Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  So we shall come back of course, if we live; indeed, we leave this house ready to come back to, meaning, if we can, to let our rooms simply.

  Little Penini looks like a rose, and has, besides, the understanding and sweetness of a creature ‘a little lower than the angels.’ I don’t care any less for him than I did, upon the whole.

  I hear the Sartoris’s think of Paris for next winter, and mean to give up Rome. She has been a good deal secluded, until quite lately, they say, on account of her father’s death and brother’s worse than death, which may account in part for any backwardness you may have observed. As to her ‘not liking Dr. Braun,’ do you believe in anybody’s not liking Dr. Braun? I don’t quite. It’s more difficult for me to ‘receive’ than the notion of the spiritual hand— ‘tenderly touching.’

  Do you know young Leighton of Rome? If so, you will be glad of this wonderful success of his picture, bought by the Queen, and applauded by the Academicians, and he not twenty-five.

  The lady who brought your book did not leave her name here, so of course she did not mean to be called on.

  Our kindest regards for dear Dr. Braun, and repeated truest thanks to both of you. Among his discoveries and inventions, he will invent some day an Aladdin’s lamp, and then you will be suddenly potentates, and vanish in a clap of thunder.

  Till then, think of me sometimes, dearest Madame Braun, as I do of you, and of all your great kindness to me at Rome.

  Ever your affectionate

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

  To Mr. Ruskin

  Florence: June 2, 1855.

  My dear Mr. Ruskin, — I believe I shall rather prove in this letter how my head turns round when I write it, than explain why I didn’t write it before — and so you will go on to think me the most insusceptible and least grateful of human beings — no small distinction in our bad obtuse world. Yet the truth is — oh, the truth is, that I am deeply grateful to you and have felt to the quick of my heart the meaning and kindness of your words, the worth of your sympathy and praise. One thing especially which you said, made me thankful that I had been allowed to live to hear it — since even to fancy that anything I had written could be the means of the least good to you, is worth all the trumpet blowing of a vulgar fame. Oh, of course, I do not exaggerate, though your generosity does. I understand the case as it is. We burn straw and it warms us. My verses catch fire from you as you read them, and so you see them in that light of your own. But it is something to be used to such an end by such a man, and I thank you, thank you, and so does my husband, for the deep pleasure you have given us in the words you have written.

  And why not say so sooner? Just because I wanted to say so fully, and because I have been crushed into a corner past all elbow-room for doing anything largely and comfortably, by work and fuss and uncertainty of various kinds. Now it isn’t any better scarcely, though it is quite fixed now that we are going from Florence to England — no more of the shadow dancing which is so pretty at the opera and so fatiguing in real life. We are coming, and have finished most of our preparations; conducted on a balance of — must we go? may we stay? which is so very inconvenient. If you knew what it is to give up this still dream-life of our Florence, where if one is over-busy ever, the old tapestries on the walls and the pre-Giotto pictures (picked up by my husband for so many pauls) surround us ready to quiet us again — if you knew what it is to give it all up and be put into the mill of a dingy London lodging and ground very small indeed, you wouldn’t be angry with us for being sorry to go north — you wouldn’t think it unnatural. As for me, I have all sorts of pain in England — everything is against me, except a few things; and yet, while my husband and I groan at one another, strophe and antistrophe (pardon that rag of Greek!) we admit our compensations — that it will be an excellent thing, for instance, to see Mr. Ruskin! Are we likely to undervalue that?

  Let me consider how to answer your questions. My poetry — which you are so good to, and which you once thought ‘sickly,’ you say, and why not? (I have often written sickly poetry, I do not doubt — I have been sickly myself!) — has been called by much harder names, ‘affected’ for instance, a charge I have never deserved, for I do think, if I may say it of myself, that the desire of speaking or spluttering the real truth out broadly, may be a cause of a good deal of what is called in me careless and awkward expression. My friends took some trouble with me at one time; but though I am not self-willed naturally, as you will find when you know me, I hope, I never could adopt the counsel urged upon me to keep in sight always the stupidest person of my acquaintance in order to clear and judicious forms of composition. Will you set me down as arrogant, if I say that the longer I live in this writing and reading world, the more convinced I am that the mass of readers never receive a poet (you, who are a poet yourself, must surely observe that) without intermediation? The few understand, appreciate, and distribute to the multitude below. Therefore to say a thing faintly, because saying it strongly sounds odd or obscure or unattractive for some reason, to ‘careless readers,’ does appear to me bad policy as well as bad art. Is not art, like virtue, to be practised for its own sake first? If we sacrifice our ideal to notions of immediate utility, would it not be better for us to write tracts at once?

  Of course any remark of yours is to be received and considered with all reverence. Only, be sure you please to say, ‘Do it differently to satisfy me, John Ruskin,’ and not to satisfy Mr., Mrs., and the Miss and Master Smith of the great majority. The great majority is the majority of the little, you know, who will come over to you if you don’t think of them — and if they don’t, you will bear it.

  Am I pert, do you think? No, don’t think it. And the truth is, though you may not see that, that your praise made me feel very humble. Nay, I was quite abashed at the idea of the ‘illumination’ of my poem; and still I keep winking my eyes at the prospect of so much glory. If you were a woman, I might say, when one feels ugly one pulls down the blinds; but as a man you are superior to the understanding of such a figure, and so I must simply tell you that you honor me over much indeed. My husband is very much pleased, and particularly pleased that you selected ‘Catarina,’ which is his favourite among my poems for some personal fanciful reasons besides the rest.

  But to go back. I said that any remark of yours was to be received by me in all reverence; and truth is a part of reverence, so I shall end by telling you the truth, that I think you quite wrong in your objection to ‘nympholept.’ Nympholepsy is no more a Greek word than epilepsy, and nobody would or could object to epilepsy or apoplexy as a Greek word. It’s a word for a specific disease or mania among the ancients, that mystical passion for an invisible nymph common to a certain class of visionaries. Indeed, I am not the first in referring to it in English literature. De Quincey has done so in prose, for instance, and Lord Byron talks of ‘The nympholepsy of a fond despair,’ though he never was accused of being overridden by his Greek. Tell me now if I am not justified, I also? We are all nympholepts in running after our ideals — and none more than yourself, indeed!

  Our American friend Mr. Jarves wrote to us full of gratitude and gratification on account of your kindness to him, for which we also should thank you. Whether he felt most overjoyed by the clasp of your hand or that of a disembodied spirit, which he swears was as real (under the mediumship of Hume, his compatriot), it was somewhat difficult to distinguish. But all else in England seemed dull and worthless in comparison with those two ‘manifestations,’ the spirit’s and yours!

  How very very kind of your mother to think of my child! and how happy I am near the end of my paper, not to be tempted on into ‘descriptions’ that ‘hold the place of sense.’ He is six years old, he reads English and Italian, and writes without lines, and shall I send you a poem of his for ‘illumination’? His poems are far before mine, the very prattle of the angels, when they stammer at first and are not sure of the pronunciation of e’s and i’s in the spiritual heavens (see Swedenborg). Really he is a sweet good chil
d, and I am not bearable in my conceit of him, as you see! My thankful regards to your mother, whom I shall hope to meet with you, and do yourself accept as much from us both.

  Most truly yours,

  Elizabeth B. Browning.

  We leave Florence next week, and spend at least a week in Paris, 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées.

  To Miss Browning

  Florence: June 12, 1855 [postmark].

  How kind and tender of you, my dearest Sarianna, to care so much to hear that I am better! I was afraid that Robert had written in the Crimean style about me, for he was depressed and uneasy, poor darling, and looked at things from the blackest point of view. Nevertheless, I have escaped some bad symptoms. No spitting of blood, for instance, no loss of voice, and scarcely a threatening of pain in the side. Also I have not grown thinner than is natural under the circumstances. At Genoa (after our cold journey) I wasted in a few days, and thought much worse of myself than there was reason to do this time.

  I can assure you I am now much restored. The cough is decidedly got under, and teases me, for the most part, only in the early morning; the fever is gone, and the nights are quiet. I am able to take animal food again, and shall soon recover my ordinary strength. Certainly it has been a bad attack, and I never suffered anything like it in Italy before. The illness at Genoa was the mere tail of what began in England, and was increased by the Alpine exposure. Our weather has been very severe — wind and frost together — something peculiarly irritating in the air. I am loth to blame my poor Florence, who never treated me so before (and how many winters we have spent here!) — and our friends write from Pisa that the weather was as trying there, while from Rome the account is simply ‘detestable weather.’ At Naples it is sometimes furiously cold; there’s no perfect climate anywhere, that’s certain. You have only to choose the least evil. Here for the last week it has been so mild that, if I had been in my usual state of health, I might have gone out, they say; and, of course, I have felt the influence beneficially. One encourages oneself in Italy when it is cold, with the assurance that it can’t last. Our misfortune this time has been that it has lasted unusually long. How the Italians manage without fires I cannot make out. So chilly as they are, too, it’s a riddle.

  You would wonder almost how I could feel the cold in these two rooms opening into each other, and from which I have not stirred since the cold weather began. Robert has kept up the fire in our bedroom throughout the night. Oh, he has been spoiling me so. If it had not been that I feared much to hurt him in having him so disturbed and worried, it would have been a very subtle luxury to me, this being ill and feeling myself dear. Do not set me down as too selfish. May God bless him!...

  Robert has been frantic about the Crimea, and ‘being disgraced in the face of Europe,’ &c. &c. When he is mild he wishes the ministry to be torn to pieces in the streets, limb from limb. I do not doubt that the Aberdeen side of the Cabinet has been greatly to blame, but the system is the root of the whole evil; if they don’t tear up the system they may tear up the Aberdeens ‘world without end,’ and not better the matter; if they do tear up the system, then shall we all have reason to rejoice at these disasters, apart from our sympathy with individual sufferings. More good will have been done by this one great shock to the heart of England than by fifty years’ more patching, and pottering, and knocking impotent heads together. What makes me most angry is the ministerial apology. ‘It’s always so with us for three campaigns,’!!! ‘it’s our way,’ ‘it’s want of experience,’ &c. &c. That’s precisely the thing complained of. As to want of experience, if the French have had Algerine experiences, we have had our Indian wars, Chinese wars, Caffre wars, and military and naval expenses exceeding those of France from year to year. If our people had never had to pay for an army, they might sit down quietly under the taunt of wanting experience. But we have soldiers, and soldiers should have military education as well as red coats, and be led by properly qualified officers, instead of Lord Nincompoop’s youngest sons. As it is in the army, so it is in the State. Places given away, here and there, to incompetent heads; nobody being responsible, no unity of idea and purpose anywhere — the individual interest always in the way of the general good. There is a noble heart in our people, strong enough if once roused, to work out into light and progression, and correct all these evils. Robert is a good deal struck by the generous tone of the observations of the French press, as contradistinguished from the insolences of the Americans, who really are past enduring just now. Certain of our English friends here in Florence have ceased to associate with them on that ground. I think there’s a good deal of jealousy about the French alliance. That may account for something....

  Dearest, kindest Sarianna, remember not to think any more about me, except that I love you, that I am your attached

  Ba.

  FOOTNOTES:

  Life and Letters of Robert Browning, by Mrs. Sutherland Orr, p. 216.

  The late Earl Lytton.

  Auguste Brizieux

  Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852.

  Mrs. Jameson’s Legends of the Madonna.

  General Franklin Pierce.

  ‘Tamerton Church Tower, and other Poems.’

  In a letter to Miss Mitford, written four days later than this, Mrs. Browning alludes again to the performance of ‘Colombe’s Birthday:’ ‘Yes — Robert’s play succeeded, but there could be no “run” for a play of that kind; it was a succès d’estime and something more, which is surprising, perhaps, considering the miserable acting of the men. Miss Faucit was alone in doing us justice.’

  A few lines have been cut off the letter at this place.

  A letter to the Athenæum on July 2, 1853, giving the result of some experiments in table-turning, the tendency of which was to show that the motion of the table was due to unconscious muscular action on the part of the persons touching the table.

  Senatore Villari.

  Mr. George Barrett. The omitted passage describes an act of generosity by him to one of his younger brothers.

  Hardly a successful horoscope of the future Ambassador at Paris and Viceroy of India.

  Afterwards wife of Signor Carlo Botta, an Italian man of letters, with whom she returned to America and lived in New York.

  This refers to the death of the infant child of the Storys, with whom Mr. and Mrs. Browning were on intimate terms of friendship, as the previous letters show.

  According to Mr. R.B. Browning, this is practically what has happened with Page’s portrait of Robert Browning (now in Venice). The surface has become thick and waxy, and the portrait has almost disappeared.

  Author of ‘IX. Poems, by V.’ (1840).

  This portrait is now in the possession of Mr. R.B. Browning at Venice.

  I.e. ‘grandfather,’ a name by which Mr. Browning, senior, is frequently referred to in these letters.

  ‘Hush, hush!’

  For the subsequent fate of this picture, see note on p. 148, above.

  To Mr. Barrett.

  This letter is written in very faint ink.

  The news of Inkerman had come only a few days before.

  Mrs. Browning’s ‘Song for the Ragged Schools of London’ (Poetical Works, iv. 270) and her husband’s ‘The Twins’ were printed together as a small pamphlet for sale at Miss Arabella Barrett’s bazaar. Mrs. Browning’s poem had been written before they left Rome.

  The horrors of the Crimean winter were now becoming known, which fully accounts for this outburst.

  The death of Mrs. Jameson’s husband in 1854 had left her in very straitened circumstances, which were ultimately relieved, in part, by a subscription among her friends and the admirers of her works.

  Dr. Braun’s Ruins and Museums of Rome (1854).

  The late Lord Leighton, P.R.A.

  The picture of Cimabue’s Madonna carried in procession through the streets of Florence. It was exhibited in the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1855, and was bought by the Queen.

  In 1852.

  CHAPTER IX.
1855-1859

  About a month after the date of the last letter, Mr. and Mrs. Browning left Italy for the second time. As on the previous occasion (1851-2), their absence extended over two summers and a winter, the latter being spent in Paris, while portions of each summer were given up to visits to England. Each of them was bringing home an important work for publication, Mr. Browning’s ‘Men and Women,’ containing much of his very greatest poetry, being passed through the press in 1855, while Mrs. Browning’s ‘Aurora Leigh,’ although more than half of it had been written before she left Florence, was not ready for printing until the following year. They travelled direct from Florence to London, arriving there apparently in the course of July, and taking up their quarters at 13 Dorset Street. Their stay there was made memorable, as Mrs. Browning records below, by a visit from Tennyson, who read to them, on September 27, his new poem of ‘Maud;’ and it was while he was thus employed that Rossetti drew a well-known portrait of the Laureate in pen and ink. But in spite of glimpses of Tennyson, Ruskin, Carlyle, Kenyon, and other friends, the visit to England was, on the whole, a painful one to Mrs. Browning. Intercourse with her own family did not run smooth. One sister was living at too great a distance to see her; the other was kept out of her reach, for a considerable part of the time, by her father. In addition, a third member of the Barrett family, her brother Alfred, earned excommunication from his father’s house by the unforgivable offence of matrimony. Altogether it was not without a certain feeling of relief that, in the middle of October, Mrs. Browning, with her husband and child, left England for Paris. The whole visit had been so crowded with work and social engagements as to leave little time for correspondence; and the letters for the period are consequently few and short.