Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  The weather is exquisite, and I am going out to walk directly. It is scarcely possible to bear a fire, and some of our friends sit with the window open. We are all well.

  This should have gone to you yesterday, but we had visitors who talked past post time. The delay, however, has allowed of my writing more than I meant to have done in beginning this letter. Robert’s best love.

  Your ever affectionate

  Ba.

  Robert says that according to the impression of the wisest there can be no danger. Don’t wait till after the elections. The time is most interesting, and it is well worth your while to come and see for yourself.

  To Mrs. Martin

  [Paris,] 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:

  December 11, .

  To show how alive I am, dearest Mrs. Martin, I will tell you that I have just come home from a long walk to the Tuileries. We took a carriage to return, that’s true. Then yesterday I was out, besides, and last Saturday, the 6th, we drove down the boulevards to see the field of action on the terrible Thursday (the only day on which there was any fighting of consequence), counting the holes in the walls bored by the cannon, and looking at the windows smashed in. Even then, though the asphalte was black with crowds, the quiet was absolute, and most of the shops reopened. On Sunday the theatres were as full as usual, and our Champs-Elysées had quite its complement of promenaders. Wiedeman’s prophecy had not been carried out, any more than the prophecies of the wiser may — the soldiers had not shot Punch.

  And now I do beg you not to be down-hearted. See, if French blood runs in your veins, that you don’t take a pedantic view of this question like an Englishwoman. Constitutional forms and essential principles of liberty are so associated in England, that they are apt to be confounded, and are, in fact, constantly confounded. For my part, I am too good a democrat to be afraid of being thrown back upon the primitive popular element, from impossible paper constitutions and unrepresenting representative assemblies. The situation was in a deadlock, and all the conflicting parties were full of dangerous hope of taking advantage of it; and I don’t see, for my part, what better could be done for the French nation than to sweep the board clear and bid them begin again. With no sort of prejudice in favour of Louis Napoleon (except, I confess to you, some artistical admiration for the consummate ability and courage shown in his coup d’état), with no particular faith in the purity of his patriotism, I yet hold him justified so far, that is, I hold that a pure patriot would be perfectly justifiable in taking the same steps which up to this moment he has taken. He has broken, certainly, the husk of an oath, but fidelity to the intention of it seems to me reconcilable with the breach; and if he had not felt that he had the great mass of the people to back him, he is at least too able a man, be certain, if not too honest a man, to have dared what he has dared. You will see the result of the elections. As to Paris, don’t believe that Paris suffers violence from Louis Napoleon. The result of my own impressions is a conviction that from the beginning he had the sympathy of the whole population here with him, to speak generally, and exclusively of particular parties. All our tradespeople, for instance, milkman, breadman, wine merchant, and the rest, yes, even the shrewd old washerwoman, and the concierge, and our little lively servant were in a glow of sympathy and admiration. ‘Mais, c’est le vrai neveu de son oncle! il est admirable! enfin la patrie sera sauvée.’ The bourgeoisie has now accepted the situation, it is admitted on all hands. ‘Scandalous adhesion!’ say some. ‘Dreadful apathy!’ say others. Don’t you say either one or the other, or I think you will be unjust to Paris and France.

  The French people are very democratical in their tendencies, but they must have a visible type of hero-worship, and they find it in the bearer of that name Napoleon. That name is the only tradition dear to them, and it is deeply dear. That a man bearing it, and appealing at the same time to the whole people upon democratical principles, should be answered from the heart of the people, should neither astonish, nor shame, nor enrage anybody.

  An editor of the ‘National,’ a friend of ours, feels this so much, that he gnashes his teeth over the imprudence of the extreme Reds, who did not set themselves to trample out the fires of Buonapartism while they had some possibility of doing it. ‘Ce peuple a la tête dure,’ said he vehemently.

  As to military despotism, would France bear that, do you think? Is the French army, besides, made after the fashion of standing armies, such as we see in other countries? Are they not eminently civic, flesh of the people’s flesh? I fear no military despotism for France, oh, none. Every soldier is a citizen, and every citizen is or has been a soldier.

  Altogether, instead of despairing, I am full of hope. It seems to me probable that the door is open to a wider and calmer political liberty than France has yet enjoyed. Let us wait.

  The American forms of republicanism are most uncongenial to this artistic people; but democratical institutions will deepen and broaden, I think, even if we should soon all be talking of the ‘Empire.’

  As to the repressive measures, why, grant the righteousness of the movement, and you must accept its conditions. Don’t believe the tremendous exaggerations you are likely to hear on all sides — don’t, I beseech you.

  The President rode under our windows on December 2, through a shout extending from the Carrousel to the Arc de l’Etoile. The troups poured in as we stood and looked. No sight could be grander, and I would not have missed it, not for the Alps, I say.

  You say nothing specific. How I should like to know why exactly you are out of spirits, and whether dear Mr. Martin is sad too. Robert and I have had some domestic émeutes, because he hates some imperial names; yet he confessed to me last night that the excessive and contradictory nonsense he had heard among Legitimists, Orleanists, and English, against the movement inclined him almost to a revulsion of feeling.

  I would have written to you to-day, even if I had not received your letter. You will forgive that what I have written should have been scratched in the utmost haste to save the post. I can’t even read it over. There’s the effect of going out to walk the first thing in the morning....

  Your ever affectionate

  Ba — to both of you.

  To Miss Mitford

  [Paris,] 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:

  Christmas Eve, .

  What can you have thought of me? That I was shot or deserved to be? Forgive in the first instance, dearest friend, and believe that I won’t behave so any more, if in any way I can help it.

  Tell me your thought now about L. Napoleon. He rode under our windows on December 2 through an immense shout from the Carrousel to the Arc de l’Etoile. There was the army and the sun of Austerlitz, and even I thought it one of the grandest of sights; for he rode there in the name of the people, after all....

  But we know men most opposed to him, writers of the old ‘Presse’ and ‘National,’ and Orleanists, and Legitimists, and the fury of all such I can scarcely express to you after the life. Emile de Girardin and his friends had a sublime scheme of going over in a body to England, and establishing a Socialist periodical, inscribing on their new habitation, ‘Ici c’est la France.’ He actually advertised for sale his beautiful house close by in the Champs-Elysées, asked ten thousand pounds (English) for it; and would have been ‘rather disappointed,’ as one of his sympathising friends confessed to us, if the offer had been accepted. I heard a good story the other day. A lady visitor was groaning politically to Madame de Girardin over the desperateness of the situation. ‘Il n’y a que Celui, qui est en haut, qui peut nous en tirer,’ said she, casting up her eyes. ‘Oui, c’est vrai,’ replied Madame, ‘il le pourrait, lui,’ glancing towards the second floor, where Emile was at work upon feuilletons. Not that she mistakes him habitually for her deity, by any manner of means, if scandal is to be listened to.

  I hear that Lamennais is profoundly disgusted. He said to a friend of ours, that the French people were ‘putrefied to the heart.’ Which means that they have one tradition still d
ear to them (the name of Napoleon) and that they put no faith in the Socialistic prophets. Wise or unwise they may be accordingly; but an affection and an apprehension can’t reasonably be said to amount to a ‘putrefaction,’ I think. No, indeed.

  Louis Napoleon is said to say (a bitter foe of his told me this) that ‘there will be four phases of his life.’ The first was all rashness and imprudence, but ‘it was necessary to make him known:’ the second, ‘the struggle with and triumph over anarchy:’ the third, ‘the settlement of France and the pacification of Europe:’ the fourth, a coup de pistolet. Se non è vero, è ben trovato. Nothing is more likely than the catastrophe in any case; and the violence of the passions excited in the minority makes me wonder at his surviving a day even. Do you know I heard your idol of a Napoleon (the antique hero) called the other evening through a black beard and gnashing teeth, ‘le plus grand scélérat du monde,’ and his empire, ‘le règne du Satan,’ and his marshals, ‘les coquins.’ After that, I won’t tell you that ‘le neveu’ is reproached with every iniquity possible to anybody’s public and private life. Perhaps he is not ‘sans reproche’ in respect to the latter, not altogether; but one can’t believe, and oughtn’t, even infinitesimally, the things which are talked on the subject....

  Ah, I am so vexed about George Sand. She came, she has gone, and we haven’t met! There was a M. François who pretended to be her very very particular friend, and who managed the business so particularly ill, from some motive or some incapacity, that he did not give us an opportunity of presenting our letter. He did not ‘dare’ to present it for us, he said. She is shy — she distrusts bookmaking strangers, and she intended to be incognita while in Paris. He proposed that we should leave it at the theatre, and Robert refused. Robert said he wouldn’t have our letter mixed up with the love letters of the actresses, or perhaps given to the ‘premier comique’ to read aloud in the green room, as a relief to the ‘Chère adorable,’ which had produced so much laughter. Robert was a little proud and M. François very stupid; and I, between the two, in a furious state of dissent from either. Robert tries to smooth down my ruffled plumage now, by promising to look out for some other opportunity, but the late one has gone. She is said to have appeared in Paris in a bloom of recovered beauty and brilliancy of eyes, and the success of her play, ‘Le Mariage de Victorine,’ was complete. A strange, wild, wonderful woman, certainly. While she was here, she used a bedroom which belongs to her son — a mere ‘chambre de garçon’ — and for the rest, saw whatever friends she chose to see only at the ‘café,’ where she breakfasted and dined. She has just finished a romance, we hear, and took fifty-two nights to write it. She writes only at night. People call her Madame Sand. There seems to be no other name for her in society or letters.

  Now listen. Alexandre Dumas does write his own books, that’s a fact. You know I always maintained it, through the odour of Dumas in the books, but people swore the contrary with great foolish oaths worth nothing. Maquet prepares historical materials, gathers together notes, and so on, but Dumas writes every word of his books with his own hand, and with a facility amounting to inspiration, said my informant. He called him a great savage negro child. If he has twenty sous and wants bread, he buys a pretty cane instead. For the rest, ‘bon enfant,’ kind and amiable. An inspired negro child! In debt at this moment, after all the sums he has made, said my informant — himself a most credible witness and highly cultivated man.

  I heard of Eugène Sue, too, yesterday. Our child is invited to a Christmas tree and party, and Robert says he is too young to go, but I persist in sending him for half an hour with Wilson — oh, really I must — though he will be by far the youngest of the thirty children invited. The lady of the house, Miss Fitton, an English resident in Paris, an elderly woman, shrewd and kind, said to Robert that she had a great mind to have Eugène Sue, only he was so scampish. I think that was the word, or something alarmingly equivalent. Now I should like to see Eugène Sue with my little innocent child in his arms; the idea of the combination pleases me somewhat. But I sha’n’t see it in any case. We had three cold days last week, which brought back my cough and took away my voice. I am dumb for the present and can’t go out any more....

  At last I have caught sight of an advertisement of your book. A very catching title, and if I mayn’t compliment you upon it, I certainly do your publisher. I dare say the book is charming, and the more of yourself in it, the more charming.

  Write, and say how you are always when you write. Say, too, how you continue to like your new house. We heard a good deal of you from Mr. Fields, though he came to us only once. With him came Mr. Longfellow, the poet’s brother, who is at present in Paris — I mean the brother, not the poet. Robert’s love, may I say?

  Wiedeman has struck up two friendships: one, with the small daughter of our concierge and one with a little Russian princess, a month younger than himself. He calls them both ‘boys,’ having no idea yet of the less sublime sex, but he likes the plebeian best. May God make you happy on this and other seasons!

  Love your affectionate and grateful

  Ba.

  To Mrs. Martin

  [Paris,] 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:

  January 17, .

  My dearest Mrs. Martin, — If you think I have not written to you, you must be (as you are) the most lenient of friends, not to give me up for ever. I answered your first letter by return of post and at great length. About a fortnight ago, Robert heard from Madame Mohl, who heard from somebody at Pau that you were ‘waiting anxiously to hear from me,’ upon which I wrote a second letter. And that, too, did not reach you? Is it possible? But I am innocent, innocent, innocent. See how innocent. Now, if M. le Président has stopped my letters, or if he ponders in his imperial mind how to send me out of Paris, he is as ungrateful as a king, because I have been taking his part all this time at a great cost of domestic émeutes. So you would have known, if you had received my letters. The coup d’état was a grand thing, dramatically and poetically speaking, and the appeal to the people justified it in my eyes, considering the immense difficulty of the circumstances, the impossibility of the old constitution and the impracticability of the House of Assembly. Now that’s all over. For the rest — the new constitution — I can’t say as much for it; it disappoints me immensely. Absolute government, no, while the taxes and acceptance of law lies, as he leaves it, with the people; but there are stupidities undeniable, I am afraid, and how such a constitution is to work, and how marshals and cardinals are to help to work it, remains to be seen. I fear we have not made a good change even from the ‘constitution Marrast’ after all. The English newspapers have made me so angry, that I scarcely know whether I am as much ashamed, yet the shame is very great. As if the people of France had not a right to vote as they pleased! We understand nothing in England. As Cousin said, long ago, we are ‘insular’ of understanding. France may be mistaken in her speculations, as she often is; and if any mistake has been lately committed, it will be corrected by herself in a short time. Ignoble in her speculations she never is....

  I must tell you, my dearest friend, that for some days past I have been very much upset, and am scarcely now fairly on my feet again, in consequence of becoming suddenly aware of a painful indiscretion committed by an affectionate and generous woman. I refer to Miss Mitford’s account of me in her new book. We heard of it in a strange way, through M. Philaret Chasles, of the Collège de France, beginning a course of lectures on English literature, and announcing an extended notice of E.B.B., ‘the veil from whose private life had lately been raised by Miss Mitford.’ Somebody who happened to be present told us of it, and while we were wondering and uncomfortable, up came a writer in the ‘Revue des Deux Mondes’ to consult Robert upon a difficulty he was in. He was engaged, he said, upon an article relating to me, and the proprietors of the review had sent him a number of the ‘Athenæum,’ which contained an extract from Miss M.’s book, desiring him to make use of the biographical details. Now it struck him immediately, he said
, on reading the passage, that it was likely to give me great pain, and he was so unwilling to be the means of giving me more pain that he came to Robert to ask him how he should act. Do observe the delicacy and sensibility of this man — a man, a foreigner, a Frenchman! I shall be grateful to him as long as I live.

  Robert has seen the extract in the ‘Athenæum.’ It refers to the great affliction of my life, with the most affectionate intentions and the obtusest understanding. I know I am morbid, but this thing should not have been done indeed. Now, I shall be liable to see recollections dreadful to me, thrust into every vulgar notice of my books. I shall be afraid to see my books reviewed anywhere. Oh! I have been so deeply shaken by all this. You will understand, I am certain, and I could not help speaking of it to you, because I was certain.

  I am answering your note, observe, by return of post. Do let me know if you receive what I write this time. Robert will direct for me, having faith in his superior legibleness, and I accept the insult implied in the opinion.

  God bless you. Do write. And never doubt my grateful affection for you, whether posts go ill or well.

  Robert is going out to inquire about ‘My Novel.’ His warm regards with mine to dear Mr. Martin and yourself. This is a scratch rather than a letter, but I would rather send it to you in haste than wait for another post.

  Your ever affectionate

  Ba.

  The following letter marks the beginning of a new friendship, with Miss Mulock, afterwards Mrs. Craik, the authoress of ‘John Halifax, Gentleman.’ The subsequent letters are in very affectionate tones, but it does not appear that the correspondence ever reached any very extended dimensions.

  To Miss Mulock

  Paris, 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:

  January 21, .