Florence: February 2, 1857 [postmark].
My dearest Mona Nina,—To begin (lest I forget before the ending), don't mind the sugar-tongs, if you have not actually bought them, inasmuch as, to my astonishment, Wilson has found a pair in Florence, marking the progress of civilisation in this South. In Paris last winter we sought in vain. There was nothing between one's fingers and real silver—too expensive for poets. But now we are supplied splendidly—and at the cost of five pauls, let me tell you.
Always delighted I am to have your letters, even when you don't tell me as touchingly as in this that mine are something to you. Do I not indeed love you and sympathise with you fully and deeply? Yes, indeed. On one subject I am afraid to touch. But I know why it is you feel so long, so unduly—so morbidly, in a sense. People in general, knowing themselves to be innocently made to suffer, would take comfort in righteous indignation and justified contempt: but to you the indignation and contempt would be the worst part of suffering; you can't bear it, and you are in a strait between the two. In fact, it relieves you rather to take part against yourself, and to conclude on the whole that there's something really bad in you calling on the pure Heavens for vengeance. Yes, that's you. You sympathise tenderly with your executioner....
And as for the critics—yes, indeed, I agree with you that I have no reason to complain. More than that, I confess to you that I am entirely astonished at the amount of reception I have met with—I who expected to be put in the stocks and pelted with the eggs of the last twenty years' 'singing birds' as a disorderly woman and freethinking poet! People have been so kind that, in the first place, I really come to modify my opinions somewhat upon their conventionality, to see the progress made in freedom of thought. Think of quite decent women taking the part of the book in a sort of effervescence which I hear of with astonishment. In fact, there has been an enormous quantity of extravagance talked and written on the subject, and I know it—oh, I know it. I wish I deserved some things—some things; I wish it were all true. But I see too distinctly what I ought to have written. Still, it is nearer the mark than my former efforts—fuller, stronger, more sustained—and one may be encouraged to push on to something worthier, for I don't feel as if I had done yet—no indeed. I have had from Leigh Hunt a very pleasant letter of twenty pages, and I think I told you of the two from John Ruskin. In America, also, there's great success, and the publisher is said to have shed tears over the proofs (perhaps in reference to the hundred pounds he had to pay for them), and the critics congratulate me on having worked myself clear of all my affectations, mannerisms, and other morbidities.
Even 'Blackwood' is not to be complained of, seeing that the writer evidently belongs to an elder school, and judges from his own point of view. He is wrong, though, even in classical matters, as it seems to me.
I heard one of Thackeray's lectures, the one on George the Third, and thought it better than good—fine and touching. To what is it that people are objecting? At any rate, they crowd and pay.
Ah yes. You appreciate Robert; you know what is in his poetry. Certainly there is no pretension in me towards that profound suggestiveness, and I thank you for knowing it and saying it.
There is a real poem being lived between Mr. Kirkup and the 'spirits,' so called.[53] If I were to write it in a poem, I should beat 'Aurora' over and over. And such a tragic face the old man has, with his bleak white beard. Even Robert is touched.
Best love from him and your