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INTRODUCTION xxix
" ROME, 126 VIA FELICE, April 21.
" DEAR MR. THACKERAY,—Pray consider the famous ' tooth'
(a wise tooth !) as extracted under chloroform, and no pain suffered
by anybody.
"To prove that I am not sulky I send another contribution,
which may prove too much perhaps, and, if you think so, dispose of
the supererogatory virtue by burning the MS., as I am sure I may
rely on your having done with the last.
" I confess it, dear Mr. Thackeray, never was any one turned
out of a room for indecent behaviour in a more gracious and conciliatory
manner ! Also, I confess that from your Cornhill standpoint
(paterfamilias looking on) you are probably right ten times
over. From mine, however, I may not be wrong, and I appeal to
you, as the deep man you are, whether it is not the higher mood,
which on Sunday bears 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!
" Where are you all—Annie, Minnie ? . . . Why don't you come
and see us in Rome 1
" 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 half of May."
We have also one more charming little note sent via Cornhill.