[Transcriber's Note: The letter "o" with a macron is indicated as [=o] in this text.]
THE LETTERS
OF
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
EDITED WITH BIOGRAPHICAL ADDITIONS
BY
FREDERIC G. KENYON
WITH PORTRAITS
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOLUME II.
THIRD EDITION
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1898
CONTENTS
OF
THE SECOND VOLUME
[CHAPTER VII]
1851-1852
'Casa Guidi Windows'—Venice—Milan—Paris—London—Winter in Paris—The Coup d'Etat—Louis Napoleon—Miss Mitford's 'Recollections'—George Sand—Miss Mulock—Summer in England [1]
[CHAPTER VIII]
1852-1855
Return to Florence—Spiritualism—Robert Lytton—Bagni di Lucca—Florence—Rome—Florence—The Crimean War—Death of Miss Mitford [91]
[CHAPTER IX]
1855-1859
Visit to England—Tennyson's 'Maud'—Winter in Paris—Mr. Ruskin—Last Visit to England—'Aurora Leigh'—Death of Mr. Kenyon—Return to Florence—Carnival—Death of Mr. Barrett—Bagni di Lucca—Illness of Lytton—Paris—Havre—Paris—Florence—Rome [205]
[CHAPTER X]
1859-1860
The Franco-Austrian War—Napoleon and Italy—Villafranca—Florence—Siena—Italian Politics and England—Landor—Florence—Rome [305]
[CHAPTER XI]
1860-1861
'Poems before Congress'—Napoleon and Savoy—France, Italy, and England—Florence—Death of Mrs. Surtees Cook—Garibaldi—Rome—The 'Cornhill Magazine' and Thackeray—Increasing Weakness—Death of Mrs. Browning [363]
INDEX [455]
Portrait Of Robert Browning, Rome 1854 [Frontispiece]
Facsimile Of Letter To The Emperor Napoleon [to face p. 262]
THE LETTERS
OF
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
CHAPTER VII
1851-1852
Since they first settled in Florence the Brownings had made no long or distant expeditions from their new home. Their summer excursions to Vallombrosa, Lucca, or Siena had been of the nature of short holidays, and had not taken them beyond the limits of Tuscany. Now they had planned a far wider series of travels, which, beginning with Rome, Naples, Venice, and Milan, should then be extended across the Alps, and comprehend Brussels, Paris, and ultimately London. This ambitious programme had to be curtailed by the omission of the southern tour to Rome and Naples, as well as the digression to Brussels, but the rest of the scheme was carried out, and about the beginning of June they left Casa Guidi for an absence which extended over seventeen months.
The holiday had been well earned, especially by Mrs. Browning, who, since the preparation of the new edition of her poems in the previous year, had been writing the second part of 'Casa Guidi Windows.' It is probably to this poem that she refers in the letter to Miss Browning printed at the end of the last chapter, Miss Browning having on more than one occasion helped both her brother and her sister-in-law in the task of passing their poems through the press. The book appeared in June, just as they were starting on their travels, and probably for this reason we hear less in the letters of its reception. It was hardly to be expected that the English public would take a very keen interest in a poem dealing almost entirely with Italian politics, and half of it with the politics of three years ago. Either in 1849 or in 1859 the interest would have been livelier; but Italy was passing now through the valley of the shadow, and, save for the horrors of the Neapolitan prisons, was not much before the public for the moment. The intrigues of Louis Napoleon and the ostentatious aggression of the Pope in England were the matters of most interest in foreign politics, and both were overshadowed by the absorbing topic of the Great Exhibition.
Another reason why 'Casa Guidi Windows' has received less appreciation than it deserves, both at the time of its publication and since, is that it stands rather apart from all the recognised species of poetry, and is hard to classify and criticise. Its political and contemporary character cut it off from the imaginative and historical subjects which form in general the matter of poetry, while its genuinely poetic emotion and language separate it from the political pamphlet or the occasional verse. It is a poetic treatment of a political subject raised to a high level by the genuine enthusiasm and fire with which it is inspired, and these give it a value which lasts far beyond the moment of the events which gave it birth. The execution, too, shows an advance on most of Mrs. Browning's previous work. The dangerous experiments in rhyming which characterised many of the poems in the volumes of 1844 are abandoned; the licences of language are less frequent; the verse runs smoothly and is more uniformly under command. It would appear as if the heat of inspiration which produced the 'Sonnets from the Portuguese' had left a permanent and purifying effect upon her style. The poem has been neglected by those who take little interest in Italy and its history, and adversely criticised by those who do not sympathise with its political and religious opinions; but with those who look only to its poetry and to its warm-hearted championship of a great cause, it will always hold a high place of its own among Mrs. Browning's writings.
Florence: May 1, [1851].
I am writing to you, dearest Miss Blagden, at last, you see; though you must have excommunicated me before now as the most ungrateful of correspondents and friends. Do forgive what you can—and your kindness is so great that I believe you can, and shall go on to write as if you did. We have been in the extremity of confusion and indecision. Remember how the fairy princes used to do when they arrived at the meeting of three roads, and had to consider what choice to make. How they used to shake their heads and ponder, and end sometimes by drawing lots! Much in the like perplexity have we been. Everything was ready for Rome—the day fixed, the packing begun, the vettura bargained for. Suddenly, visions of obstacles rose up. We were late in the season. We should be late for the festas. May would be hot in Rome for Wiedeman. Then two journeys, north and south, to Rome and Naples, besides Paris and England, pulled fearfully at the purse-strings. Plainly we couldn't afford it. So everything was stopped and changed. We gave up Rome and you, and are now actually on the point of setting out for Venice; Venice is to console us for Rome. We go to-morrow, indeed. The plan is to stay a fortnight at Venice (or more or less, as the charm works), and then to strike across to Milan; across the Splügen into Switzerland, and to linger there among the hills and lakes for a part of the summer, so working out an intention of economy; then down the Rhine; then by railroad to Brussels; so to Paris, settling there; after which we pay our visit to England for a few weeks. Early next spring we mean to go to Rome and return here, either for good (which is very possible) or for the purpose of arranging our house affairs and packing up books and furniture. As it is, we have our apartment for another year, and shall let it if we can. It has been painted, cleaned, and improved in all ways, till my head and Robert's ring again with the confusion of it all. Oh that we were gone, since we are to go! When out of sight of Florence, we shall begin to enjoy, I hope, the sight of other things, but as it is the impression is only painful and dizzying. Our friends Mr. and Mrs. Ogilvy go with us as far as Venice, and then leave us on a direct course for England, having committed their children and nurses to the care of her sister at the Baths of Lucca meantime. We take with us only Wilson.
Do write to me at Venice, Poste Restante, that I may know you are thinking of me and excusing me kindly. If you knew how uncertain and tormented we have been. I won't even ask Robert to add a line to this, he is so overwhelmed with a flood of businesses; but he bids me speak to you of him as affectionately and faithfully (because affectionately) as I have reason to do. So kind it was in you to think of taking the trouble of finding us an apartment! So really sensible we are to all your warm-hearted goodness, with fullness of heart on our side too. And, after all, we are not parting! Either we shall find you in Italy again, or you will find us in Paris. I have a presentimental assurance of finding one another again before long. Remember us and love us meantime.
As to your spiritual visitor—why, it would be hard to make out a system of Romish doctrine from the most Romish version of the S.S.[1] The differences between the Protestant version and the Papistical are not certainly justifiable by the Greek original, on the side of the latter. In fact, the Papistical version does not pretend to follow the Greek text, but a Latin translation of the same—it's a translation from a translation. Granting it, however, to be faithful, I must repeat that to make out the Romish system from even such a Romish version could not be achieved. So little does Scripture (however represented) seem to me to justify that system of ecclesiastical doctrine and discipline. I answer your question because you bid me, but I am not a bit frightened at the idea of your becoming a R.C., however you may try to frighten me. You have too much intelligence and uprightness of intellect. We do hope you have enjoyed Rome, and that dearest Miss Agassiz (give our kind love to her) is better and looks better than we all thought her a little while ago. I have a book coming out in England called 'Casa Guidi Windows,' which will prevent everybody else (except you) from speaking to me again. Do love me always, as I shall you. Forgive me, and don't forget me. I shall try, after a space of calm, to behave better to you, and more after my heart—for I am ever (as Robert is)
Your faithfully affectionate friend,
Elizabeth B. Browning.
Venice: June 4, [1851].
My ever dearest Miss Mitford,—I must write to you from Venice, though it can only be a few lines. So much I have to say and feel in writing to you, and thinking that you were not well when you wrote last to me, I long to hear from you—and yet I can't tell you to-day where a letter will find me. We are wanderers on the face of the world just now, and with every desire of going straight from Venice to Milan to-morrow (Friday) week, we shall more probably, at the Baths of Recoaro, be lingering and lingering. Therefore will you write to the care of Miss Browning, New Cross, Hatcham, near London? for so I shall not lose your letter. I have been between heaven and earth since our arrival at Venice. The heaven of it is ineffable. Never had I touched the skirts of so celestial a place. The beauty of the architecture, the silver trails of water up between all that gorgeous colour and carving, the enchanting silence, the moonlight, the music, the gondolas—I mix it all up together, and maintain that nothing is like it, nothing equal to it, not a second Venice in the world. Do you know, when I came first I felt as if I never could go away. But now comes the earth side. Robert, after sharing the ecstasy, grows uncomfortable, and nervous, and unable to eat or sleep; and poor Wilson, still worse, in a miserable condition of continual sickness and headache. Alas for these mortal Venices—so exquisite and so bilious! Therefore I am constrained away from my joys by sympathy, and am forced to be glad that we are going off on Friday. For myself, it does not affect me at all. I like these moist, soft, relaxing climates; even the scirocco doesn't touch me much. And the baby grows gloriously fatter in spite of everything.
No, indeed and indeed, we are not going to England for the sake of the Exposition. How could you fancy such a thing, even once. In any case we shall not reach London till late, and if by any arrangement I could see my sister Arabel in France or on the coast of England, we would persuade Robert's family to meet us there, and not see London at all. Ah, if you knew how abhorrent the thought of England is to me! Well, we must not talk of it. My eyes shut suddenly when my thoughts go that way.
Tell me exactly how you are. I heartily rejoice that you have decided at last about the other house, so as to avoid the danger of another autumn and winter in the damp. Do you write still for Mr. Chorley's periodical, and how does it go on? Here in Italy the fame of it does not penetrate. As for Venice, you can't get even a 'Times,' much less an 'Athenæum.' We comfort ourselves by taking a box at the opera (the whole box on the ground tier, mind) for two shillings and eightpence English. Also, every evening at half-past eight, Robert and I are sitting under the moon in the great piazza of St. Mark, taking excellent coffee and reading the French papers. Can you fancy me so?
You will receive a copy of my new poem, 'Casa Guidi Windows,' soon after this note. I have asked Sarianna Browning to see that you receive it safely. I don't give away copies (having none to give away, according to booksellers' terms), but I can't let you receive my little book from another hand than the writer's. Tell me how you like the poem—honestly, truly—which numbers of people will be sure to dislike profoundly and angrily, perhaps. We think of going to Recoaro because Mr. Chorley praised it to us years ago. Tell him so if you write.
Here are a heap of words tossed down upon paper. I can't put the stops even. Do write about yourself, not waiting for the book.
Your ever attached
E.B.B.
At Paris how near we shall be! How sure to meet. Have you been to the Exposition yourself? Tell me. And what is the general feeling now?
Paris: July 7, [1851].
My dearest Mr. Kenyon,—I have waited day after day during this week that we have been here, to be able to tell you that we have decided this or that—but the indecision lasts, and I can't let you hear from others of our being in Paris when you have a right more than anybody almost to hear all about us. I wanted to write to you, indeed, from Venice, where we stayed a month, and much the same reason made me leave it undone, as we were making and unmaking plans the whole time, and we didn't know till the last few hours, for instance, whether or not we should go to Milan. Venice is quite exquisite; it wrapt me round with a spell at first sight, and I longed to live and die there—never to go away. The gondolas, and the glory they swim through, and the silence of the population, drifted over one's head across the bridges, and the fantastic architecture and the coffee-drinking and music in the Piazza San Marco, everything fitted into my lazy, idle nature and weakness of body, as if I had been born to the manner of it and to no other. Do you know I expected in Venice a dreary sort of desolation? Whereas there was nothing melancholy at all, only a soothing, lulling, rocking atmosphere which if Armida had lived in a city rather than in a garden would have suited her purpose. Indeed Taglioni seems to be resting her feet from dancing, there, with a peculiar zest, inasmuch as she has bought three or four of the most beautiful palaces. How could she do better? And one or two ex-kings and queens (of the more vulgar royalties) have wrapt themselves round with those shining waters to forget the purple—or dream of it, as the case may be. Robert and I led a true Venetian life, I assure you; we 'swam in gondolas' to the Lido and everywhere else, we went to a festa at Chioggia in the steamer (frightening Wilson by being kept out by the wind till two o'clock in the morning), we went to the opera and the play (at a shilling each, or not as much!), and we took coffee every evening on St. Mark's Piazza, to music and the stars. Altogether it would have been perfect, only what's perfect in the world? While I grew fat, Wilson grew thin, and Robert could not sleep at nights. The air was too relaxing or soft or something for them both, and poor Wilson declares that another month of Venice would have killed her outright. Certainly she looked dreadfully ill and could eat nothing. So I was forced to be glad to go away, out of pure humanity and sympathy, though I keep saying softly to myself ever since, 'What is there on earth like Venice?'
Then, we slept at Padua on St. Anthony's night (more's the pity for us: they made us pay sixteen zwanzigers for it!), and Robert and I, leaving Wiedeman at the inn, took a calèche and drove over to Arqua, which I had set my heart on seeing for Petrarch's sake. Did you ever see it, you? And didn't it move you, the sight of that little room where the great soul exhaled itself? Even Robert's man's eyes had tears in them as we stood there, and looked through the window at the green-peaked hills. And, do you know, I believe in 'the cat.'
Through Brescia we passed by moonlight (such a flood of white moonlight) and got into Milan in the morning. There we stayed two days, and I climbed to the topmost pinnacle of the cathedral; wonder at me! Indeed I was rather overtired, it must be confessed—three hundred and fifty steps—but the sight was worth everything, enough to light up one's memory for ever. How glorious that cathedral is! worthy almost of standing face to face with the snow Alps; and itself a sort of snow dream by an artist architect, taken asleep in a glacier! Then the Da Vinci Christ did not disappoint us, which is saying much. It is divine. And the Lombard school generally was delightful after Bologna and those soulless Caracci! I have even given up Guido, and Guercino too, since knowing more of them. Correggio, on the other hand, is sublime at Parma; he is wonderful! besides having the sense to make his little Christs and angels after the very likeness of my baby.
From Milan we moved to Como, steamed down to Menaggio (opposite to Bellaggio), took a calèche to Porlezza, and a boat to Lugano, another calèche to Bellinzona, left Wiedeman there, and, returning on our steps, steamed down and up again the Lago Maggiore, went from Bellinzona to Faido and slept, and crossed the Mount St. Gothard the next day, catching the Lucerne steamer at Fluellen. The scenery everywhere was most exquisite, but of the great pass I shall say nothing—it was like standing in the presence of God when He is terrible. The tears overflowed my eyes. I think I never saw the sublime before. Do you know I sate out in the coupé a part of the way with Robert so as to apprehend the whole sight better, with a thick shawl over my head, only letting out the eyes to see. They told us there was more snow than is customary at this time of year, and it well might be so, for the passage through it, cut for the carriage, left the snow-walls nodding over us at a great height on each side, and the cold was intense.
Do you know we might yield the palm, and that Lucerne is far finer than any of our Italian lakes? Even Robert had to confess it at once. I wanted to stay in Switzerland, but we found it wiser to hasten our steps and come to Paris; so we came. Yes, and we travelled from Strasburg to Paris in four-and-twenty hours, night and day, never stopping except for a quarter of an hour's breakfast and half an hour's dinner. So afraid I was of the fatigue for Wiedeman! But between the unfinished railroad and the diligence, there's a complication of risks of losing places just now, and we were forced to go the whole way in a breath or to hazard being three or four days on the road. So we took the coupé and resigned ourselves, and poor little babe slept at night and laughed in the day, and came into Paris as fresh in spirit as if just alighted from the morning star, screaming out with delight at the shops! Think of that child! Upon the whole he has enjoyed our journey as much as any one of us, observing and admiring; though Robert and Wilson will have it that some of his admiration of the scenery we passed through was pure affectation and acted out to copy ours. He cried out, clasping his hands, that the mountains were 'due'—meaning a great number. His love of beautiful buildings, of churches especially, no one can doubt about. When first he saw St. Mark's, he threw up his arms in wonder, and then, clasping them round Wilson's neck (she was carrying him), he kissed her in an ecstasy of joy. And that was after a long day's journey, when most other children would have been tired and fretful. But the sense of the beautiful is certainly very strong in him, little darling. He can't say the word 'church' yet, but when he sees one he begins to chant. Oh, he's a true Florentine in some things.
Well, now we are in Paris and have to forget the 'belle chiese;' we have beautiful shops instead, false teeth grinning at the corners of the streets, and disreputable prints, and fascinating hats and caps, and brilliant restaurants, and M. le Président in a cocked hat and with a train of cavalry, passing like a rocket along the boulevards to an occasional yell from the Red. Oh yes, and don't mistake me! for I like it all extremely, it's a splendid city—a city in the country, as Venice is a city in the sea. And I'm as much amused as Wiedeman, who stands in the street before the printshops (to Wilson's great discomfort) and roars at the lions. And I admire the bright green trees and gardens everywhere in the heart of the town. Surely it is a most beautiful city! And I like the restaurants more than is reasonable; dining à la carte, and mixing up one's dinner with heaps of newspapers, and the 'solution' by Emile de Girardin, who suggests that the next President should be a tailor. Moreover, we find apartments very cheap in comparison to what we feared, and we are in a comfortable quiet hotel, where it is possible, and not ruinous, to wait and look about one.
As to England—oh England—how I dread to think of it. We talk of going over for a short time, but have not decided when; yet it will be soon perhaps—it may. If it were not for my precious Arabel, I would not go; because Robert's family would come to him here, they say. But to give up Arabel is impossible. Henrietta is in Somersetshire; it is uncertain whether I shall see her, even in going, and she too might come to Paris this winter. And you will come—you promised, I think?...
I feel here near enough to England, that's the truth. I recoil from the bitterness of being nearer. Still, it must be thought of.
Dearest cousin, dearest friend, in all this pleasant journey we have borne you in mind, and gratefully! You must feel that without being told. I won't quite do like my Wiedeman, who every time he fires his gun (if it's twenty times in five minutes) says, 'Papa, papa,' because Robert gave him the gun, and the gratitude is as re-iterantly and loudly explosive. But one's thoughts may say what they please and as often as they please.
Arabel tells me that you are kind to the manner of my poem, though to the matter obdurate. Miss Mitford, too, says that it won't receive the sympathy proper to a home subject, because the English people don't care anything for the Italians now; despising them for their want of originality in Art! That's very good of the English people, really! I fear much that dear Miss Mitford has suffered seriously from the effects of the damp house last winter. What she says of herself makes me anxious about her.
Give my true love to dear Miss Bayley, and say how I repent in ashes for not having written to her. But she is large-hearted and will forgive me, and I shall make amends and send her sheet upon sheet. Barry Cornwall's letter to Robert, of course, delighted as well as honoured me. Does it appear in the new edition of his 'songs' &c.?
Mind, if ever I go to England I shall have no heart to go out of a very dark corner. I shall just see you and that's all. It's only Robert who is a patriot now, of us two. England, what with the past and the present, is a place of bitterness to me, bitter enough to turn all her seas round to wormwood! Airs and hearts, all are against me in England; yet don't let me be ungrateful. No love is forgotten or less prized, certainly not yours. Only I'm a citizeness of the world now, you see, and float loose.
God bless you, dearest Mr. Kenyon, prays
Your ever affectionate
Ba.
Robert's best love as always. He writes by this post to Mr. Procter. How beautifully Sarianna has corrected for the press my new poem! Wonderfully well, really. There is only one error of consequence, which I will ask you to correct in any copy you can—of 'rail' in the last line, to 'vail;' the allusion being of course to the Jewish temple—but as it is printed nobody can catch any meaning, I fear. They tell me that the Puseyite organ, the 'Guardian,' has been strong in attack. So best.
After a few weeks in Paris the travellers crossed over to England, which they had not seen for nearly five years. Their visit to London lasted about two months, from the end of July to the end of September, during which time they stayed in lodgings at 26 Devonshire Street.
26 Devonshire Street: Wednesday, [about August 1851].
My ever dearest Mrs. Martin,—I am not ungrateful after all, but I wanted to write a long letter to you (having much to say), and even now it is hard in this confusion to write a short one. We have been overwhelmed with kindnesses, crushed with gifts, like the Roman lady; and literally to drink through a cup of tea from beginning to end without an interruption from the door-bell, we have scarcely attained to since we came. For my part I refuse all dinner invitations except when our dear friend Mr. Kenyon 'imposes himself as an exception,' in his own words. But even in keeping the resolution there are necessary fatigues; and, do you know, I have not been well since our arrival in England. My first step ashore was into a puddle and a fog, and I began to cough before we reached London. The quality of the air does not agree with me, that's evident. For nearly five years I have had no such cough nor difficulty of breathing, and my friends, who at first sight thought me looking well, must forbear all compliments for the future, I think, I get so much paler every day. Next week we send Wilson to see her mother near Sheffield and the baby with her, which is a great stroke of fortitude in me; only what I can't bear is to see him crying because she is gone away. So we resolve on letting them both go together. When she returns, ten days or a fortnight after, we shall have to think of going to Paris again; indeed Robert begins to be nervous about me—which is nonsense, but natural enough perhaps.
In regard to Colwall, you are both, my very dear friends, the kindest that you can be. Ah, but dearest, dearest Mrs. Martin, you can understand, with the same kindness that you use to me in other things. There is only one event in my life which never loses its bitterness; which comes back on me like a retreating wave, going and coming again, which was and is my grief—I never had but one brother who loved and comprehended me. And so there is just one thought which would be unbearable if I went into your neighbourhood; and you won't set it down, I am sure, as unpardonable weakness, much less as affectation, if I confess to you that I never could bear it. The past would be too strong for me. As to Hope End, it is nothing. I have been happier in my own home since, than I was there and then. But Torquay has made the neighbourhood of Hope End impossible to me. I could not eat or sleep in that air. You will forgive me for the weakness, I am certain. You know a little, if not entirely, how we loved one another; how I was first with him, and he with me; while God knows that death and separation have no power over such love.
After all, we shall see you in Paris if not in England. We pass this winter in Paris, in the hope of my being able to bear the climate, for indeed Italy is too far. And if the winter does not disagree with me too much we mean to take a house and settle in Paris, so as to be close to you all, and that will be a great joy to me. You will pass through Paris this autumn (won't you?) on your way to Pau, and I shall see you. I do long to see you and make you know my husband....
So far from regretting my marriage, it has made the happiness and honour of my life; and every unkindness received from my own house makes me press nearer to the tenderest and noblest of human hearts proved by the uninterrupted devotion of nearly five years. Husband, lover, nurse—not one of these, has Robert been to me, but all three together. I neither regret my marriage, therefore, nor the manner of it, because the manner of it was a necessity of the act. I thought so at the time, I think so now; and I believe that the world in general will decide (if the world is to be really appealed to) that my opinion upon this subject (after five years) is worth more.
Dearest Mrs. Martin, do write to me. I keep my thoughts as far as I can from bitter things, and the affectionateness of my dearest sisters is indeed much on the other side. Also, we are both giddy with the kind attentions pressed on us from every side, from some of the best in England. It's hard to think at all in such a confusion. We met Tennyson (the Laureate) by a chance in Paris, who insisted that we should take possession of his house and servants at Twickenham and use them as long as we liked to stay in England. Nothing could be more warmly kind, and we accepted the note in which he gave us the right of possession for the sake of the generous autograph, though we never intended in our own minds to act out the proposition. Since then, Mr. Arnould, the Chancery barrister, has begged us to go and live in his town house (we don't want houses, you see); Mrs. Fanny Kemble called on and left us tickets for her Shakespeare reading (by the way, I was charmed with her 'Hamlet'); Mr. Forster, of the 'Examiner,' gave us a magnificent dinner at Thames Ditton in sight of the swans; and we breakfast on Saturday with Mr. Rogers. Then we have seen the Literary Guild actors at the Hanover Square rooms, and we have passed an evening with Carlyle (one of the great sights in England, to my mind). He is a very warm friend of Robert's, so that on every account I was delighted to see him face to face. I can't tell you what else we have done or not done. It's a great dazzling heap of things new and strange. Barry Cornwall (Mr. Procter) came to see us every day till business swept him out of town, and dear Mrs. Jameson left her Madonna for us in despite of the printers. Such kindness, on all sides. Ah, there's kindness in England after all. Yet I grew cold to the heart as I set foot on the ground of it, and wished myself away. Also, the sort of life is not perhaps the best for me and the sort of climate is really the worst.
You heard of Mr. Kenyon's goodness to us; I told Arabel to tell you.
But I must end here. Another time I will talk of Paris, which I do hope will suit us as a residence. I was quite well there, the three weeks we stayed, and am far from well just now. You see, the weight of the atmosphere, which seems to me like lead, combined with the excitement, is too much at once. Oh, it won't be very bad, I dare say. I mean to try to be quiet, and abjure for the future the night air.
I should not omit to tell you in this quantity of egotism that my husband's father and sister have received me most affectionately. She is highly accomplished, with a heart to suit the head.
Now do write. Let me hear all about you, and how dear Mr. Martin and yourself are. Robert's cordial regards with those of
Your ever affectionate and ever grateful
Ba.
26 Devonshire Street: Saturday, [about August 1851].
My dearest Mrs. Martin,—Day by day, and hour by hour almost, I have wanted to thank you again and again for your remedy (which I did not use, by the bye, being much better), and to answer your inquiry about me, which really I could not deliver over to Arabel to answer; but the baby did not go to the country with Wilson, and I have been 'devoted' since she went away; une âme perdue, with not an instant out of the four-and-twenty hours to call my own. It appeared, at the last, that Wilson would have a drawback to her enjoyments in having the child, and I did not choose that: she had only a fortnight, you see, after five years, to be with her family. So I took her place with him; it was necessary, for he was in a state of deplorable grief when he missed her, and has refused ever since to allow any human being except me to do a single thing for him. I hold him in my arms at night, dress and wash him in the morning, walk out with him, and am not allowed either to read or write above three minutes at a time. He has learnt to say in English 'No more,' and I am bound to be obedient. Perhaps I may make out five minutes just to write this, for he is playing in the passage with a child of the house, but even so much is doubtful. He has made very good friends with a girl here, and Arabel has sent her maid ever so often to tempt him away for half an hour, so as to give me breathing time, but he won't be tempted: he has it in his head that the world is in a conspiracy against him to take 'mama' away after having taken 'Lily,' and he is bound to resist it.
After all, the place of nursery maid is more suitable to me than that of poetess (or even poet's wife) in this obstreperous London. I was nearly killed the first weeks, what with the climate, and what with the kindness (and what with the want of kindness), and looked wretchedly, whether Reynolds Peyton saw it or not, and coughed day and night, till Robert took fright, and actually fixed a day for taking me forthwith back to Paris. I had to give up a breakfast at Rogers', and shut myself up in two rooms for a week, and refuse, like Wiedeman, to be tempted out anywhere, but, after that, I grew better, and the wind changed, and now the cough, though not gone, is quieted, and I look a different person, and have ceased to grow thin. But a racketing life will never do for me, nor an English atmosphere, I am much afraid. The lungs seem to labour in this heavy air. Oh, it is so unlike the air of the Continent; I say nothing of Florence, but even of Paris, where I do wish to be able to live, on account of the nearness to this dear detestable England.
Now let me tell you of Wimpole Street. Henry has been very kind in coming not infrequently; he has a kind, good heart. Occy, too, I have seen three or four times, Alfred and Sette once. My dearest Arabel is, of course, here once if not twice a day, and for hours at a time, bringing me great joy always, and Henrietta's dear kindness in coming to London on purpose to see me, for a week, has left a perfume in my life. Both those beloved sisters have been, as ever, perfect to me. Arabel is vexed just now, and so am I, my brothers having fixed with papa to go out of town directly, and she caring more to stay where I am....
I have not written to papa since our arrival through my fear of involving Arabel; but as soon as they go to the country I shall hopelessly write. He is very well and in good spirits, thank God.
We have spent two days at New Cross with my husband's father and sister, and she has been here constantly. Most affectionate they are to me, and the babe is taken into adoration by Mr. Browning.
But here he is upon me again! Indeed, I have had wonderful luck in having been able to write all this; and now, God bless both of you, my dearest friends. Oh, I do feel to my heart all your kindness in wishing to have us with you, and, indeed, Robert would like to see Herefordshire, but—
[The remainder of this letter is wanting]
26 Devonshire Street: Wednesday, [September 1851].
My dearest Mrs. Martin,—I write in haste to you to tell you some things which you should hear without delay.
After Robert's letter to George had been sent three times to Wales and been returned twice, it reached him, and immediately upon its reaching him (to do George justice) he wrote a kind reply to apprise us that he would be at our door the same evening. So the night before last he came, and we are all good friends, thank God. I tenderly love him and the rest, and must for ever deplore that such poor barriers as a pedantic pride can set up should have interposed between long and strong and holy affections for years. But it is past, and I have been very happy in being held in his arms again, and seen in his eyes that I was still something more to him than a stone thrown away. So, if you have thought severely of him, you and dear Mr. Martin, do not any longer. Preserve your friendship for him, my dearest friends, and let all this foolish mistaken past be well past and forgotten. I think him looking thin, though it does not strike them so in Wimpole Street, certainly.
For the rest, the pleasantness is not on every side. It seemed to me right, notwithstanding that dear Mr. Kenyon advised against it, to apprise my father of my being in England. I could not leave England without trying the possibility of his seeing me once, of his consenting to kiss my child once. So I wrote, and Robert wrote. A manly, true, straightforward letter his was, yet in some parts so touching to me and so generous and conciliating everywhere, that I could scarcely believe in the probability of its being read in vain. In reply he had a very violent and unsparing letter, with all the letters I had written to papa through these five years sent back unopened, the seals unbroken. What went most to my heart was that some of the seals were black with black-edged envelopes; so that he might have thought my child or husband dead, yet never cared to solve the doubt by breaking the seal. He said he regretted to have been forced to keep them by him until now, through his ignorance of where he should send them. So there's the end. I cannot, of course, write again. God takes it all into His own hands, and I wait.
We go on Tuesday. If I do not see you (as I scarcely hope to do now), it will be only a gladness delayed for a few months. We shall meet in Paris if we live. May God bless you both, dearest friends! I think of you and love you. Dear Mr. Martin, don't stay too late in England this year, for the climate seems to me worse than ever. Not that I have much cough now—I am much better—but the quality of the atmosphere is unmistakable to my lungs and air passages, and I believe it will be wise, on this account, to go away quickly.
Your ever affectionate and grateful
Ba.
To Miss E.F. Haworth[2]
London: September 24, 1851.
My dear Miss Haworth,—I do hope you have not set us quite on the outside of your heart with the unfeeling and ungrateful. I say 'us' when I ought to have said 'me,' for you have known Robert, and you have not known me, and I am naturally less safe with you than he is—less safe in your esteem. We should both have gone to inquire after your health if he had not been attacked with influenza, and unfit for anything until the days you mentioned as the probable term of your remaining in town had passed. I waited till he should be better, and the malady lingered. Now he is well, and I do hope you may be so too. May it be! Bear us in mind and love, for we go away to-morrow to Paris—where, however, we shall expect you before long. Thank you, thank you, for the books. I have been struck and charmed with some things in the 'Companion'—especially, may I say, with the 'Modern Pygmalion,' which catches me on my weak side of the love of wonder. By the way, what am I to say of Swedenborg and mesmerism? So much I could—the books have so drawn and held me (as far as I was capable of being drawn or held, in this chaos of London)—that I will not speak at all. The note-page is too small—the haste I write in, too great.
God bless you, and good bye. Robert bids me give you his love (of the earnestest), and I have leave from you (have I not?) to be always affectionately yours,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
The journey to Paris was effected at the end of September, and for about nine months they pitched their tent at No. 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées. It was a fortunate time to be in Paris for those who had no personal nervousness, and liked to be near the scene of great events—a most anxious time for any who were alarmed at disturbances, or took keenly to heart the horrors of street fighting. Fortunately for the Brownings, they, whether by temperament or through their Italian experiences, were not unduly disturbed at revolutions, while the horrors of Louis Napoleon's coup d'état were, no doubt, only partly known to Mrs. Browning at the time, and were palliated to her by the view she took of Napoleon's character. She had not, it is true, raised him as yet to the pinnacle on which his intervention on behalf of Italy subsequently caused her to place him, but (perhaps owing to what Mr. Kenyon called her 'immoral sympathy with power') she was always disposed to put a favourable construction on his actions, and the coup d'état was finally whitewashed for her by the approbation which the plébiscite of December 20 gave to his assumption of supreme power. Her views are, however, so fully set forth in her own letters that they need not be detailed here. For her husband's opinion of the character of Louis Napoleon, at least as it appeared to him when looking back after the lapse of years, it is only necessary to refer to 'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.'
To Mrs. Jameson
[Paris,] 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:
October 21, [1851].
But didn't you, dearest friend, get 'Casa Guidi' and the portrait of Madme de Goethe, left for you in the London house? I felt a want of leaving a word of adieu with these, and then the chaotic confusion in which we left England stifled the better purpose out of me.
With such mixed feelings I went away. Leaving love behind is always terrible, but it was not all love that I left, and there was relief in the state of mind with which I threw myself on the sofa at Dieppe—yes, indeed. Robert felt differently from me for once, as was natural, for it had been pure joy to him with his family and his friends, and I do believe he would have been capable of never leaving England again, had such an arrangement been practicable for us on some accounts. Oh England! I love and hate it at once. Or rather, where love of country ought to be in the heart, there is the mark of the burning iron in mine, and the depth of the scar shows the depth of the root of it. Well, I am writing you an amusing letter to-day, I think. After all, I wasn't made to live in England, or I should not cough there perpetually; while no sooner do I get to Paris than the cough vanishes—it is all but gone now. The lightness of the air here makes the place tenable—so far, at least. We made many an effort to get an apartment near the Madeleine, but we had to sacrifice sun or money, or breath, in going up to the top of a house, and the sacrifice seemed too great upon consideration, and we came off to the 'Avenue des Champs-Elysées,' on the sunshiny side of the way, to a southern aspect, and pretty cheerful carpeted rooms—a drawing room, a dressing and writing room for Robert, a small dining room, two comfortable bedrooms and a third bedroom upstairs for the femme de service, kitchen, &c., for two hundred francs a month. Not too dear, we think. About the same that we paid, out of the season, in London for the miserable accommodation we had there. But perhaps you won't come near us now; we may be too much 'out of the way' for you. Is it so indeed? Understand that close by us is a stand of coupés and fiacres, not to profane your ears with the mention of the continual stream of omnibuses by means of which you may reach the other end of Paris for six sous. And there might be a possibility of taking a small apartment for you in this very house. See how I castle-build.
But if the Crystal Palace vanishes from the face of the earth, who shall trust any more in castles? Will they really pull it down, do you think? If it's a bubble, it's a glass bubble, and not meant, therefore, for bursting in the air, it seems to me. And you do want a place in England for sculpture, and also to show people how olives grow. What a beautiful winter garden it would be! But they will pull it down, perhaps; and then, the last we shall have seen of it will be in this description of your letter, and that's seeing it worthily, too.
We were from home last night; we went to Lady Elgin's reception, and met a Madame Mohl, who was entertaining, and is to come to us this morning—
She came as I wrote those words. She knows you, among her other advantages, and we have been talking of you, dear friend, and we are going to her on Friday evening to see some of the French. I shall have to go to prison very soon, I suppose, as usual, for the winter months, for here is the twenty-first of October, though this is the first fire we have had occasion for. It was colder this morning, but we have had exquisite weather, really, ever since we left England.
The 'elf' is flourishing in all good fairyhood, with a scarlet rose leaf on each cheek. Wilson says she never knew him to have such an irreproachable appetite. He is charmed with Paris, and its magnificent Punches, and roundabouts, and balloons—which last he says, looking up after them gravely, 'go to God.' The child has curious ideas about theology already. He is of opinion that God 'lives among the birds.' He has taken to calling himself 'Peninni,'[3] which sounds something like a fairy's name, though he means it for 'Wiedeman.'
Robert is in good spirits, and inclined to like Paris increasingly. Do you know I think you have an idea in England that you monopolise comforts, and I, for one, can't admit it. These snug 'apartments' exclude the draughty passages and staircases, which threaten your life every time that you run to your bedroom for a pocket-handkerchief in England. I much prefer the Continental houses to the English ones, both for winter and summer, on this account.
So glad I am that you are nearly at the end of your work. To rest after work, what more than rest that always is!
Write to us often—do! We are not in Italy, and you have no excuse for even seeming to forget us. We are full in sight still, remember.
Are you aware that Carlyle travelled with us to Paris? He left a deep impression with me. It is difficult to conceive of a more interesting human soul, I think. All the bitterness is love with the point reversed. He seems to me to have a profound sensibility—so profound and turbulent that it unsettles his general sympathies. Do you guess what I mean the least in the world? or is it as dark as my writings are of course?
I hope on every account you will have no increase of domestic care. How is Miss Procter? How kind everybody was to us in England, and how affectionately we remember it! God bless you yourself! We love you for the past and the present, besides the future in December.
Your attached
E.B.B.
[Paris,] 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:
October 22, [1851].
The pause in writing has come from the confusion in living, my ever dearest Miss Mitford, and no worse cause. It was a long while before we could settle ourselves in a private apartment, and we had to stay at the hotel and wander about like doves turned out of the dove-cote, and seeking where to inhabit.... We have seen nothing in Paris, except the shell of it, yet. No theatres—nothing but business. Yet two evenings ago we hazarded going to a 'reception' at Lady Elgin's, in the Faubourg St. Germain, and saw some French, but nobody of distinction. It is a good house, I believe, and she has an earnest face which must mean something. We were invited, and are invited to go every Monday, and that Monday in particular, between eight and twelve. You go in a morning dress, and there is tea. Nothing can be more sans façon, and my tremors (for, do you know, I was quite nervous on the occasion, and charged Robert to keep close to me) were perfectly unjustified by the event. You see it was an untried form of society—like trying a Turkish bath. I expected to see Balzac's duchesses and hommes de lettres on all sides of me, but there was nothing very noticeable, I think, though we found it agreeable enough. We go on Friday evening to a Madame Mohl's, where we are to have some of the 'celebrities,' I believe, for she seems to know everybody of all colours, from white to red. Then Mazzini is to give us a letter to George Sand—come what will, we must have a letter to George Sand—and Robert has one to Emile Lorquet of the 'National,' and Gavarni of the 'Charivari,' so that we shall manage to thrust our heads into this atmosphere of Parisian journalism, and learn by experience how it smells. I hear that George Sand is seldom at Paris now. She has devoted herself to play-writing, and employs a houseful of men, her son's friends and her own, in acting privately with her what she writes—trying it on a home stage before she tries it at Paris. Her son is a very ordinary young man of three-and-twenty, but she is fond of him....
Never expect me to agree with you in that cause célèbre of 'ladies and gentlemen' against people of letters. I don't like the sort of veneer which passes in society—yes, I like it, but I don't love it. I know what the thing is worth as a matter of furniture-accomplishment, and there an end. I should rather look at the scratched silent violin in the corner, with the sense that music has come out of it or will come. I am grateful to the man who has written a good book, and I recognise reverently that the roots of it are in him. And, do you know, I was not disappointed at all in what I saw of writers of books in London; no, not at all. Carlyle, for instance, I liked infinitely more in his personality than I expected to like him, and I saw a great deal of him, for he travelled with us to Paris and spent several evenings with us, we three together. He is one of the most interesting men I could imagine even, deeply interesting to me; and you come to understand perfectly, when you know him, that his bitterness is only melancholy, and his scorn sensibility. Highly picturesque too he is in conversation. The talk of writing men is very seldom as good.
And, do you know, I was much taken, in London, with a young authoress, Geraldine Jewsbury. You have read her books. There's a French sort of daring, half-audacious power in them, but she herself is quiet and simple, and drew my heart out of me a good deal. I felt inclined to love her in our half-hour's intercourse. And I liked Lady Eastlake too in another way, the 'lady' of the 'Letters from the Baltic,' nay, I liked her better than the 'lady'....
Do write to me and tell me of your house, whether you are settling down in it comfortably[4]. In every new house there's a good deal of bird's work in treading and shuffling down the loose sticks and straws, before one can feel it is to be a nest. Robert laughs at me sometimes for pushing about the chairs and tables in a sort of distracted way, but it's the very instinct of making a sympathetical home, that works in me. We were miserably off in London. I couldn't tuck myself in anyhow. And we enjoy in proportion these luxurious armchairs, so good for the Lollards.
People say that the troops which pass before our windows every few days through the 'Arc de l'Étoile' to be reviewed will bring the President back with them as 'emperor' some sunny morning not far off. As to waiting till May, nobody expects it. There is a great inward agitation, but the surface of things is smooth enough. Be constant, be constant! Constancy is a rare virtue even where it is not an undeniable piece of wisdom. Vive Napoleon II.!
As to the book, ah, you are always, and have always been, too good to me, that's quite certain; and if you are not too good to my husband, it is only because I am persuaded in my secret soul nobody can be too good to him.
He sends you his warm regards, and I send you a kiss of baby's, who is finishing his Babylonish education, unfortunate child, by learning a complement of French. I assure you he understands everything you can say to him in English as well as Italian, so that he won't be utterly denationalised.
God bless you. Say how you are and write soon.
Your ever affectionate
E.B.B.
[Paris,] 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:
November 12, 1851.
I see your house, my beloved friend, and clap my hands for pleasure. It will suit you admirably, I see, plainly from Paris, and how right you are about the pretty garden, not to make it fine and modern; you have the right instincts about such things, and are too strong for Mrs. Loudon and the landscape gardeners. The only defect apparent to me at this distance is the size of the sitting room.... If you were to see what we call 'an apartment' in Paris! We have just a slip of a kitchen, and no passage, no staircase to take up the space, which is altogether spent upon sitting and sleeping rooms. Talk of English comforts! It's a national delusion. The comfort of the Continental way of life has only to be tested to be recognised (with the exception of the locks of doors and windows, which are barbaric here, there's no other word for it). The economy of a habitation is understood in Paris. You have the advantages of a large house without the disadvantages, without the coldness, without the dearness. And the beds, chairs, and sofas are perfect things.
But the climate is not perfect, it seems, for we have had very cold weather the last ten days, and I am a prisoner as usual. Our friends swear to us that it is exceptional weather and that it will be warmer presently, and I listen with a sort of 'doubtful doubt' worthy of a metaphysician. It is some comfort to hear that it's below zero in London meanwhile, and that Scotland stands eight feet deep in snow.
We have a letter for George Sand (directed à Madame George Sand) from Mazzini, and we hear that she is to be in Paris within twelve days. Then we must make a rush and present it, for her stay here is not likely to be long, and I would not miss seeing her for a great deal, though I have not read one of her late dramas, and only by faith understand that her wonderful genius has conquered new kingdoms. Her last romance, 'Le Château des Déserts,' is treated disdainfully in the 'Athenæum.' I have not read that even, but Mr. Chorley is apt to be cold towards French writers and I don't expect his judgment as final therefore. Have you seen M. de la Mare's correspondence with Mirabeau? And do you ever catch sight of the 'Revue des Deux Mondes'? In the August number is an excellent and most pleasant article on my husband, elaborately written and so highly appreciatory as well nigh to satisfy me.[5] 'Set you down this' that there has sprung up in France lately an ardent admiration of the present English schools of poetry, or rather of the poetry produced by the present English schools, which they consider an advance upon the poetry of the ages. Think of this, you English readers who are still wearing broad hems and bombazeens for the Byron and Scott glorious days!
Let me think what I can tell you of the President. I have never seen his face, though he has driven past me in the boulevards, and past these windows constantly, but it is said that he is very like his portraits—and, yes, rumour and the gazettes speak of his riding well. Wilson and Wiedeman had an excellent view of him the other day as he turned into a courtyard to pay some visit, and she tells me that his carriage was half full of petitions and nosegays thrown through the windows. What a fourth act of a play we are in just now! It is difficult to guess at the catastrophe. Certainly he must be very sure of his hold on the people to propose repealing the May edict,[6] and yet there are persons who persist in declaring that nobody cares for him and that even a revision of the constitution will not bring about his re-election. I am of an opposite mind; though there is not much overt enthusiasm of the population in behalf of his person. Still, this may arise from a quiet resolve to keep him where he is, and an assurance that he can't be ousted in spite of the people and army. It is significant, I think, that Emile de Girardin should stretch out a hand (a little dirty, be it observed in passing), and that Lamartine, after fasting nineteen days and nights (a miraculous fast, without fear of the 'prefect'), should murmur a 'credo' in favour of his honesty. As to honesty, 'I do believe he's honest;' that is to say, he has acted out no dishonesty as yet, and we have no right to interpret doubtful texts into dishonorable allegations. But for ambition—for ambition! Answer from the depth of your conscience, 'de profundis.' Is he or is he not an ambitious man? Does he or does he not mean in his soul to be Napoleon the Second? Yes, yes—I think, you think, we all think.
Robert's father and sister have been paying us a visit during the last three weeks. They are very affectionate to me, and I love them for his sake and their own, and am very sorry at the thought of losing them, which we are on the point of doing. We hope, however, to establish them in Paris if we can stay, and if no other obstacle should arise before the spring, when they must leave Hatcham. Little Wiedeman draws; as you may suppose, he is adored by his grandpapa; and then, Robert! they are an affectionate family and not easy when removed one from another. Sarianna is full of accomplishment and admirable sense, even-tempered and excellent in all ways—devoted to her father as she was to her mother: indeed, the relations of life seem reversed in their case, and the father appears the child of the child....
Perhaps you have not seen Eugène Sue's 'Mystères de Paris'—and I am not deep in the first volume yet. Fancy the wickedness and stupidity of trying to revive the distinctions and hatreds of race between the Gauls and Franks. The Gauls, please to understand, are the 'prolétaires,' and the capitalists are the Frank invaders (call them Cosaques, says Sue) out of the forests of Germany!...
I saw no Mr. Harness; and no Talfourd of any kind. The latter was a kind of misadventure, as Lady Talfourd was on the point of calling on me when Robert would not let her. We were going away just then. Mr. Horne I had the satisfaction of seeing several times—you know how much regard I feel for him. One evening he had the kindness to bring his wife miles upon miles just to drink tea with us, and we were to have spent a day with them somehow, half among the fields, but engagements came betwixt us adversely. She is less pretty and more interesting than I expected—looking very young, her black glossy hair hanging down her back in ringlets; with deep earnest eyes, and a silent listening manner. He was full of the 'Household Words,' and seems to write articles together with Dickens—which must be highly unsatisfactory, as Dickens's name and fame swallow up every sort of minor reputation in the shadow of his path. I shouldn't like, for my part (and if I were a fish), to herd with crocodiles. But I suppose the 'Household Words' pay—and that's a consideration. 'Claudie' I have not read. We have only just subscribed to a library, and we have been absorbed a good deal by our visitors....
Write and don't leave off loving me. I will tell you of everybody noticeable whom I happen to see, and of George Sand among the first.
Love your ever affectionate
Ba.
[Paris,] 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:
December 10, [1851].
I receive your letter, dearest friend, and hasten to write a few brief words to save the post.
We have suffered neither fear nor danger—and I would not have missed the grand spectacle of the second of December[7] for anything in the world—scarcely, I say, for the sight of the Alps.
On the only day in which there was much fighting (Thursday), Wiedeman was taken out to walk as usual, under the precaution of keeping in the immediate neighbourhood of this house. This will prove to you how little we have feared for ourselves.
But the natural emotion of the situation one could not escape from, and on Thursday night I sate up in my dressing gown till nearly one, listening to the distant firing from the boulevards. Thursday was the only day in which there was fighting of any serious kind. There has been no resistance on the part of the real people—nothing but sympathy for the President, I believe, if you except the natural mortification and disappointment of baffled parties. To judge from our own tradespeople: 'il a bien fait! c'est le vrai neveu de son oncle!' such phrases rung on every tone expressed the prevailing sentiment.
For my own part I have not only more hope in the situation but more faith in the French people than is ordinary among the English, who really try to exceed one another in discoloration and distortion of the circumstances. The government was in a deadlock—what was to be done? Yes, all parties cried out, 'What was to be done?' and felt that we were waist deep a fortnight ago in a state of crisis. In throwing back the sovereignty from a 'representative assembly' which had virtually ceased to represent, into the hands of the people, I think that Louis Napoleon did well. The talk about 'military despotism' is absolute nonsense. The French army is eminently civic, and nations who take their ideas from the very opposite fact of a standing army are far from understanding how absolutely a French soldier and French citizen are the same thing. The independence of the elections seems to be put out of reach of injury; and intelligent men of adverse opinions to the government think that the majority will be large in its favour. Such a majority would certainly justify Louis Napoleon, or should—even with you in England.
I think you quite understate the amount of public virtue in France. The difficulties of statesmanship here are enormous. I do not accuse even M. Thiers of want of public virtue. What he has wanted, has been length and breadth of view—purely an intellectual defect—and his petty, puny tracasseries destroyed the Republican Assembly just as it destroyed the throne of Louis Philippe, in spite of his own intentions.
There is a conflict of ideas in France, which we have no notion of in England, but we ought to understand that it does not involve the failing of principle, in the elemental moral sense. Be just to France, dear friend, you who are more than an Englishwoman—a Mrs. Jameson!
Everything is perfectly tranquil in Paris, I assure you—theatres full and galleries open as usual. At the same time, timid and discouraged persons say, 'Wait till after the elections,' and of course the public emotion will be a good deal excited at that time. Therefore, judge for yourself. For my own part I have not had the slightest cause for alarm of any kind—and there is my child! Judge....
The weather is exquisite, and I am going out to walk directly. It is scarcely possible to bear a fire, and some of our friends sit with the window open. We are all well.
This should have gone to you yesterday, but we had visitors who talked past post time. The delay, however, has allowed of my writing more than I meant to have done in beginning this letter. Robert's best love.
Your ever affectionate
Ba.
Robert says that according to the impression of the wisest there can be no danger. Don't wait till after the elections. The time is most interesting, and it is well worth your while to come and see for yourself.
[Paris,] 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:
December 11, [1851].
To show how alive I am, dearest Mrs. Martin, I will tell you that I have just come home from a long walk to the Tuileries. We took a carriage to return, that's true. Then yesterday I was out, besides, and last Saturday, the 6th, we drove down the boulevards to see the field of action on the terrible Thursday (the only day on which there was any fighting of consequence), counting the holes in the walls bored by the cannon, and looking at the windows smashed in. Even then, though the asphalte was black with crowds, the quiet was absolute, and most of the shops reopened. On Sunday the theatres were as full as usual, and our Champs-Elysées had quite its complement of promenaders. Wiedeman's prophecy had not been carried out, any more than the prophecies of the wiser may—the soldiers had not shot Punch.
And now I do beg you not to be down-hearted. See, if French blood runs in your veins, that you don't take a pedantic view of this question like an Englishwoman. Constitutional forms and essential principles of liberty are so associated in England, that they are apt to be confounded, and are, in fact, constantly confounded. For my part, I am too good a democrat to be afraid of being thrown back upon the primitive popular element, from impossible paper constitutions and unrepresenting representative assemblies. The situation was in a deadlock, and all the conflicting parties were full of dangerous hope of taking advantage of it; and I don't see, for my part, what better could be done for the French nation than to sweep the board clear and bid them begin again. With no sort of prejudice in favour of Louis Napoleon (except, I confess to you, some artistical admiration for the consummate ability and courage shown in his coup d'état), with no particular faith in the purity of his patriotism, I yet hold him justified so far, that is, I hold that a pure patriot would be perfectly justifiable in taking the same steps which up to this moment he has taken. He has broken, certainly, the husk of an oath, but fidelity to the intention of it seems to me reconcilable with the breach; and if he had not felt that he had the great mass of the people to back him, he is at least too able a man, be certain, if not too honest a man, to have dared what he has dared. You will see the result of the elections. As to Paris, don't believe that Paris suffers violence from Louis Napoleon. The result of my own impressions is a conviction that from the beginning he had the sympathy of the whole population here with him, to speak generally, and exclusively of particular parties. All our tradespeople, for instance, milkman, breadman, wine merchant, and the rest, yes, even the shrewd old washerwoman, and the concierge, and our little lively servant were in a glow of sympathy and admiration. 'Mais, c'est le vrai neveu de son oncle! il est admirable! enfin la patrie sera sauvée.' The bourgeoisie has now accepted the situation, it is admitted on all hands. 'Scandalous adhesion!' say some. 'Dreadful apathy!' say others. Don't you say either one or the other, or I think you will be unjust to Paris and France.
The French people are very democratical in their tendencies, but they must have a visible type of hero-worship, and they find it in the bearer of that name Napoleon. That name is the only tradition dear to them, and it is deeply dear. That a man bearing it, and appealing at the same time to the whole people upon democratical principles, should be answered from the heart of the people, should neither astonish, nor shame, nor enrage anybody.
An editor of the 'National,' a friend of ours, feels this so much, that he gnashes his teeth over the imprudence of the extreme Reds, who did not set themselves to trample out the fires of Buonapartism while they had some possibility of doing it. 'Ce peuple a la tête dure,' said he vehemently.
As to military despotism, would France bear that, do you think? Is the French army, besides, made after the fashion of standing armies, such as we see in other countries? Are they not eminently civic, flesh of the people's flesh? I fear no military despotism for France, oh, none. Every soldier is a citizen, and every citizen is or has been a soldier.
Altogether, instead of despairing, I am full of hope. It seems to me probable that the door is open to a wider and calmer political liberty than France has yet enjoyed. Let us wait.
The American forms of republicanism are most uncongenial to this artistic people; but democratical institutions will deepen and broaden, I think, even if we should soon all be talking of the 'Empire.'
As to the repressive measures, why, grant the righteousness of the movement, and you must accept its conditions. Don't believe the tremendous exaggerations you are likely to hear on all sides—don't, I beseech you.
The President rode under our windows on December 2, through a shout extending from the Carrousel to the Arc de l'Etoile. The troups poured in as we stood and looked. No sight could be grander, and I would not have missed it, not for the Alps, I say.
You say nothing specific. How I should like to know why exactly you are out of spirits, and whether dear Mr. Martin is sad too. Robert and I have had some domestic émeutes, because he hates some imperial names; yet he confessed to me last night that the excessive and contradictory nonsense he had heard among Legitimists, Orleanists, and English, against the movement inclined him almost to a revulsion of feeling.
I would have written to you to-day, even if I had not received your letter. You will forgive that what I have written should have been scratched in the utmost haste to save the post. I can't even read it over. There's the effect of going out to walk the first thing in the morning....
Your ever affectionate
Ba—to both of you.
[Paris,] 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:
Christmas Eve, [1851].
What can you have thought of me? That I was shot or deserved to be? Forgive in the first instance, dearest friend, and believe that I won't behave so any more, if in any way I can help it.
Tell me your thought now about L. Napoleon. He rode under our windows on December 2 through an immense shout from the Carrousel to the Arc de l'Etoile. There was the army and the sun of Austerlitz, and even I thought it one of the grandest of sights; for he rode there in the name of the people, after all....
But we know men most opposed to him, writers of the old 'Presse' and 'National,' and Orleanists, and Legitimists, and the fury of all such I can scarcely express to you after the life. Emile de Girardin and his friends had a sublime scheme of going over in a body to England, and establishing a Socialist periodical, inscribing on their new habitation, 'Ici c'est la France.' He actually advertised for sale his beautiful house close by in the Champs-Elysées, asked ten thousand pounds (English) for it; and would have been 'rather disappointed,' as one of his sympathising friends confessed to us, if the offer had been accepted. I heard a good story the other day. A lady visitor was groaning politically to Madame de Girardin over the desperateness of the situation. 'Il n'y a que Celui, qui est en haut, qui peut nous en tirer,' said she, casting up her eyes. 'Oui, c'est vrai,' replied Madame, 'il le pourrait, lui,' glancing towards the second floor, where Emile was at work upon feuilletons. Not that she mistakes him habitually for her deity, by any manner of means, if scandal is to be listened to.
I hear that Lamennais is profoundly disgusted. He said to a friend of ours, that the French people were 'putrefied to the heart.' Which means that they have one tradition still dear to them (the name of Napoleon) and that they put no faith in the Socialistic prophets. Wise or unwise they may be accordingly; but an affection and an apprehension can't reasonably be said to amount to a 'putrefaction,' I think. No, indeed.
Louis Napoleon is said to say (a bitter foe of his told me this) that 'there will be four phases of his life.' The first was all rashness and imprudence, but 'it was necessary to make him known:' the second, 'the struggle with and triumph over anarchy:' the third, 'the settlement of France and the pacification of Europe:' the fourth, a coup de pistolet. Se non è vero, è ben trovato. Nothing is more likely than the catastrophe in any case; and the violence of the passions excited in the minority makes me wonder at his surviving a day even. Do you know I heard your idol of a Napoleon (the antique hero) called the other evening through a black beard and gnashing teeth, 'le plus grand scélérat du monde,' and his empire, 'le règne du Satan,' and his marshals, 'les coquins.' After that, I won't tell you that 'le neveu' is reproached with every iniquity possible to anybody's public and private life. Perhaps he is not 'sans reproche' in respect to the latter, not altogether; but one can't believe, and oughtn't, even infinitesimally, the things which are talked on the subject....
Ah, I am so vexed about George Sand. She came, she has gone, and we haven't met! There was a M. François who pretended to be her very very particular friend, and who managed the business so particularly ill, from some motive or some incapacity, that he did not give us an opportunity of presenting our letter. He did not 'dare' to present it for us, he said. She is shy—she distrusts bookmaking strangers, and she intended to be incognita while in Paris. He proposed that we should leave it at the theatre, and Robert refused. Robert said he wouldn't have our letter mixed up with the love letters of the actresses, or perhaps given to the 'premier comique' to read aloud in the green room, as a relief to the 'Chère adorable,' which had produced so much laughter. Robert was a little proud and M. François very stupid; and I, between the two, in a furious state of dissent from either. Robert tries to smooth down my ruffled plumage now, by promising to look out for some other opportunity, but the late one has gone. She is said to have appeared in Paris in a bloom of recovered beauty and brilliancy of eyes, and the success of her play, 'Le Mariage de Victorine,' was complete. A strange, wild, wonderful woman, certainly. While she was here, she used a bedroom which belongs to her son—a mere 'chambre de garçon'—and for the rest, saw whatever friends she chose to see only at the 'café,' where she breakfasted and dined. She has just finished a romance, we hear, and took fifty-two nights to write it. She writes only at night. People call her Madame Sand. There seems to be no other name for her in society or letters.
Now listen. Alexandre Dumas does write his own books, that's a fact. You know I always maintained it, through the odour of Dumas in the books, but people swore the contrary with great foolish oaths worth nothing. Maquet prepares historical materials, gathers together notes, and so on, but Dumas writes every word of his books with his own hand, and with a facility amounting to inspiration, said my informant. He called him a great savage negro child. If he has twenty sous and wants bread, he buys a pretty cane instead. For the rest, 'bon enfant,' kind and amiable. An inspired negro child! In debt at this moment, after all the sums he has made, said my informant—himself a most credible witness and highly cultivated man.
I heard of Eugène Sue, too, yesterday. Our child is invited to a Christmas tree and party, and Robert says he is too young to go, but I persist in sending him for half an hour with Wilson—oh, really I must—though he will be by far the youngest of the thirty children invited. The lady of the house, Miss Fitton, an English resident in Paris, an elderly woman, shrewd and kind, said to Robert that she had a great mind to have Eugène Sue, only he was so scampish. I think that was the word, or something alarmingly equivalent. Now I should like to see Eugène Sue with my little innocent child in his arms; the idea of the combination pleases me somewhat. But I sha'n't see it in any case. We had three cold days last week, which brought back my cough and took away my voice. I am dumb for the present and can't go out any more....
At last I have caught sight of an advertisement of your book. A very catching title, and if I mayn't compliment you upon it, I certainly do your publisher. I dare say the book is charming, and the more of yourself in it, the more charming.
Write, and say how you are always when you write. Say, too, how you continue to like your new house. We heard a good deal of you from Mr. Fields, though he came to us only once. With him came Mr. Longfellow, the poet's brother, who is at present in Paris—I mean the brother, not the poet. Robert's love, may I say?
Wiedeman has struck up two friendships: one, with the small daughter of our concierge and one with a little Russian princess, a month younger than himself. He calls them both 'boys,' having no idea yet of the less sublime sex, but he likes the plebeian best. May God make you happy on this and other seasons!
Love your affectionate and grateful
Ba.
[Paris,] 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:
January 17, [1852].
My dearest Mrs. Martin,—If you think I have not written to you, you must be (as you are) the most lenient of friends, not to give me up for ever. I answered your first letter by return of post and at great length. About a fortnight ago, Robert heard from Madame Mohl, who heard from somebody at Pau that you were 'waiting anxiously to hear from me,' upon which I wrote a second letter. And that, too, did not reach you? Is it possible? But I am innocent, innocent, innocent. See how innocent. Now, if M. le Président has stopped my letters, or if he ponders in his imperial mind how to send me out of Paris, he is as ungrateful as a king, because I have been taking his part all this time at a great cost of domestic émeutes. So you would have known, if you had received my letters. The coup d'état was a grand thing, dramatically and poetically speaking, and the appeal to the people justified it in my eyes, considering the immense difficulty of the circumstances, the impossibility of the old constitution and the impracticability of the House of Assembly. Now that's all over. For the rest—the new constitution—I can't say as much for it; it disappoints me immensely. Absolute government, no, while the taxes and acceptance of law lies, as he leaves it, with the people; but there are stupidities undeniable, I am afraid, and how such a constitution is to work, and how marshals and cardinals are to help to work it, remains to be seen. I fear we have not made a good change even from the 'constitution Marrast'[8] after all. The English newspapers have made me so angry, that I scarcely know whether I am as much ashamed, yet the shame is very great. As if the people of France had not a right to vote as they pleased![9] We understand nothing in England. As Cousin said, long ago, we are 'insular' of understanding. France may be mistaken in her speculations, as she often is; and if any mistake has been lately committed, it will be corrected by herself in a short time. Ignoble in her speculations she never is....
I must tell you, my dearest friend, that for some days past I have been very much upset, and am scarcely now fairly on my feet again, in consequence of becoming suddenly aware of a painful indiscretion committed by an affectionate and generous woman. I refer to Miss Mitford's account of me in her new book.[10] We heard of it in a strange way, through M. Philaret Chasles, of the Collège de France, beginning a course of lectures on English literature, and announcing an extended notice of E.B.B., 'the veil from whose private life had lately been raised by Miss Mitford.' Somebody who happened to be present told us of it, and while we were wondering and uncomfortable, up came a writer in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes' to consult Robert upon a difficulty he was in. He was engaged, he said, upon an article relating to me, and the proprietors of the review had sent him a number of the 'Athenæum,' which contained an extract from Miss M.'s book, desiring him to make use of the biographical details. Now it struck him immediately, he said, on reading the passage, that it was likely to give me great pain, and he was so unwilling to be the means of giving me more pain that he came to Robert to ask him how he should act. Do observe the delicacy and sensibility of this man—a man, a foreigner, a Frenchman! I shall be grateful to him as long as I live.[11]
Robert has seen the extract in the 'Athenæum.' It refers to the great affliction of my life, with the most affectionate intentions and the obtusest understanding. I know I am morbid, but this thing should not have been done indeed. Now, I shall be liable to see recollections dreadful to me, thrust into every vulgar notice of my books. I shall be afraid to see my books reviewed anywhere. Oh! I have been so deeply shaken by all this. You will understand, I am certain, and I could not help speaking of it to you, because I was certain.
I am answering your note, observe, by return of post. Do let me know if you receive what I write this time. Robert will direct for me, having faith in his superior legibleness, and I accept the insult implied in the opinion.
God bless you. Do write. And never doubt my grateful affection for you, whether posts go ill or well.
Robert is going out to inquire about 'My Novel.' His warm regards with mine to dear Mr. Martin and yourself. This is a scratch rather than a letter, but I would rather send it to you in haste than wait for another post.
Your ever affectionate
Ba.
The following letter marks the beginning of a new friendship, with Miss Mulock, afterwards Mrs. Craik, the authoress of 'John Halifax, Gentleman.' The subsequent letters are in very affectionate tones, but it does not appear that the correspondence ever reached any very extended dimensions.
Paris, 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:
January 21, [1852].
I hear from England that you have dedicated a book to me with too kind and most touching words. To thank you for such a proof of sympathy, to thank you from my heart, cannot surely be a wrong thing to do, it seems so natural and comes from so irresistible an impulse.
I read a book of yours once at Florence, which first made [me] know you pleasantly, and afterwards (that was at Florence, too) there came a piercing touch from a hand in the air—whether yours also, I cannot dare to guess—which has preoccupied me a good deal since. If I speak to you in mysteries, forgive me. Let it be clear at least, that I am very happy to be grateful to you for the honor you have done me in your dedication, and that my husband, moved more, as he always is, by honor paid to me than to himself, thanks you beside. I will not keep back his thanks, which are worth more than mine can be.
For the rest, we have, neither of us, seen the book yet, nor even read an exact copy of the words in question. Only the rumour of them appears to run that I am 'not likely ever to see you.' And why am I never to see you, pray? Unlikelier pleasures have been granted to me, and I will not indeed lose hold of the hope of this pleasure.
Allow it to
Your always obliged
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
[Paris,] 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:
[January-February 1852].
My very dear friend, let me begin what I have to say by recognising you as the most generous and affectionate of friends. I never could mistake the least of your intentions; you were always, from first to last, kind and tenderly indulgent to me—always exaggerating what was good in me, always forgetting what was faulty and weak—keeping me by force of affection in a higher place than I could aspire to by force of vanity; loving me always, in fact. Now let me tell you the truth. It will prove how hard it is for the tenderest friends to help paining one another, since you have pained me. See what a deep wound I must have in me, to be pained by the touch of such a hand. Oh, I am morbid, I very well know. But the truth is that I have been miserably upset by your book, and that if I had had the least imagination of your intending to touch upon certain biographical details in relation to me, I would have conjured you by your love to me and by my love to you, to forbear it altogether. You cannot understand; no, you cannot understand with all your wide sympathy (perhaps, because you are not morbid, and I am), the sort of susceptibility I have upon one subject. I have lived heart to heart (for instance) with my husband these five years: I have never yet spoken out, in a whisper even, what is in me; never yet could find heart or breath; never yet could bear to hear a word of reference from his lips. And now those dreadful words are going the round of the newspapers, to be verified here, commented on there, gossiped about everywhere; and I, for my part, am frightened to look at a paper as a child in the dark—as unreasonably, you will say—but what then? what drives us mad is our unreason. I will tell you how it was. First of all, an English acquaintance here told us that she had been hearing a lecture at the Collège de France, and that the professor, M. Philaret Chasles, in the introduction to a series of lectures on English poetry, had expressed his intention of noticing Tennyson, Browning, &c., and E.B.B.—'from whose private life the veil had been raised in so interesting a manner lately by Miss Mitford.' In the midst of my anxiety about this, up comes a writer of the 'Revue des Deux Mondes' to my husband, to say that he was preparing a review upon me and had been directed by the editor to make use of some biographical details extracted from your book into the 'Athenæum,' but that it had occurred to him doubtfully whether certain things might not be painful to me, and whether I might not prefer their being omitted in his paper. (All this time we had seen neither book nor 'Athenæum.') Robert answered for me that the omission of such and such things would be much preferred by me, and accordingly the article appears in the 'Revue' with the passage from your book garbled and curtailed as seemed best to the quoter. Then Robert set about procuring the 'Athenæum' in question. He tells me (and that I perfectly believe) that, for the facts to be given at all, they could not possibly be given with greater delicacy; oh, and I will add for myself, that for them to be related by anyone during my life, I would rather have you to relate them than another. But why should they be related during my life? There was no need, no need. To show my nervous susceptibility in the length and breadth of it to you, I could not (when it came to the point) bear to read the passage extracted in the 'Athenæum,' notwithstanding my natural anxiety to see exactly what was done. I could not bear to do it. I made Robert read it aloud—with omissions—so that I know all your kindness. I feel it deeply; through tears of pain I feel it; and if, as I dare say you will, you think me very very foolish, do not on that account think me ungrateful. Ungrateful I never can be to you, my much loved and kindest friend.
I hear your book is considered one of your best productions, and I do not doubt that the opinion is just. Thank you for giving it to us, thank you.
I don't like to send you a letter from Paris without a word about your hero—'handsome,' I fancy not, nor the imperial type. I have not seen his face distinctly. What do you think about the constitution? Will it work, do you fancy, now-a-days in France? The initiative of the laws, put out of the power of the legislative assembly, seems to me a stupidity; and the senators, in their fine dresses, make me wink a little. Also, I hear that the 'senatorial cardinals' don't please the peasants, who hate the priesthood as much as they hate the 'Cossacks.' On the other hand, Montalembert was certainly in bed the other day with vexation, because 'nobody could do anything with Louis Napoleon—he was obstinate;' 'nous nous en lavons les mains,' and that fact gives me hope that not too much indulgence is intended to the Church. There's to be a ball at the Tuileries with 'court dresses,' which is 'un peu fort' for a republic. By the way, rumour (with apparent authority justifying it) says, that a black woman opened her mouth and prophesied to him at Ham, 'he should be the head of the French nation, and be assassinated in a ball-room.' I was assured that he believes the prophecy firmly, 'being in all things too superstitious' and fatalistical.
I was interrupted in this letter yesterday. Meantime comes out the decree against the Orleans property, which I disapprove of altogether. It's the worst thing yet done, to my mind. Yet the Bourse stands fast, and the decree is likely enough to be popular with the ouvrier class. There are rumours of tremendously wild financial measures, only I believe in no rumours just now, and apparently the Bourse is as incredulous on this particular point. If I thought (as people say) that we are on the verge of a 'law' declaring the Roman Catholic religion the State religion, I should give him up at once; but this would be contrary to the traditions of the Empire, and I can't suppose it to be probable on any account.
Observe, I am no Napoleonist. I am simply a democrat, and hold that the majority of a nation has the right of choice upon the question of its own government, even where it makes a mistake. Therefore the outcry of the English newspapers is most disgusting to me. For the rest, one can hardly do strict justice, at this time of transition, to the ultimate situation of the country; we must really wait a little, till the wind and rain shall have ceased to dash so in one's eyes. The wits go on talking, though, all the same; and I heard a suggestion yesterday, that, for the effaced 'Liberté, égalité, fraternité,' should be written up, 'Infanterie, cavallerie, artillerie.' That's the last 'mot,' I believe. The salons are very noisy. A lady was ordered to her country seat the other day for exclaiming, 'Et il n'y a pas de Charlotte Corday.'
Forgive, with this dull letter, my other defects. Always I am frank to you, saying what is in my heart; and there is always there, dearest Miss Mitford, a fruitful and grateful affection to you from your
E.B.B.
[Paris], 138 Avenue des Ch.-Elysées:
February 15, [1852].
Thank you, thank you, my beloved friend. Yes; I do understand in my heart all your kindness. Yes, I do believe that on some points I am full of disease; and this has exposed me several times to shocks of pain in the ordinary intercourse of the world, which for bystanders were hard, I dare say, to make out. Once at the Baths of Lucca I was literally nearly struck down to the ground by a single word said in all kindness by a friend whom I had not seen for ten years. The blue sky reeled over me, and I caught at something, not to fall. Well, there is no use dwelling on this subject. I understand your affectionateness and tender consideration, I repeat, and thank you; and love you, which is better. Now, let us talk of reasonable things.
Béranger lives close to us, and Robert has seen him in his white hat wandering along the asphalte. I had a notion somehow that he was very old; but he is only elderly, not much indeed above sixty (which is the prime of life now-a-days), and he lives quietly and keeps out of scrapes poetical and political, and if Robert and I had but a little less modesty we are assured that we should find access to him easy. But we can't make up our minds to go to his door and introduce ourselves as vagrant minstrels, when he may probably not know our names. We never could follow the fashion of certain authors who send their books about without intimations of their being likely to be acceptable or not, of which practice poor Tennyson knows too much for his peace. If, indeed, a letter of introduction to Béranger were vouchsafed to us from any benign quarter, we should both be delighted, but we must wait patiently for the influence of the stars. Meanwhile, we have at last sent our letter (Mazzini's) to George Sand, accompanied with a little note signed by both of us, though written by me, as seemed right, being the woman. We half despaired in doing this, for it is most difficult, it appears, to get at her, she having taken vows against seeing strangers in consequence of various annoyances and persecutions in and out of print, which it's the mere instinct of a woman to avoid. I can understand it perfectly. Also, she is in Paris for only a few days, and under a new name, to escape from the plague of her notoriety. People said to us: 'She will never see you; you have no chance, I am afraid.' But we determined to try. At last I pricked Robert up to the leap, for he was really inclined to sit in his chair and be proud a little. 'No,' said I, 'you shan't be proud, and I won't be proud, and we will see her. I won't die, if I can help it, without seeing George Sand.' So we gave our letter to a friend who was to give it to a friend, who was to place it in her hands, her abode being a mystery and the name she used unknown. The next day came by the post this answer:
Madame,—J'aurai l'honneur de vous recevoir dimanche prochain rue Racine 3. C'est le seul jour que je puisse passer chez moi, et encore je n'en suis pas absolument certaine. Mais j'y ferai tellement mon possible, que ma bonne étoile m'y aidera peut-être un peu.
Agréez mille remercîments de cœur, ainsi que Monsieur Browning, que j'espère voir avec vous, pour la sympathie que vous m'accordez.
George Sand.
Paris: 12 février, 52.
This is graceful and kind, is it not? And we are going to-morrow; I, rather at the risk of my life. But I shall roll myself up head and all in a thick shawl, and we shall go in a close carriage, and I hope I shall be able to tell you about the result before shutting up this letter.
One of her objects in coming to Paris this time was to get a commutation of the sentence upon her friend Dufraisse, who was ordered to Cayenne. She had an interview accordingly with the President. He shook hands with her and granted her request, and in the course of conversation pointed to a great heap of 'Decrees' on the table, being hatched 'for the good of France.' I have heard scarcely anything of him, except from his professed enemies; and it is really a good deal the simple recoil from manifest falsehoods and gross exaggerations which has thrown me on the ground of his defenders. For the rest, it remains to be proved, I think, whether he is a mere ambitious man, or better—whether his personality or his country stands highest with him as an object. I thought and still think that a Washington might have dissolved the Assembly as he did, and appealed to the people. Which is not saying, however, that he is a Washington. We must wait, I think, to judge the man. Only it is right to bear in mind one fact, that, admitting the lawfulness of the coup d'état, you must not object to the dictatorship. And, admitting the temporary necessity of the dictatorship, it is absolute folly to expect under it the liberty and ease of a regular government.
What has saved him with me from the beginning was his appeal to the people, and what makes his government respectable in my eyes is the answer of the people to that appeal. Being a democrat, I dare to be so consequently. There never was a more legitimate chief of a State than Louis Napoleon is now—elected by seven millions and a half; and I do maintain that, ape or demi-god, to insult him where he is, is to insult the people who placed him there. As to the stupid outcry in England about forced votes, voters pricked forward by bayonets—why, nothing can be more stupid. Nobody not blinded by passion could maintain such a thing for a moment. No Frenchman, however blinded by passion, has maintained it in my presence.
A very philosophically minded man (French) was talking of these things the other day—one of the most thoughtful, liberal men I ever knew of any country, and high and pure in his moral views—also (let me add) more anglomane in general than I am. He was talking of the English press. He said he 'did it justice for good and noble intentions' (more than I do!), 'but marvelled at its extraordinary ignorance. Those writers did not know the A B C of France. Then, as to Louis Napoleon, whether he was right or wrong, they erred in supposing him not to be in earnest with his constitution and other remedies for France. The fact was, he not only was in earnest—he was even fanatical.'
There is, of course, much to deplore in the present state of affairs—much that is very melancholy. The constitution is not a model one, and no prospect of even comparative liberty of the Press has been offered. At the same time, I hope still. As tranquillity is established, there will be certain modifications; this, indeed, has been intimated, and I think the Press will by degrees attain to its emancipation. Meanwhile, the 'Athenæum' and other English papers say wrongly that there is a censure established on books. There is a censure on pamphlets and newspapers—on books, no. Cormenin is said to have been the adviser of the Orleans confiscation....
[Paris], 138 Avenue des Ch.-Elysées:
February 15, 1852.
My dearest Mr. Kenyon,—Robert sends you his Shelley,[12] having a very few copies allowed to him to dispose of. I think you have Shelley's other letters, of which this volume is the supplement, and you will not be sorry to have Robert's preface thrown in, though he makes very light of it himself.
You never write a word to us, and so I don't mean to send you a letter to-day—only as few lines as I can drop in a sulky fit, repenting as I go on. As to politics, you know you have all put me in the corner because I stand up for universal suffrage, and am weak enough to fancy that seven millions and a half of Frenchmen have some right to an opinion on their own affairs. It's really fatal in this world to be consequent—it leads one into damnable errors. So I shall not say much more at present. You must bear with me—dear Miss Bayley and all of you—and believe of me, if I am ever so wrong, that I do at least pray from my soul, 'May the right prevail!'—loving right, truth, justice, and the people through whatever mistakes. As it was in the beginning, from 'Casa Guidi Windows,' so it is now from the Avenue des Champs-Elysées. I am most humanly liable, of course, to make mistakes, and am by temperament perhaps over hopeful and sanguine. But I do see with my own eyes and feel with my own spirit, and not with other people's eyes and spirits, though they should happen to be the dearest—and that's the very best of me, be certain, so don't quarrel with it too much.
As to the worst of the President, let him have vulture's beak, hyena's teeth, and the rattle of the great serpent, it's nothing to the question. Let him be Caligula's horse raised to the consulship—what then? I am not a Buonapartist; I am simply a 'democrat,' as you say. I simply hold to the fact that, such as he is, the people chose him, and to the opinion that they have a right to choose whom they please. When your English Press denies the fact of the choice (a fact which the most passionate of party-men does not think of denying here), I seem to have a right to another opinion which might strike you as unpatriotic if I uttered it in this place. Hic tacet, then, rather jacet.
For the rest, for heaven's sake and the truth's, do let us try to take breath a little and be patient. Let us wait till the dust of the struggle clears away before we take measures of the circus. We can't have the liberty of a regular government under a dictatorship. And if the 'constitution' which is coming is not model, it may wear itself into shape by being worked calmly. These new boots will be easier to the feet after half an hour's walking. Not that I like the pinching meanwhile. Not that stringencies upon the Press please me—no, nor arrests and imprisonments. I like these things, God knows, as little as the loudest curser of you all, but I don't think it necessary and lawful to exaggerate and over-colour, nor to paint the cheeks of sorrows into horrors, nor to talk, like the 'Quarterly Review' (betwixt excuses for the King of Naples), of two thousand four hundred persons being cut to mincemeat in the streets of Paris, nor to call boldness hypocrisy (because hypocrisy is the worse word), and the appeal to the sovereignty of the people usurpation, and universal suffrage the pricking of bayonets. Above all, I would avoid insulting the whole French nation, who have judged their own position and acted accordingly. If Louis Napoleon disappoints their expectation, he won't sit long where he is. Of that I feel satisfactory assurance; and, considering the national habits of insurrection, I really think that others may.
Meanwhile it is just to tell you that the two deepest-minded persons whom we have known in Paris—one an ultra-Republican of European reputation (I don't like mentioning names), and the other a Constitutionalist of the purest and noblest moral nature—are both inclined to take favorable views of the President's personal character and intentions. For my part, I don't pretend to an opinion. He may be, as they say, 'bon enfant,' 'homme de conscience,' and 'so much in earnest as to be fanatical,' or he may be a wretch and a reptile, as you say in England. That's nothing to the question as I see it. I don't take it up by that handle at all. Caligula's horse or the people's 'Messiah,' as I heard him called the other day—what then? You are wonderfully intolerant, you in England, of equine consulships, you who bear with quite sufficient equanimity a great rampancy of beasts all over the world—Mr. Forster not blowing the trumpet of war, and Mrs. Alfred Tennyson not loading the rifles.
There now—I've done with politics to-day. Only just let me tell you that Cormenin is said to be the adviser in the matter of the Orleans decrees. So much the worse for him.
Whom do you think I saw yesterday? George Sand. Oh, I have been in such fear about it! It's the most difficult thing to get access to her, and, notwithstanding our letter from Mazzini, we were assured on all sides that she would not see us. She has been persecuted by bookmakers—run to ground by the race, and, after having quite lost her on her former visit to Paris, it was in half despair that we seized on an opportunity of committing our letter of introduction to a friend of a friend of hers, who promised to put it into her own hands. With the letter I wrote a little note—I writing, as I was the woman, and both of us signing it. To my delight, we had an answer by the next day's post, gracious and graceful, desiring us to call on her last Sunday.
So we went. Robert let me at last, though I had a struggle for even that, the air being rather over-sharp for me. But I represented to him that one might as well lose one's life as one's peace of mind for ever, and if I lost seeing her I should with difficulty get over it. So I put on my respirator, smothered myself with furs, and, in a close carriage, did not run much risk after all.
She received us very kindly, with hand stretched out, which I, with a natural emotion (I assure you my heart beat), stooped and kissed, when she said quickly, 'Mais non, je ne veux pas,' and kissed my lips. She is somewhat large for her height—not tall—and was dressed with great nicety in a sort of grey serge gown and jacket, made after the ruling fashion just now, and fastened up to the throat, plain linen collarette and sleeves. Her hair was uncovered, divided on the forehead in black, glossy bandeaux, and twisted up behind. The eyes and brow are noble, and the nose is of a somewhat Jewish character; the chin a little recedes, and the mouth is not good, though mobile, flashing out a sudden smile with its white projecting teeth. There is no sweetness in the face, but great moral as well as intellectual capacities—only it never could have been a beautiful face, which a good deal surprised me. The chief difference in it since it was younger is probably that the cheeks are considerably fuller than they used to be, but this of course does not alter the type. Her complexion is of a deep olive. I observed that her hands were small and well-shaped. We sate with her perhaps three-quarters of an hour or more—in which time she gave advice and various directions to two or three young men who were there, showing her confidence in us by the freest use of names and allusion to facts. She seemed to be, in fact, the man in that company, and the profound respect with which she was listened to a good deal impressed me. You are aware from the newspapers that she came to Paris for the purpose of seeing the President in behalf of certain of her friends, and that it was a successful mediation. What is peculiar in her manners and conversation is the absolute simplicity of both. Her voice is low and rapid, without emphasis or variety of modulation. Except one brilliant smile, she was grave—indeed, she was speaking of grave matters, and many of her friends are in adversity. But you could not help seeing (both Robert and I saw it) that in all she said, even in her kindness and pity, there was an under-current of scorn. A scorn of pleasing she evidently had; there never could have been a colour of coquetry in that woman. Her very freedom from affectation and consciousness had a touch of disdain. But I liked her. I did not love her, but I felt the burning soul through all that quietness, and was not disappointed in George Sand. When we rose to go I could not help saying, 'C'est pour la dernière fois,' and then she asked us to repeat our visit next Sunday, and excused herself from coming to see us on the ground of a great press of engagements. She kissed me again when we went away, and Robert kissed her hand.
Lady Elgin has offered to take him one day this week to visit Lamartine (who, we hear, will be glad to see us, having a cordial feeling towards England and English poets), but I shall wait for some very warm day for that visit, not meaning to run mortal risks, except for George Sand. Nota bene. We didn't see her smoke.
Robert has ventured to send to your house, my dearest friend, two copies of 'Shelley' besides yours—one for Mr. Procter, and one for Mrs. Jameson, with kindest love, both. There is no hurry about either, you know. We wanted another for dear Miss Bayley, but we have only six copies, and don't keep one for ourselves, and she won't care, I dare say.
Your ever most affectionate and grateful
Ba.
Will you let your servant put this letter into the post for Miss Mitford? She upset me by her book, but had the most affectionate intentions, and I am obliged to her for what she meant. Then I am morbid, I know.
Tell dearest Miss Bayley, with my love, I shall write to her soon.
[Paris], 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:
February 26, [1852].
Never believe of me so bad a thing as that I could have received from you, my ever dear and very dear friend, such a letter as you describe, and rung hollow in return. I did not get your letter, so how could I send an answer? Your letter's lost, like some other happy things. But I thank you for it fervently, guessing from what you say the sympathy and affection of it. I thank you for it most gratefully.
As for poor dear Miss Mitford's book, I was entirely upset by the biography she thought it necessary or expedient to give of me. Oh, if our friends would but put off anatomising one till after one was safely dead, and call to mind that, previously, we have nerves to be agonised and morbid brains to be driven mad! I am morbid, I know. I can't bear some words even from Robert. Like the lady who lay in the grave, and was ever after of the colour of a shroud, so I am white-souled, the past has left its mark with me for ever. And now (this is the worst) every newspaper critic who talks of my poems may refer to other things. I shall not feel myself safe a moment from references which stab like a knife.
But poor dear Miss Mitford, if we don't forgive what's meant as kindness, how are we to forgive what's meant as injury? In my first agitation I felt it as a real vexation that I couldn't be angry with her. How could I, poor thing? She has always loved me, and been so anxious to please me, and this time she seriously thought that Robert and I would be delighted. Extraordinary defect of comprehension!
Still, I did not, I could not, conceal from her that she had given me great pain, and she replied in a tone which really made me almost feel ungrateful for being pained, she said 'rather that her whole book had perished than have given me a moment's pain.' How are you to feel after that?
For the rest, it appears that she had merely come forward to the rescue of my reputation, no more than so. Sundry romantic tales had been in circulation about me. I was 'in widow's weeds' in my habitual costume—and, in fact, before I was married I had grievously scandalised the English public (the imaginative part of the public), and it was expedient to 'tirer de l'autre coté.'
Well, I might have laughed at that—but I didn't. I wrote a very affectionate letter, for I really love Miss Mitford, though she understands me no more under certain respects than you in England understand Louis Napoleon and the French nation. Love's love. She meant the best to me—and so, do you, who have a much more penetrating sense of delicacy, forgive her for my sake, dear friend....
Of the memoirs of Madame Ossoli, I know only the extracts in the 'Athenæum.' She was a most interesting woman to me, though I did not sympathise with a large portion of her opinions. Her written works are just naught. She said herself they were sketches, thrown out in haste and for the means of subsistence, and that the sole production of hers which was likely to represent her at all would be the history of the Italian Revolution. In fact, her reputation, such as it was in America, seemed to stand mainly on her conversation and oral lectures. If I wished anyone to do her justice, I should say, as I have indeed said, 'Never read what she has written.' The letters, however, are individual, and full, I should fancy, of that magnetic personal influence which was so strong in her. I felt drawn in towards her, during our short intercourse; I loved her, and the circumstances of her death shook me to the very roots of my heart. The comfort is, that she lost little in this world—the change could not be loss to her. She had suffered, and was likely to suffer still more.
And now, am I to tell you that I have seen George Sand twice, and am to see her again? Ah, there is no time to tell you, for I must shut up this letter. She sate, like a priestess, the other morning in a circle of eight or nine men, giving no oracles, except with her splendid eyes, sitting at the corner of the fire, and warming her feet quietly, in a general silence of the most profound deference. There was something in the calm disdain of it which pleased me, and struck me as characteristic. She was George Sand, that was enough: you wanted no proof of it. Robert observed that 'if any other mistress of a house had behaved so, he would have walked out of the room'—but, as it was, no sort of incivility was meant. In fact, we hear that she 'likes us very much,' and as we went away she called me 'chère Madame' and kissed me, and desired to see us both again.
I did not read myself the passage in question from Miss M.'s book. I couldn't make up my mind, my courage, to look at it. But I understood from Robert.
To Mrs. Martin
[Paris], 138 Avenue des Ch.-Elysées:
February 27, [1852].
I get your second letter, my dearest Mrs. Martin, before I answer your first, which makes me rather ashamed.
... Dearest friend, it is true that I have seldom been so upset as by this act of poor dear Miss Mitford's, and the very impossibility of being vindictive on this occasion increased my agitation at the moment....
There are defects in delicacy and apprehensiveness, one cannot deny it, and yet I assure you that a more generous and fervent woman never lived than dear Miss Mitford is, and if you knew her you would do her this justice. She is better in herself than in her books—more large, more energetic, more human altogether. I think I understand her better on the whole than she understands me (which is not saying much), and I admire her on various accounts. She talks better, for instance, than most writers, male or female, whom I have had any intercourse with. And affectionate in the extreme, she has always been to me.
So I have mystified you and disgusted you with my politics, and my friends in England have put me in the corner; just so....
The French nation is very peculiar. We choose to boast ourselves of being different in England, but we have simply les qualités de nos défauts after all. The clash of speculative opinions is dreadful here, practical men catch at the ideal as if it were a loaf of bread, and they literally set about cutting out their Romeos 'into little stars,' as if that were the most natural thing in the world. As for the socialists, I quite agree with you that various of them, yes, and some of their chief men, are full of pure and noble aspiration, the most virtuous of men and the most benevolent. Still, they hold in their hands, in their clean hands, ideas that kill, ideas which defile, ideas which, if carried out, would be the worst and most crushing kind of despotism. I would rather live under the feet of the Czar than in those states of perfectibility imagined by Fourier and Cabet, if I might choose my 'pis aller.' All these speculators (even Louis Blanc, who is one of the most rational) would revolutionalise, not merely countries, but the elemental conditions of humanity, it seems to me; none of them seeing that antagonism is necessary to all progress. A man, in walking, must set one foot before another, and in climbing (as Dante observed long ago) the foot behind 'è sempre il più basso.' Only the gods (Plato tells us) keep both feet joined together in moving onward. It is not so, and cannot be so, with men.
But I think that not only in relation to the socialists, but to the monarchies, is L.N. the choice of the French people. I think that they will not bear the monarchies, they will not have either of them, they put them away. It seems to me that the French people is essentially democratical, and that by the vote in question they never meant to give away either rights or liberties. The extraordinary part of the actual position is that the Government, with these ugly signs of despotism in its face, stands upon the democracy (is no 'military despotism,' therefore, in any sense, as the English choose to say), and may be thrown, and will be thrown, on that day when it disappoints the popular expectation. For my part, I am hopeful both for this reason and for others. I hope we shall do better, when there is greater calm; that presently there will be relaxation where there is stringency, and room to breathe and speak. At present it is a dictatorship, and we can't expect at such a time the ease and liberty of a regular government. The constitution itself may be modified, as the very terms of it imply, and the laws of the Press not carried out. Even as it is, all the English papers, infamous in their abuse of the Government (because of their falsifications and exaggerations properly called infamous) and highly immoral in their tone towards France generally, come in as usual, without an official finger being lifted up to hinder them. Louis Philippe would not admit Punch, you remember, on account of a few personal sarcasms....
So much there is to say, and the post going. Can you read as I write on at a full gallop? Don't be out of heart. Do let us trust France—not L. Napoleon, but France....
Dearest friends, think of me as your
Ever affectionate
Ba.
[Paris], 138 Avenue des Ch.-Elysées:
April 7, 1852.
What a time seems to have passed since I wrote to you, my ever loved friend! Again and again I have been on the point of writing, and something has stopped me always. I have wished to wait till I had more about this and that to gossip of, and so the time went on. Now I am getting impatient to have news of you, and to learn whether the lovely spring has brought you any good yet as to health and strength. Don't take vengeance on my silence, but write, write....
Yes, I want to see Béranger, and so does Robert. George Sand we came to know a great deal more of. I think Robert saw her six times. Once he met her near the Tuileries, offered her his arm, and walked with her the whole length of the gardens. She was not on that occasion looking as well as usual, being a little too much 'endimanchée' in terrestrial lavenders and supercelestial blues—not, in fact, dressed with the remarkable taste which he has seen in her at other times. Her usual costume is both pretty and quiet, and the fashionable waistcoat and jacket (which are a spectacle in all the 'Ladies' Companions' of the day) make the only approach to masculine wearings to be observed in her. She has great nicety and refinement in her personal ways, I think, and the cigarette is really a feminine weapon if properly understood. Ah, but I didn't see her smoke. I was unfortunate. I could only go with Robert three times to her house, and once she was out. He was really very good and kind to let me go at all, after he found the sort of society rampant around her. He didn't like it extremely, but, being the prince of husbands, he was lenient to my desires and yielded the point. She seems to live in the abomination of desolation, as far as regards society—crowds of ill-bred men who adore her à genoux bas, betwixt a puff of smoke and an ejection of saliva. Society of the ragged Red diluted with the lower theatrical. She herself so different, so apart, as alone in her melancholy disdain! I was deeply interested in that poor woman, I felt a profound compassion for her. I did not mind much the Greek in Greek costume who tutoyéd her, and kissed her, I believe, so Robert said; or the other vulgar man of the theatre who went down on his knees and called her 'sublime.' 'Caprice d'amitié,' said she, with her quiet, gentle scorn. A noble woman under the mud, be certain. I would kneel down to her, too, if she would leave it all, throw it off, and be herself as God made her. But she would not care for my kneeling; she does not care for me. Perhaps she doesn't care for anybody by this time—who knows? She wrote one, or two, or three kind notes to me, and promised to 'venir m'embrasser' before she left Paris; but she did not come. We both tried hard to please her, and she told a friend of ours that she 'liked us'; only we always felt that we couldn't penetrate—couldn't really touch her—it was all vain. Her play failed, though full of talent. It didn't draw, and was withdrawn accordingly. I wish she would keep to her romances, in which her real power lies.
We have found out Jadin, Alexandre Dumas' friend and companion in the 'Speronare.' He showed Robert at his house poor Louis Philippe's famous 'umbrella,' and the Duke of Orleans' uniform, and the cup from which Napoleon took his coffee, which stood beside him as he signed the abdication. Then there was a picture of 'Milord' hanging up. I must go to see too. Said Robert: 'Then Alexandre Dumas doesn't write romances always?' (You know it was like a sudden spectacle of one of Leda's eggs.) 'Indeed,' replied Jadin, 'he wrote the true history of his own travels, only, of course, seeing everything, like a poet, from his own point of view.' Alfred de Musset was to have been at M. Buloz's, where Robert was a week ago, on purpose to meet him, but he was prevented in some way. His brother Paul de Musset, a very different person, was there instead—but we hope to have Alfred on another occasion. Do you know his poems? He is not capable of large grasps, but he has poet's life and blood in him, I assure you. He is said to be at the feet of Rachel just now, and a man may nearly as well be with a tigress in a cage. He began with the Princess Belgiojoso—followed George Sand—Rachel finishes, is likely to 'finish' in every sense. In the intervals, he plays at chess. There's the anatomy of a man!
We are expecting a visit from Lamartine, who does a great deal of honour to both of us, it appears, in the way of appreciation, and is kind enough to propose to come. I will tell you all about it.
But now tell me. Oh, I want so to hear how you are. Better, stronger, I hope and trust. How does the new house and garden look in the spring? Prettier and prettier, I dare say....
The dotation of the President is enormous certainly, and I wish for his own sake it had been rather more moderate. Now I must end here. Post hour strikes. God bless you.
Do love me as much as you can, always, and think how I am your ever affectionate
Ba.
Our darling is well; thank God.
[Paris]: 138 Avenue des Ch.-Elysées:
April 12, Monday, 1852.
Your letter was pleasant and not so pleasant, dearest Monna Nina; for it was not so pleasant indeed to hear how ill you had been—and yet to be lifted into the hope, or rather certainty, of seeing you next week pleased us extremely of course, and the more that your note through Lady Lyell had thrown us backward into a slough of despond and made me sceptical as to your coming here at all....
What a beautiful Paris it is! I walked out a little yesterday with Robert, and we both felt penetrated with the sentiment of southern life as we watched men, women, and children sitting out in the sun, taking wine and coffee, and enjoying their fête day with good happy faces. The mixture of classes is to me one of the most delicious features of the South, and you have it here exactly as in Italy. The colouring too, the brightness, even the sun—oh, come and enjoy it all with us. We have had a most splendid spring beginning with February. Still, I have been out very seldom, being afraid of treacherous winds combined with burning sunshine, but I have enjoyed the weather in the house and by opening the windows, and have been revived and strengthened much by it, and shall soon recover my summer power of walking, I dare say. What do you think I did the other night? Went to the Vaudeville to see the 'Dame aux Camélias' on above the fiftieth night of the representation. I disagree with the common outcry about its immorality. According to my view, it is moral and human. But I never will go to see it again, for it almost broke my heart and split my head. I had a headache afterwards for twenty-four hours. Even Robert, who gives himself out for blasé on dramatic matters, couldn't keep the tears from rolling down his cheeks. The exquisite acting, the too literal truth to nature everywhere, was exasperating—there was something profane in such familiar handling of life and death. Art has no business with real graveclothes when she wants tragic drapery—has she? It was too much altogether like a bull fight. There's a caricature at the shop windows of the effect produced, the pit protecting itself with multitudinous umbrellas from the tears of the boxes. This play is by Alexandre Dumas fils—and is worthy by its talent of Alexandre Dumas père.
Only that once have I been in a Parisian theatre. I couldn't go even to see 'Les Vacances de Pandolphe' when George Sand had the goodness to send us tickets for the first night. She failed in it, I am sorry to say—it did not 'draw,' as the phrase is. Now she has left Paris, but is likely to return.
I am sure it will do you great good to have change and liberty and distraction in various ways. The 'anxiety' you speak of—oh, I do hope it does not relate to Gerardine. I always think of her when you seem anxious.
I shall be very glad if, when you come, you should be inclined to give your attention, you with your honest and vigorous mind, to the facts of the political situation, not the facts as you hear them from the English, or from our friend Madme Mohl, who confessed to me one day that she liked exaggerations because she hated the President. She is a clever shrewd woman, but most eminently and on all subjects a woman; her passions having her thoughts inside them, instead of her thoughts her passions. That's the common distinction between women and men, is it not?
Robert, too, will tell you that he hates all Buonapartes, past, present, or to come, but then he says that in his self-willed, pettish way, as a manner of dismissing a subject he won't think about—and knowing very well that he doesn't think about it, not mistaking a feeling for a reason, not for a moment. There's the difference between women and men.
Well, but you won't come here to knit your brows about politics, but rather to forget all sorts of anxieties and distresses, and be well and happy, I do hope. You deserve a holiday after all that work. God bless you, dear friend.
Our united love goes to you and stays with you.
Your ever affectionate
Ba.
[Paris]: 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:
April 27, [1852].
I am afraid you must think me—what can you have thought of me for not immediately answering a letter which brought the tears both to my eyes and my husband's? I was going to write just so, but he said: 'No, do not write yet; wait till we get the book and then you can speak of it with knowledge.' And I waited.
But the misfortune is that Messrs. Chapman & Hall waited too, and that up to the present time 'The Head of the Family' has not arrived. Mr. Chapman is slow in finding what he calls his opportunities.
Therefore I can't wait any more, no indeed. The voice which called 'Dinah' in the garden—which was true, because certainly I did call from Florence with my whole heart to the writer of these verses[13] (how deeply they moved me!)—will have seemed to you by this time as fabulous as the garden itself. And we had no garden at Florence, I must confess to you, only a terrace facing the grey wall of San Felice church, where we used to walk up and down on the moonlight nights. But San Felice was always a good saint to me, and when I had read and cried over those verses from the 'Athenæum' (my husband wrote them out for me at the reading room) and when I had vainly written to England to find out the poet, and when I had all as vainly, on our visit to England last summer, inquired of this person and that person, it turns out after all that 'Dinah' answers me. Do you not think I am glad?
The beautiful verses touched me to the quick, so does your letter. We shall be in London again perhaps in two months for a few weeks, and then you will let us see you, I hope, will you not? And, in the meanwhile, you will believe that we do not indeed think of you as a stranger. Ah, your dream flattered me in certain respects! Yet there was some truth in it, as I have told you, even though you saw in the dreamlight more roses than were growing.
Certainly Mr. Chapman will at last send me 'The Head of the Family,' and then I will write again of course.
Dear Miss Mulock, may I write myself down now, because I must,
Affectionately yours and gratefully,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
[Paris],138 Avenue des Ch.-Elysées:
May 9, [1852].
I began a long letter to you in the impulse left by yours upon me, and then destroyed it by accident. That hindered me from writing as soon as I should have done, for indeed I am anxious to have other news of you, my dearest dear Miss Mitford, and to know, if possible, that you are a little better.... Tell me everything. Why, you looked really well last summer; and I want to see you looking well this summer, for we shall probably be in London in June—more's the pity, perhaps! The gladness I have in England is so leavened through and through with sadness that I incline to do with it as one does with the black bread of the monks of Vallombrosa, only pretend to eat it and drop it slyly under the table. If it were not for some ties I would say 'Farewell, England,' and never set foot on it again. There's always an east wind for me in England, whether the sun shines or not—the moral east wind which is colder than any other. But how dull to go on talking of the weather: Sia come vuole, as we say in Italy.
To-morrow is the great fête of your Louis Napoleon, the distribution of the eagles. We have done our possible and impossible to get tickets, because I had taken strongly into my head to want to go, and because Robert, who didn't care for it himself, cared for it for me; but here's the eleventh hour and our prospects remain gloomy. We did not apply sufficiently soon, I am afraid, and the name of the applicants has been legion. It will be a grand sight, and full of significances. Nevertheless, the empire won't come so; you will have to wait a little for the Empire. Who were your financial authorities who praised Louis Napoleon? and do the same approve of the late measure about the three per cents.? I am so absolutely bête upon such subjects that I don't even pretend to be intelligent; but I heard yesterday from a direct source that Rothschild expressed a high admiration of the President's financial ability. A friend of that master in Israel said it to our friend Lady Elgin. Commerce is reviving, money is pouring in, confidence is being restored on all sides. Even the Press palpitates again—ah, but I wish it were a little freer of the corset. This Government is not after my heart after all. I only tolerate what appear to me the necessities of an exceptional situation. The masses are satisfied and hopeful, and the President stronger and stronger—not by the sword, may it please the English Press, but by the democracy.
I am delighted to see that the French Government has protested against the reactionary iniquities of the Tuscan Grand Duke, and every day I expect eagerly some helping hand to be stretched out to Rome. I have looked for this from the very first, and certainly it is significant that the Prince of Canino, the late President of the Roman Republic, should be in favour at the Elysée. Pio Nono's time is but short, I fancy—that is, reforms will be forced upon him.
When George Sand had audience with the President, he was very kind; did I tell you that? At the last he said: 'Vous verrez, vous serez contente de moi.' To which she answered, 'Et vous, vous serez content de moi.' It was repeated to me as to the great dishonour of Madame Sand, and as a proof that she could not resist the influence of power and was a bad republican. I, on the contrary, thought the story quite honourable to both parties. It was for the sake of her rouge friends that she approached the President at all, and she has used the hand he stretched out to her only on behalf of persons in prison and distress. The same, being delivered, call her gratefully a recreant.
Victor Cousin and Villemain refuse to take the oath, and lose their situations in the Academy accordingly; but they retire on pensions, and it's their own fault of course. Michelet and Quinet should have an equivalent, I think, for what they have lost; they are worthy, as poets, orators, dreamers, speculative thinkers—as anything, in fact, but instructors of youth.
No, there is a brochure, or a little book somewhere, pretending to be a memoir of Balzac, but I have not seen it. Some time before his death he had bought a country place, and there was a fruit tree in the garden—I think a walnut tree—about which he delighted himself in making various financial calculations after the manner of César Birotteau. He built the house himself, and when it was finished there was just one defect—it wanted a staircase. They had to put in the staircase afterwards. The picture gallery, however, had been seen to from the first, and the great writer had chalked on the walls, 'Mon Raffaelle,' 'Mon Corrège,' 'Mon Titien,' 'Mon Léonard de Vinci,' the pictures being yet unattained. He is said to have been a little loth to spend money, and to have liked to dine magnificently at the restaurant at the expense of his friends, forgetting to pay for his own share of the entertainment. For the rest, the 'idée fixe' of the man was to be rich one day, and he threw his subtle imagination and vital poetry into pounds, shillings, and pence with such force that he worked the base element into spiritual splendours. Oh! to think of our having missed seeing that man. It is painful. A little book is published of his 'thoughts and maxims,' the sweepings of his desk I suppose; broken notes, probably, which would have been wrought up into some noble works, if he had lived. Some of these are very striking.
Lamartine has not yet paid us the promised visit. Just as we were beginning to feel vexed we heard that the intermediate friend who was to have brought him had been caught up by the Government and sent off to Saint-Germain to 'faire le mort,' on pain of being sent farther. I mean Eugène Belleton. If he talked in many places as he talked in this room, I can't be very much surprised, but I am really very sorry. He is one of those amiable domestic men who delight in talking 'battle, murder, and sudden death.'
[The end of this letter is wanting]
[Paris], 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:
June 2, [1852].
My husband went directly to Rue Vivienne and came back without the book. We waited and waited, but at last it reached us, and we have read it, and since then I have let some days go by through having been unwell. You seemed to let me sit still in my chair and do nothing; you did not call too loud. So was it with most other things in the universe. Now, having awakened from my somnolency, recovered from 'La Grippe' (or what mortal Londoners call the influenza), the first person and first book I think of must naturally be you and yours.
So I thank you much, much, for the book. It has interested me, dear Miss Mulock, as a book should, and I am delighted to recognise everywhere undeniable talent and faculty, combined with high and pure aspiration. A clever book, a graceful book, and with the moral grace besides—thank you. Many must have thanked you as well as myself.
At the same time, precisely because I feel particularly obliged to you, I mean to tell you the truth. Your hero is heroic from his own point of view—accepting his own view of the situation, which I, for one, cannot accept, do you know, for I am of opinion that both you and he are rather conventional on the subject of his marriage. I don't in the least understand, at this moment, why he should not have married in the first volume; no, not in the least. It was a matter of income, he would tell me, and of keeping two establishments; and I would answer that it ought rather to have been a matter of faith in God and in the value of God's gifts, the greatest of which is love. I am romantic about love—oh, much more than you are, though older than you. A man's life does not develop rightly without it, and what is called an 'improvident marriage' often appears to me a noble, righteous, and prudent act. Your Ninian was a man before he was a brother. I hold that he had no right to sacrifice a great spiritual good of his own to the worldly good of his family, however he made it out. He should have said: 'God gives me this gift, He will find me energy to work for it and suffer for it. We will all live together, struggle together if it is necessary, a little more poorly, a little more laboriously, but keeping true to the best aims of life, all of us.'
That's what my Ninian would have said. I don't like to see noble Ninians crushed flat under family Juggernauts, from whatever heroic motives—not I. Do you forgive me for being so candid?
I must tell you that Mrs. Jameson, who is staying in this house, read your book in England and mentioned it to me as a good book, 'very gracefully written,' before I read it, quite irrespectively, too, of my dedication, which was absent from the copy she saw at Brighton. It was mentioned as one of the novels which had pleased her most lately.
I shall like to show you my child, as you like children, and as I am vain—oh, past endurance vain, about him. You won't understand a word he says, though, for he speaks three languages at once, and most of the syllables of each wrong side foremost.
No, don't call me a Bonapartist. I am not a Bonapartist indeed. But I am a Democrat and singularly (in these days) consequent about universal suffrage. Also, facts in England have been much mis-stated; but there's no room for politics to-day.
When I thank you, remember that my husband thanks you. We both hope to see you before this month shall be quite at an end, and then you will know me better, I hope; and though I shall lose a great deal by your knowing me, of course, yet you won't, after that, make such mistakes as you 'confess' in this note which I have just read over again. Did I think you 'sentimental'? Won't you rather think me sentimental to-day? Through it all,
Your affectionate
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
[Paris], 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:
June 16, [1852].
My first word must be to thank you, my dearest kind friend, for your affectionate words to me and mine, which always, from you, sink deeply. It was, on my part, great gratification to see you and talk to you and hear you talk, and, above all, perhaps, to feel that you loved me still a little. May God bless you both! And may we meet again and again in Paris and elsewhere; in London this summer to begin with! As the Italians would say in relation to any like pleasure: 'Sarebbe una benedizione.'
We are waiting for the English weather to be reported endurable in order to set out. Mrs. Streatfield, who has been in England these twelve days, writes to certify that it is past the force of a Parisian imagination to imagine the state of the skies and the atmosphere; yet, even in Paris, we have been moaning the last four days, because really, since then, we have gone back to April, and a rather cool April, with alternate showers and sunshine—a crisis, however, which does not call for fires, nor inflict much harm on me. It was the thunder, we think, that upset the summer.
You seem to have had a sort of inkling about my brittleness when you were here. It was the beginning of a bad attack of cough and pain in the side, the consequence of which was that I turned suddenly into the likeness of a ghost and frightened Robert from his design of going to England. About that I am by no means regretful; he was not wanted, as the event proved abundantly. The worst was that he was annoyed by the number of judicious observers and miserable comforters who told him I was horribly changed and ought to be taken back to Italy forthwith. I knew it was nothing but an accidental attack, and that the results would pass away, as they did. I kept quiet, applied mustard poultices, and am now looking again (tell dear Mr. Martin) 'as if I had shammed.' So all these misfortunes are strictly historical, you are to understand. To-night we are going to Ary Scheffer's to hear music and to see ever so many celebrities. Oh, and let me remember to tell you that M. Thierry, the blind historian, has sent us a message by his physician to ask us to go to see him, and as a matter of course we go. Madame Viardot, the prima donna, and Leonard, the first violin player at the Conservatoire, are to be at M. Scheffer's.
After all, you are too right. The less amused I am, clearly the better for me. I should live ever so many years more by being shut up in a hermitage, if it were warm and dry. More's the pity, when one wants to see and hear as I do. The only sort of excitement and fatigue which does me no harm, but good, is travelling. The effect of the continual change of air is to pour in oil as the lamp burns; so I explain the extraordinary manner in which I bear the fatigue of being four-and-twenty hours together in a diligence, for instance, which many strong women would feel too much for them.
All this talking of myself when I want to talk of you and to tell you how touched I was by the praises of your winning little Letitia! Enclosed is a note to Chapman & Hall which will put her 'bearer' (if she can find one in London) in possession of the two volumes in question. I shall like her to have them, and she must try to find my love, as the King of France did the poison (a 'most unsavoury simile,' certainly), between the leaves. I send with them, in any case, my best love. Ah, so sorry I am that she has suffered from the weather you have had. She is a most interesting child, and of a nature which is rare....
Robert's warm regards, with those of your
Ever affectionate and grateful
Ba.
Madame Viardot is George Sand's heroine Consuelo. You know that beautiful book.
With the last days of June the long stay in Paris came to an end, and the Brownings paid their second visit to London. Their residence on this occasion was at 58 Welbeck Street ('very respectable rooms this time, and at a moderate price'), and here they stayed until the beginning of November. Neither husband nor wife seems to have written much poetry during this year, either in Paris or in London.
[London], 58 Welbeck Street: Saturday,
[June-July 1852].
... We saw your book in Paris, the Galignani edition, and I read it all except the one thing I had not courage to read. Thank you, thank you. We are both of us grateful to you for your most generous and heartwarm intentions to us. As to the book, it's a book made to go east and west; it's a popular book with flowers from the 'village' laid freshly and brightly between the critical leaves. I don't always agree with you. I think, for instance, that Mary Anne Browne should never be compared to George Sand in 'passion,' and I can't grant to you that your extracts from her poems bear you out to even one fiftieth degree in such an opinion. I agree with you just as little with regard to Dr. Holmes and certain others. But to have your opinion is always a delightful thing, and 'it is characteristic of your generosity,' to say the least, we say to ourselves when we are 'dissidents' most.
I am writing in the extremest haste, just a word to announce our arrival in England. We are in very comfortable rooms in 58 Welbeck Street, and my sister Henrietta is some twenty doors away. To-morrow Robert and I are going to Wimbledon for a day to dear Mr. Kenyon, who looks radiantly well and has Mr. Landor for a companion just now. Imagine the uproar and turmoil of our first days in London, and believe that I think of you faithfully and tenderly through all. I am overjoyed to see my sisters, who look well on the whole ... and they and everybody assure me that I show a very satisfactory face to my country, as far as improved looks go.
What nonsense one writes when one has but a moment to write in. I find people talking about the 'facts in the "Times"' touching Louis Napoleon. Facts in the 'Times'!
The heat is stifling. Do send one word to say how you are, and love me always as I love you.
Your most affectionate
Ba.
58 Welbeck Street: Friday, July 31, 1852 [postmark].
I want to hear about you again, dear, dearest Miss Mitford, and I can't hear. Will you send me a line or a word.... I mean to go down to see you one day, but certainly we must account it right not to tire you while you are weak, and not to spoil our enjoyment by forestalling it. Two months are full of days; we can afford to wait. Meantime let us have a little gossip such as the gods allow of.
Dear Mr. Kenyon has not yet gone to Scotland, though his intentions still stand north. He passed an evening with us some evenings ago, and was brilliant and charming (the two things together), and good and affectionate at the same time. Mr. Landor was staying with him (perhaps I told you that), and went away into Worcestershire, assuring me, when he took leave of me, that he would never enter London again. A week passes, and lo! Mr. Kenyon expects him again. Resolutions are not always irrevocable, you observe.
I must tell you what Landor said about Louis Napoleon. You are aware that he loathed the first Napoleon and that he hates the French nation; also, he detests the present state of French affairs, and has foamed over in the 'Examiner' 'in prose and rhyme' on the subject of them. Nevertheless, he who calls 'the Emperor' 'an infernal fool' expresses himself to this effect about the President: 'I always knew him to be a man of wonderful genius. I knew him intimately, and I was persuaded of what was in him. When people have said to me, "How can you like to waste your time with so trifling a man?" I have answered: "If all your Houses of Parliament, putting their heads together, could make a head equal to this trifling man's head it would be well for England."
It was quite unexpected to me to hear Mr. Landor talk so.
He, Mr. Landor, is looking as young as ever, as full of life and passionate energy.
Did Mr. Horne write to you before he went to Australia? Did I speak to you about his going? Did you see the letter which he put into the papers as a farewell to England? I think of it all sadly.
Mazzini came to see us the other day, with that pale spiritual face of his, and those intense eyes full of melancholy illusions. I was thinking, while he sate there, on what Italian turf he would lie at last with a bullet in his heart, or perhaps with a knife in his back, for to one of those ends it will surely come. Mrs. Carlyle came with him. She is a great favorite of mine: full of thought, and feeling, and character, it seems to me.
London is emptying itself, and the relief will be great in a certain way; for one gets exhausted sometimes. Let me remember whom I have seen. Mrs. Newton Crosland, who spoke of you very warmly; Miss Mulock, who wrote 'The Ogilvies' (that series of novels), and is interesting, gentle, and young, and seems to have worked half her life in spite of youth; Mr. Field we have not seen, only heard of; Miss ——, no—but I am to see her, I understand, and that she is an American Corinna in yellow silk, but pretty. We drove out to Kensington with Monckton Milnes and his wife, and I like her; she is quiet and kind, and seems to have accomplishments, and we are to meet Fanny Kemble at the Procters some day next week. Many good faces, but the best wanting. Ah, I wish Lord Stanhope, who shows the spirits of the sun in a crystal ball, could show us that! Have you heard of the crystal ball?[14] We went to meet it and the seer the other morning, with sundry of the believers and unbelievers—among the latter, chief among the latter, Mr. Chorley, who was highly indignant and greatly scandalised, particularly on account of the combination sought to be established by the lady of the house between lobster salad and Oremus, spirit of the sun. For my part, I endured both luncheon and spiritual phenomena with great equanimity. It was very curious altogether to my mind, as a sign of the times, if in no other respect of philosophy. But I love the marvellous. Write a word to me, I beseech you, and love me and think of me, as I love and think of you. God bless you. Robert's love.
Your ever affectionate
Ba.
58 Welbeck Street: Tuesday, [July-October 1852].
Dearest Monna Nina,—Here are the verses. I did them all because that was easiest to me, but of course you will extract the two you want.
It has struck me besides that you might care to see this old ballad which I find among my papers from one of the Percy or other antiquarian Society books, and which I transcribed years ago, modernising slightly in order to make out some sort of rhythm as I went on. I did this because the original poem impressed me deeply with its pathos. I wish I could send you the antique literal poem, but I haven't it, nor know where to find it; still, I don't think I quite spoilt it with the very slight changes ventured by me in the transcription.
God bless you. Let us meet on Wednesday. Robert's best love, with that of your ever affectionate
Ba.
Mother full of lamentation,
Near that cross she wept her passion,
Whereon hung her child and Lord.
Through her spirit worn and wailing,
Tortured by the stroke and failing,
Passed and pierced the prophet's sword.
Oh, sad, sore, above all other,
Was that ever blessed mother
Of the sole-begotten one;
She who mourned and moaned and trembled
While she measured, nor dissembled,
Such despairs of such a son!
Where's the man could hold from weeping,
If Christ's mother he saw keeping
Watch with mother-heart undone?
Who could hold from grief, to view her,
Tender mother true and pure,
Agonising with her Son?
For her people's sins she saw Him
Down the bitter deep withdraw Him
'Neath the scourge and through the dole!
Her sweet Son she contemplated
Nailed to death, and desolated,
While He breathed away His soul.
E.B.B.
Ballad—Beginning of Edward II.'s Reign
'Stand up, mother, under cross,
Smile to help thy Son at loss.
Blythe, O mother, try to be!'
'Son, how can I blythely stand,
Seeing here Thy foot and hand
Nailèd to the cruel tree?'
'Mother, cease thy weeping blind.
I die here for all mankind,
Not for guilt that I have done.'
'Son, I feel Thy deathly smart.
The sword pierces through my heart,
Prophesied by Simeon.'
'Mother, mercy! let me die,
Adam out of hell to buy,
And his kin who are accurst.'
'Son, what use have I for breath?
Sorrow wasteth me to death—
Let my dying come the first.'
'Mother, pity on thy Son!
Bloody tears be running down
Worse to bear than death to meet!'
'Son, how can I cease from weeping?
Bloody streams I see a-creeping
From Thine heart against my feet.'
'Mother, now I tell thee, I!
Better is it one should die
Than all men to hell should go.'
'Son, I see Thy body hang
Foot and hand in piercèd pang.
Who can wonder at my woe?'
'Mother, now I will thee tell,
If I live, thou goest to hell—
I must die here for thy sake.'
'Son, Thou art so mild and kind,
Nature, knowledge have enjoined
I, for Thee, this wail must make.'
'Mother, ponder now this thing:
Sorrow childbirth still must bring,
Sorrow 'tis to have a son!'
'Ay, still sorrow, I can tell!
Mete it by the pain of hell,
Since more sorrow can be none.'
'Mother, pity mother's care!
Now as mother dost thou fare,
Though of maids the purest known.'
'Son, Thou help at every need
All those who before me plead—
Maid, wife—woman, everyone.'
'Mother, here I cannot dwell.
Time is that I pass to hell,
And the third day rise again.'
'Son, I would depart with Thee.
Lo! Thy wounds are slaying me.
Death has no such sorrow—none.'
When He rose, then fell her sorrow.
Sprang her bliss on the third morrow.
A blythe mother wert thou so!
Lady, for that selfsame bliss,
Pray thy Son who peerless is,
Be our shield against our foe.
Blessed be thou, full of bliss!
Let us not heaven's safety miss,
Never! through thy sweet Son's might.
Jesus, for that selfsame blood
Which Thou sheddest upon rood,
Bring us to the heavenly light.
58 Welbeck Street: Thursday, [September 2, 1852].
My dearest Mrs. Martin,—Your letters always make me glad to see them, but this time the pleasure was tempered by an undeniable pain in the conscience. Oh, I ought to have written long and long ago. I have another letter of yours unanswered. Also, there was a proposition in it to Robert of a tempting character, and he put off the 'no'—the ungracious-sounding 'no'—as long as he could. He would have liked to have seen Mrs. Flood, as well as you; she is a favorite with us both. But he finds it impossible to leave London. We have had no less than eight invitations into the country, and we are forced to keep to London, in spite of all 'babbling about' and from 'green fields.' Once we went to Farnham, and spent two days with Mr. and Mrs. Paine there in that lovely heathy country, and met Mr. Kingsley, the 'Christian Socialist,' author of 'Alton Locke,' 'Yeast,' &c. It is only two hours from town (or less) by railroad, and we took our child with us and Flush, and had a breath of fresh air which ought to have done us good, but didn't. Few men have impressed me more agreeably than Mr. Kingsley. He is original and earnest, and full of a genial and almost tender kindliness which is delightful to me. Wild and theoretical in many ways he is of course, but I believe he could not be otherwise than good and noble, let him say or dream what he will. You are not to confound this visit of ours to Farnham with the 'sanitary reform' picnic (!) to the same place, at which the newspapers say we were present. We were invited—that is true—but did not go, nor thought of it. I am not up to picnics—nor down to some of the company perhaps; who knows? Don't think me grown, too, suddenly scornful, without being sure of the particulars....
Mr. Tennyson has a little son, and wrote me such three happy notes on the occasion that I really never liked him so well before. I do like men who are not ashamed to be happy beside a cradle. Monckton Milnes had a brilliant christening luncheon, and his baby was made to sweep in India muslin and Brussels lace among a very large circle of admiring guests. Think of my vanity turning my head completely and admitting of my taking Wiedeman there (because of an express invitation). He behaved like an angel, everybody said, and looked very pretty, I said myself; only he disgraced us all at last by refusing to kiss the baby, on the ground of his being 'troppo grande.' He has learnt quantities of English words, and is in consequence more unintelligible than ever. Poor darling! I am in pain about him to-day. Wilson goes to spend a fortnight with her mother, and I don't know how I shall be comforter enough. There will be great wailing and gnashing of teeth certainly, and I shall be in prison for the next two weeks, and have to do all the washing and dressing myself....
Your ever affectionate
Ba.
58 Welbeck Street:
Saturday, September 14, 1852 [postmark].
My dearest Miss Mitford,—I am tied and bound beyond redemption for the next fortnight at least, therefore the hope of seeing you must be for afterwards. I dare say you think that a child can be stowed away like other goods; but I do assure you that my child, though quite capable of being amused by his aunts for a certain number of half-hours, would break his little heart if I left him for a whole day while he had not Wilson. When she is here, he is contented. In her absence he is sceptical about happiness, and suspicious of complete desolation. Every now and then he says to me, 'Will mama' (saying it in his pretty, broken, unquotable language) 'go away and leave Peninni all alone?' He won't let a human being touch him. I wash and dress him, and have him to sleep with me, and Robert is the only other helper he will allow of. 'There's spoiling of a child!' say you. But he is so good and tender and sensitive that we can't go beyond a certain line. For instance, I was quite frightened about the effect of Wilson's leaving him. We managed to prepare him as well as we could, and when he found she was actually gone, the passion of grief I had feared was just escaped. He struggled with himself, the eyes full of tears, and the lips quivering, but there was not any screaming and crying such as made me cry last year on a like occasion. He had made up his mind.
You see I can't go to you just now, whatever temptations you hold out. Wait—oh, we must wait. And whenever I do go to you, you will see Robert at the same time. He will like to see you; and besides, he would as soon trust me to travel to Reading alone as I trust Peninni to be alone here. I believe he thinks I should drop off my head and leave it under the seat of the rail-carriage if he didn't take care of it....
I ought to have told you that Mr. Kingsley (one of the reasons why I liked him) spoke warmly and admiringly of you. Yes, I ought to have told you that—his praise is worth having. Of course I have heard much of Mr. Harness from Mr. Kenyon and you, as well as from my own husband. But there is no use in measuring temptations; I am a female St. Anthony, and won't be overcome. The Talfourds wanted me to dine with them on Monday. Robert goes alone. You don't mention Mr. Chorley. Didn't he find his way to you?
Mr. Patmore told us that Tennyson was writing a poem on Arthur—not an epic, a collection of poems, ballad and otherwise, united by the subject, after the manner of 'In Memoriam,' but in different measures. The work will be full of beauty, whatever it is, I don't doubt.
I am reading more Dumas. He never flags. I must see Dumas when I go again to Paris, and it will be easy, as we know his friend Jadin.
Did you read Mrs. Norton's last book—the novel, which seems to be so much praised? Tell me what it is, in your mind....
I will write no more, that you may have the answer to my kind proposition as soon as possible. After the fortnight.
God bless you.
Your ever affectionate
E.B.B.
To Miss Mitford
58 Welbeck Street: Tuesday, [September 1852].
Alas, no; I cannot go to you before the Saturday you name, nor for some days after, dearest friend. It is simply impossible. Wilson has not come back, nor will till the end of next week, and though I can get away from my child for two or three hours at once during the daytime, for the whole day I could not go. What would become of him, poor darling?...
And I can't go to you this week, nor next week, probably. How vexatious! My comfort is that you seem to be better—much, much better—and that you have courage to think of the pony carriages and the Kingsleys of the earth. That man impressed me much, interested me much. The more you see of him, the more you will like him, is my prophecy. He has a volume of poems, I hear, close upon publication, and Robert and I are looking forward to it eagerly.
Mr. Ruskin has been to see us (did I tell you that?)... We went to Denmark Hill yesterday by agreement, to see the Turners—which, by the way, are divine. I like Mr. Ruskin much, and so does Robert. Very gentle, yet earnest—refined and truthful. I like him very much. We count him among the valuable acquaintances made this year in England....
Mr. Kenyon has come back, and most other people are gone away; but he is worth more than most other people, so the advantage remains to the scale. I am delighted that you should have your dear friend Mr. Harness with you, and, for my own part, I do feel grateful to him for the good he has evidently done you. Oh, continue to be better! Don't overtire yourself—don't use improvidently the new strength. Remember the winter, and be wise; and let me see you, before it comes, looking as bright and well as I thought you last year. God bless you always.
Love your ever affectionate
Ba.
Robert's love.
London: Friday, [October 6, 1852].
My dearest Miss Mitford,—I am quite in pain to have to write a farewell to you after all. As soon as Wilson had returned—and she stayed away much longer than last year—we found ourselves pushed to the edge of our time for remaining in England, and the accumulation of business to be done before we could go pressed on us. I am almost mad with the amount of things to be done, as it is; but I should have put the visit to you at the head of them, and swept all the rest on one side for a day, if it hadn't been for the detestable weather, and my horrible cough which combines with it. When Wilson came back she found me coughing in my old way, and it has been without intermission up to now, or rather waxing worse and worse. To have gone down to you and inflicted the noise of it on you would have simply made you nervous, while the risk to myself would have been very great indeed. Still, I have waited and waited, feeling it scarcely possible to write to you to say, 'I am not coming this year.' Ah, I am so very sorry and disappointed! I hoped against hope for a break in the weather, and an improvement in myself; now we must go, and there is no hope. For about a fortnight I have been a prisoner in the house. This climate won't let me live, there's the truth. So we are going on Monday. We go to Paris for a week or two, and then to Florence, and then to Rome, and then to Naples; but we shall be back next year, if God pleases, and then I shall seize an early summer day to run down straight to you and find you stronger, if God blesses me so far. Think of me and love me a little meanwhile. I shall do it by you. And do, do—since there is no time to hear from you in London—send a fragment of a note to Arabel for me, that I may have it in Paris before we set out on our long Italian journey. Let me have the comfort of knowing exactly how you are before we set out. As for me, I expect to be better on crossing the Channel. How people manage to live and enjoy life in this fog and cold is inexplicable to me. I understand the system of the American rapping spirits considerably better....
The Tennysons in their kindest words pressed us to be present at their child's christening, which took place last Tuesday, but I could not go; it was not possible. Robert went alone, therefore, and nursed the baby for ten or twelve minutes, to its obvious contentment, he flatters himself. It was christened Hallam Tennyson. Mr. Hallam was the godfather, and present in his vocation. That was touching, wasn't it? I hear that the Laureate talks vehemently against the French President and the French; but for the rest he is genial and good, and has been quite affectionate to us....
So I go without seeing you. Grieved I am. Love me to make amends.
Robert's love goes with me.
Your ever affectionate
Ba.
[Paris,] Hôtel de la Ville-l'Évêque, Rue Ville-l'Évêque:
Thursday, [November 1852].
My dearest Mr. Kenyon,—I cannot do better to-day than keep my promise to you about writing. We have done our business in Paris, but we linger from the inglorious reason that we, experienced travellers as we are, actually left a desk behind us in Bentinck Street, and must get it before we go farther. Meanwhile, it's rather dangerous to let the charm of Paris work—the honey will be clogging our feet very soon, and make it difficult to go away. What an attractive place this is, to be sure! How the sun shines, how the blue sky spreads, how the life lives, and how kind the people are on all sides! If we were going anywhere but to Italy, and if I were a little less plainly mortal with this disagreeable cough of mine, I would gladly stay and see in the Empire with M. Proudhon in the tail of it, and sit as a watcher over whatever things shall be this year and next spring at Paris. As it is, we have been very fortunate, as usual, in being present in a balcony on the boulevard, the best place possible for seeing the grandest spectacle in the world, the reception of Louis Napoleon last Saturday. The day was brilliant, and the sweep of sunshine over the streaming multitude, and all the military and civil pomp, made it difficult to distinguish between the light and life. The sunshine seemed literally to push back the houses to make room for the crowd, and the wide boulevards looked wider than ever. If you had cursed the sentiment of the day ever so, you would have had eyes for its picturesqueness, I think, so I wish you had been there to see. Louis Napoleon showed his usual tact and courage by riding on horseback quite alone, at least ten paces between himself and his nearest escort, which of course had a striking effect, taking the French on their weak side, and startling even Miss Cushman (who had been murmuring displeasure into my ear for an hour) into an exclamation of 'That's fine, I must say.' Little Wiedeman was in a state of ecstasy, and has been recounting ever since how he called '"Vive Napoléon!" molto molto duro,' meaning very loud (his Italian is not very much more correct, you know, than his other languages), and how Napoleon took off his hat to him directly. I don't see the English papers, but I conclude you are all furious. You must make up your minds to it nevertheless—the Empire is certain, and the feeling of all but unanimity (whatever the motive) throughout France obvious enough. Smooth down the lion's mane of the 'Examiner,' and hint that roaring over a desert is a vain thing. As to Victor Hugo's book, the very enemies of the present state of affairs object to it that he lies simply. There is not enough truth in it for an invective to rest on, still less for an argument. It's an inarticulate cry of a bird of prey, wild and strong irrational, and not a book at all. For my part I did wave my handkerchief for the new Emperor, but I bore the show very well, and said to myself, 'God bless the people!' as the man who, to my apprehension, represents the democracy, went past. A very intelligent Frenchman, caught in the crowd and forced to grope his way slowly along, told me that the expression of opinion everywhere was curiously the same, not a dissenting mutter did he hear. Strange, strange, all this! For the drama of history we must look to France, for startling situations, for the 'points' which thrill you to the bone....
May God bless you meantime! Take care of yourself for the sake of us all who love you, none indeed more affectionately and gratefully than
R.B. and E.B.B.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The Holy Scriptures.
[2] Miss Haworth was a friend of Mr. Browning from very early days, and was commemorated by him in 'Sordello' under the name of 'Eyebright' (see Mrs. Orr's Life, p. 86). Her acquaintance with Mrs. Browning began with this visit to London, and ripened into a warm friendship. One subject of interest which they had in common was mesmerism, with the attendant mysteries of spiritualism and Swedenborgianism; and references to these are frequent in Mrs. Browning's letters to her.
[3] So spelt in the earlier letters, but subsequently modified to 'Penini.'
[4] Miss Mitford had lately moved into her new home at Swallowfield, about three miles from the old cottage at Three Mile Cross, commemorated in 'Our Village.'
[5] The article was by M. Joseph Milsand, and led to the formation of the warm friendship between him and Mr. Browning which lasted until the death of the former in 1886.
[6] The May edict restricted the franchise to electors who had resided three years in the same district. In October Louis Napoleon proposed to repeal it, and the refusal of the Assembly no doubt strengthened his hold on the democracy.
[7] The coup d'état took place in the early morning of December 2.
[8] The constitution of 1848.
[9] The point was rather whether they had the power.
[10] Miss Mitford's Recollections of a Literary Life contained a chapter relating to Robert and Elizabeth Browning, in which, with the best intentions in the world, she told the story of the drowning of Edward Barrett, and of the gloom cast by it on his sister's life. It was this revival of the greatest sorrow of her life that so upset Mrs. Browning.
[11] No doubt M. Milsand was the writer in question.
[12] The (forged) Letters of Shelley, to which Mr. Browning wrote an introduction, dealing rather with Shelley in general than with the letters.
[13] 'Lines to Elizabeth Barrett Browning on her Later Sonnets', printed in the Athenæum for February 15, 1851. The allusion to the voice which called 'Dinah' must refer to something in Miss Mulock's letter. Dinah was Miss Mulock's Christian name.
[14] In another letter, written about the same date to Mrs. Martin, Mrs. Browning says: 'Perhaps you never heard of the crystal ball. The original ball was bought by Lady Blessington from an "Egyptian magician," and resold at her sale. She never could understand the use of it, but others have looked deeper, or with purer eyes, it is said; and now there is an optician in London who makes and sells these balls, and speaks of a "great demand," though they are expensive. "Many persons," said Lord Stanhope, "use the balls, without the moral courage to confess it." No doubt they did.
CHAPTER VIII
1852-55
The middle of November found the travellers back again in Florence, and it was nearly three years before they again quitted Italy. No doubt, after the excitement of the coup d'état in Paris, and the subsequent manœuvres of Louis Napoleon, which culminated in this very month in his exchanging the title of President for that of Emperor, Florence must have seemed very quiet, if not dull. The political movement there was dead; the Grand Duke, restored by Austrian bayonets, had abandoned all pretence at reform and constitutional progress. In Piedmont, Cavour had just been summoned to the head of the administration, but there were no signs as yet of the use he was destined to make of his power. Of politics, therefore, we hear little for the present.
Nor is there much to note at this time in respect of literature. A new edition of Mrs. Browning's poems was called for in 1853; but beyond some minor revisions of detail it did not differ from the edition of 1850. Her husband's play, 'Colombe's Birthday,' was produced at the Haymarket Theatre during April, with Miss Faucit (Lady Martin) in the principal part; but the poet had no share in the production, and his literary activity must have been devoted to the composition of some of the fine poems which subsequently formed the two volumes of 'Men and Women,' which appeared in 1855. Mrs. Browning had also embarked on her longest poem, 'Aurora Leigh,' and speaks of being happily and busily engaged in work; but we hear little of it as yet in her correspondence. Her little son and her Florentine friends and visitors form her principal subjects; and we also see the beginning of a topic which for the next few years occupied a good deal of her attention—namely, Spiritualism.
The temperament of Mrs. Browning had in it a decidedly mystical vein, which predisposed her to believe in any communication between our world and that of the spirits. Hence when a number of people professed to have such communication, she was not merely ready to listen to their claims, but was by temperament inclined to accept them. The immense vogue which spiritualism had during 'the fifties' tended to confirm her belief. It was easy to say that where there was so much smoke there must be fire. And what she believed, she believed strongly and with a perfect conviction that no other view could be right. Just as her faith in Louis Napoleon survived the coup d'état, and even Villafranca, so her belief in communications with the spirit world was proof against any exposure of fraud on the part of the mediums. Not that she was guilty of the absurdities which marked many of the devotees of spiritualism. She had a great horror of submitting herself to mesmeric influences. She recognised that very many of the supposed revelations of the spirits were trivial, perhaps false; but to the fact that communications did exist she adhered constantly.
It is not of much interest now to discuss the ethics or the metaphysics of the 'rapping spirits;' but the subject deserves more than a passing mention in the life of Mrs. Browning, because it has been said, and apparently with authority, that 'the only serious difference which ever arose between Mr. Browning and his wife referred to the subject of spiritualism.'[15] It is quite certain that Mr. Browning did not share his wife's belief in spiritualism; a reference to 'Sludge the Medium' is sufficient to establish his position in the matter. But it is easy to make too much of the supposed 'difference.' Certainly it has left no trace in Mrs. Browning's letters which are now extant. There is no sign in them that the divergence of opinion produced the slightest discord in the harmony of their life. No doubt Mr. Browning felt strongly as to the character of some of the persons, whether mediums or their devotees, with whom his wife was brought into contact, and he may have relieved his feelings by strong expressions of his opinion concerning them; but there is no reason to lay stress on this as indicating any serious difference between himself and his wife.
It has seemed necessary to say so much, lest it should be supposed that any of the omissions, which have been made in order to reduce the bulk of the letters within reasonable limits, cover passages in which such a difference is spoken of. In no single instance is this the case. The omissions have been made in the interests of the reader, not in order to affect in any way the representation which the letters give of their writer's feelings and character. With this preface they may be left to tell their own tale.
Florence: November 14, 1852 [postmark].
My dearest Sarianna,—You can't think how pleased I am to find myself in Florence again in our own house, everything looking exactly as if we had left it yesterday. Scarcely I can believe that we have gone away at all. But Robert has been perfectly demoralised by Paris, and thinks it all as dull as possible after the boulevards: 'no life, no variety.' Oh, of course it is very dead in comparison! but it's a beautiful death, and what with the lovely climate, and the lovely associations, and the sense of repose, I could turn myself on my pillow and sleep on here to the end of my life; only be sure that I shall do no such thing. We are going back to Paris; you will have us safe. Peninni had worked himself up to a state of complete agitation on entering Florence, through hearing so much about it. First he kissed me and then Robert again and again, as if his little heart were full. 'Poor Florence' said he while we passed the bridge. Certainly there never was such a darling since the world began.... I suffered extremely through our unfortunate election of the Mont Cenis route (much more my own fault than Robert's), and was extremely unwell at Genoa, to the extent of almost losing heart and hope, which is a most unusual case with me, but the change from Lyons had been too sudden and severe. At Genoa the weather was so exquisite, so absolutely June weather, that at the end of a week's lying on the sofa, I had rallied again quite, only poor darling Robert was horribly vexed and out of spirits all that time, as was natural. I feel myself, every now and then (and did then), like a weight round his neck, poor darling, though he does not account it so, for his part. Well, but it passed, and we were able to walk about beautiful Genoa the last two days, and visit Andrea Doria's palace and enjoy everything together. Then we came on by a night and day's diligence through a warm air, which made me better and better. By the way, Turin is nearly as cold as Chambéry; you can't believe yourself to be in Italy. Susa, at the foot of the Alps, is warmer. We were all delighted to hear the sound of our dear Italian, and inclined to be charmed with everything; and Peninni fairly expressed the kind of generalisations we were given to, when he observed philosophically, 'In Italy, pussytats don't never scwatch, mama.' This was in reply to an objection I had made to a project of his about kissing the head of an enchanting pussy-cat who presented herself in vision to him as we were dining at Turin.... God bless and preserve you. We love you dearly, and talk of you continually—of both of you. Your most affectionate sister,
Ba.
Best love to your father.—Peninni.
Casa Guidi: November 23, 1852.
We flatter ourselves, dearest Mr. Kenyon, that as we think so much of you, you may be thinking a little of us, and will not be sorry—who knows?—to have a few words from us.
November 24.
Just as I was writing, had written, that sentence yesterday, came the letter which contained your notelet. Thank you, thank you, dearest friend, it is very pleasant to have such a sign from your hand across the Alps of kindness and remembrance. As to my sins in the choice of the Mont Cenis route, 'Bradshaw' was full of temptation, and the results to me have so entirely passed away now, that even the wholesome state of repentance is very faded in the colours. What chiefly remains is the sense of wonderful contrast between climate and climate when we found ourselves at Genoa and in June. I can't get rid of the astonishment of it even now. At Turin I had to keep up a fire most of the night in my bedroom, and at Genoa, with all the windows and doors open, we were gasping for breath, languid with the heat, blue burning skies overhead, and not enough stirring air for refreshment. Nothing less, perhaps, would have restored me so soon, and it was delightful to be able during our last two days of our ten days there to stand on Andrea Doria's terrace, and look out on that beautiful bay with its sweep of marble palaces. My 'unconquerable mind' even carried me halfway up the lighthouse for the sake of the 'view,' only there I had to stop ingloriously, and let Robert finish the course alone while I rested on a bench: aspiration is not everything, either in literature or lighthouses, you know, let us be ever so 'insolvent.'
Well, and since we left Turin, everywhere in Italy we have found summer, summer—not a fire have we needed even in Florence. Such mornings, such evenings, such walkings out in the dusk, such sunsets over the Arno! ah, Mr. Kenyon, you in England forget what life is in this out-of-door fresh world, with your cloistral habits and necessities! I assure you I can't help fancying that the winter is over and gone, the past looks so cold and black in the warm light of the present. We have had some rain, but at night, and only thundery frank rains which made the next day warmer, and I have all but lost my cough, and am feeling very well and very happy.
Oh, yes, it made me glad to see our poor darling Florence again; I do love Florence when all's said against it, and when Robert (demoralised by Paris) has said most strongly that the place is dead, and dull, and flat, which it is, I must confess, particularly to our eyes fresh from the palpitating life of the Parisian boulevards, where we could scarcely find our way to Prichard's for the crowd during our last fortnight there. Poor Florence, so dead, as Robert says, and as we both feel, so trodden flat in the dust of the vineyards by these mules of Austria and these asses of the Papacy: good heavens! how long are these things to endure? I do love Florence, when all's said. The very calm, the very dying stillness is expressive and touching. And then our house, our tables, our chairs, our carpets, everything looking rather better for our having been away! Overjoyed I was to feel myself at home again! our Italians so pleased to see us, Wiedeman's nurse rushing in, kissing my lips away almost, and seizing on the child, 'Dio mio, come è bellino! the tears pouring down her cheeks, not able to look, for emotion, at the shawl we had brought her from England. Poor Italians! who can help caring for them, and feeling for them in their utter prostration just now? The unanimity of despair on all sides is an affecting thing, I can assure you. There is no mistake here, no possibility of mistake or doubt as to the sentiment of the people towards the actual régime; and if your English newspapers earnestly want to sympathise with an oppressed people, let them speak a little for Tuscany. The most hopeful word we have heard uttered by the Italians is, 'Surely it cannot last.' It is the hope of the agonising.
But our 'carta di soggiorno' was sent to us duly. The government is not over learned in literature, oh no....
And only Robert has seen Mr. Powers yet, for he is in the crisis of removal to a new house and studio, a great improvement on the last, and an excellent sign of prosperity of course. He is to come to us some evening as soon as he can take breath. We have had visits from the attachés at the English embassy here, Mr. Wolf, and Mr. Lytton,[16] Sir E. Bulwer Lytton's son, and I think we shall like the latter, who (a reason for my particular sympathy) is inclined to various sorts of spiritualism, and given to the magic arts. He told me yesterday that several of the American rapping spirits are imported to Knebworth, to his father's great satisfaction. A very young man, as you may suppose, the son is; refined and gentle in manners. Sir Henry Bulwer is absent from Florence just now.
As to our house, it really looks better to my eyes than it used to look. Mr. Lytton wondered yesterday how we could think of leaving it, and so do I, almost. The letting has answered well enough; that is, it has paid all expenses, leaving an advantage to us of a house during six months, at our choice to occupy ourselves or let again. Also it might have been let for a year (besides other offers), only our agent expecting us in September, and mistaking our intentions generally, refused to do so. Now I will tell you what our plans are. We shall stay here till we can let our house. If we don't let it we shall continue to occupy it, and put off Rome till the spring, but the probability is that we shall have an offer before the end of December, which will be quite time enough for a Roman winter. In fact, I hear of a fever at Rome and another at Naples, and would rather, on every account, as far as I am concerned, stay a little longer in Florence. I can be cautious, you see, upon some points, and Roman fevers frighten me for our little Wiedeman.
As to your 'science' of 'turning the necessity of travelling into a luxury,' my dearest cousin, do let me say that, like some of the occult sciences, it requires a good deal of gold to work out. Your too generous kindness enabled us to do what we couldn't certainly have done without it, but nothing would justify us, you know, in not considering the cheapest way of doing things notwithstanding. So Bradshaw, as I say, tempted us, and the sight of the short cut in the map (pure delusion those maps are!) beguiled us, and we crossed the 'cold valley' and the 'cold mountain' when we shouldn't have done either, and we have bought experience and paid for it. Never mind! experience is nearly always worth its price. And I have nearly lost my cough, and Robert is dosing me indefatigably with cod's liver oil to do away with my thinness....
Robert's best love, with that of your most
Gratefully affectionate
Ba.
[Florence: winter 1852-3.]
[The beginning of the letter is lost]
The state of things here in Tuscany is infamous and cruel. The old serpent, the Pope, is wriggling his venom into the heart of all possibilities of free thought and action. It is a dreadful state of things. Austria the hand, the papal power the brain! and no energy in the victim for resistance—only for hatred. They do hate here, I am glad to say.
But we linger at Florence in spite of all. It was delightful to find ourselves in the old nest, still warm, of Casa Guidi, to sit in our own chairs and sleep in our own beds; and here we shall stay as late perhaps as March, if we don't re-let our house before. Then we go to Rome and Naples. You can't think how we have caught up our ancient traditions just where we left them, and relapsed into our former soundless, stirless hermit life. Robert has not passed an evening from home since we came—just as if we had never known Paris. People come sometimes to have tea and talk with us, but that's all; a few intelligent and interesting persons sometimes, such as Mr. Tennyson (the poet's brother) and Mr. Lytton (the novelist's son) and Mr. Stuart, the lecturer on Shakespeare, whom once I named to you, I fancy. Mr. Tennyson married an Italian, and has four children. He has much of the atmosphere poetic about him, a dreamy, speculative, shy man, reminding us of his brother in certain respects; good and pure-minded. I like him. Young Mr. Lytton is very young, as you may suppose, with all sorts of high aspirations—and visionary enough to suit me, which is saying much—and affectionate, with an apparent liking to us both, which is engaging to us, of course. We have seen the Trollopes once, the younger ones, but the elder Mrs. Trollope was visible neither at that time nor since....
I sit here reading Dumas' 'last,' notwithstanding. Dumas is astonishing; he never will write himself out; there's no dust on his shoes after all this running; his last books are better than his first.
Do your American friends write ever to you about the rapping spirits? I hear and would hear much of them. It is said that at least fifteen thousand persons in America, of all classes and society, are mediums, as the term is. Most curious these phenomena.
[The end of the letter is lost]
Casa Guidi, Florence: February [1853].
I had just heard of your accident from Arabel, my much loved friend, and was on the point of writing to you when your letter came. To say that I was shocked and grieved to hear such news of you, is useless indeed; you will feel how I have felt about it. May God bless and restore you, and make me very thankful, as certainly I must be in such a case....
The comfort to me in your letter is the apparent good spirits you write in, and the cheerful, active intentions you have of work for the delight of us all. I clap my hands, and welcome the new volumes. Dearest friend, I do wish I had heard about the French poetry in Paris, for there I could have got at books and answered some of your questions. The truth is, I don't know as much about French modern poetry as I ought to do in the way of métier. The French essential poetry seems to me to flow out into prose works, into their school of romances, and to be least poetical when dyked up into rhythm. Mdme. Valmore I never read, but she is esteemed highly, I think, for a certain naïveté, and happy surprises in the thought and feeling, des mots charmants. I wanted to get her books in Paris, and missed them somehow; there was so much to think of in Paris. Alfred de Musset's poems I read, collected in a single volume; it is the only edition I ever met with. The French value him extremely for his music; and there is much in him otherwise to appreciate, I think; very beautiful things indeed. He is best to my mind when he is most lyrical, and when he says things in a breath. His elaborate poems are defective. One or two Spanish ballads of his seem to me perfect, really. He has great power in the introduction of familiar and conventional images without disturbing the ideal—a good power for these days. The worst is that the moral atmosphere is bad, and that, though I am not, as you know, the very least bit of a prude (not enough perhaps), some of his poems must be admitted to be most offensive. Get St. Beuve's poems, they have much beauty in them you will grant at once. Then there is a Breton[17] poet whose name Robert and I have both of us been ungrateful enough to forget—we have turned our brains over and over and can't find the name anyhow—and who, indeed, deserves to be remembered, who writes some fresh and charmingly simple idyllic poems, one called, I think, 'Primel et Nola.' By that clue you may hunt him out perhaps in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes.' There's no strong imagination, understand—nothing of that sort! but you have a sweet, fresh, cool sylvan feeling with him, rare among Frenchmen of his class. Edgar Quinet has more positive genius. He is a man of grand, extravagant conceptions. Do you know the 'Ahasuerus'?
I wonder if the Empress pleases you as well as the Emperor. For my part, I approve altogether, and none the less that he has offended Austria by the mode of announcement. Every cut of the whip in the face of Austria is an especial compliment to me—or, so I feel it. Let him head the democracy and do his duty to the world, and use to the utmost his great opportunities. Mr. Cobden and the Peace Society are pleasing me infinitely just now in making head against the immorality (that's the word) of the English press. The tone taken up towards France is immoral in the highest degree, and the invasion cry would be idiotic if it were not something worse. The Empress, I heard the other day from good authority, is 'charming and good at heart.' She was educated 'at a respectable school at Bristol' (Miss Rogers's, Royal Crescent, Clifton), and is very 'English,' which doesn't prevent her from shooting with pistols, leaping gates, driving 'four-in-hand,' and upsetting the carriage when the frolic requires it, as brave as a lion and as true as a dog. Her complexion is like marble, white, pale and pure; her hair light, rather 'sandy,' they say, and she powders it with gold dust for effect; but there is less physical and more intellectual beauty than is generally attributed to her. She is a woman of 'very decided opinions.' I like all that, don't you? and I liked her letter to the Préfet, as everybody must. Ah, if the English press were in earnest in the cause of liberty, there would be something to say for our poor trampled-down Italy—much to say, I mean. Under my eyes is a people really oppressed, really groaning its heart out. But these things are spoken of with measure.
We are reading Lamartine and Proudhon on '48. We have plenty of French books here; only the poets are to seek—the moderns. Do you catch sight of Moore in diary and letters? Robert, who has had glimpses of him, says the 'flunkeyism' is quite humiliating. It is strange that you have not heard more of the rapping spirits. They are worth hearing of were it only in the point of view of the physiognomy of the times, as a sign of hallucination and credulity, if not more. Fifteen thousand persons in all ranks of society, and all degrees of education, are said to be mediums, that is seers, or rather hearers and recipients, perhaps. Oh, I can't tell you all about it; but the details are most curious. I understand that Dickens has caught a wandering spirit in London and showed him up victoriously in 'Household Words' as neither more nor less than the 'cracking of toe joints;' but it is absurd to try to adapt such an explanation to cases in general. You know I am rather a visionary, and inclined to knock round at all the doors of the present world to try to get out, so that I listen with interest to every goblin story of the kind, and, indeed, I hear enough of them just now.
We heard nothing, however, from the American Minister, Mr. Marsh, and his wife, who have just come from Constantinople in consequence of the change of Presidency, and who passed an evening with us a few days ago. She is pretty and interesting, a great invalid and almost blind, yet she has lately been to Jerusalem, and insisted on being carried to the top of Mount Horeb. After which I certainly should have the courage to attempt the journey myself, if we had money enough. Going to the Holy Land has been a favorite dream of Robert's and mine ever since we were married, and some day you will wonder why I don't write, and hear suddenly that I am lost in the desert. You will wonder, too, at our wandering madness, by the way, more than at any rapping spirit extant; we have 'a spirit in our feet,' as Shelley says in his lovely Eastern song—and our child is as bad as either of us. He says, 'I tuite tired of Flolence. I want to go to Brome,' which is worse than either of us. I never am tired of Florence. Robert has had an application from Miss Faucit (now Mrs. Martin) to bring out his 'Colombe's Birthday' at the Haymarket.
[The remainder of this letter is missing]
To Miss I. Blagden
Florence: March 3, 1853.
My dearest Isa, ... You have seen in the papers that Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer has had an accident in the arm, which keeps him away from the House of Commons, and even from the Haymarket, where they are acting his play ('Not so bad as we seem') with some success. Well, here is a curious thing about it. Mr. Lytton told us some time ago, that, by several clairvoyantes, without knowledge or connection with one another, an impending accident had been announced to him, 'not fatal, but serious.' Mr. Lytton said, 'I have been very uneasy about it, and nervous as every letter arrived, but nearly three months having passed, I began to think they must have made a mistake—only it is curious that they all should all make a mistake of the same kind precisely.' When after this we saw the accident in the paper, it was effective, as you may suppose!
Profane or not, I am resolved on getting as near to a solution of the spirit question as I can, and I don't believe in the least risk of profanity, seeing that whatever is, must be permitted; and that the contemplation of whatever is, must be permitted also, where the intentions are pure and reverent. I can discern no more danger in psychology than in mineralogy, only intensely a greater interest. As to the spirits, I care less about what they are capable of communicating, than of the fact of there being communications. I certainly wouldn't set about building a system of theology out of their oracles. God forbid. They seem abundantly foolish, one must admit. There is probably, however, a mixture of good spirits and bad, foolish and wise, of the lower orders perhaps, in both kinds....
Isa, you and I must try to make head against the strong-minded women, though really you half frighten me prospectively....
—— ——, one of the strong-minded, we just escaped with life from in London, and again in Paris. In Rome she has us! What makes me talk so ill-naturedly is the information I have since received, that she has put everybody unfortunate enough to be caught, into a book, and published them at full length, in American fashion. Now I do confess to the greatest horror of being caught, stuck through with a pin, and beautifully preserved with other butterflies and beetles, even in the album of a Corinna in yellow silk. I detest that particular sort of victimisation....
We are invited to go to Constantinople this summer, to visit the American Minister there. There's a temptation for you!
God bless you, dearest Isa. I shall be delighted to see you again, and so will Robert! I always feel (I say to him sometimes) that you love me a little, and that I may rest on you. Your ever affectionate friend,
Elizabeth B. Browning.
Florence: March 15, [1853].
... The spring has surprised us here just as we were beginning to murmur at the cold. Think of somebody advising me the other day not to send out my child without a double-lined parasol! There's a precaution for March! The sun is powerful—we are rejoicing in our Italian climate. Oh, that I could cut out just a mantle of it to wrap myself in, and so go and see you. Your house is dry, you say. Is the room you occupy airy as well as warm? Because being confined to a small room, with you who are so used to liberty and out of door life, must be depressing to the vital energies. Do you read much? No, no, you ought not to think of the press, of course, till you are strong. Ah—if you should get to London to see our play, how glad I should be! We, too, talk of London, but somewhat mistily, and not so early in the summer. Mr. and Mrs. Marsh—he is the American Minister at Constantinople—have been staying in Florence, and passing some evenings with us. They tempt us with an invitation to Constantinople this summer, which would be irresistible if we had the money for the voyage, perhaps, so perhaps it is as well that we have not. Enough for us that we are going to Rome and to Naples, then northward. I am busy in the meanwhile with various things, a new poem, and revising for a third edition which is called for by the gracious public. Robert too is busy with another book. Then I am helping to make frocks for my child, reading Proudhon (and Swedenborg) and in deep meditation on the nature of the rapping spirits, upon whom, I understand, a fellow dramatist of yours, Henry Spicer (I think you once mentioned him to me as such), has just written a book entitled, 'The Mystery of the Age.' A happy winter it has been to me altogether. We have had so much repose, and at the same time so much interest in life, also I have been so well, that I shall be sorry when we go out of harbour again with the spring breezes. We like Mr. Tennyson extremely, and he is a constant visitor of ours: the poet's elder brother. By the way, the new edition of the Ode on the Duke of Wellington seems to contain wonderful strokes of improvement. Have you seen it? As to Alexandre Dumas, Fils, I hope it is not true that he is in any scrape from the cause you mention. He is very clever, and I have a feeling for him for his father's sake as well as because he presents a rare instance of intellectual heirship. Didn't I tell you of the prodigious success of his drama of the 'Dame aux Camélias,' which ran about a hundred nights last year, and is running again? how there were caricatures on the boulevards, showing the public of the pit holding up umbrellas to protect themselves from the tears rained down by the public of the boxes? how the President of the Republic went to see, and sent a bracelet to the first actress, and how the English newspapers called him immoral for it? how I went to see, myself, and cried so that I was ill for two days and how my aunt called me immoral for it? I was properly lectured, I assure you. She 'quite wondered how Mr. Browning could allow such a thing,' not comprehending that Mr. Browning never, or scarcely ever, does think of restraining his wife from anything she much pleases to do. The play was too painful, that was the worst of it, but I maintain it is a highly moral play, rightly considered, and the acting was most certainly most exquisite on the part of all the performers. Not that Alexandre Dumas, Fils, excels generally in morals (in his books, I mean), but he is really a promising writer as to cleverness, and when he has learnt a little more art he will take no low rank as a novelist. Robert has just been reading a tale of his called 'Diane de Lys,' and throws it down with—'You must read that, Ba—it is clever—only outrageous as to the morals.' Just what I should expect from Alexandre Dumas, Fils. I have a tenderness for the whole family, you see.
You don't say a word to me of Mrs. Beecher Stowe. How did her book[18] impress you? No woman ever had such a success, such a fame; no man ever had, in a single book. For my part I rejoice greatly in it. It is an individual glory full of healthy influence and benediction to the world.
[The remainder of this letter is missing]
Casa Guidi, Florence: March 17, [1853].
Thank you—how to thank you enough—for the too kind present of the 'Madonna,'[19] dearest Mona Nina. I will not wait to read it through—we have only looked through it, which is different; but there is enough seen so beautiful as to deserve the world's thanks, to say nothing of ours, and there are personal reasons besides why we should thank you. Have you not quoted us, have you not sent us the book? Surely, good reasons.
But now, be still better to me, and write and say how you are. I want to know that you are quite well; if you can tell me so, do. You have told me of a new book, which is excellent news, and I hear from another quarter that it will consist of your 'Readings' and 'Remarks,' a sort of book most likely to penetrate widely and be popular in a good sense. Would it not be well to bring out such a work volume by volume at intervals? Is it this you are contemplating?...
Robert and I have had a very happy winter in Florence; let me, any way, answer for myself. I have been well, and we have been quiet and occupied; reading books, doing work, playing with Wiedeman; and with nothing from without to vex us much. At the end of it all, we go to Rome certainly; but we have taken on this apartment for another year, which Robert decided on to please me, and because it was reasonable on the whole. We have been meditating Socialism and mysticism of very various kinds, deep in Louis Blanc and Proudhon, deeper in the German spiritualists, added to which, I have by no means given up my French novels and my rapping spirits, of whom our American guests bring us relays of witnesses. So we don't absolutely moulder here in the intellect, only Robert (and indeed I have too) has tender recollections of 'that blaze of life in Paris,' and we both mean to go back to it presently. No place like Paris for living in. Here, one sleeps, 'perchance to dream,' and praises the pillow.
We had a letter from our friend M. Milsand yesterday; you see he does not forget us—no, indeed. In speaking of the state of things in France, which I had asked him to do, he says, he is not sanguine (he never is sanguine, I must tell you, about anything), though entirely dissentient from la presse Anglaise. He considers on the whole that the status is as good as can be desired, as a stable foundation for the development of future institutions. It is in that point of view that he regards the situation. So do I. As to the English press, I, who am not 'Anglomane' like our friend, I call it plainly either maniacal or immoral, let it choose the epithet. The invasion cry, for instance, I really can't qualify it; I can't comprehend it with motives all good and fair. I throw it over to you to analyse.
With regard to the sudden death of French literature, you all exaggerate that like the rest. If you look into even the 'Revue des Deux Mondes' for the year 1852, you will see that a few books are still published. Pazienza. Things will turn up better than you suppose. Newspapers breathe heavily just now, that's undeniable; but for book literature the government never has touched it with a finger. I ascertained that as a fact when I was in Paris.
None of you in England understand what the crisis has been in France; and how critical measures have been necessary. Lamartine's work on the revolution of '48 is one of the best apologies for Louis Napoleon; and, if you want another, take Louis Blanc's work on the same.
Isn't it a shame that nobody comes from the north to the south, after a hundred oaths? I hear nothing of dear Mr. Kenyon. I hear nothing from you of your coming. You won't come, any of you....
I am much relieved by hearing that Mazzini is gone from Italy, whatever Lord Malmesbury may say of it. Every day I expected to be told that he was taken at Milan and shot. A noble man, though incompetent, I think, to his own aspiration; but a man who personally has my sympathies always. The state of things here is cruel, the people are one groan. God deliver us all, I must pray, and by almost any means.
As to your Ministry, I don't expect very much from it. Lord Aberdeen, 'put on' to Lord John, is using the drag uphill. They will do just as little as they can, be certain.
Think of my submitting at last to the conjugal will and cod's liver oil—yes, and think of its doing me good. The cough was nearly, if not quite, gone because of the climate, before I took the oil, but it does me good by making me gain in flesh. I am much less thin, and very well, and dearest Robert triumphant.
Florence: April 12, [1853].
The comfort is, my ever loved friend, that here is spring—summer, as translated into Italy—if fine weather is to set you up again. I shall be very thankful to have better news of you; to hear of your being out of that room and loosened into some happy condition of liberty. It seems unnatural to think of you in one room. That seems fitter for me, doesn't it? And the rooms in England are so low and small, that they put double bars on one's captivity. May God bring you out with the chestnut trees and elms! It's very sad meanwhile.
Comfort yourself, dear friend! Admire Louis Napoleon. He's an extraordinary man beyond all doubt; and that he has achieved great good for France, I do not in the least doubt. I was only telling you that I had not finished my pedestal for him—wait a little. Because, you see, for my part, I don't go over to the system of 'mild despotisms,' no, indeed. I am a democrat to the bone of me. It is simply as a democratical ruler, and by grace of the people, that I accept him, and he must justify himself by more deeds to his position before he glorifies himself before me. That's what I mean to say. A mild despot in France, let him be the Archangel Gabriel, unless he hold the kingdom in perpetuity, what is the consequence? A successor like the Archangel Lucifer, perhaps. Then, for the press, where there is thought, there must be discussion or conspiracy. Are you aware of the amount of readers in France? Take away the 'Times' newspaper, and the blow falls on a handful of readers, on a section of what may be called the aristocracy. But everybody reads in France. Every fiacre driver who waits for you at a shop door, beguiles the time with a newspaper. It is on that account that the influence of the press is dangerous, you will say. Precisely so; but also, on that account too, it is necessary. No; I hold, myself, that he will give more breathing room to France, as circumstances admit of it. Else, there will be convulsion. You will see. We shall see. And Louis Napoleon, who is wise, foresees, I cannot doubt.
Not read Mrs. Stowe's book! But you must. Her book is quite a sign of the times and has otherwise and intrinsically considerable power. For myself, I rejoice in the success, both as a woman and a human being. Oh, and is it possible that you think a woman has no business with questions like the question of slavery? Then she had better use a pen no more. She had better subside into slavery and concubinage herself, I think, as in the times of old, shut herself up with the Penelopes in the 'women's apartment,' and take no rank among thinkers and speakers. Certainly you are not in earnest in these things. A difficult question—yes! All virtue is difficult. England found it difficult. France found it difficult. But we did not make ourselves an arm-chair of our sins. As for America, I honor America in much; but I would not be an American for the world while she wears that shameful scar upon her brow. The address of the new President[20] exasperates me. Observe, I am an abolitionist, not to the fanatical degree, because I hold that compensation should be given by the North to the South, as in England. The States should unite in buying off this national disgrace.
The Americans are very kind and earnest, and I like them all the better for their warm feeling towards you. Is Longfellow agreeable in his personal relations? We knew his brother, I think I told you, in Paris. I suppose Mr. Field has been liberal to Thackeray, and yet Thackeray does not except him in certain observations on American publishers. We shall have an arrangement made of some sort, it appears. Mr. Forster wants me to add some new poems to my new edition, in order to secure the copyright under the new law. But as the law does not act backwards, I don't see how new poems would save me. They would just sweep out the new poems—that's all. One or two lyrics could not be made an object, and in those two thick volumes, nearly bursting with their present contents, there would not be room for many additions. No, I shall add nothing. I have revised the edition very carefully, and made everything better. It vexed me to see how much there was to do. Positively, even rhymes left unrhymed in 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship.' You don't write so carelessly, not you, and the reward is that you haven't so much trouble in your new editions. I see your book advertised in a stray number of the 'Athenæum' lent to me by Mr. Tennyson—Frederick. He lent it to me because I wanted to see the article on the new poet, Alexander Smith, who appears so applauded everywhere. He has the poet's stuff in him, one may see from the extracts. Do you know him? And Coventry Patmore—have you heard anything of his book,[21] of which appears an advertisement?
Ah, yes; how unfortunate that you should have parted with your copyrights! It's a bad plan always, except in the case of novels which have their day, and no day after.
The poem I am about will fill a volume when done. It is the novel or romance I have been hankering after so long, written in blank verse, in the autobiographical form; the heroine, an artist woman—not a painter, mind. It is intensely modern, crammed from the times (not the 'Times' newspaper) as far as my strength will allow. Perhaps you won't like it, perhaps you will. Who knows? who dares hope?
I am beginning to be anxious about 'Colombe's Birthday.' I care much more about it than Robert does. He says that nobody will mistake it for his speculation, it's Mr. Buckstone's affair altogether. True; but I should like it to succeed, being Robert's play notwithstanding. But the play is subtle and refined for pits and galleries. I am nervous about it. On the other hand, those theatrical people ought to know; and what in the world made them select it if it is not likely to answer their purpose? By the way, a dreadful rumour reaches us of its having been 'prepared for the stage by the author.' Don't believe a word of it. Robert just said 'yes' when they wrote to ask him, and not a line of communication has passed since. He has prepared nothing at all, suggested nothing, modified nothing. He referred them to his new edition; and that was the whole.
We see a great deal of Mr. Tennyson. Robert is very fond of him, and so am I. He too writes poems, and prints them, though not for the public. They are better and stronger than Charles Tennyson's, and he has the poetical temperament in everything. Did I tell you that he had married an Italian, and had children from twelve years old downwards? He is intensely English nevertheless, as expatriated Englishmen generally are. I always tell Robert that his patriotism grows and deepens in exact proportion as he goes away from England. As for me, it is not so with me. I am very cosmopolitan, and am considerably tired of the self-deification of the English nation at the expense of all others. We have some noble advantages over the rest of the world, but it is not all advantage. The shameful details of bribery, for instance, prove what I have continually maintained, the non-representativeness of our 'representative system;' and, socially speaking, we are much behindhand with most foreign peoples. Let us be proud in the right place, I say, and not in the wrong. 'We see too a good deal of young Lytton, Sir Edward's only son, an interesting young man, with various sorts of good, and aspiration to good, in him. You see we are not at Rome yet. Do write to me. Speak of yourself particularly. God bless you, dearest friend. Believe that I think of you and love you most faithfully.
Ba.
Florence: April 21, 1853.
My dearest Mrs. Martin,—I am in consternation and vexation on receiving your letter. What you must have thought of me all this time! Of course I never saw the letters which went to Rome. Letters sent to Poste restante, Rome, are generally lost, even if you are a Roman: and we are no Romans, alas! nor likely to become such, it seems to me. There's a fatality about Rome to us. I waited for you to write, and then waited on foolishly for the settlement of our own plans, after I had ascertained that you were not in Devonshire, but in France as usual. Now, I can't help writing, though I have written a letter already which must have crossed yours—a long letter—so that you will have more than enough of me this time.
It's comfort and pleasure after all to have a good account of you both, my very dear friends, even though one knows by it that you have been sending one 'al diavolo' for weeks or months. Forgive me, do. I feel guilty somehow to the extreme degree, that four letters should have been written to me, even though I received none of them, because I ought to have written at least one letter in that time.
Your politics would be my politics on most points; we should run together more than halfway, if we could stand side by side, in spite of all your vindictiveness to N. III. My hero—say you? Well, I have more belief in him than you have. And what is curious, and would be unaccountable, I suppose, to English politicians in general, the Italian democrats of the lower classes, the popular clubs in Florence, are clinging to him as their one hope. Ah, here's oppression! here's a people trodden down! You should come here and see. It is enough to turn the depths of the heart bitter. The will of the people forced, their instinctive affections despised, their liberty of thought spied into, their national life ignored altogether. Robert keeps saying, 'How long, O Lord, how long?' Such things cannot last, surely. Oh, this brutal Austria!
I myself expect help from Louis Napoleon, though scarcely in the way that the clubs are said to do. When I talk of a club, of course I mean a secret combination of men—young men who meet to read forbidden newspapers and talk forbidden subjects. He won't help the Mazzinians, but he will do something for Italy, you will see. The Cardinals feel it, and that's why they won't let the Pope go to Paris. We shall see. I seem to catch sight of the grey of dawn even in the French Government papers, and am full of hope.
As to Mazzini, he is a noble man and an unwise man. Unfortunately the epithets are compatible. Kossuth is neither very noble nor very wise. I have heard and felt a great deal of harm of him. The truth is not in him. And when a patriot lies like a Jesuit, what are we to say?
For England—do you approve of the fleet staying on at Malta? We are prepared to do nothing which costs us a halfpenny for a less gain than three farthings—always excepting the glorious national defences, which have their end too, though not the one generally attributed....
God bless you, my dear, dear friends! Care in your thoughts for us all!
Your ever affectionate
Ba.
Casa Guidi: May 16 [1853].
My dearest Mr. Kenyon,—You are to be thanked and loved as ever, and what can we say more? This: Do be good to us by a supererogatory virtue and write to us. You can't know how pleasant it is to be en rapport with you, though by holding such a fringe of a garment as a scrap of letter is. We don't see you, we don't hear you! 'Rap' to us with the end of your pen, like the benign spirit you are, and let me (who am credulous) believe that you care for us and think kindly of us in the midst of your brilliant London gossipry, and that you don't disdain the talk of us, dark ultramontanists as we are. You are good to us in so many ways, that it's a reason for being good in another way besides. At least, to reason so is one of the foolishnesses of my gratitude.
On the whole, I am satisfied with regard to 'Colombe.' I never expected a theatrical success, properly and vulgarly so called; and the play has taken rank, to judge by the various criticisms, in the right way, as a true poet's work: the defects of the acting drama seemed recognised as the qualities of the poem. It was impossible all that subtle tracery of thought and feeling should be painted out clear red and ochre with a house-painter's brush, and lose nothing of its effect.[22] A play that runs nowadays has generally four legs to run with—something of the beast to keep it going. The human biped with the 'os divinior' is slower than a racehorse even. What I hope is, that the poetical appreciation of 'Colombe' will give an impulse to the sale of the poems, which will be more acceptable to us than the other kind of success....
Yes, dearest Mr. Kenyon, we mean, if we can, to go to Rome in the autumn. It is very wrong of you not to come too, and the reasons you give against it are by no means conclusive. My opinion is that, whatever the term of your natural life may be, you would probably have an additional ten years fastened on to it by coming to the Continent, and so I tease you and tease you, as is natural to such an opinion. People twirl now in their arm-chairs, and the vitality in them kindles as they rush along. Remember how pleased you were when you were at Como! Don't draw a chalk circle round you and fancy you can't move. Even tables and chairs have taken to move lately, and hats spin round without a giddy head in them. Is this a time to stand still, even in the garden at Wimbledon? 'I speak to a wise man; judge what I say.'
We tried the table experiment in this room a few days since, by-the-bye, and failed; but we were impatient, and Robert was playing Mephistopheles, as Mr. Lytton said, and there was little chance of success under the circumstances. It has been done several times in Florence, and the fact of the possibility seems to have passed among 'attested facts.' There was a placard on the wall yesterday about a pamphlet purporting to be an account of these and similar phenomena 'scoperte a Livorno,' referring to 'oggetti semoventi' and other wonders. You can't even look at a wall without a touch of the subject. The circoli at Florence are as revolutionary as ever, only tilting over tables instead of States, alas! From the Legation to the English chemist's, people are 'serving tables' (in spite of the Apostle) everywhere. When people gather round a table it isn't to play whist. So good, you say. You can believe in table-moving, because that may be 'electricity;' but you can't believe in the 'rapping spirits,' with the history of whom these movements are undeniably connected, because it's 'a jump.' Well, but you will jump when the time comes for jumping, and when the evidence is strong enough. I know you; you are strong enough and true enough to jump at anything, without being afraid. The tables jump, observe—and you may jump. Meanwhile, if you were to hear what we heard only the evening before last from a cultivated woman with truthful, tearful eyes, whose sister is a medium, and whose mother believes herself to be in daily communion with her eldest daughter, dead years ago—if you were to hear what we hear from nearly all the Americans who come to us, their personal experiences, irrespectively of paid mediums, I wonder if you would admit the possibility of your even jumping! Robert, who won't believe, he says, till he sees and hears with his own senses—Robert, who is a sceptic—observed of himself the other day, that we had received as much evidence of these spirits as of the existence of the town of Washington. But then of course he would add—and you would, reasonably enough—that in a matter of this kind (where you have to jump) you require more evidence, double the evidence, to what you require for the existence of Washington. That's true.
[Incomplete]
Florence: June [1853].
My dearest Fanny,—I hope you will write to me as if I deserved it. You see, my first word is to avert the consequences of my sin instead of repenting of it in the proper and effectual way. The truth is, that ever since I received your letter we have been looking out for 'messengers' from the Legation, so as to save you postage; while the Embassy people have been regularly forgetting us whenever there has been an opportunity. By the way, I catch up that word of 'postage' to beg you never to think of it when inclined in charity to write to us. If you knew what a sublunary thing—oh, far below any visible moon!—postage is to us exiles! Too glad we are to get a letter and pay for it. So write to me directly, dear Fanny, when you think enough of us for that, and write at length, and tell us of yourself first, swirling off into Pope's circles—'your country first and then the human race'—and, indeed, we get little news from home on the subjects which especially interest us. My sister sends me heaps of near things, but she is not in the magnetic circles, nor in the literary, nor even in the gossiping. Be good to us, you who stand near the fountains of life! Every cup of cold water is worth a ducat here.
To wait to a second page without thanking you for your kindness and sympathy about 'Colombe' does not do justice to the grateful sense I had of both at the time, and have now. We were very glad to have your opinion and impressions. Most of our friends took for granted that we had supernatural communications on the subject, and did not send us a word. Mrs. Duncan Stewart was one of the kind exceptions (with yourself and one or two more), and I write to thank her. It was very pleasant to hear what you said, dear Fanny. Certainly, says the author, you are right, and Helen Faucit wrong, in the particular reading you refer to; but she seems to have been right in so much, that we should only remember our grateful thoughts of her in general.
Now what am I to say about my illustrations—that is, your illustrations of my poems? To thank you again and again first. To be eager next to see what is done. To be sure it is good, and surer still that you are good for spending your strength on me. See how it is. When you wrote to me, a new edition was in the press; yes, and I was expecting every day to hear it was out again. But it would not have done, I suppose, to have used illustrations for that sort of edition; it would have raised the price (already too high) beyond the public. But there will be time always for such arrangements—when it so pleases Mr. Chapman, I suppose. Do tell me more of what you have done.
We did not go to Rome last winter, in spite of the spirits of the sun who declared from Lord Stanhope's crystal ball, you remember, that we should. And we don't go to England till next summer, because we must see Rome next winter, and must lie perdus in Italy meantime. I have had a happy winter in Florence, recovered my lost advantages in point of health, been busy and tranquil, had plenty of books and talk, and seen my child grow rosier and prettier (said aside) every day. Robert and I are talking of going up to the monasteries beyond Vallombrosa for a day or two, on mule-back through forests and mountains. We have had an excursion to Prato (less difficult) already, and we keep various dreams in our heads to be acted out on occasion. Our favorite friend here is a brother of Alfred Tennyson's, himself a poet, but most admirable to me for his simplicity and truth. Robert is very fond of him. Then we like Powers—of the 'Greek Slave'—Swedenborgian and spiritualist; and Mr. Lytton, Sir Edward's son, who is with us often, and always a welcome visitor. All these confederate friends are ranged with me on the believing side with regard to the phenomena, and Robert has to keep us at bay as he best can. Oh, do tell me what you can. Your account deeply interested me. We have heard many more intimate personal relations from Americans who brush us with their garments as they pass through Florence, and I should like to talk these things over with you. Paid mediums, as paid clairvoyants in general, excite a prejudice; yet, perhaps, not reasonably. The curious fact in this movement is, however, the degree in which it works within private families in America. Has anything of the kind appeared in England? And has the motion of the tables ever taken the form of alphabetical expression, which has been the case in America? I had a letter from Athens the other day, mentioning that 'nothing was talked of there except moving tables and spiritual manifestations.' (The writer was not a believer.) Even here, from the priest to the Mazzinian, they are making circles. An engraving of a spinning table at a shop window bears this motto: 'E pur si muove!' That's adroit for Galileo's land, isn't it? Now mind you tell me whatever you hear and see. How does Mrs. Crowe decide? By the way, I was glad to observe by the papers that she has had a dramatic success.
Your Alexander Smith has noble stuff in him. It's undeniable, indeed. It strikes us, however, that he has more imagery than verity, more colour than form. He will learn to be less arbitrary in the use of his figures—of which the opulence is so striking—and attain, as he ripens, more clearness of outline and depth of intention. Meanwhile none but a poet could write this, and this, and this.
Your faithfully affectionate
E.B.B., properly speaking Ba.
This was written ever so long since. Here we are in July; but I won't write it over again. The 'tables' are speaking alphabetically and intelligently in Paris; they knock with their legs on the floor, establishing (what was clear enough before to me) the connection between the table-moving and 'rapping spirits.' Sarianna—who is of the unbelieving of temperaments, as you know—wrote a most curious account to me the other day of a séance at which she had been present, composed simply of one or two of our own honest friends and of a young friend of theirs, a young lady....[23] She says that she 'was not as much impressed as she would have been,' 'but I am bound to tell the truth, that I do not think it possible that any tricks could have been played.'
This from Sarianna is equal to the same testimony—from Mr. Chorley, say!
We are planning a retreat into the mountains—into Giotto's country, the Casentino—where we are to find a villa for almost nothing, and shall have our letters sent daily from Florence, together with books and newspapers. I look forward to it with joy. We promise one another to be industrious à faire frémir, so as to make the pleasure lawful. Little Penini walks about, talking of 'mine villa,' anxiously hoping that 'some boys' may not have pulled all the flowers before he gets there. He boasts, with considerable complacency, that 'a table in Pallis says I am four years,' though the fact doesn't strike him as extraordinary.
Do you ever see Mr. Kenyon? I congratulate you on your friend's 'Cœur de Lion.' That has given you pleasure.
The summer 'retreat' from Florence this year was not to the Casentino after all, but to the Baths of Lucca, which they had already visited in 1849. During their stay there, which lasted from July to October, Mr. Browning is said to have composed 'In a Balcony.'
Florence: July 15, 1853.
... We have taken a villa at the Baths of Lucca, after a little holy fear of the company there; but the scenery, the coolness, and the convenience altogether prevail, and we have taken our villa for three months or rather more, and go to it next week with a stiff resolve of not calling nor being called upon. You remember perhaps that we were there four years ago, just after the birth of our child. The mountains are wonderful in beauty, and we mean to buy our holiday by doing some work.
Yesterday evening we had the American Minister at the Court of Turin here, and it was delightful to hear him talk about Piedmont, its progress in civilisation and the comprehension of liberty, and the honesty and resolution of the King. It is the only hope of Italy, that Piedmont! God prosper the hope. Besides this diplomatical dignitary and his wife, we had two American gentlemen of more than average intelligence, who related wonderful things of the 'spiritual manifestations' (so called), incontestable things, inexplicable things. You will have seen Faraday's letter.[24] I wish to reverence men of science, but they often will not let me. If I know certain facts on this subject, Faraday ought to have known them before he expressed an opinion on it. His statement does not meet the facts of the case—it is a statement which applies simply to various amateur operations without touching on the essential phenomena, such as the moving of tables untouched by a finger.
Our visitor last night, to say nothing of other witnesses, has repeatedly seen this done with his eyes—in private houses, for instance, where there could be no machinery—and he himself and his brother have held by the legs of a table to prevent the motion—the medium sitting some yards away—and that table has been wrenched from their grasp and lifted into the air. My husband's sister, who has admirable sense and excessive scepticism on all matters of the kind, was present the other day at the house of a friend of ours in Paris, where an English young lady was medium, and where the table expressed itself intelligently by knocking, with its leg, responses according to the alphabet. For instance, the age of my child was asked, and the leg knocked four times. Sarianna was 'not impressed,' she says, but, 'being bound to speak the truth, she does not think it possible that any trick could have been used.' To hear her say so was like hearing Mr. Chorley say so; all her prejudices were against it strongly. Mr. Spicer's book on the subject is flippant and a little vulgar, but the honesty and accuracy of it have been attested to me by Americans oftener than once. By the way, he speaks in it of your interesting 'Recollections,' and quotes you upon the possibility of making a ghost story better by the telling—in reference to Washington.
Mr. Tennyson is going to England for a few months, so that our Florence party is breaking up, you see. He has printed a few copies of his poems, and is likely to publish them if he meets with encouragement in England, I suppose. They are full of imagery, encompassed with poetical atmosphere, and very melodious. On the other hand, there is vagueness and too much personification. It's the smell of a rose rather than a rose—very sweet, notwithstanding. His poems are far superior to Charles Tennyson's, bear in mind. As for the poet, we quite love him, Robert and I do. What Swedenborg calls 'selfhood,' the proprium, is not in him.
Oh yes! I confess to loving Florence and to having associated with it the idea of home. My child was born here, and here I have been very happy and well. Yet we shall not live in Florence—we are steady to our Paris plan. We must visit Rome next winter, and in the spring we shall go to Paris viâ London; you may rely on us for next summer. I think it too probable that I may not be able to bear two successive winters in the North; but in that case it will be easy to take a flight for a few winter months into Italy, and we shall regard Paris, where Robert's father and sister are waiting for us, as our fixed place of residence. As to the distance between Paris and London, it's a mere step now. We are to have war, I suppose. I would not believe it for a long while, but the Czar seems to be struck with madness—mad in good earnest. Under these circumstances I hope our Ministry will act with decision and honesty—but I distrust Lord Aberdeen. There is evidently, or has been, a division in the Cabinet, and perhaps Lord Palmerston is not the strongest. Louis Napoleon has acted excellently in this conjuncture—with integrity and boldness—don't you think so? Dear Mr. Kenyon has his brother and sister with him, to his great joy. Robert pretended he would not give me your last letter. Little Wiedeman threw his arms round my neck (taking the play-cruelty for earnest) and exclaimed, 'Never mind, mine darling Ba! You'll have it.' He always calls me Ba at coaxing times. Such a darling that child is, indeed!
God bless you! Do write soon and tell me in detail of yourself.
Our united love, but mine the closest!
Your ever most affectionate
E.B.B.
Casa Tolomei, Alia Villa, Bagni di Lucca:
July 26, [1853].
I deserve another scold for this other silence, dearest Isa. Scold as softly as you can! We have been in uncertainty about leaving Florence—where to go for the summer—and I did not like to write till I could tell you where to write to me. Now we are 'fixed,' as our American friends would say. We have taken this house for three months—a larger house than we need. We have a row of plane trees before the door in which the cicale sing all day, and the beautiful mountains stand close around, keeping us fresh with shadows. Penini thinks he is in Eden—at least he doesn't think otherwise. We have a garden and an arbour, and the fireflies light us up at nights. With all this, I am sorry for Florence. Florence was horribly hot, and pleasant notwithstanding. We hated cutting the knot of friends we had there—bachelor friends, Isa, who came to us for coffee and smoking! I was gracious and permitted the cigar (as you were not present), and there were quantities of talk, controversy, and confidences evening after evening. One of our very favourite friends, Frederick Tennyson, is gone to England, or was to have gone, for three months. Mr. Lytton had a reception on the terrace of his villa at Bellosguardo the evening before our last in Florence, and we were all bachelors together there, and I made tea, and we ate strawberries and cream and talked spiritualism through one of the pleasantest two hours that I remember. Such a view! Florence dissolving in the purple of the hills; and the stars looking on. Mr. Tennyson was there, Mr. Powers, and M. Villari[25], an accomplished Sicilian, besides our young host and ourselves. How we 'set down' Faraday for his 'arrogant and insolent letter,' and what stories we told, and what miracles we swore to! Oh, we are believers here, Isa, except Robert, who persists in wearing a coat of respectable scepticism—so considered—though it is much out of elbows and ragged about the skirts. If I am right, you will none of you be able to disbelieve much longer—a, new law, or a new development of law, is making way everywhere. We have heard much—more than I can tell you in a letter. Imposture is absolutely out of the question, to speak generally; and unless you explain the phenomena by 'a personality unconsciously projected' (which requires explanation of itself), you must admit the spirit theory. As to the simpler forms of the manifestation (it is all one manifestation), the 'turning-tables,' I was convinced long before Faraday's letter that many of the amateur performances were from involuntary muscular action—but what then? These are only imitations of actual phenomena. Faraday's letter does not meet the common fact of tables being moved and lifted without the touch of a finger. It is a most arrogant letter and singularly inconclusive. Tell me any facts you may hear. Mr. Kinney, the American Minister at the Court of Turin, had arrived at Florence a few days before we quitted it, and he and his wife helped us to spend our last evening at Casa Guidi. He is cultivated and high-minded. I like him much; and none the less that he brings hopeful accounts of the state of Piedmont, of the progress of the people, and good persistency of the King. It makes one's heart beat with the sense that all is not over with our poor Italy.
I am glad you like Frederick Tennyson's poems. They are full of atmospherical poetry, and very melodious. The poet is still better than the poems—so truthful, so direct, such a reliable Christian man. Robert and I quite love him. We very much appreciate, too, young Lytton, your old friend. He is noble in many ways, I think, and affectionate. Moreover, he has an incontestable faculty in poetry, and I expect great things from him as he ripens into life and experience. Meanwhile he has just privately printed a drama called 'Clytemnestra,' too ambitious because after Æschylus, but full of promise indeed. We are hoping that he will come down and see us in the course of our rustication at the Baths, and occupy our spare bedroom....
As to Mr. ——, his Hebrew was Chinese to you, do you say? But, dear, he is strong in veritable Chinese besides! And one evening he nearly assassinated me with the analysis, chapter by chapter, of a Japanese novel. Mr. Lytton, who happened to be a witness, swore that I grew paler and paler, and not with sympathy for the heroine. He is a miraculously vain man—which rather amused me—and, for the rest, is full of information—yes, and of kindness, I think. He gave me a little black profile of you which gives the air of your head, and is so far valuable to me. As to myself, indeed, he has rather flattered me than otherwise—I don't complain, I assure you. How could I complain of a man who compares me to Isaiah, under any circumstances?...
God bless you! Robert's love with that of
Your ever affectionate and faithful
Ba.
Casa Tolomei (Alia Villa), Bagni di Lucca:
August 10, [1853].
My dear Mr. Chorley,—I can't bear that you should intimate by half a word that you are 'a creature to be eaten'—viz. not to have your share in friendship and confidence. Now, if you fancy that we, for instance, don't affectionately regard you, you are very wrong, and I am very right for feeling inclined to upbraid you. I take the pen from Robert—he would take it if I did not. We scramble a little for the pen which is to tell you this—which is to say it again and again, and be dull in the reiteration, rather than not instruct you properly, as we teach our child to do—D O G, dog; D O G, dog; D O G, dog. Says Robert, 'What a slow business!' Yet he's a quick child; and you too must be quick and comprehending, or we shall take it to heart sadly. Often I think, and we say to one another, that we belied ourselves to you in England. If you knew how, at that time, Robert was vexed and worn!—why, he was not the same even to me! He seemed to himself to be slipping out of waistcoats and friends at once—so worn and teased he was! But then and now believe that he loved and loves you. Set him down as a friend—as somebody to 'rest on' after all; and don't fancy that because we are away here in the wilderness (which blossoms as a rose, to one of us at least) we may not be full of affectionate thoughts and feelings towards you in your different sort of life in London. So sorry we are—I especially, for I think I understand the grief especially—about the household troubles which you hint at and Mr. Kenyon gave us a key to. I quite understand how a whole life may seem rumpled up and creased—torn for the moment; only you will live it smooth again, dear Mr. Chorley—take courage. You have time and strength and good aims, and human beings have been happy with much less. I understate your advantages on purpose, you see. I heard you talked of in Florence when Miss Cushman, in the quarter of an hour she gave us at Casa Guidi, told us of the oath she had in heaven to bring out your play and make it a triumph. How she praised the play, and you! Twice I have spoken with her—once on a balcony on the boulevard, when together we saw Louis Napoleon enter Paris in immediate face of the empire, and that once in Florence. I like the 'manly soul' in her face and manners. Manly, not masculine—an excellent distinction of Mrs. Jameson's. By the way, we hear wonderful things of the portrait painted of Miss Cushman at Rome by Mr. Page the artist, called 'the American Titian' by the Americans....
There I stop, not to 'fret' you beyond measure. Besides, now that you Czars of the 'Athenæum' have set your Faradays on us, ukase and knout, what Pole, in the deepest of the brain, would dare to have a thought on the subject? Now that Professor Faraday has 'condescended,' as the 'Literary Gazette' affectingly puts it (and the condescension is sufficiently obvious in the letter—'how we stoop!')—now that Professor Faraday has condescended to explain the whole question—which had offered some difficulty, it is admitted, to 'hundreds of intelligent men, including five or six eminent men of science,' in Paris, and, we may add, to thousands of unintelligent men elsewhere, including the eminent correspondent of the 'Literary Gazette'—let us all be silent for evermore. For my part, I won't say that Lord Bacon would have explained any question to a child even without feeling it to be an act of condescension. I won't hint under my breath that Lord Bacon reverenced every fact as a footstep of Deity, and stooped to pick up every rough, ungainly stone of a fact, though it were likely to tear and deform the smooth wallet of a theory. I, for my part, belong, you know, not to the 'eminent men of science,' nor even to the 'intelligent men,' but simply to the women, children (and poets?), and if we happen to see with our eyes a table lifted from the floor without the touch of a finger or foot, let no dog of us bark—much less a puppy-dog! The famous letter holds us gagged. What it does not hold is the facts; but, en revanche, the writer and his abettors know the secret of being invincible—which is, not to fight. My child proposed a donkey-race yesterday, the condition being that he should ride first. Somebody, told me once that when Miss Martineau has spoken eloquently on one side of a question, she drops her ear-trumpet to give the opportunity to her adversary. Most controversies, to do justice to the world, are conducted on the same plan and terms.
What I do venture however to say is that it's not all over in Paris because of Faraday's letter. Ask Lamartine. What I hear and what the 'Literary Gazette' hears from Paris is by no means the same thing. I hear Hebrew while the 'Gazette' hears Dutch—a miracle befitting the subject, or what was once considered to be the subject (I beg Professor Faraday's pardon), before it was annihilated.
How pert women can be, can't they, Mr. Chorley? particularly when they are safe among the mountains, shut in with a row of seven plane-trees joined at top. I won't go on to offer myself as 'spiritual correspondent to the "Athenæum,"' though I have a modest conviction that it might increase your sale considerably. Ah, tread us down! put us out! You will have some trouble with us yet. The opposition Czar of St. Petersburg supports us, be it known, and Louis Napoleon comes to us for oracles. The King of Holland is going mad gently in our favour—quite absorbed, says an informant. But I won't quote kings. It is giving oneself too great a disadvantage.
We stayed in Florence till it was oven-heat, and then we came here, where it was fire-heat for a short time, though with cool nights comparatively, by means of which we lived, comparatively too. Now it is cool by day and night. You know these beautiful hills, the green rushing river which keeps them apart, the chestnut woods, the sheep-walks and goat-walks, the villages on the peaks of the mountains like wild eagles; the fresh, unworn, uncivilised, world-before-the-flood look of everything? If you don't know it, you ought to know it. Come and know it—do! We have a spare bedroom which opens its door of itself at the thought of you, and if you can trust yourself so far from home, try for our sakes. Come and look in our faces and learn us more by heart, and see whether we are not two friends. I am so very sorry for your increased anxiety about your sister. I scarcely know how to cheer you, or, rather, to attempt such a thing, but it did strike me that she was full of life when I saw her. It may be better with her than your fears, after all. If you would come to us, you would be here in two hours from Leghorn; and there's a telegraph at Leghorn—at Florence. Think of it, do. The Storys are at the top of the hill; you know Mr. and Mrs. Story. She and I go backward and forward on donkeyback to tea-drinking and gossiping at one another's houses, and our husbands hold the reins. Also Robert and I make excursions, he walking as slowly as he can to keep up with my donkey. When the donkey trots we are more equal. The other day we were walking, and I, attracted by a picturesque sort of ladder-bridge of loose planks thrown across the river, ventured on it, without thinking of venturing. Robert held my hand. When we were in the middle the bridge swayed, rocked backwards and forwards, and it was difficult for either of us to keep footing. A gallant colonel who was following us went down upon his hands and knees and crept. In the meantime a peasant was assuring our admiring friends that the river was deep at that spot, and that four persons had been lost from the bridge. I was so sick with fright that I could scarcely stand when all was over, never having contemplated an heroic act. 'Why, what a courageous creature you are!' said our friends. So reputations are made, Mr. Chorley.
Yes, we are doing a little work, both of us. Robert is working at a volume of lyrics, of which I have seen but a few, and those seemed to me as fine as anything he has done. We neither of us show our work to one another till it is finished. An artist must, I fancy, either find or make a solitude to work in, if it is to be good work at all. This for the consolation of bachelors!
I am glad you like Mr. Powers's paper. You would have 'fretted' me terribly if you had not, for I liked it myself, knowing it to be an earnest opinion and expressive of the man. I had a very interesting letter from him the other day. He is devout in his art, and the simplest of men otherwise....
Now, I will ask you to write to us. It is you who give us up, indeed. Will your sister accept our true regards and sympathies? I shall persist in hoping to see her a little stronger next spring—or summer, rather. May God bless you! I will set myself down, and Robert with me, as
Faithfully and affectionately yours,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Casa Tolomei, Alia Villa, Bagni di Lucca:
August 20 and 21, 1853.
... We are enjoying the mountains here, riding the donkeys in the footsteps of the sheep, and eating strawberries and milk by basins full. The strawberries succeed one another, generation after generation, throughout the summer, through growing on different aspects of the hills. If a tree is felled in the forests strawberries spring up just as mushrooms might, and the peasants sell them for just nothing. Our little Penini is wild with happiness; he asks in his prayers that God would 'mate him dood and tate him on a dontey,' (make him good and take him on a donkey), so resuming all aspiration for spiritual and worldly prosperity. Then our friends, Mr. and Mrs. Story, help the mountains to please us a good deal. He is the son of Judge Story, the biographer of his father, and, for himself, sculptor and poet; and she a sympathetic, graceful woman, fresh and innocent in face and thought. We go backwards and forwards to tea and talk at one another's houses. Last night they were our visitors, and your name came in among the Household Gods to make us as agreeable as might be. We were considering your expectations about Mr. Hawthorne. 'All right,' says Mr. Story, 'except the rare half hours' (of eloquence). He represents Mr. Hawthorne as not silent only by shyness, but by nature and inaptitude. He is a man, it seems, who talks wholly and exclusively with the pen, and who does not open out socially with his most intimate friends any more than with strangers. It isn't his way to converse. That has been a characteristic of some men of genius before him, you know, but you will be nevertheless disappointed, very surely. Also, Mr. Story does not imagine that you will get anything from him on the subject of the 'manifestations.' You have read the 'Blithedale Romance,' and are aware of his opinion expressed there? He evidently recognised them as a sort of scurvy spirits, good to be slighted, because of their disreputableness. By the way, I heard read the other day a very interesting letter from Paris, from Mr. Appleton, Longfellow's brother-in-law, who is said to be a man of considerable ability, and who is giving himself wholly just now to the investigation of this spirit-subject, termed by him the 'sublimest conundrum ever given to the world for guessing.' He appears still in doubt whether the intelligence is external, or whether the phenomena are not produced by an unconscious projection in the medium of a second personality, accompanied with clairvoyance, and attended by physical manifestations. This seems to me to double the difficulty; yet the idea is entertained as a doubtful sort of hypothesis by such men as Sir Edward Lytton and others. Imposture is absolutely out of the question, be certain, as an ultimate solution, and a greater proof of credulity can scarcely be given than a belief in imposture as things are at present. But I was going to tell you Mr. Appleton has a young American friend in Paris, who, 'besides being a very sweet girl,' says he, 'is a strong medium.' By Lamartine's desire he took her to the poet's house; 'all the phenomena were reproduced, and everybody present convinced,' Lamartine himself 'in ecstasies.' Among other spirits came Henry Clay, who said, 'J'aime Lamartine.' We shall have it in the next volume of biography. Louis Napoleon gets oracles from the 'raps,' and it is said that the Czar does the same,—your Emperor, certainly,—and the King of Holland is allowing the subject to absorb him. 'Dying out! dying out!' Our accounts from New York are very different, but unbelieving persons are apt to stop their ears and exclaim, 'We hear nothing now.' On one occasion the Hebrew Professor at New York was addressed in Hebrew to his astonishment.
Well, I don't believe, with all my credulity, in poets being perfected at universities. What can be more absurd than this proposition of 'finishing' Alexander Smith at Oxford or Cambridge? We don't know how to deal with literary genius in England, certainly. We are apt to treat poets (when we condescend to treat them at all) as over-masculine papas do babies; and Monckton Milnes was accused of only touching his in order to poke out its eyes, for instance. Why not put this new poet in a public library? There are such situations even among us, and something of the kind was done for Patmore. The very judgment Tennyson gave of him, in the very words, we had given here—'fancy, not imagination.' Also, imagery in excess; thought in deficiency. Still, the new poet is a true poet, and the defects obvious in him may be summed up in youth simply. Let us wait and see. I have read him only in extracts, such as the reviews give, and such as a friend helped me to by good-natured MS. It is extraordinary to me that with his amount of development, as far as I understand it, he has met with so much rapid recognition. Tell me if you have read 'Queechy,' the American book—novel—by Elizabeth Wetherell? I think it very clever and characteristic. Mrs. Beecher Stowe scarcely exceeds it, after all the trumpets. We are about to have a visit from Mr. Lytton, Sir Edward's only son—only child now. Did I tell you that he was a poet—yes, and of an unquestionable faculty? I expect much from him one day, when he shakes himself clear of the poetical influences of the age, which he will have strength to do presently. He thinks as well as sees, and that is good....
Oh yes! I like Mr. Kingsley. I am glad he spoke kindly of us, because really I like him and admire him. Few people have struck me as much as he did last year in England. 'Manly,' do you say? But I am not very fond of praising men by calling them manly. I hate and detest a masculine man. Humanly bold, brave, true, direct, Mr. Kingsley is—a moral cordiality and an original intellect uniting in him. I did not see her and the children, but I hope we shall be in better fortune next time.
Since I began this letter the Storys and ourselves have had a grand donkey-excursion to a village called Benabbia, and the cross above it on the mountain-peak. We returned in the dark, and were in some danger of tumbling down various precipices; but the scenery was exquisite—past speaking of for beauty. Oh those jagged mountains, rolled together like pre-Adamite beasts, and setting their teeth against the sky! It was wonderful. You may as well guess at a lion by a lady's lapdog as at Nature by what you see in England. All honour to England, lanes and meadowland, notwithstanding; to the great trees above all. Will you write to me sooner? Will you give me the details of yourself? Will you love me?
Your most affectionate
Ba.
Casa Tolomei, Alia Villa, Bagni di Lucca:
August 30, [1853].
Dearest Fanny,—On your principle that 'there's too much to say,' I ought not to think of writing to you these three months; you have pleased me and made me grateful to such an extremity by your most pretty and graceful illustrative outlines. The death-bed I admire particularly; the attitudes are very expressive, and the open window helps the sentiment. What am I to say for your kindness in holding a torch of this kind (perfumed for the 'nobilities') between the wind and my poems? Thank you, thank you. And when that's said, I ought to stop short and beg you, dear Fanny, not to waste yourself in more labour of this kind, seeing that I am accursed and that nothing is to be done with my books and me, as far as my public is concerned. Why not get up a book of your own, a collection of 'outlines' illustrative of everybody's poems, which would stand well on its own feet and make a circle for itself? Think of that rather. For my part, there's nothing to be done with me, as I said; that is, there's nothing to be done with my publishers, who just do as they like with my books, and don't like to do much good for me with them, whatever they may do for themselves. I am misanthropical in respect to the booksellers. They manage one as they please, and not at all to please one. I have no more to say to the fate of my books than you have—and not much more to pocket. This third edition, for instance, which should have been out four or five months ago, they are keeping, I suppose, for the millennium, encouraged probably by the spiritual manifestations; and my personal manifestations meanwhile have as much weight with them as facts have with Faraday, or the theory of fair play with the London 'Athenæum.' I am sick of it all, indeed. I look down on it all as the epicurean gods do on the world without putting out a finger to save an empire; perhaps because they can't. Long live the ——, who are kings of us. It's the best thing possible, I conclude, in this best of possible social economies, though for ourselves individually it may not be a very good thing; not precisely what we should choose. Think of the separate book of outlines. Seriously, Robert and I recommend you to consider it. You might make a book for drawing-room tables which would be generally acceptable if not too expensive. And Mr. Spicer is bringing me more? How kind of you. And when is he coming? Scarcely could anyone come as a stranger whom I desire more to see, and I do hope he will bring me facts and fantasies too on the great subject which is interesting me so deeply. His book of 'Sights and Sounds' we have read, but the new book has not penetrated to us. 'Sights and Sounds' is very curious, and the authenticity of its facts has been confirmed to me by various testimonies, but the author is too clever for his position; I mean too full of flash and wit. There's an air of levity, and of effective writing, without which the book would have been more impressive and convincing; don't you think so? And here we get to the heart of most of the difficulties of the subject. Why do we make no quicker advances, do you say? Why are our communications chiefly trivial? Why, but because we ourselves are trivial, and don't bring serious souls and concentrated attentions and holy aspirations to the spirits who are waiting for these things? Spirit comes to spirit by affinity, says Swedenborg; but our cousinship is not with the high and noble. We try experiments from curiosity, just as children play with the loadstone; our ducks swim, but they don't get beyond that, and won't, unless we do better. To prove what I say, consider what you say yourself, that you couldn't manage to draw the same persons together again (these very persons being persuaded of the verity of the spiritual communications they were in reach of) on account of the difficulties of the London season. Difficulties of the London season! The inconsequence of human nature is more wonderful to me than the ingress of any spirits could be. This instance is scarcely credible....
I had a letter the other day from Mr. Chorley, and he was chivalrous enough (I call it real chivalry in his state of opinion) to deliver to me a message from Mr. Westland Marston, whom he met at Folkestone, and who kindly proposes to write a full account to me of his own spiritual experiences, having heard from you that they were likely to interest me; I mean that I was interested in the whole subject. Will you tell him from me that I shall be most thankful for anything he will vouchsafe to write to me, and will you give him my address? I don't know where to find him, and Mr. Chorley is on the Continent wandering. I have seen nothing for myself, but I am a believer upon testimony; and a stream of Americans running through Florence, and generally making way to us, the testimony has been various and strong. Interested in the subject! Who can be uninterested in the subject? Even Robert is interested, who professes to be a sceptic, an infidel indeed (though I can swear to having seen him considerably shaken more than once), and who promises never to believe till he has experience by his own senses. Isn't it hard on me that I can't draw a spirit into our circle and convince him? He would give much, he says, to find it true....
Here an end. Write soon and write much.
Your ever affectionate
E.B.B. (called Ba).
Our child was gathering box leaves in a hedge the other day (wherever we have a hedge, it's box, I would have you to understand), and pulled a yellow flower by mistake. Down he flung it as if it stung him. 'Ah, brutto! Colore Tedesco!' Think of that baby!
Casa Tolomei, Alia Villa, Bagni di Lucca:
September [1853].
As to Patmore's new volume of poems, my husband and I had the pleasure of reading in MS. the poem which gives its title to the book. He has a great deal of thought and poetry in him. Alexander Smith I know by copious extracts in reviews, and by some MSS. once sent to us by friends and readers. Judging from those he must be set down as a true poet in opulence of imagery, but defective, so far (he is said to be very young) in the intellectual part of poetry. His images are flowers thrown to him by the gods, beautiful and fragrant, but having no root either in Enna or Olympus. There's no unity and holding together, no reality properly so called, no thinking of any kind. I hear that Alfred Tennyson says of him: 'He has fancy without imagination.' Still, it is difficult to say at the dawn what may be written at noon. Certainly he is very rich and full of colour; nothing is more surprising to me than his favourable reception with the critics. I should have thought that his very merits would be against him.
If you can read novels, and you have too much sense not to be fond of them, read 'Villette.' The scene of the greater part of it is in Belgium, and I think it a strong book. 'Ruth,' too, by Mrs. Gaskell, the author of 'Mary Barton,' has pleased me very much. Do you know the French novels? there's passion and power for you, if you like such things. Balzac convinced me that the French language was malleable into poetry. We are behindhand here in books, and elderly ones seem young to us. For instance, we have not caught sight yet of 'Moore's Life,' the extracts from which are unpropitious, I think. I had a fancy, I cannot tell you how it grew, that Moore, though an artificial, therefore inferior, poet, was a most brilliant letter-writer. His letters are disappointing, and his mean clinging to the aristocracy still more so.
I wish you could suddenly walk into this valley, which seems to have been made by the flashing scimitar of the river that cuts through the mountain. Ah! you in England, and in Belgium still less, do not know what scenery is, what Nature is when she is natural. You could as soon guess at a tiger from the cat on the hearthstone. You do not know; but, being a poet, you can dream. You have divine insights, as we all have, of heaven, all of us with whom the mortal mind does not cake and obstruct into cecity. No, no, no. I protest against anything I have not reprinted. The Prometheus poems bear the mark of their time, which was one of greenness and immaturity. Indeed, the responsibility for what I acknowledge in print is hard enough to bear. Don't put another stick on the overloaded—ass, shall I say candidly?
Bagni di Lucca: October 5, [1853].
My dearest Mrs. Martin, I am delighted to have your letter at last, and should have come upon you like a storm in a day or two if you hadn't written, for really I began to be low in patience. Also, after having spent the summer here, we were about to turn our faces to Florence again, and it was necessary to my own satisfaction to let you know of our plans for the winter. To begin with those, then, we go to Florence, as I said, from hence, and after a week or two, or three or four as it may be, the briefer time if we let our house, we proceed to Rome for some months. You see we must visit Rome before we go northwards, and northwards we must go in the spring, so that the logic of events seems to secure Rome to us this time; otherwise I should still doubt of our going there, so often have we been on the verge and caught back....
So you think that he[26] is looking 'less young than formerly,' and that 'we should all learn to hear and make such remarks with equanimity.' Now, once for all, let me tell you—confess to you—I never, if I live to be a hundred, should learn that learning. Death has the luminous side when we know how to look; but the rust of time, the touch of age, is hideous and revolting to me, and I never see it, by even a line's breadth, in the face of any I love, without pain and recoil of nature. I have a worse than womanly weakness about that class of subjects. Death is a face-to-face intimacy; age, a thickening of the mortal mask between souls. So I hate it; put it far from me. Why talk of age, when it's just an appearance, an accident, when we are all young in soul and heart? We don't say, one to another, 'You are freckled in the forehead to-day,' or 'There's a yellow shade in your complexion.' Leave those disagreeable trifles. I, for my part, never felt younger. Did you, I wonder? To be sure not. Also, I have a gift in my eyes, I think, for scarcely ever does it strike me that anybody is altered, except my child, for instance, who certainly is larger than when he was born. When I went to England after five years' absence, everybody (save one) appeared to me younger than I was used to conceive of them, and of course I took for granted that I appeared to them in the same light. Be sure that it is highly moral to be young as long as possible. Women who throw up the game early (or even late) and wear dresses 'suitable to their years' (that is, as hideous as possible), are a disgrace to their sex, aren't they now? And women and men with statistical memories, who are always quoting centuries and the years thereof ('Do you remember in '20?' As if anybody could), are the pests of society. And, in short, and for my part, whatever honours of authorship may ever befall me, I hope I may be safe from the epithet which distinguishes the Venerable Bede.
Now, if I had written this from Paris, you would have cried out upon the frivolity I had picked up. Who would imagine that I had just finished a summer of mountain solitude, succeeding a winter's meditation on Swedenborg's philosophy, and that such fruit was of it all? By the way, tell me how it was that Paris did harm to Moore? Mentally, was it, and morally, or in the matter of the body? I have not seen the biography yet. Italy keeps us behind in new books. But the extracts given in newspapers displease me through the ignoble tone of 'doing honour to the lord,' which is anything but religious. Also, the letters seem somewhat less brilliant than I expected from Moore; but it must be, after all, a most entertaining book. Tell me if you have read Mrs. Gaskell's 'Ruth.' That's a novel which I much admire. It is strong and healthy at once, teaching a moral frightfully wanted in English society. Such an interesting letter I had from Mrs. Gaskell a few days ago simple, worthy of 'Ruth.' By the way, 'Ruth' is a great advance on 'Mary Barton,' don't you think so? 'Villette,' too (Jane Eyre's), is very powerful.
Since we have been here we have had for a visitor (drawing the advantage from our spare room) Mr. Lytton, Sir Edward's only son, who is attaché at the Florence Legation at this time. He lost nothing from the test of house-intimacy with either of us—gained, in fact, much. Full of all sorts of good and nobleness he really is, and gifted with high faculties and given to the highest aspirations—not vulgar ambitions, understand—he will never be a great diplomatist, nor fancy himself an inch taller for being master of Knebworth.[27] Then he is somewhat dreamy and unpractical, we must confess; he won't do for drawing carts under any sort of discipline. Such a summer we have enjoyed here, free from burning heats and mosquitos—the two drawbacks of Italy—and in the heart of the most enchanting scenery. Mountains not too grand for exquisite verdure, and just kept from touching by the silver finger of a stream. I have been donkey-riding, and so has Wiedeman. I even went (to prove to you how well I am) the great excursion to Prato Fiorito, six miles there and six miles back, perpendicularly up and down. Oh, it almost slew me of course! I could not stir for days after. But who wouldn't see heaven and die? Such a vision of divine scenery, such as, in England, the best dreamers do not dream of! As we came near home I said to Mr. Lytton, who was on horseback, 'I am dying. How are you?' To which he answered, 'I thought a quarter of an hour ago I could not keep up to the end, but now I feel better.' This from a young man just one-and-twenty! He is delicate, to be sure, but still you may imagine that the day's work was not commonly fatiguing. The guides had to lead the horses and donkeys. It was like going up and down a wall, without the smoothness. No road except in the beds of torrents. Robert pretended to be not tired, but, of course (as sensible people say of the turning tables), nobody believed a word of it. It was altogether a supernatural pretension, and very impertinent in these enlightened days.
Mr. and Mrs. Story were of our party. He is the son of Judge Story and full of all sorts of various talent. And she is one of those cultivated and graceful American women who take away the reproach of the national want of refinement. We have seen much of them throughout the summer. There has been a close communion of tea-drinking between the houses, and as we are all going to Rome together, this pleasure is not a past one....
We still point to Paris. Ah! you disapprove of Paris, I see, but we must try the experiment. What I am afraid of is simply the climate. I doubt whether I shall stand two winters running as far north as Paris, but if I can't, we must come south again. Then I love Italy. Oh! if it were not for the distance between Italy and England, we should definitively settle here at once. We shall be in England, by the way, next summer for pleasure and business, having, or about to have, two books to see through the press. Not prose, Mr. Martin. I'm lost—devoted to the infernal gods of rhyming. 'It's my fate,' as a popular poet said when going to be married....
(We go on Monday. Write to Florence for the next month.)
[Florence: autumn, 1853.]
My dearest Sarianna,—I shall not be able to write very much to-day, for Robert is in haste, and we are both overwhelmed with different engagements, the worst of which have been forced on me maritally rather than artistically by the portrait-sittings he of course has told you of. His own portrait, by Mr. Reade, I must be glad about, seeing that though it by no means gives his best expression, the face is there, and it will be the best work extant on the same subject. I only wish that the artist had been satisfied with it, or taken my Penini in the second place instead of me, who am not wanted in canvas for art's sake, or for any other sake in the world. When gone from hence, may nobody think of me again, except when one or two may think perhaps how I loved them....
Do you think much of the war? I hope all will be done on the part of the two western Powers honestly and directly; and then, may the best that can, come out of the worst that must be. The poor Italians catch like men in an agony at all these floating straws. We hear that the new Austrian Commandant has received instructions to hold no intercourse with members of the English and French Legations till further orders are received.
We have lived a disturbed life lately; too much coming and going even with agreeable people. There has been no time for work. In Rome it must be different, or we shall get on poorly with our books, I think. Robert seems, however, by his account, to be in an advanced state already....
[Incomplete.]
Casa Guidi: Saturday [about October, 1853].
My dearest Isa,— ... I was very sorry on returning from Lucca to find only Mr. Thompson's note and yours; but though we missed him at Florence we shall see him at Rome, I hope. There was also a card from Miss Lynch,[28] an American poetess (one of the ninety-and-nine muses), with a note of introduction from England. Do you hear of her at Rome? The 'Ninth Street' printed on her card leaves me in the infinite as far as conjectures of where she is go.
So pleased I am to get back to Florence, and so little inclined to tumble out of my nest again; yet we shall go to Rome if some new obstacle does not arise. We have had no glimpse of the Tassinaris; they seem to have vanished from the scene. Florence is full of great people, so called, from England, and the real sommités are coming, such as Alfred Tennyson, and, with an interval, Dickens and Thackeray. The two latter go to Rome for the winter, I understand.
Do you say Edward Lytton? But he isn't Edward Lytton now—he is Robert. The two Edwards clashed inconveniently, and now he doesn't sign an Edward even by an initial; he has renounced the name, and is a Robert for evermore. I am glad to tell you that although he is delicate and excitable there seems to me no tendency to disease of any kind. Indeed, he is looking particularly well just now. He is full of sensibility, both intellectually and morally, which is scarcely favorable to health and long life; but in the long run, if people can run, they get over such a disadvantage. At this time he is about to publish a collection of poems. I think highly of his capabilities; and he is a great favorite with both of us for various excellent reasons. Did I tell you of his passing a fortnight with us at Lucca, and how sorry we were to lose him at last? Sir Edward either has just brought out, or is bringing out, a volume of poems of his own, called 'Cornflowers' (referring to the harvest time of maturity in which he produces them), and chiefly of a metaphysical character. His son, who has seen the manuscript, thinks them the best of his poems. 'My Novel' is certainly excellent. Did I tell you that I had seized and read it?
I shall get at Swedenborg in Rome, and get on with my readings. There are deep truths in him, I cannot doubt, though I can't receive everything, which may be my fault. I would fain speak with a wise humility. We will talk on these things and the spirits. How that last subject attracts me! It strikes me that we are on the verge of great developments of the spiritual nature, and that in a philosophical point of view (apart from ulterior ends) the facts are worthy of all admiration and meditation. If a spiritual influx, it is mixed—good and evil together. The fact of there being a mixture of evil justifies Swedenborg's philosophy (does it not?) without concluding against the movement generally. We were at the Pergola the other night, and heard the 'Trovatore,' Verdi's new work. Very passionate and dramatic, surely. The Storys are here on their way back to Rome. Oh, I mean to convert you, Isa! Is it true that the fever at Rome is still raging? Give my love to your dear invalid, who must be comforting you so much with her improvement. Penini is in a chronic state of packing up his desk to go to 'Bome.' Robert's love with mine as ever. I can't write either legibly or otherwise than stupidly on this detestable paper, having never learnt to skate. Are we giving you too much trouble, dearest, kind Isa?
Your affectionate friend
E.B.B.
After a few weeks only at Florence the Brownings moved on to Rome and there (at No. 43 Via Bocca di Leone) they passed the winter. Both were now actively engaged on their new volumes of poetry—Mr. Browning on his 'Men and Women,' Mrs. Browning on 'Aurora Leigh,' both of which were, however, still far from completion.
Via Bocca di Leone, Rome: December 21, 1853.
My dearest Mona Nina,—I have been longer than I thought to be in Rome without writing to you, especially when I have a letter of yours for which to thank you. My fancy was to wait till I had seen Gerardine in her own home, and then to write to you, but I have called on her three times, and the three Fates have been at it each time to prevent my getting in. Still, we have met here, and I would rather not wait any longer for whatever might be added to what I have seen and know already....
Ah, dearest friend! you have heard how our first step into Rome was a fall, not into a catacomb but a fresh grave[29], and how everything here has been slurred and blurred to us, and distorted from the grand antique associations. I protest to you I doubt whether I shall get over it, and whether I ever shall feel that this is Rome. The first day at the bed's head of that convulsed and dying child; and the next two, three, four weeks in great anxiety about his little sister, who was all but given up by the physicians; the English nurse horribly ill of the same fever, and another case in this house. It was not only sympathy. I was selfishly and intensely frightened for my own treasures; I wished myself at the end of the world with Robert and Penini twenty times a day. Rome has been very peculiarly unhealthy; and I heard a Monsignore observe the other morning that there would not be much truce to the fever till March came. Still, I begin to take breath again and be reasonable. Penini's cheeks are red as apples, and if we avoid the sun, and the wind, and the damp, and, above all if God takes care of us, we shall do excellently. I, of course, am in a flourishing condition; walk out nearly every day and scarcely cough at all. Which isn't enough for me, you see. Dear friend, we have not set foot in the Vatican. Oh, barbarians!
But we have seen Mrs. Kemble, and I am as enchanted as I ought to be, and even, perhaps, a little more. She has been very kind and gracious to me; she was to have spent an evening with us three days since, but something intervened. I am much impressed by her as well as attracted to her. What a voice, what eyes, what eyelids full of utterance!
Then we have had various visits from Mr. Thackeray and his daughters. 'She writes to me of Thackeray instead of Raffael, and she is at Rome'! But she isn't at Rome. There's the sadness of it. We got to Gibson's studio, which is close by, and saw his coloured Venus. I don't like her. She has come out of her cloud of the ideal, and to my eyes is not too decent. Then in the long and slender throat, in the turn of it, and the setting on of the head, you have rather a grisette than a goddess. 'Tis over pretty and petite, the colour adding, of course, to this effect. Crawford's studio (the American sculptor) was far more interesting to me than Gibson's. By the way, Mr. Page's portrait of Miss Cushman is really something wonderful—soul and body together. You can show nothing like it in England, take for granted. Indeed, the American artists consider themselves a little aggrieved when you call it as good as a Titian. 'Did Titian ever produce anything like it?' said an admirer in my hearing. Critics wonder whether the colour will stand. It is a theory of this artist that time does not tone, and that Titian's pictures were painted as we see them. The consequence of which is that his (Page's) pictures are undertoned in the first instance, and if they change at all will turn black[30]. May all Boston rather turn black, which it may do one of these days by an eruption from the South, when 'Uncle Tomison' gets strong enough.
We have been to St. Peter's; we have stood in the Forum and seen the Coliseum. Penini says: 'The sun has tome out. I think God knows I want to go out to walk, and so He has sent the sun out.' There's a child who has faith enough to put us all to shame. A vision of angels wouldn't startle him in the least. When his poor little friend died, and we had to tell him, he inquired, fixing on me those earnest blue eyes, 'Did papa see the angels when they took away Joe?' And when I answered 'No' (for I never try to deceive him by picturesque fictions, I should not dare, I tell him simply what I believe myself), 'Then did Joe go up by himself?' In a moment there was a burst of cries and sobs. The other day he asked me if I thought Joe had seen the Dute of Wellyton. He has a medal of the Duke of Wellington, which put the name into his head. By-the-bye, Robert yesterday, in a burst of national vanity, informed the child that this was the man who beat Napoleon. 'Then I sint he a velly naughty man. What! he beat Napoleon wiz a stit?' (with a stick). Imagine how I laughed, and how Robert himself couldn't help laughing. So, the seraphs judge our glories!
If you have seen Sir David Brewster lately I should like to know whether he has had more experience concerning the tables, and has modified his conclusions in any respect. I myself am convinced as I can be of any fact, that there is an external intelligence; the little I have seen is conclusive to me. And this makes me more anxious that the subject should be examined with common fairness by learned persons. Only the learned won't learn—that's the worst of them. Their hands are too full to gather simples. It seems to me a new development of law in the human constitution, which has worked before in exceptional cases, but now works in general.
Dearest friend, I do not speak of your own anxious watch and tender grief, but think of them deeply. Believe that I love you always and in all truth.
Your
E.B.B.
[Rome:] 43 Bocca di Leone: December 27, [1853].
My dearest Fanny,—I can't judge of your 'obstacles,' of course, but as to your being snowed up on the road or otherwise impeded between Rome and Cività (Castellana or Vecchia), there's certainly not room for even a dream of it. There has been beautiful weather here ever since we came, except for exacting invalids. I, for instance, have been kept in the house for a fortnight or more (till Christmas Day, when I was able to get to St. Peter's) by tramontana; but there has been sun on most days of cold, and nothing has been severe as cold. The hard weather came in November, before we arrived. I was out yesterday, and may be to-day, perhaps. 'Judge ye!'...
You bid me write. But to what end, if you are here on New Year's Day? There's not time for a letter.
And at first I intended not to write, till beginning to consider how, as you are not actually of the race of Medes and Persians, you might possibly so modify your plans as to be able to receive these lines. Oh, a provoking person or persons you are, since you and Ellen Heaton are plural henceforth! No, I won't include her. You are singular, by your own confession, on this occasion. And, instead of Christmas solemnisations, I shall take to reading the Commination Service over you if you stay any longer at Florence because of the impracticable, snowed-up roads around Rome. You really might as well object to coming on account of the heat!...
I thank you very much for meaning to bring my goods for me. I wish I could have seen your pictures before they took to themselves golden wings and fled away. Is it true, really, that you think to exhibit in London Penini's portrait at the piano, as Sophie Eckley tells me? I shall like to hear that you succeed in that.
I see her every day almost, if not quite. Nobody is like her. And there are quantities of people here to choose from. I have not taken heart and 'an evening for reception' yet, but we have had 'squeezes' of more or less stringency. Miss Ogle is here—and her family, of course, for she is young—the author of 'A Lost Love,' that very pretty book; and she is natural and pleasing. Do you know Lady Oswald, and her daughter and son? She is Lady Elgin's sister-in-law, and brought a letter to me from Lady Augusta Bruce. Then the Marshalls found us out through Mr. De Vere (her cousin), and in the name of Alfred Tennyson (their intimate friend). Mrs. Marshall was a Miss Spring Rice, and is very refined in all senses. Refinement expresses the whole woman. Yes, there are some nice people here—nice people; it's the word. Nobody as near to me as Mr. Page, whom we often see, I am happy to say, and who has just presented the world (only that is generally said of the lady) with a son, and is on the point of presenting said world with a Venus. Will you come to see? I wonder....
I want you here to see a portrait taken of me in chalks by Miss Fox. I said 'No' to her in London, which was my sole reason for saying 'Yes' to her in Rome, when she asked me for a patient—or victim. She draws well, and has been very successful with the hair at least. For the likeness you shall judge for yourself. She comes here for an hour in the morning to execute me, and I'm as well as can be expected under it....
May God bless you, dearest Fanny. What Christmas wishes warm from the heart by heartfuls I throw at you! And say to Ellen Heaton, with cordial love, that I thank her much for her kind letter, and remember her in all affectionate wishes made for friends. I shall write to Mr. Ruskin. Don't get this letter, I say.
Your
E.B.B.
Robert's love, and Penini's. If 'Fanny' strikes you, 'Madame Bovary' will thunder-strike you.
43 Via di Leone, Rome: January 7, 18[54].
It is long, my ever dearest Miss Mitford, since I wrote to you last, but since we came to Rome we have had troubles, out of the deep pit of which I was unwilling to write to you, lest the shadows of it should cleave as blots to my pen. Then one day followed another, and one day's work was laid on another's shoulders. Well, we are all well, to begin with, and have been well; our troubles came to us through sympathy entirely. A most exquisite journey of eight days we had from Florence to Rome, seeing the great monastery and triple church of Assisi and the wonderful Terni by the way—that passion of the waters which makes the human heart seem so still. In the highest spirits we entered Rome, Robert and Penini singing actually; for the child was radiant and flushed with the continual change of air and scene, and he had an excellent scheme about 'tissing the Pope's foot,' to prevent his taking away 'mine gun,' somebody having told him that such dangerous weapons were not allowed by the Roman police. You remember my telling you of our friends the Storys—how they and their two children helped to make the summer go pleasantly at the baths of Lucca? They had taken an apartment for us in Rome, so that we arrived in comfort to lighted fires and lamps as if coming home, and we had a glimpse of their smiling faces that evening. In the morning, before breakfast, little Edith was brought over to us by the manservant with a message—'The boy was in convulsions; there was danger.' We hurried to the house, of course, leaving Edith with Wilson. Too true! All that first day was spent beside a death-bed; for the child never rallied, never opened his eyes in consciousness, and by eight in the evening he was gone. In the meanwhile, Edith was taken ill at our house—could not be moved, said the physicians. We had no room for her, but a friend of the Storys on the floor immediately below—Mr. Page, the artist—took her in and put her to bed. Gastric fever, with a tendency to the brain, and within two days her life was almost despaired of; exactly the same malady as her brother's. Also the English nurse was apparently dying at the Storys' house, and Emma Page, the artist's youngest daughter, sickened with the same symptoms. Now you will not wonder that, after the first absorbing flow of sympathy, I fell into a selfish human panic about my child. Oh, I 'lost my head,' said Robert; and if I could have caught him up in my arms and run to the ends of the world, the hooting after me of all Rome could not have stopped me. I wished—how I wished!—for the wings of a dove, or any unclean bird, to fly away with him to be at peace. But there was no possibility but to stay; also the physicians assured me solemnly that there was no contagion possible, otherwise I would have at least sent him from us to another house. To pass over this dreary time, I will tell you at once that the three patients recovered; only in poor little Edith's case Roman fever followed the gastric, and has persisted so, ever since, in periodical recurrence, that she is very pale and thin. Roman fever is not dangerous to life—simple fever and ague—but it is exhausting if not cut off, and the quinine fails sometimes. For three or four days now she has been free from the symptoms, and we are beginning to hope. Now you will understand at once what ghastly flakes of death have changed the sense of Rome to me. The first day by a death-bed! The first drive out to the cemetery, where poor little Joe is laid close to Shelley's heart (Cor cordium, says the epitaph), and where the mother insisted on going when she and I went out in the carriage together. I am horribly weak about such things. I can't look on the earth-side of death; I flinch from corpses and graves, and never meet a common funeral without a sort of horror. When I look deathwards I look over death, and upwards, or I can't look that way at all. So that it was a struggle with me to sit upright in that carriage in which the poor stricken mother sate so calmly—not to drop from the seat, which would have been worse than absurd of me. Well, all this has blackened Rome to me. I can't think about the Cæsars in the old strain of thought; the antique words get muddled and blurred with warm dashes of modern, every-day tears and fresh grave-clay. Rome is spoiled to me—there's the truth. Still, one lives through one's associations when not too strong, and I have arrived at almost enjoying some things—the climate, for instance, which, though perilous to the general health, agrees particularly with me, and the sight of the blue sky floating like a sea-tide through the great gaps and rifts of ruins. We read in the papers of a tremendously cold winter in England and elsewhere, while I am able on most days to walk out as in an English summer, and while we are all forced to take precautions against the sun. Also Robert is well, and our child has not dropped a single rose-leaf from his radiant cheeks. We are very comfortably settled in rooms turned to the sun, and do work and play by turns—having almost too many visitors—hear excellent music at Mrs. Sartoris's (Adelaide Kemble) once or twice a week, and have Fanny Kemble to come and talk to us with the doors shut, we three together. This is pleasant. I like her decidedly. If anybody wants small-talk by handfuls of glittering dust swept out of salons, here's Mr. Thackeray besides; and if anybody wants a snow-man to match Southey's snow-woman (see 'Thalaba'), here's Mr. Lockhart, who, in complexion, hair, conversation, and manners, might have been made out of one of your English 'drifts'—'sixteen feet deep in some places,' says Galignani. Also, here's your friend V.—Mrs. Archer Clive.[31] We were at her house the other evening. She seems good-natured, but what a very peculiar person as to looks, and even voice and general bearing; and what a peculiar unconsciousness of peculiarity. I do not know her much. I go out very little in the evening, both from fear of the night air and from disinclination to stir. Mr. Page, our neighbour downstairs, pleases me much, and you ought to know more of him in England, for his portraits are like Titian's—flesh, blood, and soul. I never saw such portraits from a living hand. He professes to have discovered secrets, and plainly knows them, from his wonderful effects of colour on canvas—not merely in words. His portrait of Miss Cushman is a miracle. Gibson's famous painted Venus is very pretty—that's my criticism. Yes, I will say besides that I have seldom, if ever, seen so indecent a statue. The colouring with an approximation to flesh tints produces that effect, to my apprehension. I don't like this statue colouring—no, not at all. Dearest Miss Mitford, will you write to me? I don't ask for a long letter, but a letter—a letter. And I entreat you not to prepay. Among other disadvantages, that prepaying tendency of yours may lose me a letter one day. I want much to hear how you are bearing the winter—how you are. Give me details about your dear self.
[The remainder of this letter is missing]
43 Via Bocca di Leone, Rome: February 2, [1854].
Thank you, my dear Mr. Westwood, for your kind defence of me against the stupid, blind, cur-dog backbiting of the American writer. I will tell you. Three weeks ago I had a letter from my brother, apprising me of what had been said, and pressing on me the propriety of a contradiction in form. Said I in reply: 'When you marry a wife, George, take her from the class of those who have never printed a book, if this thing vexes you. A woman in a crowd can't help the pushing up against her of dirty coats; happy if somebody in boots does not tread upon her toes! Words to that effect, I said. I really could not do the American the honour of sitting down at the table with him to say: 'Sir, you are considerably mistaken.' He was not only mistaken, you see, but so stupid and self-willed in his mistake, so determined to make a system of it, but he was too disreputable to set right. Also of the tendency of one's writings one's readers are the best judges. I don't profess to write a religious commentary on my writings. I am content to stand by the obvious meaning of what I have written, according to the common sense of the general reader.
The tendency of my writings to Swedenborgianism has been observed by others, though I had read Swedenborg, when I wrote most of them, as little as the American editor of 'Robert Hall' can have done, and less can't be certainly. Otherwise, the said editor would have known that the central doctrine of Swedenborgianism being the Godhead of Jesus Christ, no Unitarian, liberal or unliberal, could have produced works Swedenborgian in character, and that William and Mary Howitt being Unitarian (which I believe they are) couldn't have a tendency at the same time to Swedenborgianism, unless it should be possible for them to be bolt upright with a leaning to the floor. I speak to a wise man. Judge what I say. For my own part I have thought freely on most subjects, and upon the state of the Churches among others, but never at any point of my life, and now, thank God, least of all, have I felt myself drawn towards Unitarian opinions. I should throw up revelation altogether if I ceased to recognise Christ as divine. Sectarianism I do not like, even in the form of a State Church, and the Athanasian way of stating opinions, between a scholastic paradox and a curse, is particularly distasteful to me. But I hold to Christ's invisible Church as referred to in Scripture, and to the Saviour's humanity and divinity as they seem to me conspicuous in Scripture, and so you have done me justice and the American has done me injustice....
Well, I have seen your Mrs. Brotherton, only once, though, because she can't come to see me at all, and lives too far for me to go in the winter weather. I shall see more of her presently, I hope, and in the meantime she is very generous to me, and sends me violets, and notes that are better, and we have a great sympathy on the spiritual subjects which set you so in a passion. What do I say? She sends me Greek (of which she does not know a single character), written by her, or rather through her; mystical Greek, from a spirit-world, produced by her hands, she herself not knowing what she writes. The character is beautifully written, and the separate words are generally correct—such words as 'Christ,' 'God,' 'tears,' 'blood,' 'tempest,' 'sea,' 'thunder,' 'calm,' 'morning,' 'sun,' 'joy.' No grammatical construction hitherto, but a significant sort of grouping of the separate words, as if the meaning were struggling out into coherence. My idea is that she is being exercised in the language, in the character, in order to fuller expression hereafter. Well, you would have us snowed upon with poppies till we sleep and forget these things. I, on the contrary, would have our eyes wide open, our senses 'all attentive,' our souls lifted in reverential expectation. Every fact is a word of God, and I call it irreligious to say, 'I will deny this because it displeases me.' 'I will look away from that because it will do me harm.' Why be afraid of the truth? God is in the truth, and He is called also Love. The evil results of certain experiences of this class result mainly from the superstitions and distorted views held by most people concerning the spiritual world. We have to learn—we in the body—that Death does not teach all things. Death is simply an accident. Foolish Jack Smith who died on Monday, is on Tuesday still foolish Jack Smith. If people who on Monday scorned his opinions prudently, will on Tuesday receive his least words as oracles, they very naturally may go mad, or at least do something as foolish as their inspirer is. Also, it is no argument against any subject, that it drives people mad who suffer themselves to be absorbed in it. That would be an argument against all religion, and all love, by your leave. Ask the Commissioners of Lunacy; knock at the door of mad-houses in general, and inquire what two causes act almost universally in filling them. Answer—love and religion. The common objection of the degradation of knocking with the leg of the table, and the ridicule of the position for a spirit, &c., &c., I don't enter into at all. Twice I have been present at table-experiments, and each time I was deeply impressed—impressed, there's the word for it! The panting and shivering of that dead dumb wood, the human emotion conveyed through it—by what? had to me a greater significance than the St. Peter's of this Rome. O poet! do you not know that poetry is not confined to the clipped alleys, no, nor to the blue tops of 'Parnassus hill'? Poetry is where we live and have our being—wherever God works and man understands. Hein! ... if you are in a dungeon and a friend knocks through the outer wall, spelling out by knocks the words you comprehend; you don't think the worse of the friend standing in the sun who remembers you. He is not degraded by it, you rather think. Now apply this. Certainly, there is a reaction from the materialism of the age, and this is certainly well, in my mind, but then there is something more than this, more than a mere human reaction, I believe. I have not the power of writing myself at all, though I have felt the pencil turn in my hand—a peculiar spiral motion like the turning of the tables, and independent of volition, but the power is not with me strong enough to make words or letters even.
We see a good deal of Fanny Kemble, a noble creature, and hear her sister sing—Mrs. Sartoris. Do admit a little society. It is good for soul and body, and on the Continent it is easy to get a handful of society without paying too dear for it. That, I think, is an advantage of Continental life.
43 Via Bocca di Leone, Rome: March 19, 1854.
My dearest Miss Mitford,—Your letter made my heart ache. It is sad, sad indeed, that you should have had this renewed cold just as you appeared to be rallying a little from previous shocks, and I know how depressing and enfeebling a malady the influenza is. It's the vulture finishing the work of the wolf. I pray God that, having battled through this last attack, you may be gradually strengthened and relieved by the incoming of the spring (though an English spring makes one shiver to think of generally), and with the summer come out into the garden, to sit in a chair and be shone upon, dear, dear friend. I shall be in England then, and get down to see you this time, and I tenderly hold to the dear hope of seeing you smile again, and hearing you talk in the old way....
We see a good deal of the Kembles here, and like them both, especially the Fanny, who is looking magnificent still, with her black hair and radiant smile. A very noble creature, indeed. Somewhat unelastic, unpliant to the eye, attached to the old modes of thought and convention, but noble in quality and defects; I like her much. She thinks me credulous and full of dreams, but does not despise me for that reason, which is good and tolerant of her, and pleasant, too, for I should not be quite easy under her contempt. Mrs. Sartoris is genial and generous, her milk has had time to stand to cream, in her happy family relations. The Sartoris's house has the best society at Rome, and exquisite music, of course. We met Lockhart there, and my husband sees a good deal of him—more than I do, because of the access of cold weather lately which has kept me at home chiefly. Robert went down to the seaside in a day's excursion with him and the Sartoris's; and, I hear, found favor in his sight. Said the critic: 'I like Browning, he isn't at all like a damned literary man.' That's a compliment, I believe, according to your dictionary. It made me laugh and think of you directly. I am afraid Lockhart's health is in a bad state; he looks very ill, and every now and then his strength seems to fail. Robert has been sitting for his picture to Fisher, the English artist, who painted Mr. Kenyon and Landor; you remember those pictures in Mr. Kenyon's house? Landor's was praised much by Southey. Well, he has painted Robert, and it is an admirable likeness.[32] The expression is an exceptional expression, but highly characteristic; it is one of Fisher's best works. Now he is about our Wiedeman, and if he succeeds as well in painting angels as men, will do something beautiful with that seraphic face. You are to understand that these works are done by the artist for the artist. Oh, we couldn't afford to have such a luxury as a portrait done for us. But I am pleased to have a good likeness of each of my treasures extant in the possession of somebody. Robert's will, of course, be eminently saleable, and Wiedeman's too, perhaps, for the beauty's sake, with those blue far-reaching eyes, and that innocent angel face emplumed in the golden ringlets! Somebody told me yesterday that she never had known, in a long experience of children, so attractive a child. He is so full of sweetness and vivacity together, of imagination and grace. A poetical child really, and in the best sense. Such a piece of innocence and simplicity with it all, too! A child you couldn't lie to if you tried. I had a fit of remorse for telling him the history of Jack and the Beanstalk, when he turned his earnest eyes up to me at the end and said, 'I think, if Jack went up so high, he must have seen God.'
To see those two works through the press must be a fatigue to you in your present weak state, dearest friend, and I keep wishing vainly I could be of use to you in the matter of the proof sheets. I might, you know, if I were in England. I do some work myself, but doubt much whether I shall be ready for the printers by July; no, indeed, it is clear I shall not. If Robert is, it will be well. Doesn't it surprise you that Alexander Smith should be already in a third edition? I can't make it out for my part. I 'give it up' as is my way with riddles. He is both too bad and too good to explain this phenomenon, which is harder to me than any implied in the turning tables or involuntary writing. By the way, a lady whom I know here writes Greek without knowing or having ever known a single letter of it. The unbelievers writhe under it.
Oh, I have been reading poor Haydon's biography. There is tragedy! The pain of it one can hardly shake off. Surely, surely, wrong was done somewhere, when the worst is admitted of Haydon. For himself, looking forward beyond the grave, I seem to understand that all things when most bitter worked ultimate good to him, for that sublime arrogance of his would have been fatal perhaps to the moral nature if developed further by success. But for the nation we had our duties, and we should not suffer our teachers and originators to sink thus. It is a book written in blood of the heart. Poor Haydon!
May God bless you, my dear friend! I think of you and love you dearly, Robert's love, put to mine, and Penini's love put to Robert's. I give away Penini's love as I please just now.
Your ever affectionate
E.B.B.
Send my bulletins; only two lines if you will.
[Rome: about March, 1854.]
My dearest Sarianna,—We are all well, and so is the weather, which is diviner. We sit with the windows wide open, and find it almost too warm, and to-day Robert and I have been wandering under the trees of the Pincio and looking to the Monte Marino pine. Let the best come, I don't like Rome, I never shall; and as they have put into the English newspapers that I don't, I might as well acknowledge the barbarism. Very glad I shall be to see you and Paris, even though my beloved Florence shall be left behind. Dearest Sarianna, after a short rest at Paris, we go on to London for the printing of Robert's book (mine won't be ready till later in the year), and for the sight of some dear English faces while the weather shall admit of it, before we settle for the winter in France. Well, you will go with us to England, won't you? The dear nonno[33] will spare you to go with us? It will do you good, and it will do us good, certainly.
I quite agree with you that there's no situation like the Champs Elysées—really, there is scarcely anything like it in Europe, if you put away Venice—for a situation in a city.
The worst of the Champs Elysées is that it is out of the way, and expensive on the point of carriages when you can't walk far. People tell you, too, that the air is sharper at the end of the avenue; yet the sun is so brilliant as to make amends for the disadvantage, if it exists. Then you pay more for houses on account of the concourse of English. And what if I object a little to the English besides? If I do, the desirableness of the pure air and free walking for Penini counterbalances them.
The Thackeray girls have had the scarlatina at Naples, and have been very desolate, I fear, without a female servant or friend near them. They probably were indisposed towards Naples by their own illness (which was slight, however; the scarlet fever is always slight in Italy they say), and by their father's more serious attack, for I have heard very different accounts of the Neapolitan weather. Still, it has been an abnormal winter everywhere, and there are cold winds on that coast on certain months of the year always. Lockhart has gone away with the Duke of Wellington, who was in deep consideration how he should manage his funeral on the road. Robert was present when the question was mooted on the Duke's last evening. Should he send the body to England or bury it? Would it be delicate to ask Lockhart which he preferred? Somebody said: 'Suppose you were to ask what he would do with your body if you died yourself.' I am afraid poor Lockhart is really in a dangerous state of health, and that it would have been better if he had had something tenderer and more considerate than a dukedom travelling with him under his circumstances. He called upon us, and took a great fancy to Robert, I understand, as being 'not at all like a damned literary man.'
Penini is overwhelmed with attentions and gifts of all kinds, and generally acknowledged as the king of the children here. Mrs. Page, the wife of the distinguished American artist, gave a party in honor of him the other day. There was an immense cake inscribed 'Penini' in sugar; and he sat at the head of the table and did the honors. You never saw a child so changed in point of shyness. He will go anywhere with anybody, and talk, and want none of us to back him. Wilson is only instructed not to come till it is 'velly late' to fetch him away. He talks to Fanny Kemble, who 'dashes' most people. 'I not aflaid of nossing,' says he, in his eloquent English. Mr. Fisher's cartoon of him is very pretty, but doesn't do him justice in the delicacy of the lower part of the face. Yet I can't complain of Mr. Fisher after the admirable likeness he has painted of Robert. It is really satisfying to me. You will see it in London. Oh, how cruel it is that we can't buy it, Sarianna; I have a sort of hope that Mr. Kenyon may—but zitto, zitto![34] Arabel will be very grateful to you for the drawings....
[Endorsed by Miss Browning, 'Part of a letter']
The plans, thus confidently spoken of, for a visit to Paris and London in the summer of this year, did not attain fulfilment. The Brownings left Rome for Florence about the end of May, intending to stay there only a few weeks; but their arrangements were altered by letters received from England, and ultimately they remained in Florence until the summer of the following year. Whether for this reason, or because the poems were not, after all, ready for press, the printing of Mr. Browning's new volumes ('Men and Women') was also postponed, and they did not appear until 1855; while 'Aurora Leigh' was still a long way from completion.
Rome: May 10, 1854.
My ever dearest Miss Mitford,—Your letter pained me to a degree which I will not pain you by expressing farther. Now, I do not write to press for another letter. On the contrary, I entreat you not to attempt to write a word to me with your own hand, until you can do so without effort and suffering. In the meanwhile, would it be impossible for K. to send me in one line some account of you? I don't mean to tease, but I should be very glad and thankful to have news of you though in the briefest manner, and if a letter were addressed to me at Poste Restante, Florence, it would reach me, as we rest there on our road to Paris and London. In any case I shall see you this summer, if it shall please God; and stay with you the half hour you allow, and kiss your dear hands and feel again, I hope, the brightness of your smile. As the green summer comes on you must be the better surely; if you can bear to lie out under the trees, the general health will rally and the local injury correct itself. You must have a strong, energetic vitality; and, after all, spinal disorders do not usually attack life, though they disable and overthrow. The pain you endure is the terrible thing. Has a local application of chloroform been ever tried? I catch at straws, perhaps, with my unlearned hands, but it's the instinct of affection. While you suffer, my dear friend, the world is applauding you. I catch sight of stray advertisements and fragmentary notices of 'Atherton,' which seems to have been received everywhere with deserved claps of hands. This will not be comfort to you, perhaps; but you will feel the satisfaction which every workman feels in successful work. I think the edition of plays and poems has not yet appeared, and I suppose there will be nothing in that which can be new to us. 'Atherton' I thirst for, but the cup will be dry, I dare say, till I get to England, for new books even at Florence take waiting for far beyond all necessary bounds. We shall not stay long in Tuscany. We want to be in England late in June or very early in July, and some days belong to Paris as we pass, since Robert's family are resident there. To leave Rome will fill me with barbarian complacency. I don't pretend to have a rag of sentiment about Rome. It's a palimpsest Rome—a watering-place written over the antique—and I haven't taken to it as a poet should, I suppose; only let us speak the truth, above all things. I am strongly a creature of association, and the associations of the place have not been personally favorable to me. Among the rest my child, the light of my eyes, has been more unwell lately than I ever saw him in his life, and we were forced three times to call in a physician. The malady was not serious, it was just the result of the climate, relaxation of the stomach, &c., but the end is that he is looking a delicate, pale, little creature, he who was radiant with all the roses and stars of infancy but two months ago. The pleasantest days in Rome we have spent with the Kembles—the two sisters—who are charming and excellent, both of them, in different ways; and certainly they have given us some exquisite hours on the Campagna, upon picnic excursions, they and certain of their friends—for instance, M. Ampère, the member of the French Institute, who is witty and agreeable; M. Gorze, the Austrian Minister, also an agreeable man; and Mr. Lyons, the son of Sir Edmund, &c. The talk was almost too brilliant for the sentiment of the scenery, but it harmonised entirely with the mayonnaise and champagne. I should mention, too, Miss Hosmer (but she is better than a talker), the young American sculptress, who is a great pet of mine and of Robert's, and who emancipates the eccentric life of a perfectly 'emancipated female' from all shadow of blame by the purity of hers. She lives here all alone (at twenty-two); dines and breakfasts at the cafés precisely as a young man would; works from six o'clock in the morning till night, as a great artist must, and this with an absence of pretension and simplicity of manners which accord rather with the childish dimples in her rosy cheeks than with her broad forehead and high aims. The Archer Clives have been to Naples, but have returned for a time. Mr. Lockhart, who went to England with the Duke of Wellington (the same prepared to bury him on the road), writes to Mrs. Sartoris that he has grown much better under the influence of the native beef and beer. To do him justice he looked, when here, innocent of the recollection even of either. I wonder if you have seen Mrs. Howe's poems, lately out, called 'Passion Flowers.' They were sent to me by an American friend but were intercepted en route, so that I have not set eyes on them yet, but one or two persons, not particularly reliable as critics, have praised them to me. She is the wife of Dr. Howe, the deaf and dumb philanthropist, and herself neither deaf nor dumb (very much the contrary) I understand—a handsome woman and brilliant in society. I gossip on to you, dearest dear Miss Mitford, as if you were in gossiping humour. Believe that my tender thoughts, deeper than any said, are with you always.
Robert's love with that of your attached
Ba.
We go on the 22nd of this month. You have seen Mr. Chorley's book, I daresay, which I should like much to see.
Casa Guidi: Thursday, [end of May 1854].
My dearest Sarianna,—I am delighted to say that we have arrived, and see our dear Florence, the queen of Italy, after all. On the road I said to Penini, 'Make a poem about Florence.' Without a moment's hesitation he began, 'Florence is more pretty of all. Florence is a beauty. Florence was born first, and then Rome was born. And Paris was born after.' Penini is always en verve. He's always ready to make a poem on any subject, and doesn't ask you to wait while he clears his voice. The darling will soon get over the effect of that poisonous Roman air, I do trust, though it is humiliating to hear our Florentines wailing over the loss of bloom and dimples; it doesn't console me that his amount of growth is properly acknowledged. Well, good milk and good air will do their work in a little time with God's blessing, and a most voracious appetite is developed already, I am glad to say. Even in the journey he revived, the blue marks under the darling eyes fading gradually away, and now he looks decidedly better, though unlike himself of two months ago. You are to understand that the child is perfectly well, and that the delicate look is traceable distinctly and only to the attacks he had in Rome during the last few weeks. Throughout the winter he was radiant, as I used to tell you, and the confessed king of the whole host of his contemporaries and country-babies....
The Kembles were our gain in Rome. I appreciate and admire both of them. They fail in nothing as you see them nearer. Noble and upright women, whose social brilliancy is their least distinction! Mrs. Sartoris is the more tender and tolerant, the more loveable and sympathetical, perhaps, to me. I should like you to know them both. Then there is that dear Mr. Page. Yes, and Harriet Hosmer, the young American sculptress, who is an immense favorite with us both.
A comfort is that Robert is considered here to be looking better than he ever was known to look. And this notwithstanding the greyness of his beard, which indeed is, in my own mind, very becoming to him, the argentine touch giving a character of elevation and thought to the whole physiognomy. This greyness was suddenly developed; let me tell you how. He was in a state of bilious irritability on the morning of his arrival in Rome from exposure to the sun or some such cause, and in a fit of suicidal impatience shaved away his whole beard, whiskers and all! I cried when I saw him, I was so horror-struck. I might have gone into hysterics and still been reasonable; for no human being was ever so disfigured by so simple an act. Of course I said, when I recovered breath and voice, that everything was at an end between him and me if he didn't let it all grow again directly, and (upon the further advice of his looking-glass) he yielded the point, and the beard grew. But it grew white, which was the just punishment of the gods—our sins leave their traces.
Well, poor darling, Robert won't shock you after all, you can't choose but be satisfied with his looks. M. de Monclar swore to me that he was not changed for the intermediate years.
Robert talks of money, of waiting for that, among other hindrances to setting out directly. Not my fault, be certain, Sarianna! We seem to have a prospect of letting our house for a year, which, if the thing happens, will give us a lift.
We spent yesterday evening with Lytton at his villa, meeting there Mr. and Mrs. Walpole, Frederick Tennyson, and young Norton (Mrs. Norton's son), who married the Capri girl. She was not present, I am sorry to say. We walked home to the song of nightingales by starlight and firefly-light. Florence looks to us more beautiful than ever after Rome. I love the very stones of it, to say nothing of the cypresses and river.
Robert says, 'Are you nearly done?' I am done. Give Penini's love and mine to the dear nonno, and tell him (and yourself, dear) how delighted we shall be [to] have you both. You are prepared to go to England, I hope. By the way, the weather there is said to be murderous through bitter winds, but it must soften as the season advances. May God bless you! I am yours in truest love.
Ba.
We had a very pleasant vettura journey, Robert will have told you.
Florence: June 6, 1854.
Yes, dearest friend, I had your few lines which Arabel sent to me. I had them on the very day I had posted my letter to you, and I need not say how deeply it moved me that you should have thought of giving me that pleasure of Mr. Ruskin's kind word at the expense of what I knew to be so much pain to yourself....
We mean to stay at Florence a week or two longer and then go northward. I love Florence, the place looks exquisitely beautiful in its garden-ground of vineyards and olive trees, sung round by the nightingales day and night, nay, sung into by the nightingales, for as you walk along the streets in the evening the song trickles down into them till you stop to listen. Such nights we have between starlight and firefly-light, and the nightingales singing! I would willingly stay here, if it were not that we are constrained by duty and love to go, and at some day not distant, I daresay we shall come back 'for good and all' as people say, seeing that if you take one thing with another, there is no place in the world like Florence, I am persuaded, for a place to live in. Cheap, tranquil, cheerful, beautiful, within the limit of civilisation yet out of the crush of it. I have not seen the Trollopes yet; but we have spent two delicious evenings at villas on the outside the gates, one with young Lytton, Sir Edward's son, of whom I have told you, I think. I like him, we both do, from the bottom of our hearts. Then our friend Frederick Tennyson, the new poet, we are delighted to see again. Have you caught sight of his poems? If you have, tell me your thought. Mrs. Howe's I have read since I wrote last. Some of them are good—many of the thoughts striking, and all of a certain elevation. Of poetry, however, strictly speaking, there is not much; and there's a large proportion of conventional stuff in the volume. She must be a clever woman. Of the ordinary impotencies and prettinesses of female poets she does not partake, but she can't take rank with poets in the good meaning of the word, I think, so as to stand without leaning. Also there is some bad taste and affectation in the dressing of her personality. I dare say Mr. Fields will bring you her book. Talking of American literature, with the publishers on the back of it, we think of offering the proofs of our new works to any publisher over the water who will pay us properly for the advantage of bringing out a volume in America simultaneously with the publication in England. We have heard that such a proposal will be acceptable, and mean to try it. The words you sent to me from Mr. Ruskin gave me great pleasure indeed, as how should they not from such a man? I like him personally, too, besides my admiration for him as a writer, and I was deeply gratified in every way to have his approbation. His 'Seven Lamps' I have not read yet. Books come out slowly to Italy. It's our disadvantage, as you know. Ruskin and art go together. I must tell you how Rome made me some amends after all. Page, the American artist, painted a picture of Robert like an Italian, and then presented it to me like a prince. It is a wonderful picture, the colouring so absolutely Venetian that artists can't (for the most part) keep their temper when they look at it, and the breath of the likeness is literal.[35] Mr. Page has secrets in the art—certainly nobody else paints like him—and his nature, I must say, is equal to his genius and worthy of it. Dearest Miss Mitford, the 'Athenæum' is always as frigid as Mont Blanc; it can't be expected to grow warmer for looking over your green valleys and still waters. It wouldn't be Alpine if it did. They think it a point of duty in that journal to shake hands with one finger. I dare say when Mr. Chorley sits down to write an article he puts his feet in cold water as a preliminary. Still, I oughtn't to be impertinent. He has been very good-natured to me, and it isn't his fault if I'm not Poet Laureate at this writing, and engaged in cursing the Czar in Pindarics very prettily. 'Atherton,' meanwhile, wants nobody to praise it, I am sure. How glad I shall be to seize and read it, and how I thank you for the gift! May God bless and keep you! I may hear again if you write soon to Florence, but don't pain yourself for the world, I entreat you. I shall see you before long, I think.
Your ever affectionate
E.B.B.
Robert's love.
Florence: July 20, [1854].
My dearest Miss Mitford,—I this moment receive your little note. It makes me very sad and apprehensive about you, and I would give all this bright sunshine for weeks for one explanatory word which might make me more easy. Arabel speaks of receiving your books—I suppose 'Atherton'—and of having heard from yourself a very bad account of your state of health. Are you worse, my beloved friend? I have been waiting to hear the solution of our own plans (dependent upon letters from England) in order to write to you; and when I found our journey to London was definitively rendered impossible till next spring, I deferred writing yet again, it was so painful to me to say to you that our meeting could not take place this year. Now, I receive your little note and write at once to say how sad that makes me. It is the first time that the expression of your love, my beloved friend, has made me sad, and I start as from an omen. On the other hand, the character you write in is so firm and like yourself, that I do hope and trust you are not sensibly worse. Let me hear by a word, if possible, that the change of weather has done you some little good. I understand there has scarcely been any summer in England, and this must necessarily have been adverse to you. A gleam of fine weather would revive you by God's help. Oh, that I could look in your face and say, 'God bless you!' as I feel it. May God bless you, my dear, dear friend.
Our reason for not going to England has not been from caprice, but a cross in money matters. A ship was to have brought us in something, and brought us in nothing instead, with a discount; the consequence of which is that we are transfixed at Florence, and unable even to 'fly to the mountains' as a refuge from the summer heat. It has been a great disappointment to us all, and to our respective families, my poor darling Arabel especially; but we can only be patient, and I take comfort in the obvious fact that my Penini is quite well and almost as rosy as ever in spite of the excessive Florence heat. One of the worst thoughts I have is about you. I had longed so to see you this summer, and had calculated with such certainty upon doing so. I would have gone to England for that single reason if I could, but I can't; we can't stir, really. That we should be able to sit quietly still at Florence and eat our bread and maccaroni is the utmost of our possibilities this summer.
Mrs. Trollope has gone to the Baths of Lucca, and thus I have not seen her. She will be very interested about you, of course. How many hang their hearts upon your sickbed, dearest Miss Mitford! Yes, and their prayers too.
The other day, by an accident, an old number of the 'Athenæum' fell into my hands, and I read for the second time Mr. Chorley's criticism upon 'Atherton.' It is evidently written in a hurried manner, and is quite inadequate as a notice of the book; but, do you know, I am of opinion that if you considered it more closely you would lose your impression of its being depreciatory and cold. He says that the only fault of the work is its shortness; a rare piece of praise to be given to a work nowadays. You see, your reputation is at the height; neither he nor another could help you; such books as yours make their own way. The 'Athenæum' doesn't give full critiques of Dickens, for instance, and it is arctical in general temperature. I thought I would say this to you. Certainly I do know that Mr. Chorley highly regards you in every capacity—as writer and as woman—and in the manner in which he named you to me in his last letter there was no chill of sentiment nor recoil of opinion. So do not admit a doubt of him; he is a sure and affectionate friend, and absolutely high-minded and reliable; of an intact and even chivalrous delicacy. I say it, lest you might have need of him and be scrupulous (from your late feeling) about making him useful. It is horrible to doubt of one's friends; oh, I know that, and would save you from it.
We had a letter from Paris two days ago from one of the noblest and most intellectual men in the country, M. Milsand, a writer in the 'Deux Mondes.' He complains of a stagnation in the imaginative literature, but adds that he is consoled for everything by the 'state of politics.' Your Napoleon is doing you credit, his very enemies must confess.
As for me, I can't write to-day. Your little precious, melancholy note hangs round the neck of my heart like a stone. Arabel simply says she is afraid from what you have written to her that you must be very ill; she does not tell me what you wrote to her—perhaps for fear of paining me—and now I am pained by the silence beyond measure.
Robert's love and warmest wishes for you. He appreciates your kind word to him. And I, what am I to say? I love you from a very sad and grateful heart, looking backwards and forwards—and upwards to pray God's love down on you!
Your ever affectionate
E.B.B., rather Ba.
Precious the books will be to me. I hope not to wait to read them till they reach me, as there is a bookseller here who will be sure to have them. Thank you, thank you.
Florence: September 4, 1854.
Five minutes do not pass, my beloved friend, since reading this dear letter which has wrung from me tender and sorrowful tears, and answering it thus. Pray for you? I do not wait that you should bid me. May the divine love in the face of our Lord Jesus Christ shine upon you day and night, and make all our human loves strike you as cold and dull in comparison with that ineffable tenderness! As to wandering prayers, I cannot believe that it is of consequence whether this poor breath of ours wanders or does not wander. If we have strength to throw ourselves upon Him for everything, for prayer, as well as for the ends of prayer, it is enough, and He will prove it to be enough presently. I have been when I could not pray at all. And then God's face seemed so close upon me that there was no need of prayer, any more than if I were near you, as I yearn to be, as I ought to be, there would be need for this letter. Oh, be sure that He means well by us by what we suffer, and it is when we suffer that He often makes the meaning clearer. You know how that brilliant, witty, true poet Heine, who was an atheist (as much as a man can pretend to be), has made a public profession of a change of opinion which was pathetic to my eyes and heart the other day as I read it. He has joined no church, but simply (to use his own words) has 'returned home to God like the prodigal son after a long tending of the swine.' It is delightful to go home to God, even after a tending of the sheep. Poor Heine has lived a sort of living death for years, quite deprived of his limbs, and suffering tortures to boot, I understand. It is not because we are brought low that we must die, my dearest friend. I hope—I do not say 'hope' for you so much as for me and for the many who hang their hearts on your life—I hope that you may survive all these terrible sufferings and weaknesses, and I take my comfort from your letter, from the firmness and beauty of the manuscript; I who know how weak hands will shudder and reel along the paper. Surely there is strength for more life in that hand. Now I stoop to kiss it in my thought. Feel my kiss on the dear hand, dear, dear friend.
A previous letter of yours pained me much because I seemed to have given you the painful trouble in it of describing your state, your weakness. Ah, I knew what that state was, and it was therefore that the slip of paper which came with 'Atherton' seemed to me so ominous! By the way, I shall see 'Atherton' before long, I dare say. The 'German Library' in our street is to have a 'box of new books' almost directly, and in it surely must be 'Atherton,' and you shall hear my thoughts of the book as soon as I catch sight of it. Then you have sent me the Dramas. Thank you, thank you; they will be precious. I saw the article in the 'Athenæum' with joy and triumph, and knew Mr. Chorley by the 'Roman hand.' In the 'Illustrated News' also, Robert (not I) read an enthusiastic notice. He fell upon it at the reading-room where I never go on account of my she-dom, women in Florence being supposed not—
(Part of this letter is missing)
Think of me who am far, yet near in love and thought. Love me with that strong heart of yours. May God bless it, bless it!
I am ever your attached
E.B.B., rather Ba.
I have had a sad letter from poor Haydon's daughter. She has fifty-six pounds a year, and can scarcely live on it in England, and inquires if she could live in any family in Florence. I fear to recommend her to come so far on such means. Robert's love. May God bless you and keep you! Love me.
Florence: October 19, 1854.
I will try not to be overjoyed, my dear, dearest Miss Mitford, but, indeed, it is difficult to refrain from catching at hope with both hands. If the general health will but rally, there is nothing fatal about a spine disease. May God bless you, give you the best blessing in earth and heaven, as the God of the living in both places. We ought not to be selfish, nor stupid, so as to be afraid of leaving you in His hands. What is beautiful and joyful to observe is the patience and self-possession with which you endure even the most painful manifestation of His will; and that, while you lose none of that interest in the things of our mortal life which is characteristic of your sympathetic nature, you are content, just as if you felt none, to let the world go, according to the decision of God. May you be more and more confirmed and elevated and at rest—being the Lord's, whether absent from the body or present in it! For my own part, I have been long convinced that what we call death is a mere incident in life—perhaps scarcely a greater one than the occurrence of puberty, or the revolution which comes with any new emotion or influx of new knowledge. I am heterodox about sepulchres, and believe that no part of us will ever lie in a grave. I don't think much of my nail-parings—do you?—not even of the nail of my thumb when I cut off what Penini calls the 'gift-mark' on it. I believe that the body of flesh is a mere husk which drops off at death, while the spiritual body (see St. Paul) emerges in glorious resurrection at once. Swedenborg says, some persons do not immediately realise that they have passed death, and this seems to me highly probable. It is curious that Maurice, Mr. Kingsley's friend, about whom so much lately has been written and quarrelled (and who has made certain great mistakes, I think), takes this precise view of the resurrection, with an apparent unconsciousness of what Swedenborg has stated upon the subject, and that, I, too, long before I knew Swedenborg, or heard the name of Maurice, came to the same conclusions. I wonder if Mr. Kingsley agrees with us. I dare say he does, upon the whole—for the ordinary doctrine seems to me as little taught by Scripture as it can be reconciled with philosophical probabilities. I believe in an active, human life, beyond death as before it, an uninterrupted human life. I believe in no waiting in the grave, and in no vague effluence of spirit in a formless vapour. But you'll be tired with 'what I believe.'
I have been to the other side of Florence to call on Mrs. Trollope, on purpose that I might talk to her of you, but she was not at home, though she has returned from the Baths of Lucca. From what I hear, she appears to be well, and has recommenced her 'public mornings,' which we shrink away from. She 'receives' every Saturday morning in the most heterogeneous way possible. It must be amusing to anybody not overwhelmed by it, and people say that she snatches up 'characters' for her 'so many volumes a year' out of the diversities of masks presented to her on these occasions. Oh, our Florence! In vain do I cry out for 'Atherton.' The most active circulating library 'hasn't got it yet,' they say. I must still wait. Meanwhile, of course, I am delighted with all your successes, and your books won't spoil by keeping like certain other books. So I may wait.
How young children unfold like flowers, and how pleasant it is to watch them! I congratulate you upon yours—your baby-girl must be a dear forward little thing. But I wish I could show you my Penini, with his drooping golden ringlets and seraphic smile, and his talk about angels—you would like him, I know. Your girl-baby has avenged my name for me, and now, if you heard my Penini say in the midst of a coaxing fit—'O, my sweetest little mama, my darling, dearlest, little Ba,' you would admit that 'Ba' must have a music in it, to my ears at least. The love of two generations is poured out to me in that name—and the stream seems to run (in one instance) when alas! the fountain is dry. I do not refer to the dead who live still.
Ah, dearest friend, you feel how I must have felt about the accident in Wimpole Street.[36] I can scarcely talk to you about it. There will be permanent lameness, Arabel says, according to the medical opinion, though the general health was not for a moment affected. But permanent lameness! That is sad, for a person of active habits. I ventured to write a little note—which was not returned, I thank God—or read, I dare say; but of course there was no result. I never even expected it, as matters have been. I must tell you that our pecuniary affairs are promising better results for next year, and that we shall not, in all probability, be tied up from going to England. For the rest—if I understand you—oh no! My husband has a family likeness to Lucifer in being proud. Besides, it's not necessary. When literary people are treated in England as in some other countries, in that case and that time we may come in for our share in the pensions given by the people, without holding out our hands. Now think of Carlyle—unpensioned! Why, if we sate here in rags, we wouldn't press in for an obolus before Belisarius. Mrs. Sartoris has been here on her way to Rome, spending most of her time with us—singing passionately and talking eloquently. She is really charming. May God bless and keep you and love you, beloved friend! Love your own affectionate
Ba.
May it be Robert's love?
[Florence:] November 11, 1854 [postmark].
My dearest Sarianna,—I shall be writing my good deeds in water to-day with this mere pretence at inks.[37] We are all well, though it is much too cold for me—a horrible tramontana which would create a cough under the ribs of death, and sets me coughing a little in the morning. I am afraid it's to be a hard winter again this year—or harder than last year's. We began fires on the last day of October, after the most splendid stretch of spring, summer, and autumn I ever remember. We have translated our room into winter—sent off the piano towards the windows, and packed tables, chairs, and sofas as near to the hearth as possible.
What a time of anxiety this war time is![38] I do thank God that we have no reasons for its being a personal agony, through having anyone very precious at the post of danger. I have two first cousins there, a Hedley, and Paget Butler, Sir Thomas's son. I understand that the gloom in England from the actual bereavements is great; that the frequency of deep mourning strikes the eye; that even the shops are filled chiefly with black; and that it has become a sort of mode to wear black or grey, without family losses, and from the mere force of sympathy.
My poor father is still unable to stir from the house, and he has been unwell through a bilious attack, the consequence of want of exercise. Nothing can induce him to go out in a carriage, because he 'never did in his life drive out for mere amusement,' he says. There's what Mr. Kenyon calls 'the Barrett obstinacy,' and it makes me uneasy as to the effect of it in this instance upon the general health of the patient. Poor darling Arabel seems to me much out of spirits—'out of humour,' she calls it, dear thing—oppressed by the gloom of the house, and looking back yearningly to the time when she had sisters to talk to. Oh Sarianna, I wish we were all together to have a good gossip or groaning, with a laugh at the end!...
Your ever affectionate sister,
Ba.
Florence: November 1854.
My dearest Mrs. Martin,—You make me wait and I make you wait for letters. It is bad of us both—and remember, worse of you, seeing that you left two long letters of mine unanswered for months. I felt as if I had fallen down an oubliette, and I was about to utter the loud shrieks befitting the occasion, when you wrote at last. Don't treat me so another time; I want to know your plans for the winter, since the winter is upon us. Next summer, if it pleases God, we shall certainly meet somewhere—say Paris, say London. We shall have money for it, which we had not this year; and now the disappointment's over, I don't care. The heat at Florence was very bearable, and our child grew into his roses lost at Rome, and we have lived a very tranquil and happy six months on our own sofas and chairs, among our own nightingales and fireflies. There's an inclination in me to turn round with my Penini and say, 'I'm an Italian.' Certainly both light and love seem stronger with me at Florence than elsewhere....
The war! The alliance is the consolation; the necessity is the justification. For the rest, one shuts one's eyes and ears—the rest is too horrible. What do you mean by fearing that the war itself may not be all the evil of the war? I expect, on the contrary, a freer political atmosphere after this thunder. Louis Napoleon is behaving very tolerably well, won't you admit, after all? And I don't look to a treason at the end as certain of his enemies do, who are reduced to a 'wait, wait, and you'll see.' There's a friend of mine here, a traditional anti-Gallican, and very lively in his politics until the last few months. He can't speak now or lift up his eyelids, and I am too magnanimous in opposition to talk of anything else in his presence except Verdi's last opera, which magnanimity he appreciates, though he has no ear. About a month ago he came suddenly to life again. 'Have you heard the news? Napoleon is suspected of making a secret treaty with Russia.' The next morning he was as dead as ever—poor man! It's a desperate case for him.
Are you not happy—you—in this fast union between England and France? Some of our English friends, coming to Italy through France, say that the general feeling towards England, and the affectionate greetings and sympathies lavished upon them as Englishmen by the French everywhere, are quite strange and touching. 'In two or three years,' said a Frenchman on a railroad, 'French and English, we shall make only one nation.' Are you very curious about the subject of gossip just now between Lord Palmerston and Louis Napoleon? We hear from somebody in Paris, whose métier it is to know everything, that it refers to the readjustment of affairs in Italy. May God grant it! The Italians have been hanging their whole hope's weight upon Louis Napoleon ever since he came to power, and if he does now what he can for them I shall be proud of my protégé—oh, and so glad! Robert and I clapped our hands yesterday when we heard this; we couldn't refrain, though our informant was reactionary and in a deep state of conservative melancholy. 'Awful things were to be expected about Italy,' quotha!
Now do be good, and write and tell me what your plans are for the winter. We shall remain here till May, and then, if God pleases, go north—to Paris and London. Robert and I are at work on our books. I have taken to ass's milk to counteract the tramontana, and he is in the twenty-first and I in the twenty-second volume of Alexandre Dumas's 'Memoirs.' The book is un peu hasardé occasionally, as might be expected, but extremely interesting, and I really must recommend it to your attention for the winter if you don't know it already.
We have seen a good deal of Mrs. Sartoris lately on her way to Rome (Adelaide Kemble)—eloquent in talk and song, a most brilliant woman, and noble. She must be saddened since then, poor thing, by her father's death. Tell me if it is true that Harriet Martineau has seceded again from her atheism? We heard so the other day. Dearest Mrs. Martin, do write to me; and do, both of you, remember me, and think of both of us kindly. With Robert's true regards,
I am your as ever affectionate
Ba.
Tell me dear Mr. Martin's mind upon politics—in the Austrian and Prussian question, for instance. We have no fears, in spite of Dr. Cumming and the prophets generally, of ultimate results.
To Miss Mitford
Florence: December 11, 1854.
I should have written long ago, my dearest Miss Mitford, to try to say half the pleasure and gratitude your letter made for me, but I have been worried and anxious about the illnesses, not exactly in my family but nearly as touching to me, and hanging upon posts from England in a painful way inevitable to these great distances....
I understand that literature is going on flaggingly in England just now, on account of nobody caring to read anything but telegraphic messages. So Thackeray told somebody, only he might refer chiefly to the fortunes of the 'Newcomes,' who are not strong enough to resist the Czar. The book is said to be defective in story. Certainly the subject of the war is very absorbing; we are all here in a state of tremblement about it. Dr. Harding has a son at Sebastopol, who has had already three horses killed under him. What hideous carnage! The allies are plainly numerically too weak, and the two governments are much blamed for not reinforcing long ago. I am discontented about Austria. I don't like handshaking with Austria; I would rather be picking her pocket of her Italian provinces; and, while upon such civil terms, how can we? Yet somebody, who professes to know everything, told somebody at Paris, who professes to tell everything, that Louis Napoleon and Lord Palmerston talked much the other day about what is to be done for Italy; and here in Italy we have long been all opening our mouths like so many young thrushes in a nest, expecting some 'worme small' from your Emperor. Now, if there's an Austrian alliance instead!...
Do you hear from Mr. Kingsley? and, if so, how is his wife? I am reading now Mrs. Stowe's 'Sunny Memories,' and like the naturalness and simplicity of the book much, in spite of the provincialism of the tone of mind and education, and the really wretched writing. It's quite wonderful that a woman who has written a book to make the world ring should write so abominably....
Do you hear often from Mr. Chorley? Mr. Kenyon complains of never seeing him. He seems to have withdrawn a good deal, perhaps into closer occupations, who knows? Aubrey de Vere told a friend of ours in Paris the other day that Mr. Patmore was engaged on a poem which 'was to be the love poem of the age,' parts of which he, Aubrey de Vere, had seen. Last week I was vexed by the sight of Mrs. Trollope's card, brought in because we were at dinner. I should have liked to have seen her for the sake of the opportunity of talking of you.
Do you know the engravings in the 'Story without an End'? The picture of the 'child' is just my Penini. Some one was observing it the other day, and I thought I would tell you, that you might image him to yourself. Think of his sobbing and screaming lately because of the Evangelist John being sent to Patmos. 'Just like poor Robinson Crusoe' said he. I scarcely knew whether to laugh or cry, I was so astonished at this crisis of emotion.
Robert's love will be put in. May God bless you and keep you, and love you better than we all.
Your ever affectionate
Ba.
Casa Guidi: February 13, [1855].
My dearest Mrs. Martin,—How am I to thank you for this most beautiful shawl, looking fresh from Galatea's flocks, and woven by something finer than her fingers? You are too good and kind, and I shall wrap myself in this piece of affectionateness on your part with very pleasant feelings. Thank you, thank you. I only wish I could have seen you (though more or less dimly, it would have been a satisfaction) in the face of your friend who was so kind as to bring the parcel to me. But I have been very unwell, and was actually in bed when he called; unwell with the worst attack on the chest I ever suffered from in Italy. Oh, I should have written to you long since if it had not been for this. For a month past or more I have been ill. Now, indeed, I consider myself convalescent; the exhausting cough and night fever are gone, I may say, the pulse quiet, and, though considerably weakened and pulled down, that will be gradually remedied as long as this genial mildness of the weather lasts. You were quite right in supposing us struck here by the cold of which you complained even at Pau. Not only here but at Pisa there has been snow and frost, together with a bitter wind which my precaution of keeping steadily to two rooms opening one into another could not defend me from. My poor Robert has been horribly vexed about me, of course, and indeed suffered physically at one time through sleepless nights, diversified by such pastimes as keeping fires alight and warming coffee, &c. &c. Except for love's sake it wouldn't be worth while to live on at the expense of doing so much harm, but you needn't exhort—I don't give it up. I mean to live on and be well.
In the meantime, in generous exchange for your miraculous shawl, I send you back sixpence worth of rhymes. They were written for Arabel's Ragged School bazaar last spring (she wanted our names), and would not be worth your accepting but for the fact of their not being purchaseable anywhere.[39] A few copies were sent out to us lately. Half I draw back my hand as I give you this little pamphlet, because I seem to hear dear Mr. Martin's sardonic laughter at my phrase about the Czar. 'If she wink, &c.' Well, I don't generally sympathise with the boasting mania of my countrymen, but it's so much in the blood that, even with me, it exceeds now and then, you observe. Ask him to be as gentle with me as possible.
Oh, the East, the East! My husband has been almost frantic on the subject. We may all cover our heads and be humble.[40] Verily we have sinned deeply. As to ministers, that there is blame I do not doubt. The Aberdeen element has done its worst, but our misfortune is that nobody is responsible; and that if you tear up Mr. So-and-so and Lord So-and-so limb from limb, as a mild politician recommended the other day, you probably would do a gross injustice against very well-meaning persons. It's the system, the system which is all one gangrene; the most corrupt system in Europe, is it not? Here is my comfort. Apart from the dreadful amount of individual suffering which cries out against us to heaven and earth, this adversity may teach us much, this shock which has struck to the heart of England may awaken us much, and this humiliation will altogether be good for us. We have stood too long on a pedestal talking of our moral superiority, our political superiority, and all our other superiorities, which I have long been sick of hearing recounted. Here's an inferiority proved. Let us understand it and remedy it, and not talk, talk, any more.
[Part of this letter has been cut out]
We heard yesterday from the editor of the 'Examiner,' Mr. Forster, who expects some terrible consequence of present circumstances in England, as far as I can understand. The alliance with France is full of consolation. There seems to be a real heart-union between the peoples. What a grand thing the Napoleon loan is! It has struck the English with admiration.
I heard, too, among other English news, that Walter Savage Landor, who has just kept his eightieth birthday, and is as young and impetuous as ever, has caught the whooping cough by way of an illustrative accident. Kinglake ('E[=o]then') came home from the Crimea (where he went out and fought as an amateur) with fever, which has left one lung diseased. He is better, however....
Dearest Mrs. Martin, dearest friends, be both of you well and strong. Shall we not meet in Paris this early summer?
May God bless you! Your ever affectionate
Ba.
Florence: February 24, 1855.
The devil (say charitable souls) is not as bad as he is painted, and even I, dearest Mona Nina, am better than I seem. In the first place, let me make haste to say that I never received the letter you sent me to Rome with the information of your family affliction, and that, if I had, it could never have remained an unnoticed letter. I am not so untender, so unsympathising, not so brutal—let us speak out. I lost several letters in Rome, besides a good deal of illusion. I did not like Rome, I think I confessed to you. In the second place, when your last letter reached me—I mean the letter in which you told me to write to you directly—I would have written directly, but was so very unwell that you would not have wished me even to try if, absent in the flesh, you had been present in spirit. I have had a severe attack on the chest—the worst I ever had in Italy—the consequence of exceptionally severe weather—bitter wind and frost together—which quite broke me up with cough and fever at night. Now I am well again, only of course much weakened, and grown thin. I mean to get fat again upon cod's liver oil, in order to appear in England with some degree of decency. You know I'm a lineal descendant of the White Cat, and have seven lives accordingly. Also I have a trick of falling from six-storey windows upon my feet, in the manner of the traditions of my race. Not only I die hard, but I can hardly die. 'Half of it would kill me,' said an admiring friend the other day. 'What strength you must have!' A questionable advantage, except that I have also—a Robert, and a Penini!
Dearest friend, I don't know how to tell you of our fullness of sympathy in your late trials.[41] From a word which reached us from England the other day, there will be, I do trust, some effectual arrangement to relieve your friends from their anxieties about you. Then, there should be an increase of the Government pension by another hundred, that is certain; only the 'should be' lies so far out of sight in the ideal, that nobody in his senses should calculate on its occurrence. As to Law, it's different from Right—particularly in England perhaps—and appeals to Law are disastrous when they cannot be counted on as victorious, always and certainly. Therefore you may be wise in abstaining; you have considered sufficiently, of course. I only hope you are not trammelled in any degree by motives of delicacy which would be preposterous under the actual circumstances. You meantime are as nobly laborious as ever. We have caught hold of fragments in the newspapers from your 'Commonplace Book,' which made us wish for more; and Mr. Kenyon told me of a kind mention of Robert which was very pleasant to me.
How will it be? Shall you be likely to come to Italy before we set out to the north—that is, before the middle of May—or shall we cross on the road, like our letters, or shall we catch you in London, or in Paris at least? Oh, you won't miss the Exhibition in Paris. That seems certain.
I know Florence Nightingale slightly. She came to see me when we were in London last; and I remember her face and her graceful manner, and the flowers she sent me after afterwards. I honor her from my heart. She is an earnest, noble woman, and has fulfilled her woman's duty where many men have failed.
At the same time, I confess myself to be at a loss to see any new position for the sex, or the most imperfect solution of the 'woman's question,' in this step of hers. If a movement at all, it is retrograde, a revival of old virtues! Since the siege of Troy and earlier, we have had princesses binding wounds with their hands; it's strictly the woman's part, and men understand it so, as you will perceive by the general adhesion and approbation on this late occasion of the masculine dignities. Every man is on his knees before ladies carrying lint, calling them 'angelic she's,' whereas, if they stir an inch as thinkers or artists from the beaten line (involving more good to general humanity; than is involved in lint), the very same men would curse the impudence of the very same women and stop there. I can't see on what ground you think you see here the least gain to the 'woman's question,' so called. It's rather the contrary, to my mind, and, any way, the women of England must give the precedence to the sœurs de charité, who have magnificently won it in all matters of this kind. For my own part (and apart from the exceptional miseries of the war), I acknowledge to you that I do not consider the best use to which we can put a gifted and accomplished woman is to make her a hospital nurse. If it is, why then woe to us all who are artists! The woman's question is at an end. The men's 'noes' carry it. For the future I hope you will know your place and keep clear of Raffaelle and criticism; and I shall expect to hear of you as an organiser of the gruel department in the hospital at Greenwich, that is, if you have the luck to percer and distinguish yourself.
Oh, the Crimea! How dismal, how full of despair and horror! The results will, however, be good if we are induced to come down from the English pedestal in Europe of incessant self-glorification, and learn that our close, stifling, corrupt system gives no air nor scope for healthy and effective organisation anywhere. We are oligarchic in all things, from our parliament to our army. Individual interests are admitted as obstacles to the general prosperity. This plague runs through all things with us. It accounts for the fact that, according to the last marriage statistics, thirty per cent, of the male population signed with the mark only. It accounts for the fact that London is at once the largest and ugliest city in Europe. For the rest, if we cannot fight righteous and necessary battles, we must leave our place as a nation, and be satisfied with making pins. Write to me, but don't pay your letters, dear dear friend, and I will tell you why. Through some slip somewhere we have had to pay your two last letters just the same. So don't try it any more. Do you think we grudge postage from you? Tell me if it is true that Harriet Martineau is very ill. What do you hear of her?
May God bless you! With Robert's true love,
Your ever affectionate
Ba.
The following letter is the first of a few addressed to Mr. Ruskin, which have been made available through the kindness of Mrs. Arthur Severn. The acquaintanceship with Mr. Ruskin dated from the visit of the Brownings to England in 1852 (see vol. ii. p. [87], above); but the occasion of the present correspondence was the recent death of Miss Mitford, which took place on January 10, 1855. Mr. Ruskin had shown much kindness to her during her later years, and after her death had written to Mrs. Browning to tell her of the closing scenes of her friend's life.
Florence: March 17, 1855.
I have your letter, dear Mr. Ruskin. The proof is the pleasure it has given me—yes, and given my husband, which is better. 'When has a letter given me so much pleasure?' he exclaimed, after reading it; 'will you write?' I thank you much—much for thinking of it, and I shall be thankful of anything you can tell me of dearest Miss Mitford. I had a letter from her just before she went, written in so firm a hand, and so vital a spirit, that I could feel little apprehension of never seeing her in the body again. God's will be done. It is better so, I am sure. She seemed to me to see her way clearly, and to have as few troubling doubts in respect to the future life as she had to the imminent end of the present.
Often we have talked and thought of you since the last time we saw you, and, before your letter came, we had ventured to put on the list of expected pleasures connected with our visit to England, fixed for next summer, the pleasure of seeing more of Mr. Ruskin. For the rest, there will be some bitter things too. I do not miss them generally in England, and among them this time will be an empty place where I used always to find a tender and too indulgent friend.
You need not be afraid of my losing a letter of yours. The peril would be mine in that case. But among the advantages of our Florence—the art, the olives, the sunshine, the cypresses, and don't let me forget the Arno and mountains at sunset time—is that of an all but infallible post office. One loses letters at Rome. Here, I think, we have lost one in the course of eight years, and for that loss I hold my correspondent to blame.
How good you are to me! How kind! The soul of a cynic, at its third stage of purification, might feel the value of 'Gold' laid on the binding of a book by the hand of John Ruskin. Much more I, who am apt to get too near that ugly 'sty of Epicurus' sometimes! Indeed you have gratified me deeply. There was 'once on a time,' as is said in the fairy tales, a word dropped by you in one of your books, which I picked up and wore for a crown. Your words of goodwill are of great price to me always, and one of my dear friend Miss Mitford's latest kindnesses to me was copying out and sending to me a sentence from a letter of yours which expressed a favorable feeling towards my writings. She knew well—she who knew me—the value it would have for me, and the courage it would give me for any future work.
With my husband's cordial regards,
I remain most truly yours,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Our American friends, who sent to Dresden in vain for your letter, are here now, but will be in England soon on their way to America, with the hope of trying fate again in another visit to you. Thank you! Also thank you for your inquiry about my health. I have had a rather bad attack on my chest (never very strong) through the weather having been colder than usual here, but now I am very well again—for me.
Florence: April 20, 1855.
My dearest Mrs. Martin,—Having nine lives, as I say, I am alive again, and prosperous—thanking you for wishing to know. People look at me and laugh, because it's a clear case of bulbous root with me—let me pass (being humble) for the onion. I was looking miserable in February, and really could scarcely tumble across the room, and now I am up on my perch again—nay, even out of my cage door. The weather is divine. One feels in one's self why the trees are green. I go out, walk out, have recovered flesh and fire—my very hair curls differently. 'Is I, I?' I say with the metaphysicians. There's something vital about this Florence air, for, though much given to resurrection, I never made such a leap in my life before after illness. Robert and I need to run as well as leap. We have quantities of work to do, and small time to do it in. He is four hours a day engaged in dictating to a friend of ours who transcribes for him, and I am not even ready for transcription—have not transcribed a line of my six or seven thousand. We go to England, or at least to Paris, next month, but it can't be early. Oh, may we meet you! Our little Penini is radiant, and altogether we are all in good spirits. Which is a shame, you will say, considering the state of affairs at Sebastopol. Forgive me. I never, at worst, thought that the great tragedy of the world was going on there. It was tragic, but there are more chronic cruelties and deeper despairs—ay, and more exasperating wrongs. For the rest, we have the most atrocious system in Europe, and we mean to work it out. Oh, you will see. Your committees nibble on, and this and that poisonous berry is pulled off leisurely, while the bush to the root of it remains, and the children eat on unhindered on the other side. I had hoped that there was real feeling among politicians. But no; we are put off with a fast day. There, an end! I begin to think that nothing will do for England but a good revolution, and a 'besom of destruction' used dauntlessly. We are getting up our vainglories again, smoothing our peacock's plumes. We shall be as exemplary as ever by next winter, you will see.
Meanwhile, dearest Mrs. Martin, that you should ask me about 'Armageddon' is most assuredly a sign of the times. You know I pass for being particularly mad myself, and everybody, almost universally, is rather mad, as may be testified by the various letters I have to read about 'visible spirit-hands,' pianos playing themselves, and flesh-and-blood human beings floating about rooms in company with tables and lamps. Dante has pulled down his own picture from the wall of a friend of ours in Florence five times, signifying his pleasure that it should be destroyed at once as unauthentic (our friend burnt it directly, which will encourage me to pull down mine by [word lost]). Savonarola also has said one or two things, and there are gossiping guardian angels, of whom I need not speak. Let me say, though, that nothing has surprised me quite so much as your inquiring about Armageddon, because I am used to think of you as the least in the world of a theorist, and am half afraid of you sometimes, and range the chairs before my speculative dark corners, that you may not think or see 'how very wild that Ba is getting!' Well, now it shall be my turn to be sensible and unbelieving. There's a forced similitude certainly, in the etymology, between the two words; but if it were full and perfect I should be no nearer thinking that the battle of Armageddon could ever signify anything but a great spiritual strife. The terms, taken from a symbolical book, are plainly to my mind symbolical, and Dr. Cumming and a thousand mightier doctors could not talk it out of me, I think. I don't, for the rest, like Dr. Cumming; his books seem to me very narrow. Isn't the tendency with us all to magnify the great events of our own time, just as we diminish the small events? For me, I am heretical in certain things. I expect no renewal of the Jewish kingdom, for instance. And I doubt much whether Christ's 'second coming' will be personal. The end of the world is probably the end of a dispensation. What I expect is, a great development of Christianity in opposition to the churches, and of humanity generally in opposition to the nations, and I look out for this in much quiet hope. Also, and in the meanwhile, the war seems to be just and necessary. There is nothing in it to regret, except the way of conducting it....
Write to me soon again, and tell me as much of both of you as you can put into a letter.
May God bless you always!
With Robert's warm regards, both of you think of me as
Your ever affectionate
Ba.
Florence: May 13, [1855].
My dearest Madame Braun,—You have classed me and ticketed me before now, I think, as among the ungrateful of the world; yet I am grateful, grateful, grateful! When your book[42] came (how very kind you were to send it to me!) and when I had said so some five times running, in came somebody who was fanatico per Roma, and reverential in proportion for Dr. Braun, who with some sudden appeal to my sensibility—the softer just then that I was only just recovering strength after a sharp winter attack—swept the volume off the table and carried it off out of the house to study the contents at leisure. I expected it back the next week, but it lingered. And I really hadn't the audacity to write to you and say, 'Thank you, but I have looked as yet simply at the title-page.' Well, at last it comes home, and I turn the leaves, examine, read, approve, like Ludovisi and the Belvedere, with a double pleasure of association and become qualified properly to thank you and Dr. Braun from Robert and myself for this gift to us and valuable contribution to archæological literature. I am only sorry I did not get to Rome after the book; it would have helped my pleasure so, holding up the lanthorn in dark places. So much suggestiveness in combination with so much specific information makes a book (or a man) worth knowing.
Of late, other hindrances have come to writing this, in the shape of various labours of Hercules, which fall sometimes to Omphale as well. We go to England in a week or two or three, and we take between us some sixteen thousand lines, eight on one side, eight on the other, which ought to be ready for publication. I have not finished my seventh thousand yet; Robert is at his mark. Then, I have to see that we have shoes and stockings to go in, and that Penini's little trousers are creditably frilled and tucked. Then, about twenty letters lie by me waiting to be answered in time, so as to save me from a mobbing in England. Then there are visits to be paid all round in Florence, to make amends for the sins of the winter; visiting, like almsgiving, being put generally in the place of virtue, when the latter is found too inconvenient. Altogether, my head swims and my heart ticks before the day's done, with positive weariness. For there are Penini's lessons, you are to understand, besides the rest. And 'between the intersections,' cod liver oil to be taken judiciously, in order to appear before my English friends with due decency of corporeal coverture.
Well, now, do tell me, shall you go to England, you? You will see my reasons for being very interested. Oh, I hope you won't be snatched away to Naples, or nailed down at Rome. Railroads open from Marseilles; the Exhibition open at Paris! Surely, surely Dr. Braun will go to Paris to see the Exhibition. His conscience won't let him off. Tell him too, from me, that in London he may see a spirit if he will go for it. I have a letter from a friend who swears to me he has shaken hands with three or four—'softer, more thrilling than any woman's hand'—'tenderly touching'—think of that! The American 'medium' Hume is turning the world upside down in London with this spiritual influx.
Let me remember to tell you. Your paper was in the 'Athenæum.' Therefore, if you were not paid for it, it was the more abominable. Robert saw it with his own eyes, printed. When I heard from you that you had heard nothing, I mentioned the circumstance to Mrs. Jameson in a letter I was writing to her, and I do hope she has not neglected since to give you some information at least. You are aware probably of the excellent effect with which that kind Mrs. Procter has managed a private subscription in behalf of dear Mrs. Jameson, in consequence of which she will be placed in circumstances of ease for the rest of her life. Fanny Kemble nobly gave a hundred pounds towards this good purpose. Mrs. Jameson spoke in her last letter of coming to Italy this summer, and I dare say we shall have the ill luck to lose her, miss her, cross her en route, perhaps.
We hear from dear Mr. Kenyon and from Miss Bayley; each very well and full of animation. If it were not for them, and my dear sisters, and one or two other hands I shall care to clasp (beside the spirits!) I would give much not to go north. Oh, we Italians grow out of the English bark; it won't hold us after a time. Such a happy year I have had this last! I do love Florence so! When Penini says, 'Sono Italiano, voglio essere Italiano,' I agree with him perfectly.
So we shall come back of course, if we live; indeed, we leave this house ready to come back to, meaning, if we can, to let our rooms simply.
Little Penini looks like a rose, and has, besides, the understanding and sweetness of a creature 'a little lower than the angels.' I don't care any less for him than I did, upon the whole.
I hear the Sartoris's think of Paris for next winter, and mean to give up Rome. She has been a good deal secluded, until quite lately, they say, on account of her father's death and brother's worse than death, which may account in part for any backwardness you may have observed. As to her 'not liking Dr. Braun,' do you believe in anybody's not liking Dr. Braun? I don't quite. It's more difficult for me to 'receive' than the notion of the spiritual hand—'tenderly touching.'
Do you know young Leighton[43] of Rome? If so, you will be glad of this wonderful success of his picture,[44] bought by the Queen, and applauded by the Academicians, and he not twenty-five.
The lady who brought your book did not leave her name here, so of course she did not mean to be called on.
Our kindest regards for dear Dr. Braun, and repeated truest thanks to both of you. Among his discoveries and inventions, he will invent some day an Aladdin's lamp, and then you will be suddenly potentates, and vanish in a clap of thunder.
Till then, think of me sometimes, dearest Madame Braun, as I do of you, and of all your great kindness to me at Rome.
Ever your affectionate
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Florence: June 2, 1855.
My dear Mr. Ruskin,—I believe I shall rather prove in this letter how my head turns round when I write it, than explain why I didn't write it before—and so you will go on to think me the most insusceptible and least grateful of human beings—no small distinction in our bad obtuse world. Yet the truth is—oh, the truth is, that I am deeply grateful to you and have felt to the quick of my heart the meaning and kindness of your words, the worth of your sympathy and praise. One thing especially which you said, made me thankful that I had been allowed to live to hear it—since even to fancy that anything I had written could be the means of the least good to you, is worth all the trumpet blowing of a vulgar fame. Oh, of course, I do not exaggerate, though your generosity does. I understand the case as it is. We burn straw and it warms us. My verses catch fire from you as you read them, and so you see them in that light of your own. But it is something to be used to such an end by such a man, and I thank you, thank you, and so does my husband, for the deep pleasure you have given us in the words you have written.
And why not say so sooner? Just because I wanted to say so fully, and because I have been crushed into a corner past all elbow-room for doing anything largely and comfortably, by work and fuss and uncertainty of various kinds. Now it isn't any better scarcely, though it is quite fixed now that we are going from Florence to England—no more of the shadow dancing which is so pretty at the opera and so fatiguing in real life. We are coming, and have finished most of our preparations; conducted on a balance of—must we go? may we stay? which is so very inconvenient. If you knew what it is to give up this still dream-life of our Florence, where if one is over-busy ever, the old tapestries on the walls and the pre-Giotto pictures (picked up by my husband for so many pauls) surround us ready to quiet us again—if you knew what it is to give it all up and be put into the mill of a dingy London lodging and ground very small indeed, you wouldn't be angry with us for being sorry to go north—you wouldn't think it unnatural. As for me, I have all sorts of pain in England—everything is against me, except a few things; and yet, while my husband and I groan at one another, strophe and antistrophe (pardon that rag of Greek!) we admit our compensations—that it will be an excellent thing, for instance, to see Mr. Ruskin! Are we likely to undervalue that?
Let me consider how to answer your questions. My poetry—which you are so good to, and which you once thought 'sickly,' you say, and why not? (I have often written sickly poetry, I do not doubt—I have been sickly myself!)—has been called by much harder names, 'affected' for instance, a charge I have never deserved, for I do think, if I may say it of myself, that the desire of speaking or spluttering the real truth out broadly, may be a cause of a good deal of what is called in me careless and awkward expression. My friends took some trouble with me at one time; but though I am not self-willed naturally, as you will find when you know me, I hope, I never could adopt the counsel urged upon me to keep in sight always the stupidest person of my acquaintance in order to clear and judicious forms of composition. Will you set me down as arrogant, if I say that the longer I live in this writing and reading world, the more convinced I am that the mass of readers never receive a poet (you, who are a poet yourself, must surely observe that) without intermediation? The few understand, appreciate, and distribute to the multitude below. Therefore to say a thing faintly, because saying it strongly sounds odd or obscure or unattractive for some reason, to 'careless readers,' does appear to me bad policy as well as bad art. Is not art, like virtue, to be practised for its own sake first? If we sacrifice our ideal to notions of immediate utility, would it not be better for us to write tracts at once?
Of course any remark of yours is to be received and considered with all reverence. Only, be sure you please to say, 'Do it differently to satisfy me, John Ruskin,' and not to satisfy Mr., Mrs., and the Miss and Master Smith of the great majority. The great majority is the majority of the little, you know, who will come over to you if you don't think of them—and if they don't, you will bear it.
Am I pert, do you think? No, don't think it. And the truth is, though you may not see that, that your praise made me feel very humble. Nay, I was quite abashed at the idea of the 'illumination' of my poem; and still I keep winking my eyes at the prospect of so much glory. If you were a woman, I might say, when one feels ugly one pulls down the blinds; but as a man you are superior to the understanding of such a figure, and so I must simply tell you that you honor me over much indeed. My husband is very much pleased, and particularly pleased that you selected 'Catarina,' which is his favourite among my poems for some personal fanciful reasons besides the rest.
But to go back. I said that any remark of yours was to be received by me in all reverence; and truth is a part of reverence, so I shall end by telling you the truth, that I think you quite wrong in your objection to 'nympholept.' Nympholepsy is no more a Greek word than epilepsy, and nobody would or could object to epilepsy or apoplexy as a Greek word. It's a word for a specific disease or mania among the ancients, that mystical passion for an invisible nymph common to a certain class of visionaries. Indeed, I am not the first in referring to it in English literature. De Quincey has done so in prose, for instance, and Lord Byron talks of 'The nympholepsy of a fond despair,' though he never was accused of being overridden by his Greek. Tell me now if I am not justified, I also? We are all nympholepts in running after our ideals—and none more than yourself, indeed!
Our American friend Mr. Jarves wrote to us full of gratitude and gratification on account of your kindness to him, for which we also should thank you. Whether he felt most overjoyed by the clasp of your hand or that of a disembodied spirit, which he swears was as real (under the mediumship of Hume, his compatriot), it was somewhat difficult to distinguish. But all else in England seemed dull and worthless in comparison with those two 'manifestations,' the spirit's and yours!
How very very kind of your mother to think of my child! and how happy I am near the end of my paper, not to be tempted on into 'descriptions' that 'hold the place of sense.' He is six years old, he reads English and Italian, and writes without lines, and shall I send you a poem of his for 'illumination'? His poems are far before mine, the very prattle of the angels, when they stammer at first and are not sure of the pronunciation of e's and i's in the spiritual heavens (see Swedenborg). Really he is a sweet good child, and I am not bearable in my conceit of him, as you see! My thankful regards to your mother, whom I shall hope to meet with you, and do yourself accept as much from us both.
Most truly yours,
Elizabeth B. Browning.
We leave Florence next week, and spend at least a week in Paris, 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées.
Florence: June 12, 1855 [postmark].
How kind and tender of you, my dearest Sarianna, to care so much to hear that I am better! I was afraid that Robert had written in the Crimean style about me, for he was depressed and uneasy, poor darling, and looked at things from the blackest point of view. Nevertheless, I have escaped some bad symptoms. No spitting of blood, for instance, no loss of voice, and scarcely a threatening of pain in the side. Also I have not grown thinner than is natural under the circumstances. At Genoa (after our cold journey[45]) I wasted in a few days, and thought much worse of myself than there was reason to do this time.
I can assure you I am now much restored. The cough is decidedly got under, and teases me, for the most part, only in the early morning; the fever is gone, and the nights are quiet. I am able to take animal food again, and shall soon recover my ordinary strength. Certainly it has been a bad attack, and I never suffered anything like it in Italy before. The illness at Genoa was the mere tail of what began in England, and was increased by the Alpine exposure. Our weather has been very severe—wind and frost together—something peculiarly irritating in the air. I am loth to blame my poor Florence, who never treated me so before (and how many winters we have spent here!)—and our friends write from Pisa that the weather was as trying there, while from Rome the account is simply 'detestable weather.' At Naples it is sometimes furiously cold; there's no perfect climate anywhere, that's certain. You have only to choose the least evil. Here for the last week it has been so mild that, if I had been in my usual state of health, I might have gone out, they say; and, of course, I have felt the influence beneficially. One encourages oneself in Italy when it is cold, with the assurance that it can't last. Our misfortune this time has been that it has lasted unusually long. How the Italians manage without fires I cannot make out. So chilly as they are, too, it's a riddle.
You would wonder almost how I could feel the cold in these two rooms opening into each other, and from which I have not stirred since the cold weather began. Robert has kept up the fire in our bedroom throughout the night. Oh, he has been spoiling me so. If it had not been that I feared much to hurt him in having him so disturbed and worried, it would have been a very subtle luxury to me, this being ill and feeling myself dear. Do not set me down as too selfish. May God bless him!...
Robert has been frantic about the Crimea, and 'being disgraced in the face of Europe,' &c. &c. When he is mild he wishes the ministry to be torn to pieces in the streets, limb from limb. I do not doubt that the Aberdeen side of the Cabinet has been greatly to blame, but the system is the root of the whole evil; if they don't tear up the system they may tear up the Aberdeens 'world without end,' and not better the matter; if they do tear up the system, then shall we all have reason to rejoice at these disasters, apart from our sympathy with individual sufferings. More good will have been done by this one great shock to the heart of England than by fifty years' more patching, and pottering, and knocking impotent heads together. What makes me most angry is the ministerial apology. 'It's always so with us for three campaigns,'!!! 'it's our way,' 'it's want of experience,' &c. &c. That's precisely the thing complained of. As to want of experience, if the French have had Algerine experiences, we have had our Indian wars, Chinese wars, Caffre wars, and military and naval expenses exceeding those of France from year to year. If our people had never had to pay for an army, they might sit down quietly under the taunt of wanting experience. But we have soldiers, and soldiers should have military education as well as red coats, and be led by properly qualified officers, instead of Lord Nincompoop's youngest sons. As it is in the army, so it is in the State. Places given away, here and there, to incompetent heads; nobody being responsible, no unity of idea and purpose anywhere—the individual interest always in the way of the general good. There is a noble heart in our people, strong enough if once roused, to work out into light and progression, and correct all these evils. Robert is a good deal struck by the generous tone of the observations of the French press, as contradistinguished from the insolences of the Americans, who really are past enduring just now. Certain of our English friends here in Florence have ceased to associate with them on that ground. I think there's a good deal of jealousy about the French alliance. That may account for something....
Dearest, kindest Sarianna, remember not to think any more about me, except that I love you, that I am your attached
Ba.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] Life and Letters of Robert Browning, by Mrs. Sutherland Orr, p. 216.
[16] The late Earl Lytton.
[17] Auguste Brizieux
[18] Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in 1852.
[19] Mrs. Jameson's Legends of the Madonna.
[20] General Franklin Pierce.
[21] 'Tamerton Church Tower, and other Poems.'
[22] In a letter to Miss Mitford, written four days later than this, Mrs. Browning alludes again to the performance of 'Colombe's Birthday:' 'Yes—Robert's play succeeded, but there could be no "run" for a play of that kind; it was a succès d'estime and something more, which is surprising, perhaps, considering the miserable acting of the men. Miss Faucit was alone in doing us justice.'
[23] A few lines have been cut off the letter at this place.
[24] A letter to the Athenæum on July 2, 1853, giving the result of some experiments in table-turning, the tendency of which was to show that the motion of the table was due to unconscious muscular action on the part of the persons touching the table.
[25] Senatore Villari.
[26] Mr. George Barrett. The omitted passage describes an act of generosity by him to one of his younger brothers.
[27] Hardly a successful horoscope of the future Ambassador at Paris and Viceroy of India.
[28] Afterwards wife of Signor Carlo Botta, an Italian man of letters, with whom she returned to America and lived in New York.
[29] This refers to the death of the infant child of the Storys, with whom Mr. and Mrs. Browning were on intimate terms of friendship, as the previous letters show.
[30] According to Mr. R.B. Browning, this is practically what has happened with Page's portrait of Robert Browning (now in Venice). The surface has become thick and waxy, and the portrait has almost disappeared.
[31] Author of 'IX. Poems, by V.' (1840).
[32] This portrait is now in the possession of Mr. R.B. Browning at Venice.
[33] I.e. 'grandfather,' a name by which Mr. Browning, senior, is frequently referred to in these letters.
[34] 'Hush, hush!'
[35] For the subsequent fate of this picture, see [note on p. 148], above.
[36] To Mr. Barrett.
[37] This letter is written in very faint ink.
[38] The news of Inkerman had come only a few days before.
[39] Mrs. Browning's 'Song for the Ragged Schools of London' (Poetical Works, iv. 270) and her husband's 'The Twins' were printed together as a small pamphlet for sale at Miss Arabella Barrett's bazaar. Mrs. Browning's poem had been written before they left Rome.
[40] The horrors of the Crimean winter were now becoming known, which fully accounts for this outburst.
[41] The death of Mrs. Jameson's husband in 1854 had left her in very straitened circumstances, which were ultimately relieved, in part, by a subscription among her friends and the admirers of her works.
[42] Dr. Braun's Ruins and Museums of Rome (1854).
[43] The late Lord Leighton, P.R.A.
[44] The picture of Cimabue's Madonna carried in procession through the streets of Florence. It was exhibited in the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1855, and was bought by the Queen.
[45] In 1852.
CHAPTER IX
1855-1859
About a month after the date of the last letter, Mr. and Mrs. Browning left Italy for the second time. As on the previous occasion (1851-2), their absence extended over two summers and a winter, the latter being spent in Paris, while portions of each summer were given up to visits to England. Each of them was bringing home an important work for publication, Mr. Browning's 'Men and Women,' containing much of his very greatest poetry, being passed through the press in 1855, while Mrs. Browning's 'Aurora Leigh,' although more than half of it had been written before she left Florence, was not ready for printing until the following year. They travelled direct from Florence to London, arriving there apparently in the course of July, and taking up their quarters at 13 Dorset Street. Their stay there was made memorable, as Mrs. Browning records below, by a visit from Tennyson, who read to them, on September 27, his new poem of 'Maud;' and it was while he was thus employed that Rossetti drew a well-known portrait of the Laureate in pen and ink. But in spite of glimpses of Tennyson, Ruskin, Carlyle, Kenyon, and other friends, the visit to England was, on the whole, a painful one to Mrs. Browning. Intercourse with her own family did not run smooth. One sister was living at too great a distance to see her; the other was kept out of her reach, for a considerable part of the time, by her father. In addition, a third member of the Barrett family, her brother Alfred, earned excommunication from his father's house by the unforgivable offence of matrimony. Altogether it was not without a certain feeling of relief that, in the middle of October, Mrs. Browning, with her husband and child, left England for Paris. The whole visit had been so crowded with work and social engagements as to leave little time for correspondence; and the letters for the period are consequently few and short.
To Mrs. Martin
13 Dorset Street, Baker Street:
Tuesday, [July-August 1855].
My dearest Mrs. Martin,—I have waited days and days in the answering of your dear, kind, welcoming letter, and yet I have been very very grateful for it. Thank you. I need such things in England above other places.
For the rest, we could not go to Herefordshire, even if I were rational, which I am not; I could as soon open a coffin as do it: there's the truth. The place is nothing to me, of course, only the string round a faggot burnt or scattered. But if I went there, the thought of one face which never ceases to be present with me (and which I parted from for ever in my poor blind unconsciousness with a pettish word) would rise up, put down all the rest, and prevent my having one moment of ordinary calm intercourse with you, so don't ask me; set it down to mania or obstinacy, but I never could go into that neighbourhood, except to die, which I think sometimes I should like. So you may have me some day when the physicians give me up, but then, you won't, you know, and it wouldn't, any way, be merry visiting.
Foolish to write all this! As if any human being could know thoroughly what he was to me. It must seem so extravagant, and perhaps affected, even to you, who are large-hearted and make allowances. After these years!
And, after all, I might have just said the other truth, that we are at the end of our purse, and can't travel any more, not even to Taunton, where poor Henrietta, who is hindered from coming to me by a like pecuniary straitness, begs so hard that we should go. Also, we are bound to London by business engagements; a book in the press (Robert's two volumes), and proofs coming in at all hours. We have been asked to two or three places at an hour's distance from London, and can't stir; to Knebworth, for instance, where Sir Edward Lytton wants us to go. It would be amusing in some ways; but we are tired. Also Robert's sister is staying with us.
Also, we shall see you in Paris on the way to Pau next November, shall we not? Write and tell me that we shall, and that you are not disgusted with me meanwhile.
Do you know our news? Alfred is just married at the Paris Embassy to Lizzie Barrett.... Of course, he makes the third exile from Wimpole Street, the course of true love running remarkably rough in our house. For the rest, there have been no scenes, I thank God, for dearest Arabel's sake. He had written to my father nine or ten days before the ceremony, received no answer, and followed up the silence rather briskly by another letter to announce his marriage.... I am going to write to him at Marseilles.
You cannot imagine to yourself the unsatisfactory and disheartening turmoil in which we are at present. It's the mad bull and the china shop, and, nota bene, we are the china shop. People want to see if Italy has cut off our noses, or what! A very kind anxiety certainly, but so horribly fatiguing that my heart sinks, and my brain goes round under the process. O my Florence! how much better you are!
Have you heard that Wilson is married to a Florentine who lived once with the Peytons, and is here now with us, a good, tender-hearted man?[46]
I am tolerably well, though to breathe this heavy air always strikes me as difficult; and my little Penini is very well, thank God. I want so much to show him to you. We shall be here till the end of September, if the weather admits of it, then go to Paris for the winter, then return to London, and then—why, that 'then' is too far off to see. Only we talk of Italy in the distance.
My book is not ready for the press yet; and as to writing here, who could produce an epic in the pauses of a summerset? Not that my poem is an epic, I hurry on to say in consideration for dear Mr. Martin's feelings. I flatter myself it's a novel, rather, a sort of novel in verse. Arabel looks well.
What pens! What ink! Do write, and tell me of you both. I love you cordially indeed.
Your ever affectionate
Ba.
13 Dorset Street: Tuesday, [July-August 1855].
My dearest Mona Nina,—I write to you in the midst of so much fatigue and unsatisfactory turmoil, that I feel I shall scarcely be articulate in what I say. Still, it must be tried, for I can't have you think that I have come to London to forget you, much less to be callous to the influence of this dear affectionate letter of yours. May God bless you! How sorry I am that you should have vexation on the top of more serious hurts to depress you. Indeed, if it were not for the other side of the tapestry, it would seem not at all worth while for us to stand putting in more weary Gobelin stitches (till we turn into goblins) day after day, year after year, in this sad world. For my part, I am ready at melancholy with anybody. The air, mentally or physically considered, is very heavy for me here, and I long for the quiet of my Florence, where somehow it always has gone best with my life. As to England, it affects me so, in body, soul, and circumstances, that if I could not get away soon, I should be provoked, I think, into turning monster and hating the whole island, which shocks you so to hear, that you will be provoked into not loving me, perhaps, and that would really be too hard, after all.
The best news I can give you is that Robert has printed the first half volume of his poems, and that the work looks better than ever in print, as all true work does brought into the light. He has read these proofs to Mr. Fox (of Oldham), who gives an opinion that the poems are at the top of art in their kind. I don't know whether you care for Mr. Fox's opinion, but it's worth more than mine, of course, on the ground of impartiality, to say no otherwise, and it will disappoint me much if you don't confirm both of us presently. The poems, for variety, vitality, and intensity, are quite worthy of the writer, it seems to me, and a clear advance in certain respects on his previous productions.
Has 'Maud' penetrated to you? The winding up is magnificent, full of power, and there are beautiful thrilling bits before you get so far. Still, there is an appearance of labour in the early part; the language is rather encrusted by skill than spontaneously blossoming, and the rhythm is not always happy. The poet seems to aim at more breadth and freedom, which he attains, but at the expense of his characteristic delicious music. People in general appear very unfavourably impressed by this poem, very unjustly, Robert and I think. On some points it is even an advance. The sale is great, nearly five thousand copies already.
Let me see what London news I have to tell you. We spent an evening with Mr. Ruskin, who was gracious and generous, and strengthened all my good impressions. Robert took our friend young Leighton to see him afterwards, and was as kindly received. We met Carlyle at Mr. Forster's, and found him in great force, particularly in the damnatory clauses. Mr. Kinglake we saw twice at the Procters', and once here.... The Procters are very well. How I like Adelaide's face! that's a face worth a drove of beauties! Dear Mrs. Sartoris has just left London, I grieve to say; and so has Mrs. Kemble, who (let me say it quick in a parenthesis) is looking quite magnificent just now, with those gorgeous eyes of hers. Mr. Kenyon, too, has vanished—gone with his brother to the Isle of Wight. The weather has been very uncertain, cloudy, misty, and rainy, with heavy air, ever since we came. Ferdinando keeps saying, 'Povera gente, che deve vivere in questo posto,' and Penini catches it up, and gives himself immense airs, discoursing about Florentine skies and the glories of the Cascine to anyone who will listen. The child is well, thank God, and in great spirits, which is my comfort. I found my dear sister Arabel, too, well, and it is deep yet sad joy to me to look in her precious loving eyes, which never failed me, nor could. Henrietta will be hindered, perhaps, from coming to see me by want of means, poor darling; and the same cause will keep me from going to Taunton. We have a quantity of invitations to go into the country, to the Custs, to the Martins, &c. &c., and (one which rather tempts me) to Knebworth, Sir Edward Lytton having written us the kindest of possible invitations; but none of these things are for us, I see.
Dearest friend, I do hope you won't go to Rome this winter. When you have been to Vienna, come back, and let us have you in Paris. I am glad Lady Elgin liked the book. The history of it was that she asked Robert to get it for her, and he presented it instead.
Our M. Milsand likes you much, he says, and I like you to hear it....
Oh, we read your graceful, spirited letter in the 'Athenæum.' By the way, did you see the absurd exposition of 'Maud' as an allegory? What pure madness, instead of Maudness!