Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  To Mrs. Martin

  26 Devonshire Street: Wednesday, [about August 1851].

  My ever dearest Mrs. Martin, — I am not ungrateful after all, but I wanted to write a long letter to you (having much to say), and even now it is hard in this confusion to write a short one. We have been overwhelmed with kindnesses, crushed with gifts, like the Roman lady; and literally to drink through a cup of tea from beginning to end without an interruption from the door-bell, we have scarcely attained to since we came. For my part I refuse all dinner invitations except when our dear friend Mr. Kenyon ‘imposes himself as an exception,’ in his own words. But even in keeping the resolution there are necessary fatigues; and, do you know, I have not been well since our arrival in England. My first step ashore was into a puddle and a fog, and I began to cough before we reached London. The quality of the air does not agree with me, that’s evident. For nearly five years I have had no such cough nor difficulty of breathing, and my friends, who at first sight thought me looking well, must forbear all compliments for the future, I think, I get so much paler every day. Next week we send Wilson to see her mother near Sheffield and the baby with her, which is a great stroke of fortitude in me; only what I can’t bear is to see him crying because she is gone away. So we resolve on letting them both go together. When she returns, ten days or a fortnight after, we shall have to think of going to Paris again; indeed Robert begins to be nervous about me — which is nonsense, but natural enough perhaps.

  In regard to Colwall, you are both, my very dear friends, the kindest that you can be. Ah, but dearest, dearest Mrs. Martin, you can understand, with the same kindness that you use to me in other things. There is only one event in my life which never loses its bitterness; which comes back on me like a retreating wave, going and coming again, which was and is my grief — I never had but one brother who loved and comprehended me. And so there is just one thought which would be unbearable if I went into your neighbourhood; and you won’t set it down, I am sure, as unpardonable weakness, much less as affectation, if I confess to you that I never could bear it. The past would be too strong for me. As to Hope End, it is nothing. I have been happier in my own home since, than I was there and then. But Torquay has made the neighbourhood of Hope End impossible to me. I could not eat or sleep in that air. You will forgive me for the weakness, I am certain. You know a little, if not entirely, how we loved one another; how I was first with him, and he with me; while God knows that death and separation have no power over such love.

  After all, we shall see you in Paris if not in England. We pass this winter in Paris, in the hope of my being able to bear the climate, for indeed Italy is too far. And if the winter does not disagree with me too much we mean to take a house and settle in Paris, so as to be close to you all, and that will be a great joy to me. You will pass through Paris this autumn (won’t you?) on your way to Pau, and I shall see you. I do long to see you and make you know my husband....

  So far from regretting my marriage, it has made the happiness and honour of my life; and every unkindness received from my own house makes me press nearer to the tenderest and noblest of human hearts proved by the uninterrupted devotion of nearly five years. Husband, lover, nurse — not one of these, has Robert been to me, but all three together. I neither regret my marriage, therefore, nor the manner of it, because the manner of it was a necessity of the act. I thought so at the time, I think so now; and I believe that the world in general will decide (if the world is to be really appealed to) that my opinion upon this subject (after five years) is worth more.

  Dearest Mrs. Martin, do write to me. I keep my thoughts as far as I can from bitter things, and the affectionateness of my dearest sisters is indeed much on the other side. Also, we are both giddy with the kind attentions pressed on us from every side, from some of the best in England. It’s hard to think at all in such a confusion. We met Tennyson (the Laureate) by a chance in Paris, who insisted that we should take possession of his house and servants at Twickenham and use them as long as we liked to stay in England. Nothing could be more warmly kind, and we accepted the note in which he gave us the right of possession for the sake of the generous autograph, though we never intended in our own minds to act out the proposition. Since then, Mr. Arnould, the Chancery barrister, has begged us to go and live in his town house (we don’t want houses, you see); Mrs. Fanny Kemble called on and left us tickets for her Shakespeare reading (by the way, I was charmed with her ‘Hamlet’); Mr. Forster, of the ‘Examiner,’ gave us a magnificent dinner at Thames Ditton in sight of the swans; and we breakfast on Saturday with Mr. Rogers. Then we have seen the Literary Guild actors at the Hanover Square rooms, and we have passed an evening with Carlyle (one of the great sights in England, to my mind). He is a very warm friend of Robert’s, so that on every account I was delighted to see him face to face. I can’t tell you what else we have done or not done. It’s a great dazzling heap of things new and strange. Barry Cornwall (Mr. Procter) came to see us every day till business swept him out of town, and dear Mrs. Jameson left her Madonna for us in despite of the printers. Such kindness, on all sides. Ah, there’s kindness in England after all. Yet I grew cold to the heart as I set foot on the ground of it, and wished myself away. Also, the sort of life is not perhaps the best for me and the sort of climate is really the worst.

  You heard of Mr. Kenyon’s goodness to us; I told Arabel to tell you.

  But I must end here. Another time I will talk of Paris, which I do hope will suit us as a residence. I was quite well there, the three weeks we stayed, and am far from well just now. You see, the weight of the atmosphere, which seems to me like lead, combined with the excitement, is too much at once. Oh, it won’t be very bad, I dare say. I mean to try to be quiet, and abjure for the future the night air.

  I should not omit to tell you in this quantity of egotism that my husband’s father and sister have received me most affectionately. She is highly accomplished, with a heart to suit the head.

  Now do write. Let me hear all about you, and how dear Mr. Martin and yourself are. Robert’s cordial regards with those of

  Your ever affectionate and ever grateful

  Ba.

  To Mrs. Martin

  26 Devonshire Street: Saturday, [about August 1851].

  My dearest Mrs. Martin, — Day by day, and hour by hour almost, I have wanted to thank you again and again for your remedy (which I did not use, by the bye, being much better), and to answer your inquiry about me, which really I could not deliver over to Arabel to answer; but the baby did not go to the country with Wilson, and I have been ‘devoted’ since she went away; une âme perdue, with not an instant out of the four-and-twenty hours to call my own. It appeared, at the last, that Wilson would have a drawback to her enjoyments in having the child, and I did not choose that: she had only a fortnight, you see, after five years, to be with her family. So I took her place with him; it was necessary, for he was in a state of deplorable grief when he missed her, and has refused ever since to allow any human being except me to do a single thing for him. I hold him in my arms at night, dress and wash him in the morning, walk out with him, and am not allowed either to read or write above three minutes at a time. He has learnt to say in English ‘No more,’ and I am bound to be obedient. Perhaps I may make out five minutes just to write this, for he is playing in the passage with a child of the house, but even so much is doubtful. He has made very good friends with a girl here, and Arabel has sent her maid ever so often to tempt him away for half an hour, so as to give me breathing time, but he won’t be tempted: he has it in his head that the world is in a conspiracy against him to take ‘mama’ away after having taken ‘Lily,’ and he is bound to resist it.

  After all, the place of nursery maid is more suitable to me than that of poetess (or even poet’s wife) in this obstreperous London. I was nearly killed the first weeks, what with the climate, and what with the kindness (and what with the want of kindness), and looked wretchedly, whether Reynolds Peyton saw it or not, and coughed d
ay and night, till Robert took fright, and actually fixed a day for taking me forthwith back to Paris. I had to give up a breakfast at Rogers’, and shut myself up in two rooms for a week, and refuse, like Wiedeman, to be tempted out anywhere, but, after that, I grew better, and the wind changed, and now the cough, though not gone, is quieted, and I look a different person, and have ceased to grow thin. But a racketing life will never do for me, nor an English atmosphere, I am much afraid. The lungs seem to labour in this heavy air. Oh, it is so unlike the air of the Continent; I say nothing of Florence, but even of Paris, where I do wish to be able to live, on account of the nearness to this dear detestable England.

  Now let me tell you of Wimpole Street. Henry has been very kind in coming not infrequently; he has a kind, good heart. Occy, too, I have seen three or four times, Alfred and Sette once. My dearest Arabel is, of course, here once if not twice a day, and for hours at a time, bringing me great joy always, and Henrietta’s dear kindness in coming to London on purpose to see me, for a week, has left a perfume in my life. Both those beloved sisters have been, as ever, perfect to me. Arabel is vexed just now, and so am I, my brothers having fixed with papa to go out of town directly, and she caring more to stay where I am....

  I have not written to papa since our arrival through my fear of involving Arabel; but as soon as they go to the country I shall hopelessly write. He is very well and in good spirits, thank God.

  We have spent two days at New Cross with my husband’s father and sister, and she has been here constantly. Most affectionate they are to me, and the babe is taken into adoration by Mr. Browning.

  But here he is upon me again! Indeed, I have had wonderful luck in having been able to write all this; and now, God bless both of you, my dearest friends. Oh, I do feel to my heart all your kindness in wishing to have us with you, and, indeed, Robert would like to see Herefordshire, but —

  [The remainder of this letter is wanting]

  To Mrs. Martin

  26 Devonshire Street: Wednesday, [September 1851].

  My dearest Mrs. Martin, — I write in haste to you to tell you some things which you should hear without delay.

  After Robert’s letter to George had been sent three times to Wales and been returned twice, it reached him, and immediately upon its reaching him (to do George justice) he wrote a kind reply to apprise us that he would be at our door the same evening. So the night before last he came, and we are all good friends, thank God. I tenderly love him and the rest, and must for ever deplore that such poor barriers as a pedantic pride can set up should have interposed between long and strong and holy affections for years. But it is past, and I have been very happy in being held in his arms again, and seen in his eyes that I was still something more to him than a stone thrown away. So, if you have thought severely of him, you and dear Mr. Martin, do not any longer. Preserve your friendship for him, my dearest friends, and let all this foolish mistaken past be well past and forgotten. I think him looking thin, though it does not strike them so in Wimpole Street, certainly.

  For the rest, the pleasantness is not on every side. It seemed to me right, notwithstanding that dear Mr. Kenyon advised against it, to apprise my father of my being in England. I could not leave England without trying the possibility of his seeing me once, of his consenting to kiss my child once. So I wrote, and Robert wrote. A manly, true, straightforward letter his was, yet in some parts so touching to me and so generous and conciliating everywhere, that I could scarcely believe in the probability of its being read in vain. In reply he had a very violent and unsparing letter, with all the letters I had written to papa through these five years sent back unopened, the seals unbroken. What went most to my heart was that some of the seals were black with black-edged envelopes; so that he might have thought my child or husband dead, yet never cared to solve the doubt by breaking the seal. He said he regretted to have been forced to keep them by him until now, through his ignorance of where he should send them. So there’s the end. I cannot, of course, write again. God takes it all into His own hands, and I wait.

  We go on Tuesday. If I do not see you (as I scarcely hope to do now), it will be only a gladness delayed for a few months. We shall meet in Paris if we live. May God bless you both, dearest friends! I think of you and love you. Dear Mr. Martin, don’t stay too late in England this year, for the climate seems to me worse than ever. Not that I have much cough now — I am much better — but the quality of the atmosphere is unmistakable to my lungs and air passages, and I believe it will be wise, on this account, to go away quickly.

  Your ever affectionate and grateful

  Ba.

  To Miss E.F. Haworth

  London: September 24, 1851.

  My dear Miss Haworth, — I do hope you have not set us quite on the outside of your heart with the unfeeling and ungrateful. I say ‘us’ when I ought to have said ‘me,’ for you have known Robert, and you have not known me, and I am naturally less safe with you than he is — less safe in your esteem. We should both have gone to inquire after your health if he had not been attacked with influenza, and unfit for anything until the days you mentioned as the probable term of your remaining in town had passed. I waited till he should be better, and the malady lingered. Now he is well, and I do hope you may be so too. May it be! Bear us in mind and love, for we go away to-morrow to Paris — where, however, we shall expect you before long. Thank you, thank you, for the books. I have been struck and charmed with some things in the ‘Companion’ — especially, may I say, with the ‘Modern Pygmalion,’ which catches me on my weak side of the love of wonder. By the way, what am I to say of Swedenborg and mesmerism? So much I could — the books have so drawn and held me (as far as I was capable of being drawn or held, in this chaos of London) — that I will not speak at all. The note-page is too small — the haste I write in, too great.

  God bless you, and good bye. Robert bids me give you his love (of the earnestest), and I have leave from you (have I not?) to be always affectionately yours,

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

  The journey to Paris was effected at the end of September, and for about nine months they pitched their tent at No. 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées. It was a fortunate time to be in Paris for those who had no personal nervousness, and liked to be near the scene of great events — a most anxious time for any who were alarmed at disturbances, or took keenly to heart the horrors of street fighting. Fortunately for the Brownings, they, whether by temperament or through their Italian experiences, were not unduly disturbed at revolutions, while the horrors of Louis Napoleon’s coup d’état were, no doubt, only partly known to Mrs. Browning at the time, and were palliated to her by the view she took of Napoleon’s character. She had not, it is true, raised him as yet to the pinnacle on which his intervention on behalf of Italy subsequently caused her to place him, but (perhaps owing to what Mr. Kenyon called her ‘immoral sympathy with power’) she was always disposed to put a favourable construction on his actions, and the coup d’état was finally whitewashed for her by the approbation which the plébiscite of December 20 gave to his assumption of supreme power. Her views are, however, so fully set forth in her own letters that they need not be detailed here. For her husband’s opinion of the character of Louis Napoleon, at least as it appeared to him when looking back after the lapse of years, it is only necessary to refer to ‘Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.’

  To Mrs. Jameson

  [Paris,] 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:

  October 21, .

  But didn’t you, dearest friend, get ‘Casa Guidi’ and the portrait of Madme de Goethe, left for you in the London house? I felt a want of leaving a word of adieu with these, and then the chaotic confusion in which we left England stifled the better purpose out of me.

  With such mixed feelings I went away. Leaving love behind is always terrible, but it was not all love that I left, and there was relief in the state of mind with which I threw myself on the sofa at Dieppe — yes, indeed. Robert felt differently from me for once, as w
as natural, for it had been pure joy to him with his family and his friends, and I do believe he would have been capable of never leaving England again, had such an arrangement been practicable for us on some accounts. Oh England! I love and hate it at once. Or rather, where love of country ought to be in the heart, there is the mark of the burning iron in mine, and the depth of the scar shows the depth of the root of it. Well, I am writing you an amusing letter to-day, I think. After all, I wasn’t made to live in England, or I should not cough there perpetually; while no sooner do I get to Paris than the cough vanishes — it is all but gone now. The lightness of the air here makes the place tenable — so far, at least. We made many an effort to get an apartment near the Madeleine, but we had to sacrifice sun or money, or breath, in going up to the top of a house, and the sacrifice seemed too great upon consideration, and we came off to the ‘Avenue des Champs-Elysées,’ on the sunshiny side of the way, to a southern aspect, and pretty cheerful carpeted rooms — a drawing room, a dressing and writing room for Robert, a small dining room, two comfortable bedrooms and a third bedroom upstairs for the femme de service, kitchen, &c., for two hundred francs a month. Not too dear, we think. About the same that we paid, out of the season, in London for the miserable accommodation we had there. But perhaps you won’t come near us now; we may be too much ‘out of the way’ for you. Is it so indeed? Understand that close by us is a stand of coupés and fiacres, not to profane your ears with the mention of the continual stream of omnibuses by means of which you may reach the other end of Paris for six sous. And there might be a possibility of taking a small apartment for you in this very house. See how I castle-build.

  But if the Crystal Palace vanishes from the face of the earth, who shall trust any more in castles? Will they really pull it down, do you think? If it’s a bubble, it’s a glass bubble, and not meant, therefore, for bursting in the air, it seems to me. And you do want a place in England for sculpture, and also to show people how olives grow. What a beautiful winter garden it would be! But they will pull it down, perhaps; and then, the last we shall have seen of it will be in this description of your letter, and that’s seeing it worthily, too.