Florence: January 9, 1850.
Thank you, ever dearest Miss Mitford, for this welcome letter written on your birthday! May the fear of small-pox have passed away long before now, and every hope and satisfaction have strengthened and remained!...
May God bless you and give you many happy years, you who can do so much towards the happiness of others. May I not answer for my own?...
Little Wiedeman began to crawl on Christmas Day. Before, he used to roll. We throw things across the floor and he crawls for them like a little dog, on all fours....
He has just caught a cold, which I make more fuss about than I ought, say the wise; but I can’t get resigned to the association of any sort of suffering with his laughing dimpled little body — it is the blowing about in the wind of such a heap of roses. So you prefer ‘Shirley’ to ‘Jane Eyre’! Yet I hear from nobody such an opinion; yet you are very probably right, for ‘Shirley’ may suffer from the natural reaction of the public mind. What you tell me of Tennyson interests me as everything about him must. I like to think of him digging gardens — room for cabbage and all. At the same time, what he says about the public ‘hating poetry’ is certainly not a word for Tennyson. Perhaps no true poet, having claims upon attention solely through his poetry, has attained so certain a success with such short delay. Instead of being pelted (as nearly every true poet has been), he stands already on a pedestal, and is recognised as a master spirit not by a coterie but by the great public. Three large editions of the ‘Princess’ have already been sold. If he isn’t satisfied after all, I think he is wrong. Divine poet as he is, and no laurel being too leafy for him, yet he must be an unreasonable man, and not understanding of the growth of the laurel trees and the nature of a reading public. With regard to the other garden-digger, dear Mr. Home, I wish as you do that I could hear something satisfactory of him. I wrote from Lucca in the summer, and have no answer. The latest word concerning him is the announcement in the ‘Athenaeum’ of a third edition of his ‘Gregory the Seventh,’ which we were glad to see, but very, very glad we should be to have news of his prosperity in the flesh as well as in the litterae scriptae....
I have not been out of doors these two months, but people call me ‘looking well,’ and a newly married niece of Miss Bayley’s, the accomplished Miss Thomson, who has become the wife of Dr. Emil Braun (the learned German secretary of the Archaeological Society), and just passed through Florence on her way to Rome, where they are to reside, declared that the change she saw in me was miraculous— ‘wonderful indeed.’ I took her to look at Wiedeman in his cradle, fast asleep, and she won my heart (over again, for always she was a favorite of mine) by exclaiming at his prettiness. Charmed, too, we both were with Dr. Braun — I mean Robert and I were charmed. He has a mixture of fervour and simplicity which is still more delightfully picturesque in his foreign English. Oh, he speaks English perfectly, only with an obvious accent enough. I am sure we should be cordial friends, if the lines had fallen to us in the same pleasant places; but he is fixed at Rome, and we are half afraid of the enervating effects of the Roman climate on the constitutions of children. Tell me, do you hear often from Mr. Chorley? It quite pains us to observe from his manner of writing the great depression of his spirits. His mother was ill in the summer, but plainly the sadness does not arise entirely or chiefly from this cause. He seems to me over-worked, taxed in the spirit. I advise nobody to give up work; but that ‘Athenaeum’ labour is a sort of treadmill discipline in which there is no progress, nor triumph, and I do wish he would give that up and come out to us with a new set of anvils and hammers. Only, of course, he couldn’t do it, even if he would, while there is illness in his family. May there be a whole sun of success shining on the new play! Robert is engaged on a poem, and I am busy with my edition. So much to correct, I find, and many poems to add. Plainly ‘Jane Eyre’ was by a woman. It used to astound me when sensible people said otherwise. Write to me, will you? I long to hear again. Tell me everything of yourself; accept my husband’s true regards, and think of me as your
Ever affectionate
E.B.B.
To Miss Browning
Florence: January 29, 1850.
My dearest Sarianna, — I have waited to thank you for your great and ready kindness about the new edition, until now when it is fairly on its way to England. Thank you, thank you! I am only afraid, not that you will find anything too ‘learned,’ as you suggest, but a good many things too careless, I was going to say, only Robert, with various deep sighs for ‘his poor Sarianna,’ devoted himself during several days to rearranging my arrangements, and simplifying my complications. It was the old story of Order and Disorder over again. He pulled out the knotted silks with an indefatigable patience, so that really you will owe to him every moment of ease and facility which may be enjoyable in the course of the work. I am afraid that at the easiest you will find it a vexatious business, but I throw everything on your kindness, and am not distrustful on such a point of weights and measures.
Your letter was full of sad news. Robert was deeply affected at the account of the illness of his cousin — was in tears before he could end the letter. I do hope that in a day or two we may hear from you that the happy change was confirmed as time passed on. I do hope so; it will be joy, not merely to Robert, but to me, for indeed I never forget the office which his kindness performed for both of us at a crisis ripe with all the happiness of my life.
Then it was sad to hear of your dear father suffering from lumbago. May the last of it have passed away long before you get what I am writing! Tell him with my love that Wiedeman shall hear some day (if we all live) the verses he wrote to him; and I have it in my head that little Wiedeman will be very sensitive to verses and kindness too — he likes to hear anything rhythmical and musical, and he likes to be petted and kissed — the most affectionate little creature he is — sitting on my knee, while I give him books to turn the leaves over (a favorite amusement), every two minutes he puts up his little rosebud of a mouth to have a kiss. His cold is quite gone, and he has taken advantage of the opportunity to grow still fatter; as to his activities, there’s no end to them. His nurse and I agree that he doesn’t remain quiet a moment in the day....
Now the love of nephews can’t bear any more, Sarianna, can it? Only your father will take my part and say that it isn’t tedious — beyond pardoning.
May God bless both of you, and enable you to send a brighter letter next time. Robert will be very anxious.
Your ever affectionate sister
BA.
Mention yourself, do.
To Miss Mitford
Florence: February 18, 1850.
Ever dearest Miss Mitford, you always give me pleasure, so for love’s sake don’t say that you ‘seldom give it,’ and such a magical act as conjuring up for me the sight of a new poem by Alfred Tennyson is unnecessary to prove you a right beneficent enchantress. Thank you, thank you. We are not so unworthy of your redundant kindness as to abuse it by a word spoken or sign signified. You may trust us indeed. But now you know how free and sincere I am always! Now tell me. Apart from the fact of this lyric’s being a fragment of fringe from the great poet’s ‘singing clothes’ (as Leigh Hunt says somewhere), and apart from a certain sweetness and rise and fall in the rhythm, do you really see much for admiration in the poem? Is it new in, any way? I admire Tennyson with the most worshipping part of the multitude, as you are aware, but I do not perceive much in this lyric, which strikes me, and Robert also (who goes with me throughout), as quite inferior to the other lyrical snatches in the ‘Princess.’ By the way, if he introduces it in the ‘Princess,’ it will be the only rhymed verse in the work. Robert thinks that he was thinking of the Rhine echoes in writing it, and not of any heard in his Irish travels. I hear that Tennyson has taken rooms above Mr. Forster’s in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and is going to try a London life. So says Mr. Kenyon.... I am writing with an easier mind than when I wrote last, for I was for a little time rendered very unhappy (so unhappy tha
t I couldn’t touch on the subject, which is always the way with me when pain passes a certain point), by hearing accidentally that papa was unwell and looking altered. My sister persisted in replying to my anxieties that they were unfounded, that I was quite absurd, indeed, in being anxious at all; only people are not generally reformed from their absurdities through being scolded for them. Now, however, it really appears that the evil has passed. He left his doctor who had given him lowering medicines, and, coincidently with the leaving, he has recovered looks and health altogether. Arabel says that I should think he was looking as well as ever, if I saw him, and that appetite and spirits are even redundant. Thank God.... To have this good news has made me very happy, and I overflow to you accordingly. Oh, there is pain enough from that quarter, without hearing of his being out of health. I write to him continually and he does not now return my letters, which is a melancholy something gained. Now enough of such a subject.
I certainly don’t think that the qualities, half savage and half freethinking, expressed in ‘Jane Eyre’ are likely to suit a model governess or schoolmistress; and it amuses me to consider them in that particular relation. Your account falls like dew upon the parched curiosity of some of our friends here, to whom (as mere gossip, which did not leave you responsible) I couldn’t resist the temptation of communicating it. People are so curious — even here among the Raffaels — about this particular authorship, yet nobody seems to have read ‘Shirley’; we are too slow in getting new books. First Galignani has to pirate them himself, and then to hand us over the spoils. By the way, there’s to be an international copyright, isn’t there? Something is talked of it in the ‘Athenaeum.’ Meanwhile the Americans have already reprinted my husband’s new edition. ‘Landthieves, I mean pirates.’ I used to take that for a slip of the pen in Shakespeare; but it was a slip of the pen into prophecy. Sorry I am at Mrs. —— falling short of your warm-hearted ideas about her! Can you understand a woman’s hating a girl because it is not a boy — her first child too? I understand it so little that scarcely I can believe it. Some women have, however, undeniably an indifference to children, just as many men have, though it must be unnatural and morbid in both sexes. Men often affect it — very foolishly, if they count upon the scenic effects; affectation never succeeds well, and this sort of affectation is peculiarly unbecoming, except in old bachelors, for there is a pathetic side to the question so viewed. For my part and my husband’s, we may be frank and say that we have caught up our parental pleasures with a sort of passion. But then, Wiedeman is such a darling little creature; who could help loving the child?... Little darling! So much mischief was not often put before into so small a body. Fancy the child’s upsetting the water jugs till he is drenched (which charms him), pulling the brooms to pieces, and having serious designs upon cutting up his frocks with a pair of scissors. He laughs like an imp when he can succeed in doing anything wrong. Now, see what you get, in return for your kindness of ‘liking to hear about’ him! Almost I have the grace to be ashamed a little. Just before I had your letter we sent my new edition to England. I gave much time to the revision, and did not omit reforming some of the rhymes, although you must consider that the irregularity of these in a certain degree rather falls in with my system than falls out through my carelessness. So much the worse, you will say, when a person is systematically bad. The work will include the best poems of the ‘Seraphim’ volume, strengthened and improved as far as the circumstances admitted of. I had not the heart to leave out the wretched sonnet to yourself, for your dear sake; but I rewrote the latter half of it (for really it wasn’t a sonnet at all, and ‘Una and her lion’ are rococo), and so placed it with my other poems of the same class. There are some new, verses also. The Miss Hardings I have seen, and talked with them of you, a sure way of finding them delightful. But, my dearest friend, I shall not see any of the Trollope party — it is not likely. You can scarcely image to yourself the retired life we live, or how we have retreated from the kind advances of the English society here. Now people seem to understand that we are to be left alone; that nothing is to be made of us. The fact is, we are not like our child, who kisses everybody who smiles at him! Neither my health nor our pecuniary circumstances, nor our inclinations perhaps, would admit of our entering into English society here, which is kept up much after the old English models, with a proper disdain for Continental simplicities of expense. We have just heard from Father Prout, who often, he says, sees Mr. Horne, ‘who is as dreamy as ever.’ So glad I am, for I was beginning to be uneasy about him. He has not answered my letter from Lucca. The verses in the ‘Athenaeum’ are on Sophia Cottrell’s child.
May God bless you, dearest friend. Speak of yourself more particularly to your ever affectionate
E.B.B.
Robert’s kindest regards. Tell us of Mr. Chorley’s play, do.
To Mrs. Martin
Florence: February 22, 1850.
My dearest Mrs. Martin, — Have you wondered that I did not write before? It was not that I did not thank you in my heart for your kind, considerate letter, but I was unconquerably uncomfortable about papa; and, what with the weather, which always has me in its power somehow, and other things, I fell into a dislike of writing, which I hope you didn’t mistake for ingratitude, because it was not in the least like the same fault. Now the severe weather (such weather for Italy!) has broken up, and I am relieved in all ways, having received the most happy satisfactory news from Wimpole Street, and the assurance from my sisters that if I were to see papa I should think him looking as well as ever. He grew impatient with Dr. Elliotson’s medicines which, it appears, were of a very lowering character — suddenly gave them up, and as suddenly recovered his looks and all the rest, and everybody at home considers him to be quite well. It has relieved me of a mountain’s weight, and I thank God with great joy. Oh, you must have understood how natural it was for me to be unhappy under the other circumstances. But if you thought, dearest friend, that they were necessary to induce me to write to him the humblest and most beseeching of letters, you do not know how I feel his alienation or my own love for him. I With regard to my brothers, it is quite different, though even towards them I may faithfully say that my affection has borne itself higher than my pride. But as to papa, I have never contended about the right or the wrong, I have never irritated him by seeming to suppose that his severity to me has been more than justice. I have confined myself simply to a supplication for — his forgiveness of what he called, in his own words, the only fault of my life towards him, and an expression of the love which even I must feel I for him, whether he forgives me or not. This has been done in letter after letter, and they are not sent back — it is all. In my last letter, I ventured to ask him to let it be an understood thing that he should before the world, and to every practical purpose, act out his idea of justice by excluding me formally, me and mine, from every advantage he intended his other children — that, having so been just, he might afford to be merciful by giving me his forgiveness and affection — all I asked and desired. My husband and I had talked this over again and again; only it was a difficult thing to say, you see. At last I took courage and said it, because, doing it, papa might seem to himself to reconcile his notion of strict justice, and whatever remains of pity and tenderness might still be in his heart towards me, if there are any such. I know he has strong feelings at bottom — otherwise, should I love him so? — but he has adopted a bad system, and he (as well as I) is crushed by it.... If I were to write to you the political rumours we hear every day, you would scarcely think our situation improved in safety by the horrible Austrian army. Florence bristles with cannon on all sides, and at the first movement we are promised to be bombarded. On the other hand, if the red republicans get uppermost there will be a universal massacre; not a priest, according to their own profession, will be left alive in Italy. The constitutional party hope they are gaining strength, but the progress which depends on intellectual growth must necessarily be slow. That the Papacy has for ever lost its pre
stige and power over souls is the only evident truth; bright and strong enough to cling to. I hear even devout women say: ‘This cursed Pope! it’s all his fault.’ Protestant places of worship are thronged with Italian faces, and the minister of the Scotch church at Leghorn has been threatened with exclusion from the country if he admits Tuscans to the church communion. Politically speaking, much will depend upon France, and I have strong hope for France, though it is so strictly the fashion to despair of her. Tell me dear Mr. Martin’s impression and your own — everything is good that comes from you. But most particularly, tell me how you both are — tell me whether you are strong again, dearest Mrs. Martin, for indeed I do not like to hear of your being in the least like an invalid. Do speak of yourself a little more. Do you know, you are very unsatisfactory as a letter-writer when you write about yourself — the reason being that you never do write about yourself except by the suddenest snatches, when you can’t possibly help the reference....
Robert sends his true regards with those of your
Gratefully affectionate
BA.
To Mrs. Jameson
April 2, .
You have perhaps thought us ungrateful people, my ever dear friend, for this long delay in thanking you for your beautiful and welcome present. Here is the truth. Though we had the books from Rome last month, they were snatched from us by impatient hands before we had finished the first volume. The books are hungered and thirsted for in Florence, and, although the English reading club has them, they can’t go fast enough from one to another. Four of our friends entreated us for the reversion, and although it really is only just that we should be let read our own books first, yet Robert’s generosity can’t resist the need of this person who is ‘going away,’ and of that person who is ‘so particularly anxious’ — for particular reasons perhaps — so we renounce the privilege you gave us (with the pomps of this world) and are still waiting to finish even the first volume. Our cultivated friends the Ogilvys, who had the work from us earliest, because they were going to Naples, were charmed with it. Mr. Kirkup the artist, who disputes with Mr. Bezzi the glory of finding Dante’s portrait — yes, and breathes fire in the dispute — has it now. Madame Ossoli, Margaret Fuller, the American authoress, who brought from the siege of Rome a noble marquis as her husband, asks for it. And your adorer Mr. Stuart, who has lectured upon Shakespeare all the winter, entreats for it. So when we shall be free to enjoy it thoroughly for ourselves remains doubtful. Robert promises every day, ‘You shall have it next, certainly,’ and I only hope you will put him and me in your next edition of the martyrs, for such a splendid exercise of the gifts of self-renunciation. But don’t fancy that we have not been delighted with the sight of the books, with your kindness, and besides with the impressions gathered from a rapid examination of the qualities of the work. It seems to us in every way a valuable and most interesting work; it must render itself a necessity for art students, and general readers and seers of pictures like me, who carry rather sentiment than science into the consideration of such subjects. We much admire your introduction — excellent in all ways, besides the grace and eloquence. Altogether, the work must set you higher with a high class of the public, and I congratulate you on what is the gain of all of us. Robert has begun a little pencil list of trifling criticisms he means to finish. We both cry aloud at what you say of Guercino’s angels, and never would have said if you had been to Fano and seen his divine picture of the ‘Guardian Angel,’ which affects me every time I think of it. Our little Wiedeman had his part of pleasure in the book by being let look at the engravings. He screamed for joy at the miracle of so many bird-men, and kissed some of them very reverentially, which is his usual way of expressing admiration....
Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Page 182