My ever dear Friend,—How it grieves me that you should have been so unwell again! From what you say about the state of the house, I conclude that your health suffers from that cause precisely; and that when you are warmly and dryly walled in, you will be less liable to these attacks, grievous to your friends as to you. Oh, I don't praise anybody, I assure you, for wishing to entice you to live near them. We come over the Alps for a sunny climate; what should we not do for a moral atmosphere like yours? I dare say you have chosen excellently your new residence, and I hope you will get over the fuss of it with great courage, remembering the advantages which it is likely to secure to you. Tell me as much as you can about it all, that I may shift the scene in the right grooves, and be able to imagine you to myself out of Three Mile Cross. You have the local feeling so eminently that I have long been resolved on never asking you to migrate. Doves won't travel with swallows; who should persuade them? This is no migration—only a shifting from one branch to another. With Reading on one side of you still, you will lose nothing, neither sight nor friend. Oh, do write to me as soon as you can, and say that the deepening summer has done you good and given you strength; say it, if possible. I shall be very anxious for the next letter.... My only objection to Florence is the distance from London, and the expense of the journey. One's heart is pulled at through different English ties and can't get the right rest, and I think we shall move northwards—try France a little, after a time. The present year has been full of petty vexation to us about the difficulty of going to England, and it becomes more and more doubtful whether we can attain to the means of doing it. There are four of us and the child, you see, and precisely this year we are restricted in means, as far as our present knowledge goes; but I can't say yet, only I do very much fear. Nobody will believe our promises, I think, any more, and my poor Arabel will be in despair, and I shall lose the opportunity of authenticating Wiedeman; for, as Robert says, all our fine stories about him will go for nothing, and he will be set down as a sham child. If not sham, how could human vanity resist the showing him off bodily? That sounds reasonable....
Certainly you are disinterested about America, and, of course, all of us who have hearts and heads must feel the sympathy of a greater nation to be more precious than a thick purse. Still, it is not just and dignified, this vantage ground of American pirates. Liking the ends and motives, one disapproves the means. Yes, even you do; and if I were an American I should dissent with still more emphasis. It should be made a point of honour with the nation, if there is no point of law against the re publishers. For my own part, I have every possible reason to thank and love America; she has been very kind to me, and the visits we receive here from delightful and cordial persons of that country have been most gratifying to us. The American minister at the court of Vienna, with his family, did not pass through Florence the other day without coming to see us—General Watson Webbe-with an air of moral as well as military command in his brow and eyes. He looked, and talked too, like one of oar dignities of the Old World. The go-ahead principle didn't seem the least over-strong in him, nor likely to disturb his official balance. What is to happen next in France? Do you trust still your President? He is in a hard position, and, if he leaves the Pope where he is, in a dishonored one. As for the change in the electoral law and the increase of income, I see nothing in either to make an outcry against. There is great injustice everywhere and a rankling party-spirit, and to speak the truth and act it appears still more difficult than usual. I was sorry, do you know, to hear of dear Mr. Horne's attempt at Shylock; he is fit for higher things. Did I tell you how we received and admired his Judas Iscariot? Yes, surely I did. He says that Louis Blanc is a friend of his and much with him, speaking with enthusiasm. I should be more sorry at his being involved with the Socialists than with Shylock—still more sorry; for I love liberty so intensely that I hate Socialism. I hold it to be the most desecrating and dishonouring to humanity of all creeds. I would rather (for me) live under the absolutism of Nicholas of Russia than in a Fourier machine, with my individuality sucked out of me by a social air-pump. Oh, if you happen to write again to Mrs. Deane, thank her much for her kind anxiety; but, indeed, if I had lost my darling I should not write verses about it.[[202]] As for the Laureateship, it won't be given to me, be sure, though the suggestion has gone the round of the English newspapers—'Galignani' and all—and notwithstanding that most kind and flattering recommendation of the 'Athenaeum,' for which I am sure we should be grateful to Mr. Chorley. I think Leigh Hunt should have the Laureateship. He has condescended to wish for it, and has 'worn his singing clothes' longer than most of his contemporaries, deserving the price of long as well as noble service. Whoever has it will be, of course, exempted from Court lays; and the distinction of the title and pension should remain for Spenser's sake, if not for Wordsworth's. We are very anxious to know about Tennyson's new work, 'In Memoriam.' Do tell us about it. You are aware that it was written years ago, and relates to a son of Mr. Hallam, who was Tennyson's intimate friend and the betrothed of his sister. I have heard, through someone who had seen the MS., that it is full of beauty and pathos.... Dearest, ever dear Miss Mitford, speak particularly of your health. May God bless you, prays
Your ever affectionate
E.B.B.
Robert's kindest regards.
To Miss Mitford
Florence: July 8, 1850.
My dearest Miss Mitford,—I this moment have your note; and as a packet of ours is going to England, I snatch up a pen to do what I can with it in the brief moments between this and post time. I don't wait till it shall be possible to write at length, because I have something immediate to say to you. Your letter is delightful, yet it is not for that that I rush so upon answering it. Nor even is it for the excellent news of your consenting, for dear Mr. Chorley's sake, to give us some more of your 'papers,'[[203]] though 'blessed be the hour, and month, and year' when he set about editing the 'Ladies' Companion' and persuading you to do such a thing. No, what I want to say is strictly personal to me. You are the kindest, warmest-hearted, most affectionate of critics, and precisely as such it is that you have thrown me into a paroxysm of terror. My dearest friend, for the love of me—I don't argue the point with you—but I beseech you humbly,—kissing the hem of your garment, and by all sacred and tender recollections of sympathy between you and me, don't breathe a word about any juvenile performance of mine—don't, if you have any love left for me. Dear friend, 'disinter' anybody or anything you please, but don't disinter me, unless you mean the ghost of my vexation to vex you ever after. 'Blessed be she who spares these stones.' All the saints know that I have enough to answer for since I came to my mature mind, and that I had difficulty enough in making most of the 'Seraphim' volume presentable a little in my new edition, because it was too ostensible before the public to be caught back; but if the sins of my rawest juvenility are to be thrust upon me—and sins are extant of even twelve or thirteen, or earlier, and I was in print once when I was ten, I think—what is to become of me? I shall groan as loud as Christian did. Dearest Miss Mitford, now forgive this ingratitude which is gratitude all the time. I love you and thank you; but, right or wrong, mind what I say, and let me love and thank you still more. When you see my new edition you will see that everything worth a straw I ever wrote is there, and if there were strength in conjuration I would conjure you to pass an act of oblivion on the stubble that remains—if anything does remain, indeed. Now, more than enough of this. For the rest, I am delighted. I am even so generous as not to be jealous of Mr. Chorley for prevailing with you when nobody else could. I had given it up long ago; I never thought you would stir a pen again. By what charm did he prevail? Your series of papers will be delightful, I do not doubt; though I never could see anything in some of your heroes, American or Irish. Longfellow is a poet; I don't refer to him. Still, whatever you say will be worth hearing, and the guide through 'Pompeii' will be better than many of the ruins. 'The Pleader's Guide' I never heard of before. Praed has written some sweet and tender things. Then I shall like to hear you on Beaumont and Fletcher, and Andrew Marvell.
I have seen nothing of Tennyson's new poem. Do you know if the echo-song is the most popular of his verses? It is only another proof to my mind of the no-worth of popularity. That song would be eminently sweet for a common writer, but Tennyson has done better, surely; his eminences are to be seen above. As for the laurel, in a sense he is worthier of it than Leigh Hunt; only Tennyson can wait, that is the single difference.
So anxious I am about your house. Your health seems to me mainly to depend on your moving, and I do urge your moving; if not there, elsewhere. May God bless you, ever dear friend!
I dare say you will think I have given too much importance to the rococo verses you had the goodness to speak of; but I have a horror of being disinterred, there's the truth! Leave the violets to grow over me. Because that wretched school-exercise of a version of the 'Prometheus' had been named by two or three people, wasn't I at the pains of making a new translation before I left England, so to erase a sort of half-visible and half invisible 'Blot on the Scutcheon'? After such an expenditure of lemon-juice, you will not wonder that I should trouble you with all this talk about nothing....