Chapter 15: the third trip to Europe, 1859.
- Third visit to Europe. -- Lady Byron on the minister's Wooing. -- some foreign people and things as they appeared to Professor Stowe. -- a winter in Italy. -- things unseen and unrevealed. -- Speculations concerning spiritualism. -- John Ruskin. -- Mrs. Browning. -- the return to America. -- letters to Dr. Holmes.
Mrs. Stowe's third and last trip to Europe was undertaken in the summer of 1859. In writing to Lady Byron in May of that year, she says:
I am at present writing something that interests me greatly, and may interest you, as an attempt to portray the heart and life of New England, its religion, theology, and manners. Sampson Low & Son are issuing it in numbers, and I should be glad to know how they strike you. It is to publish this work complete that I intend to visit England this summer.The story thus referred to was The minister's Wooing, and Lady Byron's answer to the above, which is appended, leaves no room for doubt as to her appreciation of it. She writes:--
