[The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II by Elizabeth Barrett Browning]@TWC D-Link bookThe Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II CHAPTER VII 39/192
He has made very good friends with a girl here, and Arabel has sent her maid ever so often to tempt him away for half an hour, so as to give me breathing time, but he won't be tempted: he has it in his head that the world is in a conspiracy against him to take 'mama' away after having taken 'Lily,' and he is bound to resist it. After all, the place of nursery maid is more suitable to me than that of poetess (or even poet's wife) in this obstreperous London.
I was nearly killed the first weeks, what with the climate, and what with the kindness (and what with the want of kindness), and looked wretchedly, whether Reynolds Peyton saw it or not, and coughed day and night, till Robert took fright, and actually fixed a day for taking me forthwith back to Paris.
I had to give up a breakfast at Rogers', and shut myself up in two rooms for a week, and refuse, like Wiedeman, to be tempted out anywhere, but, after that, I grew better, and the wind changed, and now the cough, though not gone, is quieted, and I look a different person, and have ceased to grow thin.
But a racketing life will never do for me, nor an English atmosphere, I am much afraid.
The lungs seem to labour in this heavy air.
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