By his regular and his random writing Lowell had met the expense of his winter in Philadelphia, and with his simple mode of life and his horror of debt it was not a very serious problem which his livelihood presented. Elmwood gave shelter, and the young couple shared the family economy. A little more ease, however, was to come through the accession of Mrs. Lowell to a share in the estate of her father, who died suddenly in September of this year. “I suppose,” Lowell writes in the letter just quoted, “that when the estate is settled (Mr. White died intestate) we shall be the possessors of $20,000 or more. I confess I hardly feel so independent as before. I believe that in this age poverty needs to have apostles, and I had resolved to be one, but I suppose God knows what is best for me, or the event would not have happened. That I should ever have lived to be such a nabob!”[53] One of the effects of this modest fortune was to give the Lowells a further sense of independence and to lead them to form plans of travel and life abroad, for from the first the frailty of Mrs. Lowell’s health had been a factor in all their problems. They meant to go again to Philadelphia the next spring, and they looked forward to going to Italy in the coming fall for a two or three years’ residence. “Now that we know the amount of our property,” Mrs. Lowell wrote shortly after to Mrs. Davis, “it seems quite doubtful whether we shall be able to travel much; but we can live in Italy as cheaply as at home, and have all the advantages of climate and beautiful works of art besides.” On the last day of the year their first child was born, and they gave her the name of Blanche in gentle allusion to Mrs. Lowell’s maiden name. Lowell wrote the news in a brief note on New Year’s Day, 1846, to Mr. Davis: “Our little daughter Blanche was born yesterday afternoon at 3-1/2 o’clock. She is a very fine hearty child, very fair and white, with red cheeks, and looks already a month old. Maria, thank God, is quite well.... Our fair has been eminently successful, more so than any hitherto. I received your tract only a day or two since, having only been to Boston once or twice for the last two months. I am much obliged to you for it, though my thankfulness is almost used up by the baby.”