Your ever affectionate and grateful
E.B.B.
To Mrs. Jameson
Collegio Ferdinando [Pisa]:
Saturday, November 23, 1846 [postmark].
We were delighted to have your note, dearest Aunt Nina, and I answer it with my feet on your stool, so that my feet are full of you even if my head is not, always. Now, I shall not go a sentence farther without thanking you for that comfort; you scarcely guessed perhaps what a comfort it would be, that stool of yours. I am even apt to sit on it for hours together, leaning against the sofa, till I get to be scolded for putting myself so into the fire, and prophesied of in respect to the probability of a ‘general conflagration’ of stools and Bas; on which the prophet is to leap from the Leaning Tower, and Flush to be left to make the funeral oration of the establishment. In the meantime, it really is quite a comfort that our housekeeping should be your ‘example’ at Florence; we have edifying countenances whenever we think of it. And Robert will not by any means believe that you passed us on our own ground, though the eleven pauls a week for breakfast, and my humility, seemed to suggest something of the sort. I am so glad, we are both so glad, that you are enjoying yourself at the fullest and highest among the wonders of art, and cannot be chilled in the soul by any of those fatal winds you speak of. For me, I am certainly better here at Pisa, though the penalty is to see Frate Angelico’s picture with the remembrance of you rather than the presence. Here, indeed, we have had a little too much cold for two days; there was a feeling of frost in the air, and a most undeniable east wind which prevented my going out, and made me feel less comfortable than usual at home. But, after all, one felt ashamed to call it cold, and Robert found the heat on the Arno insupportable; which set us both mourning over our ‘situation’ at the Collegio, where one of us could not get out on such days without a blow on the chest from the ‘wind at the corner.’ Well, experience teaches, and we shall be taught, and the cost of it is not so very much after all. We have seen your professor once since you left us (oh, the leaving!), or spoken to him once, I should say, when he came in one evening and caught us reading, sighing, yawning over ‘Nicolò de’ Lapi,’ a romance by the son-in law of Manzoni. Before we could speak, he called it ‘excellent, très beau,’ one of their very best romances, upon which, of course, dear Robert could not bear to offend his literary and national susceptibilities by a doubt even. I, not being so humane, thought that any suffering reader would be justified (under the rack-wheel) in crying out against such a book, as the dullest, heaviest, stupidest, lengthiest. Did you ever read it? If not, don’t. When a father-in-law imitates Scott, and a son-in-law imitates his father-in-law, think of the consequences! Robert, in his zeal for Italy and against Eugène Sue, tried to persuade me at first (this was before the scene with your professor) that ‘really, Ba, it wasn’t so bad,’ ‘really you are too hard to be pleased,’ and so on; but after two or three chapters, the dullness grew too strong for even his benevolence, and the yawning catastrophe (supposed to be peculiar to the ‘Guida’) overthrew him as completely as it ever did me, though we both resolved to hold on by the stirrup to the end of the two volumes. The catalogue of the library (for observe that we subscribe now — the object is attained!) offers a most melancholy insight into the actual literature of Italy. Translations, translations, translations from third and fourth and fifth rate French and English writers, chiefly French; the roots of thought, here in Italy, seem dead in the ground. It is well that they have great memories — nothing else lives.
We have had the kindest of letters from dear noble Mr. Kenyon; who, by the way, speaks of you as we like to hear him. Dickens is going to Paris for the winter, and Mrs. Butler (he adds) is expected in London. Dear Mr. Kenyon calls me ‘crotchety,’ but Robert ‘an incarnation of the good and the true,’ so that I have everything to thank him for. There are noble people who take the world’s side and make it seem ‘for the nonce’ almost respectable; but he gives up all the talk and fine schemes about money-making, and allows us to wait to see whether we want it or not — the money, I mean.
It is Monday, and I am only finishing this note. In the midst came letters from my sisters, making me feel so glad that I could not write. Everybody is well and happy, and dear papa in high spirits and having people to dine with him every day, so that I have not really done anyone harm in doing myself all this good. It does not indeed bring us a step nearer to the forgiveness, but to hear of his being in good spirits makes me inclined to jump, with Gerardine. Dear Geddie! How pleased I am to hear of her being happy, particularly (perhaps) as she is not too happy to forget me. Is all that glory of art making her very ambitious to work and enter into the court of the Temple?...
Robert’s love to you both. We often talk of our prospect of meeting you again. And for the past, dearest Aunt Nina, believe of me that I feel to you more gratefully than ever I can say, and remain, while I live,
Your faithful and affectionate
BA.
To Miss Mitford
Pisa: December 19, .
Ever dearest Miss Mitford, your kindest letter is three times welcome as usual. On the day you wrote it in the frost, I was sitting out of doors, just in my summer mantilla, and complaining ‘of the heat this December!’ But woe comes to the discontented. Within these three or four days we too have had frost — yes, and a little snow, for the first time, say the Pisans, during five years. Robert says that the mountains are powdered toward Lucca, and I, who cannot see the mountains, can see the cathedral — the Duomo — how it glitters whitely at the summit, between the blue sky and its own walls of yellow marble. Of course I do not stir an inch from the fire, yet have to struggle a little against my old languor. Only, you see, this can’t last! it is exceptional weather, and, up to the last few days, has been divine. And then, after all we talk of frost, my bedroom, which has no fireplace, shows not an English sign on the window, and the air is not metallic as in England. The sun, too, is so hot that the women are seen walking with fur capes and parasols, a curious combination.
I hope you had your visit from Mr. Chorley, and that you both had the usual pleasure from it. Indeed I am touched by what you tell me, and was touched by his note to my husband, written in the first surprise; and because Robert has the greatest regard for him, besides my own personal reasons, I do count him in the forward rank of our friends. You will hear that he has obliged us by accepting a trusteeship to a settlement, forced upon me in spite of certain professions or indispositions of mine; but as my husband’s gifts, I had no right, it appeared, by refusing it to place him in a false position for the sake of what dear Mr. Kenyon calls my ‘crotchets.’ Oh, dear Mr. Kenyon! His kindness and goodness to us have been past thinking of, past thanking for; we can only fall into silence. He has thrust his hand into the fire for us by writing to papa himself, by taking up the management of my small money-matters when nearer hands let them drop, by justifying us with the whole weight of his personal influence; all this in the very face of his own habits and susceptibilities. He has resolved that I shall not miss the offices of father, brother, friend, nor the tenderness and sympathy of them all. And this man is called a mere man of the world, and would be called so rightly if the world were a place for angels. I shall love him dearly and gratefully to my last breath; we both shall....
Robert and I are deep in the fourth month of wedlock; there has not been a shadow between us, nor a word (and I have observed that all married people confess to words), and that the only change I can lay my finger on in him is simply and clearly an increase of affection. Now I need not say it if I did not please, and I should not please, you know, to tell a story. The truth is, that I who always did certainly believe in love, yet was as great a sceptic as you about the evidences thereof, and having held twenty times that Jacob’s serving fourteen years for Rachel was not too long by fourteen days, I was not a likely person (with my loathing dread of marriage as a loveless state, and absolute contentment with single life as the alternative to the great majorities
of marriages), I was not likely to accept a feeling not genuine, though from the hand of Apollo himself, crowned with his various godships. Especially too, in my position, I could not, would not, should not have done it. Then, genuine feelings are genuine feelings, and do not pass like a cloud. We are as happy as people can be, I do believe, yet are living in a way to try this new relationship of ours — in the utmost seclusion and perpetual téte-à-téte — no amusement nor distraction from without, except some of the very dullest Italian romances which throw us back on the memory of Balzac with reiterated groans. The Italians seem to hang on translations from the French — as we find from the library — not merely of Balzac, but Dumas, your Dumas, and reaching lower — long past De Kock — to the third and fourth rate novelists. What is purely Italian is, as far as we have read, purely dull and conventional. There is no breath nor pulse in the Italian genius. Mrs. Jameson writes to us from Florence that in politics and philosophy the people are getting alive — which may be, for aught we know to the contrary, the poetry and imagination leave them room enough by immense vacancies.
Yet we delight in Italy, and dream of ‘pleasures new’ for the summer — pastures new, I should have said — but it comes to the same thing. The padrone in this house sent us in as a gift (in gracious recognition, perhaps, of our lawful paying of bills) an immense dish of oranges — two hanging on a stalk with the green leaves still moist with the morning’s dew — every great orange of twelve or thirteen with its own stalk and leaves. Such a pretty sight! And better oranges, I beg to say, never were eaten, when we are barbarous enough to eat them day by day after our two o’clock dinner, softening, with the vision of them, the winter which has just shown itself. Almost I have been as pleased with the oranges as I was at Avignon by the pomegranate given to me much in the same way. Think of my being singled out of all our caravan of travellers — Mrs. Jameson and Gerardine Jameson both there — for that significant gift of the pomegranates! I had never seen one before, and, of course, proceeded instantly to cut one ‘deep down the middle’ — accepting the omen. Yet, in shame and confusion of face, I confess to not being able to appreciate it properly. Olives and pomegranates I set on the same shelf, to be just looked at and called by their names, but by no means eaten bodily.
But you mistake me, dearest friend, about the ‘Blackwood’ verses. I never thought of writing applicative poems — the heavens forfend! Only that just then, [in] the midst of all the talk, any verses of mine should come into print — and some of them to that particular effect — looked unlucky. I dare say poor papa (for instance) thought me turned suddenly to brass itself. Well, it is perhaps more my fancy than anything else, and was only an impression, even there. Mr. Chorley will tell you of a play of his, which I hope will make its way, though I do wonder how people can bear to write for the theatres in the present state of things. Robert is busy preparing a new edition of his collected poems which are to be so clear that everyone who has understood them hitherto will lose all distinction. We both mean to be as little idle as possible.... We shall meet one day in joy, I do hope, and then you will love my husband for his own sake, as for mine you do not hate him now.
Your ever affectionate
E.B.B.
To H.S. Boyd
[Pisa:] December 21 .
You must let me tell you, my dearest Mr. Boyd, that I dreamed of you last night, and that you were looking very well in my dream, and that you told me to break a crust from a loaf of bread which lay by you on the table; which I accept on recollection as a sacramental sign between us, of peace and affection. Wasn’t it strange that I should dream so of you? Yet no; thinking awake of you, the sleeping thoughts come naturally. Believe of me this Christmas time, as indeed at every time, that I do not forget you, and that all the distance and change of country can make no difference. Understand, too (for that will give pleasure to your goodness), that I am very happy, and not unwell, though it is almost Christmas....
Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Page 170