SD2883. Bayard Taylor to Edmund Clarence Stedman

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 359 (in part).

Gotha, Germany

March 11, 1867.

No chance to write a word to you sooner, but as no letter has yet arrived from you I may still be beforehand. …

Soon after reaching London … I went to Browning, who had sent me a pleasant note of invitation. He has gray hair and beard, but has lost none of his vigorous life. He had “St. John” on the table. He has a long poem on the stocks,—an Italian subject, told in I don’t know how many thousand lines. He called up his boy, who was hard at work with a tutor, reading up for Oxford, to shake hands with me,—a lusty young fellow, I was glad to see, a good rower, horseman, and swimmer. In the evening, at Procter’s, we met Browning again, and Arnold, Lord Houghton (Milnes), Dante Rossetti, and many others. Browning professed to remember M[arie Hansen-Taylor] from Rome. It was a lively, crowded, pleasant party. …

Text: Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor, ed. Marie Hansen-Taylor and Horace E. Scudder (Boston, 1884), pp. 471–475.

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