Ever affectionate
E.B.B.
To Mrs. Jameson
Bagni di Lucca: October 1, .
There seems to be a fatality about our letters, dearest friend, only the worst fate comes to me! I lose, and you are near losing! And I should not have liked you to lose any least proof of my thinking of you, lest a worst loss should happen to me as a consequence, even worse than the loss of your letters; for then, perhaps, and by degrees, you might leave off thinking of Robert and me, which, rich as we are in this mortal world, I do assure you we could neither of us afford.... We have had much quiet enjoyment here in spite of everything, read some amusing books (Dumas and Sue — shake your head!), and seen our child grow fuller of roses and understanding day by day. Before he was six months old he would stretch out his hands and his feet too, when bidden to do so, and his little mouth to kiss you. This is said to be a miracle of forwardness among the learned. He knows Robert and me quite well as ‘Papa’ and ‘Mama,’ and laughs for joy when he meets us out of doors. Robert is very fond of him, and threw me into a fit of hilarity the other day by springing away from his newspaper in an indignation against me because he hit his head against the floor rolling over and over. ‘Oh, Ba, I really can’t trust you!’ Down Robert was on the carpet in a moment, to protect the precious head. He takes it to be made of Venetian glass, I am certain. We may leave this place much sooner than the end of October, as everything depends upon the coming in of the cold. It will be the end of October, won’t it, before Gerardine can reach Florence? I wish I knew. We have made an excursion into the mountains, five miles deep, with all our household, baby and all, on horseback and donkeyback, and people open their eyes at our having performed such an exploit — I and the child. Because it is five miles straight up the Duomo; you wonder how any horse could keep its footing, the way is so precipitous, up the exhausted torrent courses, and with a palm’s breadth between you and the headlong ravines. Such scenery. Such a congregation of mountains: looking alive in the stormy light we saw them by. We dined with the goats, and baby lay on my shawl rolling and laughing. He wasn’t in the least tired, not he! I won’t say so much for myself. The Mr. Stuart who lectured here on Shakespeare (I think I told you that) couldn’t get through a lecture without quoting you, and wound up by a declaration that no English critic had done so much for the divine poet as a woman — Mrs. Jameson. He appears to be a cultivated and refined person, and especially versed in German criticism, and we mean to use his society a little when we return to Florence, where he resides.... What am I to say about Robert’s idleness and mine? I scold him about it in a most anti-conjugal manner, but, you know, his spirits and nerves have been shaken of late; we must have patience. As for me, I am much better, and do something, really, now and then. Wait, and you shall have us both on you; too soon, perhaps. May God bless you. How are your friends? Lady Byron, Madame de Goethe. The dreadful cholera has made us anxious about England.
Your ever affectionate
BA.
Mr. Browning adds the following note:
Dear Aunt Nina, — Ba will have told you everything, and how we wish you and Geddie all manner of happiness. I hope we shall be in Florence when she passes through it. The place is otherwise distasteful to me, with the creeping curs and the floggers of the same. But the weather is breaking up here, and I suppose we ought to go back soon. Shall you indeed come to Italy next year? That will indeed be pleasant to expect. We hope to go to England in the spring. What comes of ‘hoping,’ however, we [know] by this time.
Ever yours affectionately,
R.B.
To Miss Mitford
Bagni di Lucca: October 2, 1849.
Thank you, my dearest Miss Mitford: It is great comfort to know that you are better, and that the cholera does not approach your neighbourhood. My brothers and sisters have gone to Worthing for a few weeks; and though my father (dearest Papa!) is not persuadeable, I fear, into joining them, yet it is something to know that the horrible pestilence is abating in London. Oh, it has made me so anxious: I have caught with such a frightened haste at the newspaper to read the ‘returns,’ leaving even such subjects as Rome and the President’s letter to quite the last, as if they were indifferent, or, at most, bits of Mrs. Manning’s murder. By the way and talking of murder, how do you account for the crown of wickedness which England bears just now over the heads of the nations, in murders of all kinds, by poison, by pistol, by knife? In this poor Tuscany, which has not brains enough to govern itself, as you observe, and as really I can’t deny, there have been two murders (properly so called) since we came, just three years ago, one from jealousy and one from revenge (respectable motives compared to the advantages of the burying societies!), and the horror on all sides was great, as if the crime were some rare prodigy, which, indeed, it is in this country. We have no punishment of death here, observe! The people are gentle, courteous, refined, and tenderhearted. What Balzac would call ‘femmelette.’ All Tuscany is ‘Lucien’ himself. The leaning to the artistic nature without the strength of genius implies demoralisation in most cases, and it is this which makes your ‘good for nothing poets and poetesses,’ about which I love so to battle with you. Genius, I maintain always, you know, is a purifying power and goes with high moral capacities. Well, and so you invite us home to civilisation and ‘the “Times” newspaper.’ We mean to go next spring, and shall certainly do so unless something happen to catch us and keep us in a net. But always something does happen: and I have so often built upon seeing England, and been precipitated from the fourth storey, that I have learnt to think warily now. I hunger and thirst for the sight of some faces; must I not long, do you think, to see your face? And then, I shall be properly proud to show my child to those who loved me before him. He is beginning to understand everything — chiefly in Italian, of course, as his nurse talks in her sleep, I fancy, and can’t be silent a second in the day — and when told to ‘dare un bacio a questo povero Flush,’ he mixes his little face with Flush’s ears in a moment.... You would wonder to see Flush just now. He suffered this summer from the climate somewhat as usual, though not nearly as much as usual; and having been insulted oftener than once by a supposition of ‘mange,’ Robert wouldn’t bear it any longer (he is as fond of Flush as I am), and, taking a pair of scissors, clipped him all over into the likeness of a lion, much to his advantage in both health and appearance. In the winter he is always quite well; but the heat and the fleas together are too much in the summer. The affection between baby and him is not equal, baby’s love being far the stronger. He, on the other hand, looks down upon baby. What bad news you tell me of our French writers! What! Is it possible that Dumas even is struck dumb by the revolution? His first works are so incomparably the worst that I can’t admit your theory of the ‘first runnings.’ So of Balzac. So of Sue! George Sand is probably writing ‘banners’ for the ‘Reds,’ which, considering the state of parties in France, does not really give me a higher opinion of her intelligence or virtue. Ledru Rollin’s confidante and councillor can’t occupy an honorable position, and I am sorry, for her sake and ours. When we go to Florence we must try to get the ‘Portraits’ and Lamartine’s autobiography, which I still more long to see. So, two women were in love with him, were they? That must be a comfort to look back upon, now, when nobody will have him. I see by extracts from his newspaper in Galignani that he can’t be accused of temporising with the Socialists any longer, whatever other charge may be brought against him: and if, as he says, it was he who made the French republic, he is by no means irreproachable, having made a bad and false thing. The President’s letter about Rome has delighted us. A letter worth writing and reading! We read it first in the Italian papers (long before it was printed in Paris), and the amusing thing was that where he speaks of the ‘hostile influences’ (of the cardinals) they had misprinted it ‘orribili influenze,’ which must have turned still colder the blood in the veins of Absolutist readers. The misprint was not corrected until long after — more than a week, I th
ink. The Pope is just a pope; and, since you give George Sand credit for having known it, I am the more vexed that Blackwood (under ‘orribili influenze’) did not publish the poem I wrote two years ago, in the full glare and burning of the Pope-enthusiasm, which Robert and I never caught for a moment. Then, I might have passed a little for a prophetess as well as George Sand! Only, to confess a truth, the same poem would have proved how fairly I was taken in by our Tuscan Grand Duke. Oh, the traitor!
I saw the ‘Ambarvalia’ reviewed somewhere — I fancy in the ‘Spectator ‘ — and was not much struck by the extracts. They may, however, have been selected without much discrimination, and probably were. I am very glad that you like the gipsy carol in dear Mr. Kenyon’s volume, because it is, and was in MS., a great favorite of mine. There are excellent things otherwise, as must be when he says them: one of the most radiant of benevolences with one of the most refined of intellects! How the paper seems to dwindle as I would fain talk on more. I have performed a great exploit, ridden on a donkey five miles deep into the mountains to an almost inaccessible volcanic ground not far from the stars. Robert on horseback, and Wilson and the nurse (with baby) on other donkeys; guides, of course. We set off at eight in the morning and returned at six P.M., after dining on the mountain pinnacle, I dreadfully tired, but the child laughing as usual, and burnt Brick-colour for all bad effect. No horse or ass, untrained to the mountains, could have kept foot a moment where we penetrated, and even as it was one could not help the natural thrill. No road except the bed of exhausted torrents above and through the chestnut forests, and precipitous beyond what you would think possible for ascent or descent. Ravines tearing the ground to pieces under your feet. The scenery, sublime and wonderful, satisfied us wholly, however, as we looked round on the world of innumerable mountains bound faintly with the grey sea, and not a human habitation. I hope you will go to London this winter; it will be good for you, it seems to me. Take care of yourself, my much and ever loved friend! I love you and think of you indeed. Write of your health, remembering this,
And your affectionate,
E.B.B.
My husband’s regards always. You had better, I think, direct to Florence, as we shall be there in the course of October.
To Florence, accordingly, they returned in October, and settled down once more in Casa Guidi for the winter. Mrs. Browning’s principal literary occupation at this time was the preparation of a new edition of her poems, including nearly all the contents of the ‘Seraphim’ volume of 1838, more or less revised, as well as the ‘Poems’ of 1844. This edition, published in 1850, has formed the basis of all subsequent editions of her poems. Meanwhile her husband was engaged in the preparation of ‘Christmas Eve and Easter Day,’ which was also published in the course of 1850.
To Miss Mitford
Florence: December I, 1849.
My ever loved friend, you will have wondered at this unusual silence; and so will my sisters to whom I wrote just now, after a pause as little in my custom. It was not the fault of my head and heart, but of this unruly body, which has been laid up again in the way of all flesh of mine....
I am well again now, only obliged to keep quiet and give up my grand walking excursions, which poor Robert used to be so boastful of. If he is vain about anything in the world, it is about my improved health, and I used to say to him, ‘But you needn’t talk so much to people of how your wife walked here with you and there with you, as if a wife with a pair of feet was a miracle of nature.’ Now the poor feet have fallen into their old ways again. Ah, but if God pleases it won’t be for long....
The American authoress, Miss Fuller, with whom we had had some slight intercourse by letter, and who has been at Rome during the siege, as a devoted friend of the republicans and a meritorious attendant on the hospitals, has taken us by surprise at Florence, retiring from the Roman field with a husband and child above a year old. Nobody had even suspected a word of this underplot, and her American friends stood in mute astonishment before this apparition of them here. The husband is a Roman marquis, appearing amiable and gentlemanly, and having fought well, they say, at the siege, but with no pretension to cope with his wife on any ground appertaining to the intellect. She talks, and he listens. I always wonder at that species of marriage; but people are so different in their matrimonial ideals that it may answer sometimes. This Mdme. Ossoli saw George Sand in Paris — was at one of her soirées — and called her ‘a magnificent creature.’ The soirée was ‘full of rubbish’ in the way of its social composition, which George Sand likes, nota bene. If Mdme. Ossoli called it ‘rubbish’ it must have been really rubbish — not expressing anything conventionally so — she being one of the out and out Reds and scorners of grades of society. She said that she did not see Balzac. Balzac went into the world scarcely at all, frequenting the lowest cafés, so that it was difficult to track him out. Which information I receive doubtingly. The rumours about Balzac with certain parties in Paris are not likely to be too favorable nor at all reliable, I should fancy; besides, I never entertain disparaging thoughts of my demi-gods unless they should be forced upon me by evidence you must know. I have not made a demi-god of Louis Napoleon, by the way — no, and I don’t mean it. I expect some better final result than he has just proved himself to be of the French Revolution, with all its bitter and cruel consequences hitherto, so I can’t quite agree with you. Only so far, that he has shown himself up to this point to be an upright man with noble impulses, and that I give him much of my sympathy and respect in the difficult position held by him. A man of genius he does not seem to be — and what, after all, will he manage to do at Rome? I don’t take up the frantic Republican cry in Italy. I know too well the want of knowledge and the consequent want of i effective faith and energy among the Italians; but there is a stain upon France in the present state of the Roman affair, and I don’t shut my eyes to that either. To cast Rome helpless and bound into the hands of the priests is dishonor to the actors, however we consider the act; and for the sake of France, even more than for the sake of Italy, I yearn to see the act cancelled. Oh, we have had the sight of Clough and Burbidge, at last. Clough has more thought, Burbidge more music; but I am disappointed in the book on the whole. What I like infinitely better is Clough’s ‘Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich,’ a ‘long vacation pastoral,’ written in loose and more-than-need-be unmusical hexameters, but full of vigour and freshness, and with passages and indeed whole scenes of great beauty and eloquence. It seems to have been written before the other poems. Try to get it, if you have not read it already. I feel certain you will like it and think all the higher of the poet. Oh, it strikes both Robert and me as being worth twenty of the other little book, with its fragmentary, dislocated, unartistic character. Arnold’s volume has two good poems in it: ‘The Sick King of Bokhara’ and ‘The Deserted Merman.’ I like them both. But none of these writers are artists, whatever they may be in future days. Have you read ‘Shirley,’ and is it as good as ‘Jane Eyre’? We heard not long since that Mr. Chorley had discovered the author, the ‘Currer Bell.’ A woman, most certainly. We hear, too, that three large editions of the ‘Princess’ are sold. So much the happier for England and poetry.
Dearest dear Miss Mitford, mind you write to me, and don’t pay me out in my own silence! You have not been ill, I hope and trust. Write and tell me every little thing of yourself — how you are, and whether there is still danger of your being uprooted from Three Mile Cross. I love and think of you always. Fancy Flush being taken in the light of a rival by baby! Oh, baby was quite jealous the other day, and strugggled and kicked to get to me because he saw Flush leaning his pretty head on my lap. There’s a great strife for privileges between those two. May God bless you! My husband’s kind regards always, while I am your most
Affectionate
E.B.B.
To Miss Mitford
Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Page 181