rs with the 'plain word,' so
offensive on Monday, during the cheating across the counter? I am not a
'fast woman.' I don't like coarse subjects, or the coarse treatment of
any subject. But I am deeply convinced that the corruption of our
society requires not shut doors and windows, but light and air: and that
it is exactly because pure and prosperous women choose to _ignore_ vice,
that miserable women suffer wrong by it everywhere. Has paterfamilias,
with his Oriental traditions and veiled female faces, very successfully
dealt with a certain class of evil? What if materfamilias, with her
quick sure instincts and honest innocent eyes, do more towards their
expulsion by simply looking at them and calling them by their names? See
what insolence you put me up to by your kind way of naming my
dignities--'Browning's wife and Penini's mother.'

And I, being vain (turn some people out of a room and you don't humble
them properly), retort with--'materfamilias!'

Our friend Mr. Story has just finished a really grand statue of the
'African Sybil.' It will place him very high.

Where are you all, Annie, Minnie?--Why don't you come and see us in
Rome?

My husband bids me give you his kind regards, and I shall send Pen's
love with mine to your dear girls.

Most truly yours,
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

We go to Florence in the latter part of May.

* * * * *

Before leaving Florence, however, the following letter was written to
Mr. Thackeray, which I quote from the same article by Mrs. Ritchie. The
poem alluded to must, however, be 'The North and the South,'[101] Mrs.
Browning's last poem, written with reference to Hans Andersen's visit to
Rome; not 'A Musical Instrument,' as Mrs. Ritchie suggests, which had
been written some time previously.

* * * * *

_To W.M. Thackeray_

Rome, 126 Via Felice: [May 21, 1861].

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-