Always remind your dear mother that we are no more bound here than when in furnished lodgings. It is a mere name.
To Mrs. Martin
Palazzo Guidi: June 20, [1848].
My dearest Mrs. Martin,—Now I am going to answer your letter, which I all but lost, and got ever so many days beyond the right day, because you directed it to Mrs. William Browning. Pray remember Robert Browning for the future, in right descent from Robert Brunnyng,[[178]] the first English poet. Mrs. Jameson says, 'It's ominous of the actual Robert's being the last English poet;' a saying which I give you to remember us by, rejecting the omen.... We have grown to be Florentine citizens, as perhaps you have heard. Health and means both forbade our settlement in England; and the journey backwards and forwards being another sort of expense, and very necessary with our ties and affections, we had to think how to live here, when we were here, at the cheapest. The difference between taking a furnished apartment and an unfurnished one is something immense. For our furnished rooms we have had always to pay some four guineas a month; and unfurnished rooms of equal pretension we could have for twelve a year, and the furniture (out and out) for fifty pounds. This calculation, together with the consideration that we could let our apartment whenever we travelled and receive back the whole cost, could not choose, of course, but determine us. On coming to the point, however, we grew ambitious, and preferred giving five-and-twenty guineas for a noble suite of rooms in the Palazzo Guidi, a stone's throw from the Pitti, and furnishing them after our own taste rather than after our economy, the economy having a legitimate share of respect notwithstanding; and the satisfactory thing being that the whole expense of this furnishing—rococo chairs, spring sofas, carved bookcases, satin from cardinals' beds, and the rest—is covered by the proceeds of our books during the last two winters. This is satisfying, isn't it? We shall stand safe within the borders of our narrow income even this year, and next year comes the harvest! We shall go to England in the spring, and return home to Italy. Do you understand? Mr. Kenyon, our friend and counsellor, writes to applaud—such prudence was never known before among poets. Then we have a plan, that when the summer (this summer) grows too hot, we shall just take up our carpet-bag and Wilson and plunge into the mountains in search of the monasteries beyond Vallombrosa, from Arezzo go to St. Sepolchro in the Apennines, and thence to Fano on the seashore, making a round back perhaps (after seeing the great fair at Sinigaglia) to Ravenna and Bologna home. As to Rome, our plan is to give up Rome next winter, seeing that we must go to England in the spring. I must see my dearest sisters and whoever else dear will see me, and Robert must see his family beside; and going to Rome will take us too far from the route and cost too much; and then we are not inclined to give the first-fruits of our new apartment to strangers if we could let it ever so easily this year. You can't think how well the rooms look already; you must come and see them, you and dear Mr. Martin. Three immense rooms we have, and a fourth small one for a book room and winter room—windows opening on a little terrace, eight windows to the south; two good bedrooms behind, with a smaller terrace, and kitchen, &c., all on a first floor and Count Guidi's favorite suite. The Guidi were connected by marriage with the Ugolino of Pisa, Dante's Ugolino, only we shun all traditions of the Tower of Famine, and promise to give you excellent coffee whenever you will come to give us the opportunity. We shall have vines and myrtles and orange trees on the terrace, and I shall have a watering-pot and garden just as you do, though it must be on the bricks instead of the ground. For temperature, the stoves are said to be very effective in the winter, and in the summer we are cool and airy; the advantage of these thick-walled palazzos is coolness in summer and warmth in winter. I am very well and quite strong again, or rather, stronger than ever, and able to walk as far as Cellini's Perseus in the moonlight evenings, on the other side of the Arno. Oh, that Arno in the sunset, with the moon and evening star standing by, how divine it is!...
Think of me as ever your most affectionate
BA.
To Miss Mitford
Florence: July 4, [1848].
It does grieve me, my ever dearest Miss Mitford, to hear of the suffering which has fallen upon you! Oh, rheumatism or not, whatever the name may be, do take care, do consider, and turn your dear face toward the seaside; somewhere where you can have warm sea bathing and sea air, and be able to associate the word 'a drive' not with mad ponies, but the mildest of donkeys, on a flat sand. The good it would do you is incalculable, I am certain; it is precisely a case for change of air, with quiet....
As for when you come to Florence, we won't have 'a pony carriage between us,' if you please, because we may have a carriage and a pair of horses and a coachman, and pay as little as for the pony-chair in England. For three hundred a year one may live much like the Grand Duchess, and go to the opera in the evening at fivepence-halfpenny inclusive. Indeed, poor people should have their patriotism tenderly dealt with, when, after certain experiments, they decide on living upon the whole on the Continent. The differences are past belief, beyond expectation, and when the sunshine is thrown in, the head turns at once, and you fall straight into absenteeism. Ah, for the 'long chats' and the 'having England at one another's fireside!' You talk of delightful things indeed. We are very quiet, politically speaking, and though we hear now and then of melancholy mothers who have to part with their sons for Lombardy,[[179]]
and though there are processions for the blessing of flags and an occasional firing of guns for a victory, or a cry in the streets, 'Notizie della guerra—leggete, signori;' this is all we know of Radetsky in Florence; while, for civil politics, the meeting of the senate took place a few days since to the satisfaction of everybody, and the Grand Duke's speech was generally admired. The elections have returned moderate men, and many land-proprietors, and Robert, who went out to see the procession of members, was struck by the grave thoughtful faces and the dignity of expression. We are going some day to hear the debates, but it has pleased their signoria to fix upon twelve (noon) for meeting, and really I do not dare to go out in the sun. The hour is sufficiently conclusive against dangerous enthusiasm. Poor France, poor France! News of the dreadful massacre at Paris just reaches us, and the letters and newspapers not arriving to-day, everybody fears a continuation of the crisis. How is it to end? Who 'despairs of the republic?' Why, I do! I fear, I fear, that it cannot stand in France, and you seem to have not much more hope. My husband has a little, with melancholy intermediate prospects; but my own belief that the people have had enough of democratic institutions and will be impatient for a kingship anew. Whom will they have? How did you feel when the cry was raised, 'Vive l'Empereur'? Only Prince Napoleon is a Napoleon cut out in paper after all. The Prince de Joinville is said to be very popular. It makes me giddy to think of the awful precipices which surround France—to think, too, that the great danger is on the question of property, which is perhaps divided there more justly than in any other country of Europe. Lamartine has comprehended nothing, that is clear, even if his amount of energy had been effectual.... Yes, do send me the list of Balzac, after 'Les Misères de la Vie Conjugale,' I mean. I left him in the midst of 'La Femme de Soixante Ans,' who seemed on the point of turning the heads of all 'la jeunesse' around her; and, after all, she did not strike me as so charming. But Balzac charms me, let him write what he will; he's an inspired man. Tell me, too, exactly what Sue has done after 'Martin.' I read only one volume of 'Martin.' And did poor Soulié finish his 'Dramas'? And after 'Lucretia' what did George Sand write? When Robert and I are ambitious, we talk of buying Balzac in full some day, to put him up in our bookcase from the convent, if the carved-wood angels, infants and serpents, should not finish mouldering away in horror at the touch of him. But I fear it will rather be an expensive purchase, even here. Would that he gave up the drama, for which, as you observe, he has no faculty whatever. In fact, the faculty he has is the very reverse of the dramatic, ordinarily understood.... Dearest Mr. Kenyon is called quite well and delightful by the whole world, though he suffered from cough in the winter; and he is bringing out a new book of poems, a 'Day at Tivoli,' and others; and he talks energetically of coming to Florence this autumn. Also, we have hopes of Mr. Chorley. I congratulate you on the going away of Madame. Coming and going bring very various associations in this life of ours. Why, if you were to come we should appreciate our fortune, and you should have my particular chair, which Robert calls mine because I like sitting in a cloud; it's so sybaritically soft a chair. Now I love you for the kind words you say of him, who deserves the best words of the best women and men, wherever spoken! Yes, indeed, I am happy. Otherwise, I should have a stone where the heart is, and sink by the weight of it. You must have faith in me, for I never can make you thoroughly to understand what he is, of himself, and to me—the noblest and perfectest of human beings. After a year and ten months' absolute soul-to-soul intercourse and union, I have to look higher still for my first ideal. You won't blame me for bad taste that I say these things, for can I help it, when I am writing my heart to you? It is a heart which runs over very often with a grateful joy for a most peculiar destiny, even in the midst of some bitter drawbacks which I need not allude to farther....