SD2491. Sophia Hawthorne to Annie Adams Fields
Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 300–301 (in part).
[Concord]
4 August 1861
<***> I could not sleep by night for thinking of Mr Longfellow and those three young girls so much bereft. And added to this I could not get over the agony I supposed she must have endured to the end. If you can give me any solace I should be glad. I can not at all fancy how Mr Longfellow would take such an inscrutable dispensation of God. My impression is that he is not a man of Piety, but hope I am mistaken. A religious faith strong as Eternity can alone help one at such a crisis. There is no possible consolation from human source. We have to wrestle alone with the angel of God. Then came the sudden intelligence of the death of dear, noble Mrs Browning and I felt apalled when I thought of her husband and child. It seemed as if it must destroy them. Yet there is such a powerful vitality in Mr Browning; he is such a rushing, arrowy river of life and energy that I imagine he will suffer convulsions of anguish and live to mourn. Pennini is so delicate that it would seem as if such a whirlwind of grief would extinguish the fine, slender flame of his mortal existence. But he may inherit from his mother that marvellous tenacity of being which will bear him through—as the slender reed bends to the storm without breaking. But alas! what a desolated home! They three were so entirely one—so interfused and interfolded that I see the two who are left gazing at one another in wild dismay. By all who personally knew Mrs Browning, I really believe she was more tenderly loved even than admired. It was wonderful in her, that infinite feminine tenderness with a masculine force of intellect. “The smallest lady alive” had the potency of a Titan in will and mind. But all this you know. I can never forget what she was to me when Una was pronounced near to die in Rome. She, who never called anywhere, too feeble to mount staircases—alighted at my side precisely like a winged angel only three hours after Una’s doom had been pronounced. She said no word, but clasped my hand with her tiniest hand, yet with the force of a giant in its delicate fibres—and looked full into my eyes with a look and meaning so eloquent, that I thrilled to the heart, and felt the assurance of a sympathy that conquered death, and brought Life to light. You probably know that she died forgty [sic] eight hours after a hemorrhage of the lungs—in Casa Guidi, where I first saw her. I stood in a purple dream, holding a pomegranate blossom in my hand which Mr Browning had just plucked for me from his tree on the balcony, when I heard a delicate sound like the whirr of a humming bird’s wings, and turning, there she stood, so weird and fay-like, with a smile gleaming through a cloud of dark curls—summer lightning in shades of night. I gave her a branch of pink small roses, twelve on the stalk—and she fastened it in her black lace boddice [sic] with lovely effect. But here I am at the end of a second sheet. I must stop though I have much to say. At present I am in sackcloth and ashes at our defeat at Bull’s Run. All hail to General McLellan! With our love to Mr Fields
Most affectionately yours
S.H.
Publication: BPLQ, July 1957, pp. 146–147.
Manuscript: Boston Public Library.
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