Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  BA.

  My husband’s regards go to you, of course.

  To Miss Browning

  [Florence: about June 1848.]

  My dearest Sarianna, — At last, you see, I give sign of life. The love, I hope you believed in without sign or symbol; and even for the rest, Robert promised to answer for me like godfather or godmother, and bear the consequence of my sins....

  We are a little uneasy just now as to whether you will be overjoyed or under joyed by our new scheme of taking an unfurnished apartment. It would spoil all, for instance, if your dear mother seemed disappointed — vexed — in the least degree. And I can understand how, to persons at a distance and of course unable to understand the whole circumstances of the case, the fact of an apartment taken and furnished may seem to involve some dreadful giving up for ever and ever of country and family — which would be as dreadful to us as to you! How could we give you up, do you think, when we love you more and more? Oh no. If Robert has succeeded in making clear the subject to you, you will all perceive, just as we know, that we have simply thus solved the problem of making our small income carry us to England, not only next summer, but many a summer after. We should like to give every summer to dear England, and hide away from the cold only when it comes. By our scheme we shall have saved money even at the end of the present year; while for afterward, here’s a residence — that is, apied à terre — in Italy, all but free when we wish to use it; and when we care to let it, producing eight or ten pounds a month in help of travelling expenses. It’s the best investment for Mr. Moxon’s money we could have looked the world over for. So the learned tell us; and after all, you know, we only pay in the proportion of your working classes in the Pancras building contrived for them by the philanthropy of your Southwood Smiths. I do wish you could see what rooms we have, what ceilings, what height and breadth, what a double terrace for orange trees; how cool, how likely to be warm, how perfect every way! Robert leaned once to a ground floor in the Frescobaldi Palace, being bewitched by a garden full of camellias, and a little pond of gold and silver fish; but while he saw the fish I saw the mosquitos in clouds, such an apocalypse of them as has not yet been visible to me in all Florence, and I dread mosquitos more than Austrians; and he, in his unspeakable goodness, deferred to my fear in a moment and gave up the camellias without one look behind. A heavy conscience I should have if it were not that the camellia garden was certainly less private than our terrace here, where we can have camellias also if we please. How pretty and pleasant your cottage at Windsor must be! We had a long muse over your father’s sketch of it, and set faces at the windows. That the dear invalid is better for the change must have brightened it, too, to her companions, and the very sound of a ‘forest’ is something peculiarly delightful and untried to me. I know hills well, and of the sea too much; but now I want forests, or quite, quite mountains, such as you have not in England.

  Robert says that if ‘Blackwood’ likes to print a poem of mine and send you the proofs, you will be so very good as to like to correct them. To me it seems too much to ask, when you have work for him to do beside. Will it be too much, or is nothing so to your kindness? I would ask my other sisters, who would gladly, dear things, do it for me; but I have misgivings through their being so entirely unaccustomed to occupations of the sort, or any critical reading of poetry of any sort. Robert is quite well and in the best spirits, and has the headache now only very occasionally. I am as well as he, having quite recovered my strength and power of walking. So we wander to the bridge of Trinità every evening after tea to see the sunset on the Arno. May God bless you all! Give my true love to your father and mother, and my loving thanks to yourself for that last stitch in the stool. How good you are, Sarianna, to your ever affectionate sister

  BA.

  Always remind your dear mother that we are no more bound here than when in furnished lodgings. It is a mere name.

  To Mrs. Martin

  Palazzo Guidi: June 20, .

  My dearest Mrs. Martin, — Now I am going to answer your letter, which I all but lost, and got ever so many days beyond the right day, because you directed it to Mrs. William Browning. Pray remember Robert Browning for the future, in right descent from Robert Brunnyng, the first English poet. Mrs. Jameson says, ‘It’s ominous of the actual Robert’s being the last English poet;’ a saying which I give you to remember us by, rejecting the omen.... We have grown to be Florentine citizens, as perhaps you have heard. Health and means both forbade our settlement in England; and the journey backwards and forwards being another sort of expense, and very necessary with our ties and affections, we had to think how to live here, when we were here, at the cheapest. The difference between taking a furnished apartment and an unfurnished one is something immense. For our furnished rooms we have had always to pay some four guineas a month; and unfurnished rooms of equal pretension we could have for twelve a year, and the furniture (out and out) for fifty pounds. This calculation, together with the consideration that we could let our apartment whenever we travelled and receive back the whole cost, could not choose, of course, but determine us. On coming to the point, however, we grew ambitious, and preferred giving five-and-twenty guineas for a noble suite of rooms in the Palazzo Guidi, a stone’s throw from the Pitti, and furnishing them after our own taste rather than after our economy, the economy having a legitimate share of respect notwithstanding; and the satisfactory thing being that the whole expense of this furnishing — rococo chairs, spring sofas, carved bookcases, satin from cardinals’ beds, and the rest — is covered by the proceeds of our books during the last two winters. This is satisfying, isn’t it? We shall stand safe within the borders of our narrow income even this year, and next year comes the harvest! We shall go to England in the spring, and return home to Italy. Do you understand? Mr. Kenyon, our friend and counsellor, writes to applaud — such prudence was never known before among poets. Then we have a plan, that when the summer (this summer) grows too hot, we shall just take up our carpet-bag and Wilson and plunge into the mountains in search of the monasteries beyond Vallombrosa, from Arezzo go to St. Sepolchro in the Apennines, and thence to Fano on the seashore, making a round back perhaps (after seeing the great fair at Sinigaglia) to Ravenna and Bologna home. As to Rome, our plan is to give up Rome next winter, seeing that we must go to England in the spring. I must see my dearest sisters and whoever else dear will see me, and Robert must see his family beside; and going to Rome will take us too far from the route and cost too much; and then we are not inclined to give the first-fruits of our new apartment to strangers if we could let it ever so easily this year. You can’t think how well the rooms look already; you must come and see them, you and dear Mr. Martin. Three immense rooms we have, and a fourth small one for a book room and winter room — windows opening on a little terrace, eight windows to the south; two good bedrooms behind, with a smaller terrace, and kitchen, &c., all on a first floor and Count Guidi’s favorite suite. The Guidi were connected by marriage with the Ugolino of Pisa, Dante’s Ugolino, only we shun all traditions of the Tower of Famine, and promise to give you excellent coffee whenever you will come to give us the opportunity. We shall have vines and myrtles and orange trees on the terrace, and I shall have a watering-pot and garden just as you do, though it must be on the bricks instead of the ground. For temperature, the stoves are said to be very effective in the winter, and in the summer we are cool and airy; the advantage of these thick-walled palazzos is coolness in summer and warmth in winter. I am very well and quite strong again, or rather, stronger than ever, and able to walk as far as Cellini’s Perseus in the moonlight evenings, on the other side of the Arno. Oh, that Arno in the sunset, with the moon and evening star standing by, how divine it is!...

  Think of me as ever your most affectionate

  BA.

  To Miss Mitford

  Florence: July 4, .

  It does grieve me, my ever dearest Miss Mitford, to hear of the suffering which has fallen upon you! Oh, rheumatism or not, whatever t
he name may be, do take care, do consider, and turn your dear face toward the seaside; somewhere where you can have warm sea bathing and sea air, and be able to associate the word ‘a drive’ not with mad ponies, but the mildest of donkeys, on a flat sand. The good it would do you is incalculable, I am certain; it is precisely a case for change of air, with quiet....

  As for when you come to Florence, we won’t have ‘a pony carriage between us,’ if you please, because we may have a carriage and a pair of horses and a coachman, and pay as little as for the pony-chair in England. For three hundred a year one may live much like the Grand Duchess, and go to the opera in the evening at fivepence-halfpenny inclusive. Indeed, poor people should have their patriotism tenderly dealt with, when, after certain experiments, they decide on living upon the whole on the Continent. The differences are past belief, beyond expectation, and when the sunshine is thrown in, the head turns at once, and you fall straight into absenteeism. Ah, for the ‘long chats’ and the ‘having England at one another’s fireside!’ You talk of delightful things indeed. We are very quiet, politically speaking, and though we hear now and then of melancholy mothers who have to part with their sons for Lombardy,

  and though there are processions for the blessing of flags and an occasional firing of guns for a victory, or a cry in the streets, ‘Notizie della guerra — leggete, signori;’ this is all we know of Radetsky in Florence; while, for civil politics, the meeting of the senate took place a few days since to the satisfaction of everybody, and the Grand Duke’s speech was generally admired. The elections have returned moderate men, and many land-proprietors, and Robert, who went out to see the procession of members, was struck by the grave thoughtful faces and the dignity of expression. We are going some day to hear the debates, but it has pleased their signoria to fix upon twelve (noon) for meeting, and really I do not dare to go out in the sun. The hour is sufficiently conclusive against dangerous enthusiasm. Poor France, poor France! News of the dreadful massacre at Paris just reaches us, and the letters and newspapers not arriving to-day, everybody fears a continuation of the crisis. How is it to end? Who ‘despairs of the republic?’ Why, I do! I fear, I fear, that it cannot stand in France, and you seem to have not much more hope. My husband has a little, with melancholy intermediate prospects; but my own belief that the people have had enough of democratic institutions and will be impatient for a kingship anew. Whom will they have? How did you feel when the cry was raised, ‘Vive l’Empereur’? Only Prince Napoleon is a Napoleon cut out in paper after all. The Prince de Joinville is said to be very popular. It makes me giddy to think of the awful precipices which surround France — to think, too, that the great danger is on the question of property, which is perhaps divided there more justly than in any other country of Europe. Lamartine has comprehended nothing, that is clear, even if his amount of energy had been effectual.... Yes, do send me the list of Balzac, after ‘Les Misères de la Vie Conjugale,’ I mean. I left him in the midst of ‘La Femme de Soixante Ans,’ who seemed on the point of turning the heads of all ‘la jeunesse’ around her; and, after all, she did not strike me as so charming. But Balzac charms me, let him write what he will; he’s an inspired man. Tell me, too, exactly what Sue has done after ‘Martin.’ I read only one volume of ‘Martin.’ And did poor Soulié finish his ‘Dramas’? And after ‘Lucretia’ what did George Sand write? When Robert and I are ambitious, we talk of buying Balzac in full some day, to put him up in our bookcase from the convent, if the carved-wood angels, infants and serpents, should not finish mouldering away in horror at the touch of him. But I fear it will rather be an expensive purchase, even here. Would that he gave up the drama, for which, as you observe, he has no faculty whatever. In fact, the faculty he has is the very reverse of the dramatic, ordinarily understood.... Dearest Mr. Kenyon is called quite well and delightful by the whole world, though he suffered from cough in the winter; and he is bringing out a new book of poems, a ‘Day at Tivoli,’ and others; and he talks energetically of coming to Florence this autumn. Also, we have hopes of Mr. Chorley. I congratulate you on the going away of Madame. Coming and going bring very various associations in this life of ours. Why, if you were to come we should appreciate our fortune, and you should have my particular chair, which Robert calls mine because I like sitting in a cloud; it’s so sybaritically soft a chair. Now I love you for the kind words you say of him, who deserves the best words of the best women and men, wherever spoken! Yes, indeed, I am happy. Otherwise, I should have a stone where the heart is, and sink by the weight of it. You must have faith in me, for I never can make you thoroughly to understand what he is, of himself, and to me — the noblest and perfectest of human beings. After a year and ten months’ absolute soul-to-soul intercourse and union, I have to look higher still for my first ideal. You won’t blame me for bad taste that I say these things, for can I help it, when I am writing my heart to you? It is a heart which runs over very often with a grateful joy for a most peculiar destiny, even in the midst of some bitter drawbacks which I need not allude to farther....

  May God bless you continually, even as I am

  Your affectionate

  BA.

  To Mrs. Jameson

  Palazzo Guidi: July 15, .

  Now at last, my very dear friend, I am writing to you, and the reproach you sent to me in your letter shall not be driven inwardly any more by my self-reproaches. Wasn’t it your fault after all, a little, that we did not hear one another’s voice oftener? You are so long in writing. Then I have been putting off and putting off my letter to you, just because I wanted to make a full letter of it; and Robert always says that it’s the bane of a correspondence to make a full letter a condition of writing at all. But so much I had to tell you! while the mere outline of facts you had from others, I knew. Which is just said that you may forgive us both, and believe that we think of you and love you, yes, and talk of you, even when we don’t write to you, and that we shall write to you for the future more regularly, indeed. Your letter, notwithstanding its reproach, was very welcome and very kind, only you must be fagged with the book, and saddened by Lady Byron’s state of health, and anxious about Gerardine perhaps. The best of all was the prospect you hold out to us of coming to Italy this year. Do, do come. Delighted we shall be to see you in Florence, and wise it will be in you to cast behind your back both the fear of Radetsky and as much English care as may be. Now, would it not do infinite good to Lady Byron if you could carry her with you into the sun? Surely it would do her great good; the change, the calm, the atmosphere of beauty and brightness, which harmonises so wonderfully with every shade of human feeling. Florence just now, and thanks to the panic, is tolerably clean of the English — you scarcely see an English face anywhere — and perhaps this was a circumstance that helped to give Robert courage to take our apartment here and ‘settle down.’ You were surprised at so decided a step I dare say, and, I believe, though too considerate to say it in your letter, you have wondered in your thoughts at our fixing at Florence instead of Rome, and without seeing more of Italy before the finality of making a choice. But observe, Florence is wonderfully cheap, one lives here for just nothing; and the convenience in respect to England, letters, and the facility of letting our house in our absence, is incomparable altogether. At Rome a house would be habitable only half the year, and the distance and the expense are objections at the first sight of the subject.... Altogether, if I could but get a supply of French books, turning the cock easily, it would be perfect; but as to anything new in the book way, Vieusseux seems to have made a vow against it, and poor Robert comes and goes in a state of desperation between me and the bookseller (‘But what can I do, Ba?’), and only brings news of some pitiful revolution or other which promises a full flush of republican virtues and falls off into the fleur de lis as usual. Think of our not having read ‘Lucretia’ yet — George Sand’s. And Balzac is six or seven works deep from us; but these are evils to be borne. We live on just in the same way, having very few visitors, and receiving them in the
quietest of hospitalities. Mr. Ware, the American, who wrote the ‘Letters from Palmyra,’ and is a delightful, earnest, simple person, comes to have coffee with us once or twice a week, and very much we like him. Mr. Hillard, another cultivated American friend of ours, you have in London, and we should gladly have kept longer. Mr. Powers does not spend himself much upon visiting, which is quite right, but we do hope to see a good deal of Mademoiselle de Fauveau. Robert exceedingly admires her. As to Italian society, one may as well take to longing for the evening star, for it seems quite as inaccessible; and indeed, of society of any sort, we have not much, nor wish for it, nor miss it. Dearest friend, if I could open my heart to you in all seriousness, you would see nothing there but a sort of enduring wonder of happiness — yes, and some gratitude, I do hope, besides. Could everything be well in England, I should only have to melt out of the body at once in the joy and the glow of it. Happier and happier I have been, month after month; and when I hear him talk of being happy too, my very soul seems to swim round with feelings which cannot be spoken. But I tell you a little, because I owe the telling to you, and also that you may set down in your philosophy the possibility of book-making creatures living happily together. I admit, though, to begin (or end), that my husband is an exceptional human being, and that it wouldn’t be just to measure another by him. We are planning a great deal of enjoyment in this ‘going to the fair’ at Sinigaglia, meaning to go by Arezzo and San Sepolchro, and Urbino, to Fano, where we shall pitch our tent for the benefit, as Robert says, of the sea air and the oysters. Fano is very habitable, and we may get to Pesaro and the footsteps of Castiglione’s ‘courtier,’ to say nothing of Bernardo Tasso; and Ancona beckons from the other side of Sinigaglia, and Loreto beside, only we shall have to restrain our flights a little. The passage of the Apennine is said to be magnificent, and, altogether, surely it must be delightful; and we take only two carpet bags — not to be weighed down by ‘impedimenta,’ and have our own home, left in charge of the porter, to return to at last, I am very well and shall be better for the change, though Robert is dreadfully afraid, as usual, that I shall fall to pieces at the first motion....