Dear Mr. Thackeray,—I hope you received my note and last poem. I hope still more earnestly that you won't think I am putting my spite against your chastening hand into a presumptuous and troublesome fluency.
But Hans Christian Andersen is here, charming us all, and not least the children. So I wrote these verses—not for 'Cornhill' this month, of course—though I send them now that they may lie over at your service (if you are so pleased) for some other month of the summer.
We go to Florence on the first of June, and lo! here is the twenty-first of May.
With love to dear Annie and Minny,
I remain, most truly yours,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Rome: Saturday, [about May 1861].
Ever dearest Isa,—Now that Robert's letter is gone, I am able for shame to write. His waiting did not mean a slackness of kindness, but a tightness of entanglement in other things; and then absolutely he has got to the point of doing without reading. Nothing but clay does he care for, poor lost soul. But you will see, I hope, from what he has written (to judge by what he speaks), that he is not so lost as to be untouched by Agnes.[102]...