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 a tendency
to the brain, and within two days her life was almost despaired of;
exactly the same malady as her brother's. Also the English nurse was
apparently dying at the Storys' house, and Emma Page, the artist's
youngest daughter, sickened with the same symptoms. Now you will not
wonder that, after the first absorbing flow of sympathy, I fell into a
selfish human panic about my child. Oh, I 'lost my head,' said Robert;
and if I _could_ have caught him up in my arms and run to the ends of
the world, the hooting after me of all Rome could not have stopped me. I
wished--how I wished!--for the wings of a dove, or any unclean bird, to
fly away with him to be at peace. But there was no possibility but to
stay; also the physicians assured me solemnly that there was no
contagion possible, otherwise I would have at least sent him from us to
another house. To pass over this dreary time, I will tell you at once
that the three patients recovered; only in poor little Edith's case
Roman fever followed the gastric, and has persisted so, ever since, in
periodical recurrence, that she is very pale and thin. Roman fever is
not dangerous to life--simple fever and ague--but it is exhausting if
not cut off, and the quinine fails sometimes. For three or four days now
she has been free from the symptoms, and we are beginning to hope. Now
you will understand at once what ghastly flakes of death have changed
the sense of Rome to me. The first day by a death-bed! The first drive
out to the cemetery, where poor little Joe is laid close to Shelley's
heart (_Cor cordium_, says the epitaph), and where the mother insisted
on going when she and I went out in the carriage together. I am horribly
weak about such things. I can't look on the earth-side of death; I
flinch from corpses and graves, and never meet a common funeral without
a sort of horror. When I look deathwards I look _over_ death, and
upwards, or I can't look that way at all. So that it was a struggle
with me to sit upright in that carriage in which the poor stricken
mother sate so calmly--not to drop from the seat, which would have been
worse than absurd of me. Well, all this has blackened Rome to me. I
can't think about the Caesars in the old strain of thought; the antique
words get muddled and blurred with warm dashes of modern, every-day
tears and fresh grave-clay. Rome is spoiled to me--there's the truth.
Still, one lives through one's associations when not too strong, and I
have arrived at almost enjoying some things--the climate, for instance,
which, though perilous to the general health, agrees particularly with
me, and the sight of the blue sky floating like a sea-tide through the
great gaps and rifts of ruins. We read in the papers of a tremendously
cold winter in England and elsewhere, while I am able on most days to
walk out as in an English summer, and while we are all forced to take
precautions against the sun. Also Robert is well, and our child has not
dropped a single rose-leaf from his radiant cheeks. We are very
comfortably settled in rooms turned to the sun, and do work and play by
turns--having almost too many visitors--hear excellent music at Mrs.
Sartoris's (Adelaide Kemble) once or twice a week, and have Fanny Kemble
to come and talk to us with the doors shut, we three together. This is
pleasant. I like her decidedly. If anybody wants small-talk by handfuls
of glittering dust swept out of salons, here's Mr. Thackeray besides;
and if anybody wants a snow-man to match Southey's snow-woman (see
'Thalaba'), here's Mr. Lockhart, who, in complexion, hair, conversation,
and manners, might have been made out of one of your English
'_drifts_'--'sixteen feet deep in some places,' says Galignani. Also,
here's your friend _V._--Mrs. Archer Clive.[31] We were at her house the
other evening. She seems good-natured, but what a very peculiar person
as to looks, and even voice and general bearing; and what a peculiar
unconsciousness of peculiarity. I do not know her much. I go out very
little in the evening, both from fear of the night air and from
disinclination to stir. Mr. Page, our neighbour downstairs, pleases me
much, and you ought to know more of him in England, for his portraits
are like Titian's--flesh, blood, and soul. I never saw such portraits
from a living hand. He professes to have discovered secrets, and plainly
_knows_ them, from his wonderful effects of colour on canvas--not merely
in words. His portrait of Miss Cushman is a miracle. Gibson's famous
painted Venus is very pretty--that's my criticism. Yes, I will say
besides that I have seldom, if ever, seen so indecent a statue. The
colouring with an approximation to flesh tints produces that effect, to
my apprehension. I don't like this statue colouring--no, not at all.
Dearest Miss Mitford, will you write to me? I don't ask for a long
letter, but a letter--a letter. And I entreat you not to _prepay_. Among
other disadvantages, that prepaying tendency of yours may lose me a
letter one day. I want much to hear how you are bearing the winter--how
you are. Give me details about your dear self.

[_The remainder of this letter is missing_]