I want you here to see a portrait taken of me in chalks by Miss Fox.  I said ‘No’ to her in London, which was my sole reason for saying ‘Yes’ to her in Rome, when she asked me for a patient—­or victim.  She draws well, and has been very successful with the hair at least.  For the likeness you shall judge for yourself.  She comes here for an hour in the morning to execute me, and I’m as well as can be expected under it....

May God bless you, dearest Fanny.  What Christmas wishes warm from the heart by heartfuls I throw at you!  And say to Ellen Heaton, with cordial love, that I thank her much for her kind letter, and remember her in all affectionate wishes made for friends.  I shall write to Mr. Ruskin. Don’t get this letter, I say.

Your
E.B.B.

Robert’s love, and Penini’s.  If ‘Fanny’ strikes you, ‘Madame Bovary’ will thunder-strike you.

* * * * *

To Miss Mitford

43 Via di Leone, Rome:  January 7, 18[54].

It is long, my ever dearest Miss Mitford, since I wrote to you last, but since we came to Rome we have had troubles, out of the deep pit of which I was unwilling to write to you, lest the shadows of it should cleave as blots to my pen.  Then one day followed another, and one day’s work was laid on another’s shoulders.  Well, we are all well, to begin with, and have been well; our troubles came to us through sympathy entirely.  A most exquisite journey of eight days we had from Florence to Rome, seeing the great monastery and triple church of Assisi and the wonderful Terni by the way—­that passion of the waters which makes the human heart seem so still.  In the highest spirits we entered Rome, Robert and Penini singing actually; for the child was radiant and flushed with the continual change of air and scene, and he had an excellent scheme about ‘tissing the Pope’s foot,’ to prevent his taking away ‘mine gun,’ somebody having told him that such dangerous weapons were not allowed by the Roman police.  You remember my telling you of our friends the Storys—­how they and their two children helped to make the summer go pleasantly at the baths of Lucca?  They had taken an apartment for us in Rome, so that we arrived in comfort to lighted fires and lamps as if coming home, and we had a glimpse of their smiling faces that evening.  In the morning, before breakfast, little Edith was brought over to us by the manservant with a message—­’The boy was in convulsions; there was danger.’  We hurried to the house, of course, leaving Edith with Wilson.  Too true!  All that first day was spent beside a death-bed; for the child never rallied, never opened his eyes in consciousness, and by eight in the evening he was gone.  In the meanwhile, Edith was taken ill at our house—­could not be moved, said the physicians.  We had no room for her, but a friend of the Storys on the floor immediately below—­Mr. Page, the artist—­took her in and put her to bed.  Gastric fever, with