Anna thanks Bessie for her note. She has seen Harriet Hosmer’s ‘Beatrice Cenci’ at the Royal Academy, which she thinks very beautiful. She has begun an article for the Waverley [Journal] on works at the Royal Academy. She feels Bessie will make wonderful improvements to the Waverley. She is surprised but pleased at the news of Barbara [Leigh Smith]’s marriage [to Eugene Bodichon]. She feels E B looks a ‘hard sort of a man’. She wonders where they will live and says she is ‘in the dark’ on the matter. She feels Bessie will have seen ‘heaps and heaps of things’ [in Florence]. She asks Bessie to remember her to Janie Hay and tell her she is ‘lying fallow’ at the moment but feels she should come out with ‘fresh vigour’ in a while. She and the family will leave the Hermitage at midsummer to move to a house further up the hill, with views towards Lord Mansfield’s park. She is looking forward to the move with ‘healthy pleasure’. She will build a painting room in the garden. She hopes Bessie will visit. She asks Bessie to give an enclosed note to Mrs Jameson and Mrs Browning.