Robert has brought me home a most perfect copy of a small torso of Venus—­from the Greek—­in the clay.  It is wonderfully done, say the learned.  He says ‘all his happiness lies in clay now’; that was his speech to me this morning. Not a compliment, but said so sincerely and fervently, that I could not but sympathise and wish him a life-load of clay to riot in.  It’s the mixture of physical and intellectual effort which makes the attraction, I imagine.  Certainly he is very well and very gay.

I am happy to see that the ‘North British Quarterly’ has an article on him.  That gives hope for England.  Thackeray has turned me out of the ‘Cornhill’ for indecency, but did it so prettily and kindly that I, who am forgiving, sent him another poem.  He says that plain words permitted on Sundays must not be spoken on Mondays in England, and also that his ‘Magazine is for babes and sucklings.’ (I thought it was for the volunteers.)

May God bless you, dearest Sarianna and nonno!  Pen’s love.

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The incident alluded to in the last paragraph deserves fuller mention, for the credit it does to both parties concerned in it.  The letters that passed between Thackeray and Mrs. Browning on the subject have been given by Mrs. Richmond Ritchie in the ‘Cornhill Magazine’ for July 1896, from which I am allowed to quote them.  Mrs. Browning, in reply to a request from Thackeray for contributions to the then newly established ‘Cornhill,’ had sent him, among other poems, ’Lord Walter’s Wife,’[100] of which, though the moral is unimpeachable, the subject is not absolutely virginibus puerisque.  The editor, in this difficulty, wrote the following admirable letter:—­

* * * * *

W.M.  Thackeray to Mrs. Browning.

36 Onslow Square:  April 2, 1861.

My dear, kind Mrs. Browning,—­Has Browning ever had an aching tooth which must come out (I don’t say Mrs. Browning, for women are much more courageous)—­a tooth which must come out, and which he has kept for months and months away from the dentist?  I have had such a tooth a long time, and have sate down in this chair, and never had the courage to undergo the pull.

This tooth is an allegory (I mean this one).  It’s your poem that you sent me months ago, and who am I to refuse the poems of Elizabeth Browning and set myself up as a judge over her?  I can’t tell you how often I have been going to write and have failed.  You see that our Magazine is written not only for men and women but for boys, girls, infants, sucklings almost; and one of the best wives, mothers, women in the world writes some verses which I feel certain would be objected to by many of our readers.  Not that the writer is not pure, and the moral most pure, chaste, and right, but there are things my squeamish public will not hear on Monday, though on Sundays they listen to them without scruple.  In your poem, you know, there is an account of unlawful passion, felt by a man for a woman, and though you write pure doctrine, and real modesty, and pure ethics, I am sure our readers would make an outcry, and so I have not published this poem.