Two-Way Mirror

by Fiona Sampson

  ‘Nerves were unstrung…’ EBB to Arabella MB c.23–25 June 1849, #2797.

  p. 206

  ‘Prices… Some suggestion of it…’ #2797. ‘Flush, Baby…’ EBB to Arabella MB 4 July 1849, #2801.

  p. 207

  ‘…Bosnian’: Edmund Gosse, Critical Kit-kats (London: William Heinemann, 1896). ‘The truth is that though they were written several years ago, I never showed them to Robert till last [year] .. I felt shy about them altogether .. even to him. I had heard him express himself strongly against “personal” poetry & I shrank back.—[…] But when Robert saw them, he was much touched & pleased—&, thinking highly of the poetry, he did not like, .. could not consent, he said, that they should be lost to my volumes: so we agreed to slip them in under some sort of veil, & after much consideration chose the “Portuguese.” Observe—the poem which precedes them, is “Catarina to Camoens”. In a loving fancy, he had always associated me with Catarina, and the poem had affected him to tears, he said, again & again.’ EBB to Arabella MB 12 January 1851, #2899.

  Robert ‘is much better’: EBB to Arabella MB 31 August 1849, #2812.

  p. 208

  The Christian Register (28 September 1850), p. 154. The English Review (December 1850), pp. 320–32. The Morning Post (13 December 1850), p. 2. The Athenaeum (30 November 1850), pp. 1242–44. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (October 1850), p. 714.

  Despite fainting, at Christmas EBB was still ‘hoping that the poor little resolute creature may not be weakened by the peril she has run—.’ EBB to Henrietta MB 22 December 1849, #2826.

  ‘Generally obtuse…’ EBB to Henrietta (MB) Cook 15 April 1850, #2842.

  p. 209

  ‘I grieve…’ #2826. Arabella MB to Henrietta (MB) Cook 8 April 1850, SD1420. ‘What emotion…’ #2842.

  Advocacy of EBB for laureateship: The Athenaeum vol. 1 (1850), p. 585 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.25738790&view=1up&seq=591 [retrieved 26 June 2019]. Thought to be by either literary editor Henry Chorley (Martin Garrett, A Browning Chronology (Basingstoke, Hants: Palgrave, 2000), p. 83) or T. K. Hervey (Kelley et al., online Chronology). ‘It’s curious…’ EBB to Arabella MB 14–16 June 1850, #2861. EBB goes on: ‘To say nothing of my own husband’s rights! At the same time it is just possible, that the choosers may escape from the difficulty of choice by choosing a woman, & in that case, may choose me. (They wont though.)’ Louise Bogan becomes the first female annual US Laureate ninety-five years from now.

  p. 210

  ‘Appeals…’ EBB to Mary Louisa Boyle 5 December 1850, #2891; EBB to Miss Mitford 13 December 1850, #2895.

  ‘A hundred ounces…’ as estimated by Dr Harding. RB to Kenyon 29 July 1850, #2869. They now don’t really need the extra room that their landlord has let them rent since spring. ‘Perfectly white & black…’ EBB to Eliza Anne Ogilvy 28 August 1850, #2875. ‘Except the blackberries…’ EBB to Sarianna Browning c.7 September 1850, #2877.

  p. 211

  Poems (1850): The Athenaeum notes ‘Diffuseness, ruggedness, concetti, and at times colloquialisms’.

  On 13 August 1850 the Brownings had lost one of their few intellectual and genuine Florentine friendships when the American feminist Margaret Fuller d’Ossoli, her husband, an Italian count, and their infant son, around Pen’s age, drowned off the American coast.

  p. 212

  Venice: ‘Robert & I were sitting outside the caffè in the piazza of St Mark last night at nearly ten, taking our coffee & listening to music, & watching the soundless crowd drift backwards & forwards through that grand square’; EBB to Arabella MB 16 May 1851, #2917. They’re travelling with the Ogilvies, Casa Guidi neighbours. ‘Robert & I… An old man…’ EBB to Arabella MB 5 June 1851, #2920.

  p. 213

  The quick route is via Basle and Strasbourg. Tennyson’s offer: his letter delights the Brownings because it’s autographed. EBB to Arabella MB 21 July 1851, #2930. ‘The idea… It is a position… Thank God…’ EBB to Eliza Ogilvy 25 July–1 August 1851, #2931. ‘Henry has…’ EBB to Julia Martin 23 August 1851, #2941. ‘Dear George…’ EBB to Henrietta Cook 6 October 1851, #2962. ‘Very violent…’ EBB to Julia Martin 17 September 1851, #2945.

  p. 214

  ‘Mr Arnauld [sic]… There’s kindness… The quality… Paris…’ EBB to Julia Martin 6 August 1851, #2936.

  p. 215

  ‘Miseries…’ They move into No. 138 on 10 October 1851. Carlyle to RB 10 October 1851, #2964; EBB to Sarianna Browning c.7 October 1851, #2963; EBB to Arabella MB 12–14 October 1851, #2965. ‘A drawing room…’ EBB to Anna Jameson 21 October 1851, #2969. ‘Has taken to…’ #2965.

  ‘Peninni…’ EBB to Eliza Ogilvy 17 October 1851, #2967. By Christmas, Elizabeth borrows the coinage: ‘He’s really a darling more & more, the sweetest little Peninni of a child that ever was seen.’ EBB to Arabella MB 25 December 1851, #2988. In her sketch of his new hat he looks like Flush! EBB to Arabella and Henrietta MB, 19 October 1849, #2819. This is also where we read of Righi’s disappearance. Pen’s costume: EBB to Henrietta Cook 2 November 1851, #2974. ‘Do you know…’ EBB to Henrietta Cook 1 December 1852, #3149.

  p. 216

  Desirée: EBB to Arabella MB 31 October–23 November 1851, #2973. £800: equivalent to about £110,757.73 in 2020: http://www.in2013dollars.com/uk/inflation/1852?amount=800 [retrieved 29 June 2019]. ‘To the heart…’ EBB to Anna Jameson 7 July 1852, #3060. ‘Neither Robert nor I had apprehended the real character of the letters.’ She goes on to repeat the untruth that Mrs von Müller was a bigamist, and ‘an intriguing woman’: there’s no evidence of this, as the judge pointed out in summing up. The case is reported in The Times (2 July 1852), p. 7; The Morning Chronicle (2 July 1852), pp. 7–8; and in Galignani’s Messenger (5 July 1852).

  p. 217

  RB and Milsand finally meet in mid-December. Letter of introduction: #2972. ‘She seemed…’ EBB to Kenyon 15–16 February 1852, #3005.

  p. 218

  Robert senior had moved to Bayswater, perhaps to elude Mrs von Müller, earlier that year. Wilson stays: ‘I have learnt the use of Wilson.’ EBB to Henrietta Cook 21 August 1851, #2938. ‘Only bone…’ EBB to Jameson 4 January 1853, #3156. ‘To my deep joy… We have no fires…’ EBB to Arabella MB 13–15 November 1852, #3146.

  p. 219

  ‘Neither I nor Baby…’ #2792. EBB continues, ‘We are like the church bells of San Felice opposite, which, with a sublime impartiality rang when the Grand Duke ran away & when he was invited back again, when the general assembly met & when it would’nt meet any more, when the republic was declared and when it was denied.’. ‘Kissing Pen…’ EBB to Arabella MB 13–15 November 1852, #3146. ‘A very happy winter…’ EBB to Jameson 17 March 1853, #3179.

  BOOK NINE

  Epigraph

  AL Bk. 9, L. 939.

  p. 222

  ‘Well—here’s…’ EBB to Arabella MB 11–12 September 1853, #3266. ‘Likely indeed… Cheerful little blue room…’ EBB and RB to George Goodin MB 16–18 July 1853, #3227. ‘Our little Penini…’ EBB to Hiram Powers 1 August 1853, #3242.

  ‘An artist must…’ EBB to Henry Fothergill Chorley, influential literary critic of The Athenaeum, 10 August 1853, #3246. She continues, ‘We, neither of us, show our work to one another till it is finished.’

  p. 223

  ‘There was…’ #3227. ‘She & I…’ #3246.

  Although EBB is said to have called herself ‘a Swedenborgian’ in an unlocated 1857 letter to Henrietta, just two months later she writes that ‘I object much to seeing Christ’s name in the category with Shakespeare’s or even Swedenborg’s.’ EBB to Henrietta Cook 8–9 October 1857, #4070; EBB to James Jackson Jarvis 5 December 1857, #4103. Swedenborgian friends include Euphrasia Fanny Haworth, family friend Charles Augustus Tulk, and a Wimpole Street neighbour, homeopath James John Garth Wilkinson.

  p. 224

  Bulwer-Lytton is a British diplomatic attaché in Florence. ‘The subject deepens…’ EBB to Miss Mitford c.26 October 1853, #3278.

>   p. 225

  ‘To see Rome…’ EBB to George Goodin MB 7–8 October 1853, #3274.

  ‘Remember unless…’ EBB to Emelyn Story 18 November 1853, #3290.

  ‘Which is considered…’ EBB to Arabella MB 28–29 November 1853, #3292.

  p. 226

  The Storys: #3290. ‘Robert & I… She may not live…’ #3292.

  p. 227

  ‘We had no night-room… This dust…’ #3292.

  Thackeray’s wife has been locked up since their third daughter’s birth in 1840.

  ‘The greatest woman…’ These journal entries record slightly later London meetings with EBB in September 1855, by which time Anne is eighteen. Hester Thackeray Ritchie, ed, The Letters and Journals of Anne Thackeray Ritchie with Many letters of William Makepeace Thackeray (New York and London: Harper and brothers, 1924), pp. 77–78.

  The Secretary is August Emil Braun. Anne Thomson, his literary wife, commissioned EBB for Classical Album (April 1845).

  p. 228

  ‘The talk was…’ EBB to Miss Mitford 10 May 1854, #3413.

  p. 229

  ‘Delicate, pale… I have’nt taken…’ #3413. ‘He died…’ EBB to Arabella MB 17–20 June 1854, #3434. ‘Our own child…’ RB to William Wetmore Story 11 June 1854, #3430.

  p. 230

  ‘Lameness…’ EBB to Arabella MB 12 September 1854, #3468. ‘At home…’

  ‘Florence, June 30, 1854’ in The Critic (1 August 1854) pp. 422–23. Cited in Kelley et al, fn. 5 to #3468.

  The David Lyon dividend may be £175. #3468.

  ‘The cough…’ EBB to Eliza Ogilvy 6 March 1855, #3530. ‘Constantly supposes…’ EBB to Sarianna Browning late January 1855, #3512.

  p. 231

  Arabella’s availability: EBB to Arabella MB 10 January 1855, #3508. “Not […] the best use… Since the siege…’ EBB to Anna Jameson 24 February 1855, #3524.

  Arabella does raise Emma, child of her second cousin Samuel Goodin Barrett; bizarrely, Elizabeth feels that Henrietta should give up one of her children to Arabella to raise.

  ‘Robert & I…’ #3508.

  p. 232

  ‘In blots…’ #3530.

  p. 233

  AL Bk. 5, LL. 41, 43, 45–49, 57–64, 66, 69, 72–73.

  p. 234

  ‘Stocks… People have been so kind…’ EBB to Anna Jameson 2 February 1857, #3963.

  p. 235

  Emily Dickinson, #312. AL Bk. 4, Ll. 1212–18.

  p. 236

  ‘Punch…’ #3508. ‘A single lady…’ EBB to Arabella MB 12 March 1850, #2836. She continues, ‘I liked her little dog extremely—& by no means disliked her.’

  ‘Lives here alone…’ #3413. ‘He feels…’ #3508. EBB continues, ‘Upon Wilson’s thanking him very much for the compliment to herself, he condescended to make another exception in her favour.’

  p. 237

  ‘But with an Italian .. a Tuscan […] there is no legal marriage, except by the act ecclesiastical’; EBB to Arabella MB 10 July 1855, #3575; EBB to Alfred MB 9 July 1855, #3574.

  ‘Half America…’ EBB to Henrietta Cook 13 July 1855, #3578.

  Sarianna and Arabella are also present for that September reading.

  Papa and the ‘mesmerizer’: EBB to Henrietta Cook 27 August 1855, #3604.

  p. 238

  The Barretts leave home on 30 August, ostensibly so that Wimpole Street can be redecorated, and return by the 27 September reading. ‘Tears enough…’ #3575. ‘Little warm, sunny, shabby…’ Ritchie, ed, The Letters and Journals of Anne Thackeray Ritchie, p. 82.

  p. 239

  ‘Old charm…’ #3574. AL Bk. 6, Ll. 79–84. EBB fair-copies the first two books in January, the next three in February, and the sixth by 13 March. RB’s Men and Women reviewed: In November (UK) and December (America). Anon. in The Literary Gazette (1 December 1855), pp. 758–59; Margaret Oliphant in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (February 1856), p. 137; Henry Fothergill Chorley in The Athenaeum (17 November 1855), pp. 1327–28.

  RB’s Shelley ‘Letters’ reviewed: The Literary Gazette (21 February 1852), pp. 173–75; John Forster in The Examiner (21 February 1852), pp. 117–18; Henry Fothergill Chorley in The Athenaeum (21 February 1852), p. 214. Anon. in The Leader (28 February 1852), pp. 205–206; Anon. in the Manchester Guardian (3 March 1852), p. 147; George Henry Lewes in The Westminster Review, April 1852, pp. 502–11.

  EBB’s Poems (1856) adds Casa Guidi Windows and three uncollected poems to Poems (1850).

  p. 240

  ‘Always a weight…’ #3578.

  Kenyon’s bequest won’t be available for a year. His will dates from the week before his death. SD1993. Bryan Waller Procter to EBB c.4 December 1856, #3931.

  p. 241

  ‘Shed tears…’ EBB to Anna Jameson 2 February 1857, #3963. ‘I think…’ John Ruskin to RB 27 November 1856, #3927. Further correspondence admiring AL: Leigh Hunt to EBB and RB 31 December 1856, #3949. #3927.

  John Ruskin to RB 28 December 1856, #3947.

  p. 242

  Mostly enthusiastic: though a year after AL’s publication John Nichols in the Westminster Review ‘has leisure to be censorious’ about form and versification in particular. AL reviewed: Anon. in The Globe and Traveller (20 November 1856), p. 1. Charles Hamilton Aidé in Edinburgh Weekly Review (28 February 1857), pp. 7–9. Henry Fothergill Chorley in The Athenaeum (22 November 1856), pp. 1425–27. Anon. in The Albion (6 December 1856), p. 585. Anon. in New-York Daily Tribune (20 December 1856), pp. 5–6. Anon. in New-York Daily Times (9 December 1856), p. 2. George Eliot in The Westminster Review (January 1857), pp. 306–310.

  Perceptively, Coventry Patmore admires the Sonnets from the Portuguese: at least one ranks ‘with the very best of Milton and Wordsworth. […] Nothing is more untrue than the common notion that deep and subtle thought is foreign to passion.’ In Aurora Leigh, she ‘seldom goes out of her way for an image’. The North British Review (February 1857), pp. 443–62.

  p. 243

  ‘There has been…’ #3963. ‘I shall try…’ #3578. ‘Yet when it came…’ EBB to Henrietta Cook 13 May 1857, #3999. ‘Without a word…’ EBB to Arabella MB c.29 April 1857, #3991.

  p. 244

  In less than a fortnight RB is able to report that EBB ‘will get over the blow’ of Papa’s death. RB to Arabella MB [?29] April 1857 #3992.

  They’re staying at Casa Betti. Annunziata’s details: source is ‘Simonetta Berbeglia, of Arezzo’, cited in Kelley et al, note to EBB to Sarianna Browning c.9 September 1857, #4043. ‘When I wanted…’ EBB to Arabella MB 12 April 1858, #4164.

  p. 245

  RB on mediums: John Casey, After Lives: A Guide to Heaven, Hell and Purgatory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 373.

  ‘A bad winter…’ #4164.

  p. 246

  Tuberculosis in Le Havre: Adolphe Lecadre, ‘Etude statistique, hygiénique et médicale relative au mouvement de la population du Havre en 1868’ in Recueil des publications de la Société Impériale Havraise d’Etudes Diverses (1868): pp. 45–114, 91. Cited in David S. Barnes, The Making of a Social Disease: Tuberculosis in Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), Chapter 6: https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft8t1nb5rp&chunk.id=ch6&toc.depth=1&toc.id=ch6&brand=ucpress [retrieved December 2019]. We can’t be certain EBB was free of tuberculosis by her death. ‘Plenty of distraction…’ EBB to Isa Blagden 7 January 1859, #4315.

  p. 247

  ‘Beautiful dream…’ EBB to Eliza Ogilvy 17 October 1859, #4508, Eton.

  EBB will publish ‘Napoleon III in Italy’ in Poems Before Congress next year. In Marciano, as EBB recovered, ‘The Brownings almost invariably came over in the afternoon to tea on the grass terrace’. Marchesa Edith Marion Peruzzi de’ Medici (née Story) in The Living Age vol. 285 (1915), p. 554.

  p. 248

  ‘Ill-directed flight…’ Julia Ward Howe, Words for the Hour (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1857), pp. 145–47.

  p. 249


  RB appreciated: EBB to Sarianna Browning 7 April 1860, #4644, Lilly.

  p. 250

  RB’s new persona poems will appear in 1864’s Dramatis Personae.

  ‘Approaching antagonism…’ William Michael Rossetti, Some Reminiscences vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Library Collection, 1906 reissued 2013) p. 239.

  Via Felice is now Via Sistina.

  p. 251

  ‘Lord Walter’s Wife’ portrays the double standard by which unfaithful women are condemned but men are not.

  EBB’s heart is ‘heavy’: EBB to Sarianna Browning 19 January 1861, #61047-00 [c.28 March 1861], MS at Lilly.

  p. 254

  Philip Larkin, ‘An Arundel Tomb’ in Archie Burnett, ed, The Complete Poems (London: Faber, 2012), pp. 71–72.

  ‘Slender, fragile…’: At nine, Pen appeared ‘At once less childlike and less manly than would befit that age’; Nathaniel Hawthorne, Notes of Travel (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1870), pp. 69–70.

  p. 255