How intimately Lowell connected the change with the condition of his wife, and how her state subdued any exhilaration he might have felt, appears further from a letter written 13 February, 1880, to a friend who had been moving in the matter at home. “I did not know that you had any hand in it when I wrote to Mr. Evarts and told him that had I been consulted I should have had grave doubts about accepting. Accordingly I wish you would contrive to let them know at Washington that I was in utter ignorance of what my friends were doing. Indeed, I hardly know even now what I shall (or rather what I can) do. When the telegram came Fanny had been going on well for six weeks, but about a fortnight ago came another relapse and she is now in a very nervous state again,--not absolutely out of her head, but incapable of controlling herself.... If this relapse should prove transitory like the others, I shall probably be obliged to leave Fanny here, and go to London for my presentation, and then come back on leave. For I cannot very well renounce the appointment now after having consented to accept it. Fanny was so well when the telegram came that I did not hesitate to consult her about it. She was very much pleased and insisted on my accepting, but now I have the dreadful suspicion that it was the excitement of this news that upset her again. It is true that the change did not show itself for more than a week, and there are reasons for attributing it to physical causes, but I cannot shake off the bitter reproach of having been imprudent. And yet what could I do? The doctor had told me that in a month at farthest I should be able to move her, and she was so perfectly herself then that I had no fears. It is now twelve o’clock (noon) and she is still asleep. The nurse thinks her better. She woke for a few moments, took some beef tea, and dropped off again. Sleep is always good for her. I hope it is a good sign that this relapse has not been so bad as the last before it. Before that she had been better for a few days only and I was never sure that the excitement of the brain was more than diminished. But when this began she had been perfectly self-possessed for weeks, and we took great comfort together in the twenty-third psalm. I am glad I was born long enough ago to have some _superstitions_ left. They stand by one somehow, and the back feels that it has a brother behind it.[73] I long to be at home again, and it will not be a great while now. If we get to England, it is more than half way.”