To Miss Mitford
Florence: February 18, 1850.
Ever dearest Miss Mitford, you always give me pleasure, so for love's sake don't say that you 'seldom give it,' and such a magical act as conjuring up for me the sight of a new poem by Alfred Tennyson[[196]] is unnecessary to prove you a right beneficent enchantress. Thank you, thank you. We are not so unworthy of your redundant kindness as to abuse it by a word spoken or sign signified. You may trust us indeed. But now you know how free and sincere I am always! Now tell me. Apart from the fact of this lyric's being a fragment of fringe from the great poet's 'singing clothes' (as Leigh Hunt says somewhere), and apart from a certain sweetness and rise and fall in the rhythm, do you really see much for admiration in the poem? Is it new in, any way? I admire Tennyson with the most worshipping part of the multitude, as you are aware, but I do not perceive much in this lyric, which strikes me, and Robert also (who goes with me throughout), as quite inferior to the other lyrical snatches in the 'Princess.' By the way, if he introduces it in the 'Princess,' it will be the only rhymed verse in the work. Robert thinks that he was thinking of the Rhine echoes in writing it, and not of any heard in his Irish travels. I hear that Tennyson has taken rooms above Mr. Forster's in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and is going to try a London life. So says Mr. Kenyon.... I am writing with an easier mind than when I wrote last, for I was for a little time rendered very unhappy (so unhappy that I couldn't touch on the subject, which is always the way with me when pain passes a certain point), by hearing accidentally that papa was unwell and looking altered. My sister persisted in replying to my anxieties that they were unfounded, that I was quite absurd, indeed, in being anxious at all; only people are not generally reformed from their absurdities through being scolded for them. Now, however, it really appears that the evil has passed. He left his doctor who had given him lowering medicines, and, coincidently with the leaving, he has recovered looks and health altogether. Arabel says that I should think he was looking as well as ever, if I saw him, and that appetite and spirits are even redundant. Thank God.... To have this good news has made me very happy, and I overflow to you accordingly. Oh, there is pain enough from that quarter, without hearing of his being out of health. I write to him continually and he does not now return my letters, which is a melancholy something gained. Now enough of such a subject.
I certainly don't think that the qualities, half savage and half freethinking, expressed in 'Jane Eyre' are likely to suit a model governess or schoolmistress; and it amuses me to consider them in that particular relation. Your account falls like dew upon the parched curiosity of some of our friends here, to whom (as mere gossip, which did not leave you responsible) I couldn't resist the temptation of communicating it. People are so curious—even here among the Raffaels—about this particular authorship, yet nobody seems to have read 'Shirley'; we are too slow in getting new books. First Galignani has to pirate them himself, and then to hand us over the spoils. By the way, there's to be an international copyright, isn't there? Something is talked of it in the 'Athenaeum.' Meanwhile the Americans have already reprinted my husband's new edition. 'Landthieves, I mean pirates.' I used to take that for a slip of the pen in Shakespeare; but it was a slip of the pen into prophecy. Sorry I am at Mrs. —— falling short of your warm-hearted ideas about her! Can you understand a woman's hating a girl because it is not a boy—her first child too? I understand it so little that scarcely I can believe it. Some women have, however, undeniably an indifference to children, just as many men have, though it must be unnatural and morbid in both sexes. Men often affect it—very foolishly, if they count upon the scenic effects; affectation never succeeds well, and this sort of affectation is peculiarly unbecoming, except in old bachelors, for there is a pathetic side to the question so viewed. For my part and my husband's, we may be frank and say that we have caught up our parental pleasures with a sort of passion. But then, Wiedeman is such a darling little creature; who could help loving the child?... Little darling! So much mischief was not often put before into so small a body. Fancy the child's upsetting the water jugs till he is drenched (which charms him), pulling the brooms to pieces, and having serious designs upon cutting up his frocks with a pair of scissors. He laughs like an imp when he can succeed in doing anything wrong. Now, see what you get, in return for your kindness of 'liking to hear about' him! Almost I have the grace to be ashamed a little. Just before I had your letter we sent my new edition to England. I gave much time to the revision, and did not omit reforming some of the rhymes, although you must consider that the irregularity of these in a certain degree rather falls in with my system than falls out through my carelessness. So much the worse, you will say, when a person is systematically bad. The work will include the best poems of the 'Seraphim' volume, strengthened and improved as far as the circumstances admitted of. I had not the heart to leave out the wretched sonnet to yourself, for your dear sake; but I rewrote the latter half of it (for really it wasn't a sonnet at all, and 'Una and her lion' are rococo), and so placed it with my other poems of the same class. There are some new, verses also.[[197]] The Miss Hardings I have seen, and talked with them of you, a sure way of finding them delightful. But, my dearest friend, I shall not see any of the Trollope party—it is not likely. You can scarcely image to yourself the retired life we live, or how we have retreated from the kind advances of the English society here. Now people seem to understand that we are to be left alone; that nothing is to be made of us. The fact is, we are not like our child, who kisses everybody who smiles at him! Neither my health nor our pecuniary circumstances, nor our inclinations perhaps, would admit of our entering into English society here, which is kept up much after the old English models, with a proper disdain for Continental simplicities of expense. We have just heard from Father Prout, who often, he says, sees Mr. Horne, 'who is as dreamy as ever.' So glad I am, for I was beginning to be uneasy about him. He has not answered my letter from Lucca. The verses in the 'Athenaeum'[[198]] are on Sophia Cottrell's child.
May God bless you, dearest friend. Speak of yourself more particularly to your ever affectionate
E.B.B.
Robert's kindest regards. Tell us of Mr. Chorley's play, do.
To Mrs. Martin
Florence: February 22, 1850.
My dearest Mrs. Martin,—Have you wondered that I did not write before? It was not that I did not thank you in my heart for your kind, considerate letter, but I was unconquerably uncomfortable about papa; and, what with the weather, which always has me in its power somehow, and other things, I fell into a dislike of writing, which I hope you didn't mistake for ingratitude, because it was not in the least like the same fault. Now the severe weather (such weather for Italy!) has broken up, and I am relieved in all ways, having received the most happy satisfactory news from Wimpole Street, and the assurance from my sisters that if I were to see papa I should think him looking as well as ever. He grew impatient with Dr. Elliotson's medicines which, it appears, were of a very lowering character—suddenly gave them up, and as suddenly recovered his looks and all the rest, and everybody at home considers him to be quite well. It has relieved me of a mountain's weight, and I thank God with great joy. Oh, you must have understood how natural it was for me to be unhappy under the other circumstances. But if you thought, dearest friend, that they were necessary to induce me to write to him the humblest and most beseeching of letters, you do not know how I feel his alienation or my own love for him. I With regard to my brothers, it is quite different, though even towards them I may faithfully say that my affection has borne itself higher than my pride. But as to papa, I have never contended about the right or the wrong, I have never irritated him by seeming to suppose that his severity to me has been more than justice. I have confined myself simply to a supplication for—his forgiveness of what he called, in his own words, the only fault of my life towards him, and an expression of the love which even I must feel I for him, whether he forgives me or not. This has been done in letter after letter, and they are not sent back—it is all. In my last letter, I ventured to ask him to let it be an understood thing that he should before the world, and to every practical purpose, act out his idea of justice by excluding me formally, me and mine, from every advantage he intended his other children—that, having so been just, he might afford to be merciful by giving me his forgiveness and affection—all I asked and desired. My husband and I had talked this over again and again; only it was a difficult thing to say, you see. At last I took courage and said it, because, doing it, papa might seem to himself to reconcile his notion of strict justice, and whatever remains of pity and tenderness might still be in his heart towards me, if there are any such. I know he has strong feelings at bottom—otherwise, should I love him so?—but he has adopted a bad system, and he (as well as I) is crushed by it.... If I were to write to you the political rumours we hear every day, you would scarcely think our situation improved in safety by the horrible Austrian army. Florence bristles with cannon on all sides, and at the first movement we are promised to be bombarded. On the other hand, if the red republicans get uppermost there will be a universal massacre; not a priest, according to their own profession, will be left alive in Italy. The constitutional party hope they are gaining strength, but the progress which depends on intellectual growth must necessarily be slow. That the Papacy has for ever lost its prestige and power over souls is the only evident truth; bright and strong enough to cling to. I hear even devout women say: 'This cursed Pope! it's all his fault.' Protestant places of worship are thronged with Italian faces, and the minister of the Scotch church at Leghorn has been threatened with exclusion from the country if he admits Tuscans to the church communion. Politically speaking, much will depend upon France, and I have strong hope for France, though it is so strictly the fashion to despair of her. Tell me dear Mr. Martin's impression and your own—everything is good that comes from you. But most particularly, tell me how you both are—tell me whether you are strong again, dearest Mrs. Martin, for indeed I do not like to hear of your being in the least like an invalid. Do speak of yourself a little more. Do you know, you are very unsatisfactory as a letter-writer when you write about yourself—the reason being that you never do write about yourself except by the suddenest snatches, when you can't possibly help the reference....