"_Casa Guidi, Wednesday._"
Here is also one other little memorial, written not by "Elizabeth
Barrett Browning," but by "Elizabeth Barrett." It is interesting
on more than one account. It bears no date, save "Beacon Terrace
[Torquay], Thursday," But it evidently marks the beginning of
acquaintanceship between the two exceptionally, though not equally
gifted girls--Elizabeth Barrett and Theodosia Garrow. It is written on
a sheet of the very small duodecimo note paper which she was wont to
use many years subsequently, but in far more delicate and elegant
characters than she used, when much pen-work had produced its usual
deteriorating effect on her caligraphy.
* * * * *
"I cannot return the _Book of Beauty_" [Lady Blessington's annual] "to
Miss Garrow without thanking her for allowing me to read in it sooner
than I should otherwise have done, those contributions of her own
which help to justify its title, and which are indeed sweet and
touching verses.
"It is among the vexations brought upon me by my illness, that I still
remain personally unacquainted with Miss Garrow, though seeming to
myself to know her through those who actually do so. And I should
venture to hope that it might be a vexation the first to leave me, if
a visit to an invalid condemned to the _peine forte et dure_ of being
very silent, notwithstanding her womanhood, were a less gloomy thing.
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