" At the same time his treatment in England affects him naturally — and for my part I set it down as an infamy of that public — no other word. He says he has told you some things you had not heard, and which, I acknowledge, I always try to prevent him from repeating to anyone. I wonder if he has told you besides (no, I fancy not) that an English lady of rank, an acquaintance of ours (observe that!), asked, the other day, the American Minister whether ‘Robert was not an American.’ The Minister answered ‘Is it possible that you ask me this? Why, there is not so poor a village in the United States where they would not tell you that Robert Browning was an Englishman, and that they were very sorry he was not an American.’ Very pretty of the American Minister — was it not? — and literally true besides. "

― Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning