Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  We were from home last night; we went to Lady Elgin’s reception, and met a Madame Mohl, who was entertaining, and is to come to us this morning —

  She came as I wrote those words. She knows you, among her other advantages, and we have been talking of you, dear friend, and we are going to her on Friday evening to see some of the French. I shall have to go to prison very soon, I suppose, as usual, for the winter months, for here is the twenty-first of October, though this is the first fire we have had occasion for. It was colder this morning, but we have had exquisite weather, really, ever since we left England.

  The ‘elf’ is flourishing in all good fairyhood, with a scarlet rose leaf on each cheek. Wilson says she never knew him to have such an irreproachable appetite. He is charmed with Paris, and its magnificent Punches, and roundabouts, and balloons — which last he says, looking up after them gravely, ‘go to God.’ The child has curious ideas about theology already. He is of opinion that God ‘lives among the birds.’ He has taken to calling himself ‘Peninni,’ which sounds something like a fairy’s name, though he means it for ‘Wiedeman.’

  Robert is in good spirits, and inclined to like Paris increasingly. Do you know I think you have an idea in England that you monopolise comforts, and I, for one, can’t admit it. These snug ‘apartments’ exclude the draughty passages and staircases, which threaten your life every time that you run to your bedroom for a pocket-handkerchief in England. I much prefer the Continental houses to the English ones, both for winter and summer, on this account.

  So glad I am that you are nearly at the end of your work. To rest after work, what more than rest that always is!

  Write to us often — do! We are not in Italy, and you have no excuse for even seeming to forget us. We are full in sight still, remember.

  Are you aware that Carlyle travelled with us to Paris? He left a deep impression with me. It is difficult to conceive of a more interesting human soul, I think. All the bitterness is love with the point reversed. He seems to me to have a profound sensibility — so profound and turbulent that it unsettles his general sympathies. Do you guess what I mean the least in the world? or is it as dark as my writings are of course?

  I hope on every account you will have no increase of domestic care. How is Miss Procter? How kind everybody was to us in England, and how affectionately we remember it! God bless you yourself! We love you for the past and the present, besides the future in December.

  Your attached

  E.B.B.

  To Miss Mitford

  [Paris,] 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:

  October 22, .

  The pause in writing has come from the confusion in living, my ever dearest Miss Mitford, and no worse cause. It was a long while before we could settle ourselves in a private apartment, and we had to stay at the hotel and wander about like doves turned out of the dove-cote, and seeking where to inhabit.... We have seen nothing in Paris, except the shell of it, yet. No theatres — nothing but business. Yet two evenings ago we hazarded going to a ‘reception’ at Lady Elgin’s, in the Faubourg St. Germain, and saw some French, but nobody of distinction. It is a good house, I believe, and she has an earnest face which must mean something. We were invited, and are invited to go every Monday, and that Monday in particular, between eight and twelve. You go in a morning dress, and there is tea. Nothing can be more sans façon, and my tremors (for, do you know, I was quite nervous on the occasion, and charged Robert to keep close to me) were perfectly unjustified by the event. You see it was an untried form of society — like trying a Turkish bath. I expected to see Balzac’s duchesses and hommes de lettres on all sides of me, but there was nothing very noticeable, I think, though we found it agreeable enough. We go on Friday evening to a Madame Mohl’s, where we are to have some of the ‘celebrities,’ I believe, for she seems to know everybody of all colours, from white to red. Then Mazzini is to give us a letter to George Sand — come what will, we must have a letter to George Sand — and Robert has one to Emile Lorquet of the ‘National,’ and Gavarni of the ‘Charivari,’ so that we shall manage to thrust our heads into this atmosphere of Parisian journalism, and learn by experience how it smells. I hear that George Sand is seldom at Paris now. She has devoted herself to play-writing, and employs a houseful of men, her son’s friends and her own, in acting privately with her what she writes — trying it on a home stage before she tries it at Paris. Her son is a very ordinary young man of three-and-twenty, but she is fond of him....

  Never expect me to agree with you in that cause célèbre of ‘ladies and gentlemen’ against people of letters. I don’t like the sort of veneer which passes in society — yes, I like it, but I don’t love it. I know what the thing is worth as a matter of furniture-accomplishment, and there an end. I should rather look at the scratched silent violin in the corner, with the sense that music has come out of it or will come. I am grateful to the man who has written a good book, and I recognise reverently that the roots of it are in him. And, do you know, I was not disappointed at all in what I saw of writers of books in London; no, not at all. Carlyle, for instance, I liked infinitely more in his personality than I expected to like him, and I saw a great deal of him, for he travelled with us to Paris and spent several evenings with us, we three together. He is one of the most interesting men I could imagine even, deeply interesting to me; and you come to understand perfectly, when you know him, that his bitterness is only melancholy, and his scorn sensibility. Highly picturesque too he is in conversation. The talk of writing men is very seldom as good.

  And, do you know, I was much taken, in London, with a young authoress, Geraldine Jewsbury. You have read her books. There’s a French sort of daring, half-audacious power in them, but she herself is quiet and simple, and drew my heart out of me a good deal. I felt inclined to love her in our half-hour’s intercourse. And I liked Lady Eastlake too in another way, the ‘lady’ of the ‘Letters from the Baltic,’ nay, I liked her better than the ‘lady’....

  Do write to me and tell me of your house, whether you are settling down in it comfortably. In every new house there’s a good deal of bird’s work in treading and shuffling down the loose sticks and straws, before one can feel it is to be a nest. Robert laughs at me sometimes for pushing about the chairs and tables in a sort of distracted way, but it’s the very instinct of making a sympathetical home, that works in me. We were miserably off in London. I couldn’t tuck myself in anyhow. And we enjoy in proportion these luxurious armchairs, so good for the Lollards.

  People say that the troops which pass before our windows every few days through the ‘Arc de l’Étoile’ to be reviewed will bring the President back with them as ‘emperor’ some sunny morning not far off. As to waiting till May, nobody expects it. There is a great inward agitation, but the surface of things is smooth enough. Be constant, be constant! Constancy is a rare virtue even where it is not an undeniable piece of wisdom. Vive Napoleon II.!

  As to the book, ah, you are always, and have always been, too good to me, that’s quite certain; and if you are not too good to my husband, it is only because I am persuaded in my secret soul nobody can be too good to him.

  He sends you his warm regards, and I send you a kiss of baby’s, who is finishing his Babylonish education, unfortunate child, by learning a complement of French. I assure you he understands everything you can say to him in English as well as Italian, so that he won’t be utterly denationalised.

  God bless you. Say how you are and write soon.

  Your ever affectionate

  E.B.B.

  To Miss Mitford

  [Paris,] 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:

  November 12, 1851.

  I see your house, my beloved friend, and clap my hands for pleasure. It will suit you admirably, I see, plainly from Paris, and how right you are about the pretty garden, not to make it fine and modern; you have the right instincts about such things, and are too strong for Mrs. Loudon and the landscape gardeners. The only defect apparent to me at this distance is the
size of the sitting room.... If you were to see what we call ‘an apartment’ in Paris! We have just a slip of a kitchen, and no passage, no staircase to take up the space, which is altogether spent upon sitting and sleeping rooms. Talk of English comforts! It’s a national delusion. The comfort of the Continental way of life has only to be tested to be recognised (with the exception of the locks of doors and windows, which are barbaric here, there’s no other word for it). The economy of a habitation is understood in Paris. You have the advantages of a large house without the disadvantages, without the coldness, without the dearness. And the beds, chairs, and sofas are perfect things.

  But the climate is not perfect, it seems, for we have had very cold weather the last ten days, and I am a prisoner as usual. Our friends swear to us that it is exceptional weather and that it will be warmer presently, and I listen with a sort of ‘doubtful doubt’ worthy of a metaphysician. It is some comfort to hear that it’s below zero in London meanwhile, and that Scotland stands eight feet deep in snow.

  We have a letter for George Sand (directed à Madame George Sand) from Mazzini, and we hear that she is to be in Paris within twelve days. Then we must make a rush and present it, for her stay here is not likely to be long, and I would not miss seeing her for a great deal, though I have not read one of her late dramas, and only by faith understand that her wonderful genius has conquered new kingdoms. Her last romance, ‘Le Château des Déserts,’ is treated disdainfully in the ‘Athenæum.’ I have not read that even, but Mr. Chorley is apt to be cold towards French writers and I don’t expect his judgment as final therefore. Have you seen M. de la Mare’s correspondence with Mirabeau? And do you ever catch sight of the ‘Revue des Deux Mondes’? In the August number is an excellent and most pleasant article on my husband, elaborately written and so highly appreciatory as well nigh to satisfy me. ‘Set you down this’ that there has sprung up in France lately an ardent admiration of the present English schools of poetry, or rather of the poetry produced by the present English schools, which they consider an advance upon the poetry of the ages. Think of this, you English readers who are still wearing broad hems and bombazeens for the Byron and Scott glorious days!

  Let me think what I can tell you of the President. I have never seen his face, though he has driven past me in the boulevards, and past these windows constantly, but it is said that he is very like his portraits — and, yes, rumour and the gazettes speak of his riding well. Wilson and Wiedeman had an excellent view of him the other day as he turned into a courtyard to pay some visit, and she tells me that his carriage was half full of petitions and nosegays thrown through the windows. What a fourth act of a play we are in just now! It is difficult to guess at the catastrophe. Certainly he must be very sure of his hold on the people to propose repealing the May edict, and yet there are persons who persist in declaring that nobody cares for him and that even a revision of the constitution will not bring about his re-election. I am of an opposite mind; though there is not much overt enthusiasm of the population in behalf of his person. Still, this may arise from a quiet resolve to keep him where he is, and an assurance that he can’t be ousted in spite of the people and army. It is significant, I think, that Emile de Girardin should stretch out a hand (a little dirty, be it observed in passing), and that Lamartine, after fasting nineteen days and nights (a miraculous fast, without fear of the ‘prefect’), should murmur a ‘credo’ in favour of his honesty. As to honesty, ‘I do believe he’s honest;’ that is to say, he has acted out no dishonesty as yet, and we have no right to interpret doubtful texts into dishonorable allegations. But for ambition — for ambition! Answer from the depth of your conscience, ‘de profundis.’ Is he or is he not an ambitious man? Does he or does he not mean in his soul to be Napoleon the Second? Yes, yes — I think, you think, we all think.

  Robert’s father and sister have been paying us a visit during the last three weeks. They are very affectionate to me, and I love them for his sake and their own, and am very sorry at the thought of losing them, which we are on the point of doing. We hope, however, to establish them in Paris if we can stay, and if no other obstacle should arise before the spring, when they must leave Hatcham. Little Wiedeman draws; as you may suppose, he is adored by his grandpapa; and then, Robert! they are an affectionate family and not easy when removed one from another. Sarianna is full of accomplishment and admirable sense, even-tempered and excellent in all ways — devoted to her father as she was to her mother: indeed, the relations of life seem reversed in their case, and the father appears the child of the child....

  Perhaps you have not seen Eugène Sue’s ‘Mystères de Paris’ — and I am not deep in the first volume yet. Fancy the wickedness and stupidity of trying to revive the distinctions and hatreds of race between the Gauls and Franks. The Gauls, please to understand, are the ‘prolétaires,’ and the capitalists are the Frank invaders (call them Cosaques, says Sue) out of the forests of Germany!...

  I saw no Mr. Harness; and no Talfourd of any kind. The latter was a kind of misadventure, as Lady Talfourd was on the point of calling on me when Robert would not let her. We were going away just then. Mr. Horne I had the satisfaction of seeing several times — you know how much regard I feel for him. One evening he had the kindness to bring his wife miles upon miles just to drink tea with us, and we were to have spent a day with them somehow, half among the fields, but engagements came betwixt us adversely. She is less pretty and more interesting than I expected — looking very young, her black glossy hair hanging down her back in ringlets; with deep earnest eyes, and a silent listening manner. He was full of the ‘Household Words,’ and seems to write articles together with Dickens — which must be highly unsatisfactory, as Dickens’s name and fame swallow up every sort of minor reputation in the shadow of his path. I shouldn’t like, for my part (and if I were a fish), to herd with crocodiles. But I suppose the ‘Household Words’ pay — and that’s a consideration. ‘Claudie’ I have not read. We have only just subscribed to a library, and we have been absorbed a good deal by our visitors....

  Write and don’t leave off loving me. I will tell you of everybody noticeable whom I happen to see, and of George Sand among the first.

  Love your ever affectionate

  Ba.

  To Mrs. Jameson

  [Paris,] 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:

  December 10, .

  I receive your letter, dearest friend, and hasten to write a few brief words to save the post.

  We have suffered neither fear nor danger — and I would not have missed the grand spectacle of the second of December for anything in the world — scarcely, I say, for the sight of the Alps.

  On the only day in which there was much fighting (Thursday), Wiedeman was taken out to walk as usual, under the precaution of keeping in the immediate neighbourhood of this house. This will prove to you how little we have feared for ourselves.

  But the natural emotion of the situation one could not escape from, and on Thursday night I sate up in my dressing gown till nearly one, listening to the distant firing from the boulevards. Thursday was the only day in which there was fighting of any serious kind. There has been no resistance on the part of the real people — nothing but sympathy for the President, I believe, if you except the natural mortification and disappointment of baffled parties. To judge from our own tradespeople: ‘il a bien fait! c’est le vrai neveu de son oncle!’ such phrases rung on every tone expressed the prevailing sentiment.

  For my own part I have not only more hope in the situation but more faith in the French people than is ordinary among the English, who really try to exceed one another in discoloration and distortion of the circumstances. The government was in a deadlock — what was to be done? Yes, all parties cried out, ‘What was to be done?’ and felt that we were waist deep a fortnight ago in a state of crisis. In throwing back the sovereignty from a ‘representative assembly’ which had virtually ceased to represent, into the hands of the people, I think that Louis Napoleon did well. The talk about ‘
military despotism’ is absolute nonsense. The French army is eminently civic, and nations who take their ideas from the very opposite fact of a standing army are far from understanding how absolutely a French soldier and French citizen are the same thing. The independence of the elections seems to be put out of reach of injury; and intelligent men of adverse opinions to the government think that the majority will be large in its favour. Such a majority would certainly justify Louis Napoleon, or should — even with you in England.

  I think you quite understate the amount of public virtue in France. The difficulties of statesmanship here are enormous. I do not accuse even M. Thiers of want of public virtue. What he has wanted, has been length and breadth of view — purely an intellectual defect — and his petty, puny tracasseries destroyed the Republican Assembly just as it destroyed the throne of Louis Philippe, in spite of his own intentions.

  There is a conflict of ideas in France, which we have no notion of in England, but we ought to understand that it does not involve the failing of principle, in the elemental moral sense. Be just to France, dear friend, you who are more than an Englishwoman — a Mrs. Jameson!

  Everything is perfectly tranquil in Paris, I assure you — theatres full and galleries open as usual. At the same time, timid and discouraged persons say, ‘Wait till after the elections,’ and of course the public emotion will be a good deal excited at that time. Therefore, judge for yourself. For my own part I have not had the slightest cause for alarm of any kind — and there is my child! Judge....