BA.

Robert's regards always. Say particularly how you are, and may God bless you, dearest Miss Mitford, and make you happy.

To Miss Mitford

Florence: April 15, [1848].

... My Flush has recovered his beauty, and is in more vivacious spirits than I remember to have seen him. Still, the days come when he will have no pleasure and plenty of fleas, poor dog, for Savonarola's martyrdom here in Florence is scarcely worse than Flush's in the summer. Which doesn't prevent his enjoying the spring, though, and just now, when, by medical command, I drive out two hours every day, his delight is to occupy the seat in the carriage opposite to Robert and me, and look disdainfully on all the little dogs who walk afoot. We drive day by day through the lovely Cascine (where the trees have finished and spread their webs of full greenery, undimmed by the sun yet), first sweeping through the city, past such a window where Bianca Capello looked out to see the Duke go by,[[172]] and past such a door where Lapo stood, and past the famous stone where Dante drew his chair out to sit.[[173]] Strange, to have all that old-world life about us, and the blue sky so bright besides, and ever so much talk on our lips about the new French revolution, and the King of Prussia's cunning, and the fuss in Germany and elsewhere. Not to speak of our own particular troubles and triumphs in Lombardy close by. The English are flying from Florence, by the way, in a helter skelter, just as they always do fly, except (to do them justice) on a field of battle. The family Englishman is a dreadful coward, be it admitted frankly. See how they run from France, even to my dear excellent Uncle Hedley, who has too many little girls in his household to stay longer at Tours. Oh, I don't blame him exactly. I only wish that he had waited a little longer, the time necessary for being quite reassured. He has great stakes in the country—a house at Tours and in Paris, and twenty thousand pounds in the Rouen railway. But Florence will fall upon her feet we may all be certain, let the worst happen that can. Meanwhile, republicans as I and my, husband are by profession, we very anxiously, anxiously even to pain, look on the work being attempted and done just now by the theorists in Paris; far from half approving of it we are, and far from being absolutely confident of the durability of the other half. Tell me what you think, and if you are not anxious too. As to communism, surely the practical part of that, the only not dangerous part, is attainable simply by the consent of individuals who may try the experiment of associating their families in order to the cheaper employment of the means of life, and successfully in many cases. But make a government scheme of even so much, and you seem to trench on the individual liberty. All such patriarchal planning in a government issues naturally into absolutism, and is adapted to states of society more or less barbaric. Liberty and civilisation when married together lawfully rather evolve individuality than tend to generalisation. Is this not true? I fear, I fear that mad theories promising the impossible may, in turn, make the people mad. I Louis Blanc knows not what he says. Have I not mentioned to you a very gifted woman, a sculptress, Mademoiselle de Fauveau, who lives in Florence with her mother practising her profession, an exile from France, in consequence of their royalist opinions and participation in the Vendée struggle, some sixteen or fifteen years? On that occasion she was mistaken for and allowed herself to be arrested as Madame de la Roche Jacquelin; therefore she has justified, by suffering in the cause, her passionate attachment to it. A most interesting person she is; she called upon us a short time ago and interested us much. And Mrs. Jameson would tell you that her celebrity in her art is not comparative 'for a woman,' but that, since Benvenuto Cellini, more beautiful works of the kind have not been accomplished. An exquisite fountain she has lately done for the Emperor of Russia. She has workmen under her, and is as 'professional' in every respect as if neither woman nor noble. At the first throb of this revolution of course she dreamt the impossible about that dear 'Henri Cinq,' who is as much out of the question as Henri Quatre himself; and now it ends with the 'French Legation' coming to settle in the house precisely opposite to hers, with a hideous sign-painting appended O the Gallic cock on one leg and at full crow inscribed, 'Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.' This, and the death of her favorite dog, whom, after seventeen years' affection, she was forced to have destroyed on account of a combination of diseases, has quite saddened the sculptress. When she came to see us I observed that after so long a residence at Florence she must regard it as a second country. 'Ah non!' (the answer was) 'il n'y a pas de seconde patrie.' What you tell me of 'Jane Eyre' makes me long to see the book. I may long, I fancy. It is dismal to have to disappoint my dearest sisters, who hoped for me in England this summer, but our English visit must be for next summer instead; there seems too much against it just now. The drawback of Italy is the distance from England. If it were but as near as Paris, for instance, why in that case we should settle here at once, I do think, the conveniences and luxuries of life are of such incredible cheapness, the climate so divine, and the way of things altogether so serene and suited to our tastes and instincts. But to give up England and the English, the dear, dearest treasure of English love, is impossible, so we just linger and linger. The Boyles go to England from the press of panic, Lady Boyle being old and infirm. Ah, but your talking friend would interest you, and you might accept the talk in infinitesimal doses, you know. Lamartine has surely acted down the fallacy of the impractical tendencies of imaginative men. I am full of France just now. Are you all prepared for an outbreak in Ireland? I hope so. My husband has the second edition of his collected poems[[174]] in the press by this time, by grace of Chapman and Hall, who accept all risks. You speak of Tennyson's vexation about the reception of the 'Princess.' Why did Mr. Harness and others, who 'never could understand' his former divine works, praise this in manuscript till the poet's hope grew to the height of his ambition? Strangely unfortunate. We have not read it yet. I hear that Tennyson had the other day everything packed for Italy, then turned his face toward Ireland, and went there. Oh, for a talk with you. But this is a sort of talk, isn't it? Accept my husband's regards. As to my love, I throw it to you over the [sea] with both hands. God bless you.

Your ever affectionate
BA.

To John Kenyan

[Florence:] May I, [1848].

My dearest Mr. Kenyon,—Surely it is quite wrong that we three, Robert, you, and I, should be satisfied with writing little dry notes, as short as so many proclamations, and those of the order of your anti-Chartist magistracy, 'Whereas certain evil disposed persons &c. &c.,' instead of our anti-Austrian Grand duchy's 'O figli amati' (how characteristic of the north and the south, to be sure, is this contrast! Yet, after all, they might have managed it rather better in England!)—little dry notes brief and business-like as an anti-Chartist proclamation! And, indeed, two of us are by no means satisfied, whatever the third may be. The other day we were looking over some of the dear delightful letters you used to write to us. Real letters those were, and not little dry notes at all. Robert said, 'When I write to dear Mr. Kenyon I really do feel overcome by the sense of what I owe to him, and so, as it is beyond words to say, why generally I say as little as possible of anything, keeping myself to matters of business.' An alternative very objectionable, I told him; for to have 'a dumb devil' from ever such grateful and sentimental reasons, when the Alps stand betwixt friend, is damnatory in the extreme. Then, as you are not 'too grateful' to us, why don't you write? Pray do, my dear friend. Let us all write as we used to do. And to make sure of it, I begin.

Since I ended last the world has turned over on its other side, in order, one must hope, to some happy change in the dream. Our friend, Miss Bayley, in that very kind letter which has just reached me and shall be answered directly (will you tell her with my thankful love?), asks if Robert and I are communists, and then half draws back her question into a discreet reflection that I, at least, was never much celebrated for acumen on political economy. Most true indeed! And therefore, and on that very ground, is it not the more creditable to me that I don't set up for a communist immediately? In proportion to the ignorance might be the stringency of the embrace of 'la vérité sociale:' so I claim a little credit that it isn't. For really we are not communists, farther than to admit the wisdom of voluntary association in matters of material life among the poorer classes. And to legislate even on such points seems as objectionable as possible; all intermeddlings of government with domesticities, from Lacedaemon to Peru, were and must be objectionable; and of the growth of absolutism, let us, theorise as we choose. I would have the government educate the people absolutely, and then give room for the individual to develop himself into life freely. Nothing can be more hateful to me than this communist idea of quenching individualities in the mass. As if the hope of the world did not always consist in the eliciting of the individual man from the background of the masses, in the evolvement of individual genius, virtue, magnanimity. Do you know how I love France and the French? Robert laughs at me for the mania of it, or used to laugh long before this revolution. When I was a prisoner, my other mania for imaginative literature used to be ministered to through the prison bars by Balzac, George Sand, and the like immortal improprieties. They kept the colour in my life to some degree and did good service in their time to me, I can assure you, though in dear discreet England women oughtn't to confess to such reading, I believe, or you told me so yourself one day. Well, but through reading the books I grew to love France, in a mania too; and the interest, which all must feel in the late occurrences there, has been with me, and is, quite painful. I read the newspapers as I never did in my life, and hope and fear in paroxysms, yes, and am guilty of thinking far more of Paris than of Lombardy itself, and try to understand financial difficulties and social theories with the best will in the world; much as Flush tries to understand me when I tell him that barking and jumping may be unseasonable things. Both of us open our eyes a good deal, but the comprehension is questionable after all. What, however, I do seem least of all to comprehend, is your hymn of triumph in England, just because you have a lower ideal of liberty than the French people have. See if in Louis Philippe's time France was not in many respects more advanced than England is now, property better divided, hereditary privilege abolished! Are we to blow with the trumpet because we respect the ruts while everywhere else they are mending the roads? I do not comprehend. As to the Chartists, it is only a pity in my mind that you have not more of them. That's their fault. Mine, you will say, is being pert about politics when you would rather have anything else in a letter from Italy. You have heard of my illness, and will have been sorry for me, I am certain; but with blessings edging me round, I need not catch at a thistle in the hedge to make a 'sorrowful complaignte' of. Our plans have floated round and round, in and out of all the bays and creeks of the Happy Islands....