Her letters were always admirable, but I do most deeply regret that what made one of their greatest charms unfits them for the public — I mean their personal details. Mr. Harness sends to me for letters, and when I bring them up, and with the greatest pain force myself to examine them (all those letters she wrote to me in her warm goodness and affectionateness), I find with wonder and sorrow how only a half-page here and there could be submitted to general readers — could, with any decency, much less delicacy.
But no, her ‘judgment’ was not ‘unerring.’ She was too intensely sympathetical not to err often, and in fact it was singular (or seemed so) what faces struck her as most beautiful, and what books as most excellent. If she loved a person, it was enough. She made mistakes one couldn’t help smiling at, till one grew serious to adore her for it. And yet when she read a book, provided it wasn’t written by a friend, edited by a friend, lent by a friend, or associated with a friend, her judgment could be fine and discriminating on most subjects, especially upon subjects connected with life and society and manners. Shall I confess? She never taught me anything but a very limited admiration of Miss Austen, whose people struck me as wanting souls, even more than is necessary for men and women of the world. The novels are perfect as far as they go — that’s certain. Only they don’t go far, I think. It may be my fault.
You lay down your finger and stop me, and exclaim that it’s my way perhaps to attribute a leaning of the judgment through personal sympathy to people in general — that I do it perhaps to you. No, indeed. I can quite easily believe that you don’t either think or say ‘the pleasantest things to your friends;’ in fact, I am sure you don’t. You would say them as soon to your enemies — perhaps sooner. Also, when you began to say pleasant things to me, you hadn’t a bit of personal feeling to make a happy prejudice of, and really I can’t flatter myself that you have now. What I meant was that you, John Ruskin, not being a critic sal merum as the ancients had it, but half critic, and half poet, may be rather encumbered sometimes by the burning imagination in you, may be apt sometimes, when you turn the light of your countenance on a thing, to see the thing lighted up as a matter of course, just as we, when we carried torches into the Vatican, were not perfectly clear how much we brought to that wonderful Demosthenes, folding the marble round him in its thousand folds — how much we brought, and how much we received. Was it the sculptor or was it the torch-bearer who produced that effect? And like doubts I have had of you, I confess, and not only when you have spoken kindly of me. You don’t mistake by your heart, through loving, but you exaggerate by your imagination, through glorifying. There’s my thought at least.
But what I meant by ‘apprehending too intensely,’ dear Mr. Ruskin, don’t ask me. Really I have forgotten. I suppose I did mean something, though it was a day of chaos and packing boxes — try to think I did therefore, and let it pass.
You please me — oh, so much — by the words about my husband. When you wrote to praise my poems, of course I had to bear it — I couldn’t turn round and say, ‘Well, and why don’t you praise him, who is worth twenty of me? Praise my second Me, as well as my Me proper, if you please.’ One’s forced to be rather decent and modest for one’s husband as well as for one’s self, even if it’s harder. I couldn’t pull at your coat to read ‘Pippa Passes,’ for instance. I can’t now.
But you have put him on the shelf, so we have both taken courage to send you his new volumes, ‘Men and Women,’ not that you may say ‘pleasant things’ of them or think yourself bound to say anything indeed, but that you may accept them as a sign of the esteem and admiration of both of us. I consider them on the whole an advance upon his former poems, and am ready to die at the stake for my faith in these last, even though the discerning public should set it down afterwards as only a ‘Heretic’s Tragedy.’
Our friend Mr. Jarves came to read a part of your letter to us, confirmatory of doctrines he had heard from us on an earlier day. The idea of your writing the art criticisms of the ‘Leader’ (!) was so stupendously ludicrous, there was no need of faith in your loyalty to laugh the whole imputation, at first hearing, to uttermost scorn. I must say, in justice to Mr. Jarves, that he never did really believe one word of it, though a good deal ruffled and pained that it should have been believed by anybody. He is full of admiring and grateful feeling for you, and has gone on to Italy in that mind.
As for me, I almost yearn to go too. We have fallen into a pit here in Paris, upon evil days and rooms, an impulsive friend having taken an apartment for us facing the east, insufficiently protected, and with a bedroom wanting, so that we are still waiting, with trunks unpacked, and our child sleeping on the floor, till we can get emancipated anyhow. Then, through the last week’s cold, I have not been well — only it will not, I think, be much, as I am better already, and there will be no practical end to the talk of Nice and Pau, which my husband had begun a little. All this has hindered me from following my first impulse of thanking you for your letter immediately.
How beautiful Paris is, and how I agree with you, as we both did with dear Miss Mitford, on the subject of Louis Napoleon. I approve of him exactly because I am a democrat, and not at all for an exceptional reason. I hold that the most democratical government in Europe is out and out the French Government (which doesn’t exclude the absolutist element, far from it); but who in England understands this? and that the representative man of France, the incarnate republic, is the man Louis Napoleon? An extraordinary man he is. I never was a Buonapartist, though the legend of the First Napoleon has wrung tears from me before now, and I was very sorry when Louis Napoleon was elected instead of Cavaignac. At the coup d’état I was not sorry. And since then I have believed in him more and more.
So far in sympathy. In regard to the slaves, no, no, no; I belong to a family of West Indian slaveholders, and if I believed in curses, I should be afraid. I can at least thank God that I am not an American. How you look serenely at slavery, I cannot understand, and I distrust your power to explain. Do you indeed?
Dear Mr. Ruskin, do let us hear from you sometimes. It is such a great gift, a letter of yours. Then remember that I am a spirit in prison all the winter, not able to stir out. Up to this time we have lived perdus from all our acquaintances because of our misfortunes. With my husband’s cordial regards, I remain most truly yours always,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
The publishers are directed to send you the volumes on their publication.
To Mrs. Jameson
[Paris] 3 Rue du Colisée, Avenue des Champs-Elysées:
Saturday, December 17, 1855 [postmark].
How pleasant, dearest Mona Nina, to hear you, though the voice sounds far! Try and come back to us soon, and let us talk, or listen, rather, to your talking. Why shouldn’t I, too, have a sister of charity, like others? I appeal to you.
Still, I have only good to tell you of myself. I am better through the better weather and through our arrival in this apartment, where, as Robert says, we are as pleased as if we had never lived in a house before. Well, I assure you the rooms are perfect in comfort and convenience; not large, but warm, and of a number and arrangement which exclude all fault-finding. Clean, carpeted; no glitter, nothing very pretty — not even the clocks — but with sofas and chairs suited to lollers such as one of us, and altogether what I mean whenever I say that an ‘apartment’ on the Continent is twenty times more really ‘comfortable’ than any of your small houses in England. Robert has a room to himself too. It’s perfect. I hop about from one side to the other, like a bird in a new cage. The feathers are draggled and rough, though. I am not strong, though the cough is quieter without the least doubt.
And this time also I shall not die, perhaps. Indeed, I do think not.
That darling Robert carried me into the carriage, swathed past possible breathing, over face and respirator in woollen shawls. No, he wouldn’t set me down even to walk up the fiacre steps, but shoved me in upside down, in a struggling bundle — I struggling for breath
— he accounting to the concierge for ‘his murdered man’ (rather woman) in a way which threw me into fits of laughter afterwards to remember. ‘Elle se porte très bien! elle se porte extrêmement bien. Ce n’est rien que les poumons.’ Nothing but lungs! No air in them, which was the worst! Think how the concierge must have wondered ever since about ‘cet original d’Anglais,’ and the peculiar way of treating wives when they are in excellent health. ‘Sacre.’
Kind Madame Mohl was here to-day, asking about you; and the Aides, male and female, whom we did not see, being at dinner; and dear Lady Elgin came to the door in her wheel-chair.
We keep Penini (in a bed this time) in our bedroom. He was so pathetic about it, we would not lose him.
Write to us, keep writing to us, till you come. I think much of you, wish much for you, and feel much with you. May God bless you, my dear dear friend! The frost broke up on Thursday, and it is raining warmly to-day; but I can’t believe in the possibility of the cold penetrating much into this house under worse circumstances; and I shall be bold, and try hard to begin writing next week.
Oh! George Sand. How magnificent that eighteenth volume is; I mean the volume which concludes with the views upon the sexes! After all, and through all, if her hands are ever so defiled, that woman has a clean soul.
On the magnetic subjects, too, her ‘je ne sais’ is worthy of her. And yet, more is to be known I am sure, than she knows.
I read this book so eagerly and earnestly that I seem to burn it up before me. Really there are great things in it.
And to hear people talking it over coldly, pulling it leaf from leaf!
Robert quite joins with me at last. He is intensely interested, and full of admiration.
Now do write. With our united love, we are ever yours, be certain!
R.B. and E.B.B.
Remember not to agree to do the etching. Pray be careful not to involve the precious eyes too much. How easy it would be to etch them out! Frightfully easy.
To Miss E.F. Haworth
[Paris] 3: Rue du Colisée:
Monday, January 29, 1856 [postmark].
Dearest Fanny, — I can’t get over it that you should fancy I meant to ‘banter’ you. If I wrote lightly, it was partly that you wrote lightly, and partly perhaps because at bottom I wasn’t light at all. When one feels out of spirits, it’s the most natural thing possible to be extravagantly gay; now, isn’t it?
And now believe me with what truth and earnestness of heart I am interested in all that concerns you; and this is every woman’s chief concern, of course, this great fact of love and marriage. My advice is, be sure of him first, and of yourself chiefly. For the rest I would marry (‘if I were a woman,’ I was going to say), though the whole world spouted fire in my face. Marriage is a personal matter, be sure, and the nearest and wisest can’t judge for you. If you can make up two hundred a year between you, or less even, there is no pecuniary obstacle in my eyes. People may live very cheaply and very happily if they are happy otherwise.
As for me, my only way was to cut the knot — because it was an untieable knot — and because my fingers generally are not strong at untieing. What do you mean by Mr. Kenyon’s backing me? Nobody backed me except the north wind which blew us vehemently out of England. Mr. Kenyon knew no more of the affair than you did, though he was very kind afterwards and took my part. And as to money, there was (and is) little enough. It was a case of pure madness (for people of the world), just like table-moving and spirit-rapping and the ‘hands’!
But you, my dear friend, I do earnestly entreat you to consider if you are sure of principles, sentiment — and of yourself. Because, whether you know it or not, you are happily situated now as far as exterior circumstances are concerned. They are not worth much, but they have their worth. They give you liberty to follow your own devices, to think the beautiful and feel the noble; to live out, in short, your individual life, which it is so hard to do in marriage, even where you marry worthily.
I say this probably ‘as one who beateth the air;’ yet you must consider that I who say it, and who say it emphatically, consider a happy marriage as the happiest state, and that all pecuniary reasons against love are both ineffectual and stupid.
Flippancy, flippancy, of course. London would be better (for your friends) as a residence for you, than Wittemberg can be; and for that, and no other account, I could be sorry that you did not settle so.
Well, never mind! The description sounds excellently; almost over-romantic, though. Is there steadiness, do you think, and depth, and reliableness altogether? What impression does he make among those who have known him longest? Dearest Fanny, do nothing in haste.
Now I am going to tell you something which has vexed me, and continues to vex me. The clock. If you knew Robert, you never would have asked him. He has a sort of mania about shops, and won’t buy his own gloves. He bought a pair of boots the other day (because I went down on my knees to ask him, and the water was running in through his soles), and he will not soon get over it. Without exaggeration, he would rather leap down among the lions after your glove, as the knight of old, than walk into a shop for you. If I could but go out, there would be no difficulties; but I am shut up in my winter prison, in spite of the extraordinarily mild weather, through having suffered so much in the beginning of the winter. I asked Sarianna; she also shrinks from the responsibility; is afraid of not pleasing you, &c. The end of it all is that Mrs. Haworth will think us all very disobliging barbarians, and that really I am vexed. Why not ask Mrs. Cochrane to get the thing for you? You can but ask, at any rate.
I am very anxious just now about dear Mr. Kenyon, who has been alarmingly ill, and is only better, I fear. Miss Bayley wrote to tell me, and added that he was going to Cowes when he could move, which pleases me; for only change of air and liberation from London air can complete his convalescence.
For the rest, I am busy beyond description; but never too much so, mind, dear Fanny, to be glad to get your letters. Write soon. Your ever affectionate
E.B.B.
To Mrs. Martin
[Paris]: 3 Rue du Colisée: February 21, .
My dearest Mrs. Martin, — I should have answered your note days ago! If you saw how I am in a plague of industry just now, and not a moment unspotted! — how, for instance, I kept an ‘Examiner’ newspaper (sent to us from London) three days on the table before I could read it, — you would make an allowance for me. It’s a sort of furia! I must get over so much writing, or I shall be too late for the summer’s printing. If it isn’t done by June, what will become of me? I shall go back to Italy in disgrace, and considerably poorer than I need be, which is of more practical consequence. So I fag. Then there’s an hour and a half in the morning for Penini’s lessons. We breakfast at nine, and receive nobody till past four. This will all prove to you two things, dearest friend — first (I hope) that I’m pardonable for making you wait a few days longer than should have been, and secondly that I’m tolerably well. Yes, indeed. Since our arrival in this house, after just the first, when there was some frost, we have had such a miraculous mildness under the name of winter, that I rallied as a matter of course, and for the last month there has been no return of the spitting of blood, and no extravagance of cough. I have persisted with cod’s liver oil, and I look by no means ill, people assure me, and so I may assure you. But I am not very strong, and was a good deal tired after a two hours’ drive which I ventured on a week ago in the Bois de Boulogne. The small rooms, and deficiency of air resulting from them, make a long shutting up a more serious thing than I find it in Florence in our acres of apartment. But it is easy to mend strength when only strength is to be mended, and I, for one, get strong again easily. I only hope that the cold is not returning. The air was sharp yesterday and is to-day; but it’s February, and the spring is at the doors, and we may hope with reason....
What do you say of the peace as a final peace? You are not at least vexed, as so many English are, that we can’t fight a little for glory to reinstate our r
eputation. You’ll excuse that. Still, I can’t help feeling disappointed in the peace — chiefly, perhaps, because I hoped too much from the war. Will nothing be done after all for Italy? nothing for Poland?
You want books. Read About’s ‘Tolla.’ He is a new writer, and his book is exquisite as a transcript of Italian manners. Then read Octave Feuillet. There is much in him.
Will there be war with America, dear Mr. Martin? Never will I believe it till I hear the cannons.
Talking of what we should believe, it appears that Mrs. Trollope has thrown over Hume from some failure in his moral character in Florence. I have had many letters on the subject. I have no doubt that the young man, who is weak and vain, and was exposed to gross flatteries from the various unwise coteries at Florence who took him up, deserves to be thrown over. But his mediumship is undisproved, as far as I can understand. It is simply a physical faculty — he is quite an electric wire. At Florence everybody is quarrelling with everybody on the subject. I thought I would tell you.
Penini, the pet, is radiant, and learning French triumphantly. May God bless you! Write to me, dearest Mrs. Martin, and tell me of both of you. Robert’s love.
Your ever, ever affectionate
Ba.
To Mrs. Jameson
[Paris]: 3 Rue du Colisée: February 28, 1856 [postmark].
My dearest Mona Nina, — Three letters, one on the top of another, and I don’t answer. Shame on me. How I have thought of you, to make up! And you write to apologise to us, from a dreamy mystical apprehension that we may peradventure have lost eightpence on your account! Well, it would have been awful if we had. And so Providence interposed with a special miracle, and obliged the officials to accept the actual penny stamp for the fourpenny stamp you meant to put, and we paid just nothing for the terrible letter! Take heart, therefore, in future, before all hypothetical misfortunes. That’s the moral of the tale....
Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Page 208