former attacks and from which she was apparently recovering. The day—her last on earth—she was planning with Robert to take a villa near Florence and move in at once. Miss Blagden who saw her in the evening thought her decidedly better; she herself maintained to the end that she was better– She passed away at four in the morning, without pain or sigh, in Robert’s arms, her head on his shoulder, her last words blessing him with passionate love her very last word, when he asked how she felt, was “beautiful”– He had sate up with her for seven nights, yet does not seem to have thought her in danger. The doctor said it was a grave case from the first—but confessed he never suspected her end so near; he thought she would have a lingering illness and be confined first to her room, then to her bed. God in his mercy spared her that suffering–
Robert leaves Italy at once– I expect him in a day or two– I believe he is now on the road—he was to start yesterday. We then go all together to the sea-side—he will winter in Paris near to us. He purposes taking Peni to poor Arabel for a few days, not longer.
Miss Blagden throws up her Villa in Florence, I hear—and is going to England. She has been most kind to him and the child–
I dread meeting him– Let me hear from you. I feel that you sympathise with me in our deep sorrow, and I love you doubly now she is gone—our blessed one–
Ever yrs affectionately,
Sarianna–
Address: Mademoiselle / Haworth / Zwinger Strasse 3 / 1. etage / Dresden.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Year provided by postmark.
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