Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  May God bless you. Think sometimes of your ever affectionate E.B.B.

  The ‘month’ lengthened itself out, and December found the Brownings still in Florence, and definitely established there for the winter. During this time, although there is no allusion to it in the letters, Mrs. Browning must have been engaged in writing the first part of ‘Casa Guidi Windows’ with its hopeful aspirations for Italian liberty. It was, indeed, a time when hope seemed justifiable. Pius IX. had ascended the papal throne — then a temporal as well as a spiritual sovereignty — in June 1846, with the reputation of being anxious to introduce liberal reforms, and even to promote the formation of a united Italy. The English Government was diplomatically advocating reform, in spite of the opposition of Austria; and its representative, Lord Minto, who was sent on a special mission to Italy to bring this influence to bear on the rulers of the various Italian States, was received with enthusiastic joy by the zealots for Italian liberty. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, as was noticed above, had taken the first step in the direction of popular government by the institution of a National Guard; and Charles Albert of Piedmont was always supposed to have the cause of Italy at heart in spite of the vacillations of his policy. The catastrophe of 1848 was still in the distance; and for the moment a friend of freedom and of Italy might be permitted to hope much.

  Yet a difference will be noticed between the tone of Mrs. Browning’s letters at this time and that which marks her language in 1859. In 1847 she was still comparatively new to the country. She is interested in the experiment which she sees enacted before her; she feels, as any poet must feel, the attraction of the idea of a free and united Italy. But her heart is not thrown into the struggle as it was at a later time. She can write, and does, for the most part, write, of other matters. The disappointment of Milan and Novara could not break her heart, as the disappointment of Villafranca went near to doing. They are not, indeed, so much as mentioned in detail in the letters that follow. It is in ‘Casa Guidi Windows’ — the first part written in 1847-8, the second in 1851 — that her reflections upon Italian politics, alike in their hopes and in their failures, must be sought.

  To Miss Mitford

  Florence: December 8, 1847.

  Have you thought me long, my dearest Miss Mitford, in writing? When your letter came we were distracted by various uncertainties, torn by wild horses of sundry speculations, and then, when one begins by delay in answering a letter, you are aware how a silence grows and grows. Also I heard of you through my sisters and Mrs. Duprey[?], and that made me lazier still. Now don’t treat me according to the Jewish law, an eye for an eye; no! but a heart for a heart, if you please; and you never can have reason to reproach mine for not loving you. Think what we have done since I wrote last to you. Taken two houses, that is, two apartments, each for six months, presigning the contract. You will set it down as excellent poet’s work in the way of domestic economy; but the fault was altogether mine as usual, and my husband, to please me, took rooms which I could not be pleased by three days, through the absence of sunshine and warmth. The consequence was that we had to pay heaps of guineas away for leave to go away ourselves, any alternative being preferable to a return of illness, and I am sure I should have been ill if we had persisted in staying there. You can scarcely fancy the wonderful difference which the sun makes in Italy. Oh, he isn’t a mere ‘round O’ in the air in this Italy, I assure you! He makes us feel that he rules the day to all intents and purposes. So away we came into the blaze of him here in the Piazza Pitti, precisely opposite the Grand Duke’s palace, I with my remorse, and poor Robert without a single reproach. Any other man, a little lower than the angels, would have stamped and sworn a little for the mere relief of the thing, but as to his being angry with me for any cause, except not eating enough dinner, the said sun would turn the wrong way first. So here we are on the Pitti till April, in small rooms yellow with sunshine from morning to evening; and most days I am able to get out into the piazza, and walk up and down for some twenty minutes without feeling a shadow of breath from the actual winter. Also it is pleasant to be close to the Raffaels, to say nothing of the immense advantage of the festa days, when, day after day, the civic guard comes to show the whole population of Florence, their Grand Duke inclusive, the new helmets and epaulettes and the glory thereof. They have swords, too, I believe, somewhere. The crowds come and come, like children to see rows of dolls, only the children would tire sooner than the Tuscans. Robert said musingly the other morning as we stood at the window, ‘Surely, after all this, they would use those muskets.’ It’s a problem, a ‘grand peut-être.’ I was rather amused by hearing lately that our civic heroes had the gallantry to propose to the ancient military that these last should do the night work, i.e. when nobody was looking on and there was no credit, as they found it dull and fatiguing. Ah, one laughs, you see; one can’t help it now and then. But at the real and rising feeling of the people by night and day one doesn’t laugh indeed. I hear and see with the deepest sympathy of soul, on the contrary. I love the Italians, too, and none the less that something of the triviality and innocent vanity of children abounds in them. A delightful and most welcome letter was the last you sent me, my dearest friend. Your bridal visit must have charmed you, and I am glad you had the gladness of witnessing some of the happiness of your friend, Mrs. Acton Tyndal, you who have such quick sympathies, and to whom the happiness of a friend is a gain counted in your own. The swan’s shadow is something in a clear water. For poor Mrs. —— , if she is really, as you say Mrs. Tyndal thinks, pining in an access of literary despondency, why that only proves to me that she is not happy otherwise, that her life and soul are not sufficiently filled for her woman’s need. I cannot believe of any woman that she can think of fame first. A woman of genius may be absorbed, indeed, in the exercise of an active power, engrossed in the charges of the course and the combat; but this is altogether different to a vain and bitter longing for prizes, and what prizes, oh, gracious heavens! The empty cup of cold metal! so cold, so empty to a woman with a heart. So, if your friend’s belief is true, still more deeply do I pity that other friend, who is supposed to be unhappy from such a cause. A few days ago I saw a bride of my own family, Mrs. Reynolds, Arlette Butler, who married Captain Reynolds some five months since.... Many were her exclamations at seeing me. She declared that such a change was never seen, I was so transfigured with my betterness: ‘Oh, Ba, it is quite wonderful indeed!’ We had been calculated on, during her three months in Rome, as a ‘piece of resistance,’ and it was a disappointment to find us here in a corner with the salt. Just as I was praised was poor Flush criticised. Flush has not recovered from the effects yet of the summer plague of fleas, and his curls, though growing, are not grown. I never saw him in such spirits nor so ugly; and though Robert and I flatter ourselves upon ‘the sensible improvement,’ Arlette could only see him with reference to the past, when in his Wimpole Street days he was sleek and over fat, and she cried aloud at the loss of his beauty. Then we have had [another] visitor, Mr. Hillard, an American critic, who reviewed me in [the old] world, and so came to view me in the new, a very intelligent man, of a good, noble spirit. And Miss Boyle, ever and anon, comes at night, at nine o’clock, to catch us at our hot chestnuts and mulled wine, and warm her feet at our fire; and a kinder, more cordial little creature, full of talent and accomplishment, never had the world’s polish on it. Very amusing, too, she is, and original, and a good deal of laughing she and Robert make between them. Did I tell you of her before, and how she is the niece of Lord Cork, and poetess by grace of certain Irish Muses? Neither of us know her writings in any way, but we like her, and for the best reasons. And this is nearly all, I think, we see of the ‘face divine,’ masculine and feminine, and I can’t make Robert go out a single evening, not even to a concert, nor to hear a play of Alfieri’s, yet we fill up our days with books and music (and a little writing has its share), and wonder at the clock for galloping. It’s twenty-four o’clock with us almost as soon as we begin to cou
nt. Do tell me of Tennyson’s book, and of Miss Martineau’s. I was grieved to hear a distant murmur of a rumour of an apprehension of a return of her complaint: somebody said that she could not bear the pressure of dress, and that the exhaustion resulting from the fits of absorption in work and enthusiasm on the new subject of Egypt was painfully great, and that her friends feared for her. I should think that the bodily excitement and fatigue of her late travels must have been highly hazardous, and that indeed, throughout her convalescence, she should have more spared herself in climbing hills and walking and riding distances. A strain obviously might undo everything. Still, I do hope that the bitter cup may not be filled for her again. What a wonderful discovery this substitute for ether inhalations seems to be. Do you hear anything of its operation in your neighbourhood? We have had a letter from Mr. Horne, who appears happy, and speaks of his success in lecturing on Ireland, and of a new novel which he is about to publish in a separate form after having printed it in a magazine. We have not set up the types even of our plans about a book, very distinctly, but we shall do something some day, and you shall hear of it the evening before. Being too happy doesn’t agree with literary activity quite as well as I should have thought; and then, dear Mr. Kenyon can’t persuade us that we are not rich enough, so as to bring into force a lower order of motives. He talks of Rome still. Now write, dear, dearest Miss Mitford, and tell me of yourself and your health, and do, do love me as you used to do. As to French books, one may swear, but you can’t get a new publication, except by accident, at this excellent celebrated library of Vieusseux, and I am reduced to read some of my favorites over again, I and Robert together. You ought to hear how we go to single combat, ever and anon, with shield and lance. The greatest quarrel we have had since our marriage, by the way (always excepting my crying conjugal wrong of not eating enough!), was brought up by Masson’s pamphlet on the Iron Mask and Fouquet. I wouldn’t be persuaded that Fouquet was ‘in it,’ and so ‘the anger of my lord waxed hot.’ To this day he says sometimes: ‘Don’t be cross, Ba! Fouquet wasn’t the Iron Mask after all.’

  God bless you, dearest Miss Mitford.

  Your ever affectionate

  E.B.B.

  We are here till April.

  To Mrs. Jameson

  Florence: December 1847.

  Indeed, my dear friend, you have a right to complain of me, whether or not we had any in thinking ourselves deeply injured creatures by your last silence. Yet when in your letter which came at last, you said, ‘Write directly,’ I meant to write directly; I did not take out my vengeance in a foregone malice, be very sure. Just at the time we were in a hard knot of uncertainties about Rome and Venice and Florence, and a cold house and a warm house; for instance we managed (that is I did, for altogether it was my fault) to take two apartments in the course of ten days, each for a term of six months, getting out of one of them by leaving the skirts of our garments, rent, literally, in the hand of the proprietor. You have heard most of this, I dare say, from Mr. Kenyon or my sisters. Now, too, you are aware of our being in Piazza Pitti, in a charmed circle of sun blaze. Our rooms are small, but of course as cheerful as being under the very eyelids of the sun must make everything; and we have a cook in the house who takes the office of traiteur on him and gives us English mutton chops at Florentine prices, both of us quite well and in spirits, and (though you never will believe this) happier than ever. For my own part, you know I need not say a word if it were not true, and I must say to you, who saw the beginning with us, that this end of fifteen months is just fifteen times better and brighter; the mystical ‘moon’ growing larger and larger till scarcely room is left for any stars at all: the only differences which have touched me being the more and more happiness. It would have been worse than unreasonable if in marrying I had expected one quarter of such happiness, and indeed I did not, to do myself justice, and every now and then I look round in astonishment and thankfulness together, yet with a sort of horror, seeing that this is not heaven after all. We live just as we did when you knew us, just as shut-up a life. Robert never goes anywhere except to take a walk with Flush, which isn’t my fault, as you may imagine: he has not been out one evening of the fifteen months; but what with music and books and writing and talking, we scarcely know how the days go, it’s such a gallop on the grass. We are going through some of old Sacchetti’s novelets now: characteristic work for Florence, if somewhat dull elsewhere. Boccaccios can’t be expected to spring up with the vines in rows, even in this climate. We got a newly printed addition to Savonarola’s poems the other day, very flat and cold, they did not catch fire when he was burnt. The most poetic thing in the book is his face on the first page, with that eager, devouring soul in the eyes of it. You may suppose that I am able sometimes to go over to the gallery and adore the Raphaels, and Robert will tell you of the divine Apollino which you missed seeing in Poggio Imperiale, and which I shall be set face to face before, some day soon, I hope....

  Father Prout was in Florence for some two hours in passing to Rome, and of course, according to contract of spirits of the air, Robert met him, and heard a great deal of you and Geddie (saw Geddie’s picture, by the way, and thought it very like), was told much to the advantage of Mr. Macpherson, and at the end of all, kissed in the open street as the speaker was about to disappear in the diligence. When you write, tell me of the book. Surely it will be out anon, and then you will be free, shall you not? Have you seen Tennyson’s new poem, and what of it? Miss Martineau is to discourse about Egypt, I suppose; but in the meanwhile do you hear that she forswears mesmerism, as Mr. Spenser Hall does, according to the report Robert brings me home from the newspaper reading. Now I shall leave him room to stand on and speak a word to you. Give my love to Gerardine, and don’t forget to mention her letter. I hope you are happy about your friends, and that, in particular, Lady Byron’s health is strengthening and to strengthen. Always my dear friend’s

  Most affectionate

  E.B.B.

  Dear Aunt Nina, — A corner is just the place for eating Christmas pies in, but for venting Christmas wishes, hardly! What has Ba told you and wished you in the way of love? I wish you the same and love you the same, but Geddie, being part of you, gets her due part. We are as happy as two owls in a hole, two toads under a tree stump; or any other queer two poking creatures that we let live, after the fashion of their black hearts, only Ba is fat and rosy; yes, indeed! Florence is empty and pleasant. Goodbye, therefore, till next year — shall it not be then we meet? God bless you. R.B.