To Miss Browning [Pisa:  about February 1847.]

I must begin by thanking dearest Sarianna again for her note, and by assuring her that the affectionate tone of it quite made me happy and grateful together—­that I am grateful to all of you:  do feel that I am.  For the rest, when I see (afar off) Robert’s minute manuscripts, a certain distrust steals over me of anything I can possibly tell you of our way of living, lest it should be the vainest of repetitions, and by no means worth repeating, both at once.  Such a quiet silent life it is—­going to hear the Friar preach in the Duomo, a grand event in it, and the wind laying flat all our schemes about Volterra and Lucca!  I have had to give up even the Friar for these three days past; there is nothing for me when I have driven out Robert to take his necessary walk but to sit and watch the pinewood blaze.  He is grieved about the illness of his cousin, only I do hope that your next letter will confirm the happy change which stops the further anxiety, and come soon for that purpose, besides others.  Your letters never can come too often, remember, even when they have not to speak of illness, and I for my part must always have a thankful interest in your cousin for the kind part he took in the happiest event of my life.  You have to tell us too of your dear mother—­Robert is so anxious about her always.  How deeply and tenderly he loves her and all of you, never could have been more manifest than now when he is away from you and has to talk of you instead of to you.  By the way (or rather out of the way) I quite took your view of the purposed ingratitude to poor Miss Haworth[158]—­it would have been worse in him than the sins of ‘Examiner’ and ‘Athenaeum.’  If authors won’t feel for one another, there’s an end of the world of writing!  Oh, I think he proposed it in a moment of hardheartedness—­we all put on tortoiseshell now and then, and presently come out into the sun as sensitively as ever.  Besides Miss Haworth has written to us very kindly; and kindness doesn’t spring up everywhere, like the violets in your gravel walks.  See how I understand Hatcham.  Do try to love me a little, dearest Sarianna, and (with my grateful love always to your father and mother) let me be your affectionate sister,

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING,
or rather BA.

[Footnote 158:  Miss E.F.  Haworth (several letters to whom are given farther on) was an old friend of Robert Browning’s, and published a volume of verse in 1847, to which this passage seems to allude.]

The correspondence with Mr. Westwood, which had lapsed for a considerable time, was resumed with the following letter: 

To Mr. Westwood Collegio Ferdinando, Pisa:  March 10, 1847.