Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  We shall probably go to Rome again for the winter, as Florence is considered too cold. There will be disturbances that way in all probability; but we are bold as to such things. The Pope is hard to manage, even for the Emperor. It is hard to cut up a feather bed into sandwiches with the finest Damascus blade, but the end will be attained somehow. I wish I could see clearly about Venetia. There are intelligent and thoughtful Italians who are hopeful even for Venetia, and certainly, the Emperor of Austria’s offer to Tuscany (not made to the Assembly, as the ‘Times’ said, but murmured about by certain agents) implies a consciousness on his part of holding Venetia, with a broken wrist at least.

  As to the Duchies never for a moment did I believe in armed intervention. Napoleon distinctly with his own lips promised our delegates, after the peace, and before he left Italy, that he would neither do it nor permit it. And afterwards, in Paris, again and again. He accepted the Austrian proposition under the condition simply that the Dukes were recalled by the people, not in defiance of the popular will. He has been loyal throughout both to Austria and to Italy, and to his own original programme, which did not contemplate dispossessing sovereigns but freeing peoples.

  Italy for the Italians — and so it will be. For Prince Napoleon, when he was in Florence he might have remained there and delighted everybody. I know even that a person high in office felt the way towards a proposal of the kind, and that he answered in a manner considered too ‘tranchant,’ ‘No, no, that would suit neither the Emperor nor England; et pour moi, je ne le voudrais pas.’ He used every opportunity at that time of advising the fusion, about which people were much less unanimous than they are now.

  But calumny never dies (like me!). Mr. Russell, Lord John’s nephew, the quasi-minister at Rome, very acute, and liberal too (by the English standard) being on his road to Rome from London last week proposed paying us a visit, and we had him here two days (in a valuable spare room!). He told me that Napoleon had been too fin for the English Government. He had induced them to acknowledge the Tuscan vote — (observe that fact, dearest friends) induced them to acknowledge the Tuscan vote; and now here was his game. He had forbidden Piedmont to accept the fusion, and therefore Piedmont must refuse. The consequence of which would be that there must be another vote in Tuscany, which would favor Prince Napoleon, and that we, having accepted the first vote, must accept the second, the Emperor throwing up his hands and crying, ‘Who would have thought it?’

  We told him that he and the English Government were so far out in their conclusions, that Piedmont, instead of refusing, would accept conditionally; but he sighed, ‘hoped it might be so,’ in the way in which preposterous opinions are civilly put away.

  Scarcely was he gone, when the conditional acceptance was known.

  How much more I could tell you. But one can’t write all. The first battle in the north of Italy freed Italy potentially from north to south. Our political life here in the centre is a proof of this. The conduct of the Italians is admirable, but last year they could not have assumed this attitude. They were a bound people. And even now, if the Emperor removed his hand from Austria, we should have the foreign intervention, and no hope.

  We are ready and willing to fight, observe. The ‘Times’ may take back its words. But to oppose the whole Austrian Empire with our unorganised, however heroic, forces, is impossible. We might die, indeed....

  May God bless both of you always! I have pretty good letters from home. Home! what’s home?

  Your ever affectionate and grateful

  Ba.

  Read ‘La Foi des Traités’; it is from the hand of Louis Napoleon. So that I was prepared for the amnesty and for what follows.

  The following letters to Mr. Chorley relate to Mrs. Browning’s poem ‘A Tale of Villafranca,’ which was published in the ‘Athenæum’ for September 24, and subsequently included in the volume of ‘Poems before Congress’ (Poetical Works, iv. 195).

  To Mr. Chorley

  Villa Alberti, Siena: September 12, .

  My dear Mr. Chorley, — This isn’t a letter, as you will see at a glance. I should have written to you long since, and have also sent this poem (which solicits a place in the ‘Athenæum’) if I had not been very ill and been very slow in getting well. We wanted to answer your kind letter, and shall. As for my poem, be so good as to see it put in, in spite of its good and true politics, which you ‘Athenæum’ people (being English) will dissent from altogether. Say so, if you please, but let me in. ‘Strike, but hear me.’ I have been living and dying for Italy lately. You don’t know how vivid these things are to us, which serve for conversation at London dinner parties.

  Ah — dear Mr. Chorley. The bad news about poor Lady Arnould will have affected you as it did Robert a few days ago. I do pity so our unhappy friend, Sir Joseph. Tell us, if you can and will, what you hear.

  We came here from Florence five or six weeks since, when I was very unfit for moving, but change of air and a cooler air and repose had grown necessary. We are at a villa two miles from Siena, where we look at scarlet sunsets, over purple hills, and have the wind nearly all day. Mr. and Mrs. Story are half a mile off in another villa, and Mr. Landor at a stone’s cast. Otherwise the solitude is absolute. Mr. Russell spent two days with us on his way to resume office at Rome. I should remember that....

  To Mr. Chorley

  Siena: Sunday [September-October 1859].

  Thank you, my dear Mr. Chorley, I submit gratefully to being snubbed for my politics. In return I will send to your private ear an additional stanza which should interpose as the real seventh but was left out. I did not send it to you the day after my note, though sorely tempted to do so, because it seemed to me likely to annul any small chance of ‘Athenæum’ tolerance which might fall to me. Would it have done so, do you think?

  ‘A great deed in this world of ours! Unheard of the pretence is. It plainly threatens the Great Powers; Is fatal in all senses. A just deed in the world! Call out The rifles! ... be not slack about The National Defences.’

  Certainly if I don’t guess ‘the Sphinx’ right, some of your English guessers in the ‘Times’ and elsewhere fail also, as events prove. The clever ‘Prince-Napoleon-for-Central-Italy’ guess, for instance, has just fallen through, by declaration of the ‘Moniteur.’ Most absurd it was always. At one time the Prince might have taken the crown by acclamation. He was almost rude about it when he was in Tuscany. And even after the peace, members of the present Government were not averse, were much the contrary indeed. At that time the autonomy was still dear, we had not made up our minds to the fusion. Now, è altra cosa, and to imagine that a man like the French Emperor would have waited till now, producing, by the opportunities he has given, the present complication, in order to impose the Prince, is absurd on the very face of it.

  While standers-by guess, the comfort is that circumstances ripen. We are in spirits about our Italy. The dignity, the constancy, the calm, are admirable, as the unanimity of the people is wonderful. Even the contadini have rallied to the Government, and the cry of enthusiasm to which the cross of Savoy was uncovered in the market place of Siena yesterday was a thrilling thing. Also we will fight, be it understood, whenever fighting shall be necessary. At present, the right arm of Austria is broken; she cannot hold the sword since Solferino, at least in central Italy. Let those who doubt our debt to France remember where we were last year, and see what our political life is now — real, vivid, unhindered! Our moral qualities are our own, but our practical opportunities come from another; we could not have made them by force of moral qualities, great as those are allowed to be. And how striking the growth of this people since 1848. Massimo d’ Azeglio said to Robert and me, ‘It is ‘48 over again with matured actors.’ But it is even more than that: it is ‘48 over again with regenerated actors. All internal jealousies at an end, all suspicions quenched, all selfish policies dissolved. Florence forgets herself for Italy. This is grand. Would that England, that pattern of moral nations, would forget herself for the sake of
something or someone beyond. That would be grand.

  I wish you were here, my dear Mr. Chorley, since I am wishing in vain, though we are almost at the close of our stay in this pretty country. We have a villa with beautiful sights from all the windows; and there, on the hill opposite, live Mr. and Mrs. Story, and within a stone’s throw, in a villino, lives the poor old lion Landor, who, being sorely buffeted by his family at Fiesole, far beyond ‘kissing with tears’ (though Robert did what he could), took refuge with us at Casa Guidi one day, broken-hearted and in wrath. He stays here while we stay, and then goes with us to Florence, where Robert has received the authorisation of his English friends to settle him in comfort in an apartment of his own, with my late maid, Wilson (who married our Italian man-servant), to take care of him; and meanwhile the quiet of this place has so restored his health and peace of mind that he is able to write awful Latin alcaics, to say nothing of hexameters and pentameters, on the wickedness of Louis Napoleon. Yes, dear Mr. Chorley, poems which might appear in the ‘Athenæum’ without disclaimer, and without injury to the reputation of that journal.

  Am I not spiteful? I assure you I couldn’t be spiteful a short time ago, so very ill I have been. Now it is different, and every day the strength returns. What remains, however, is a certain necessity of not facing the Florence wind this winter, and of going again to Rome, in spite of probable revolutions there. We talk of going in the early part of November. Why won’t you come to Rome and give us meeting? Foolish speech, when I know you won’t. We shall be in Florence probably at the end of the present week, to stay there until the journey further south begins. I shall regret this silence. And little Penini too will have his regrets, for he has been very happy here, made friends with the contadini, has helped to keep the sheep, to run after straggling cows, to play at ‘nocini’ (did you ever hear of that game?) and to pick the grapes at the vintage — driving in the grape-carts (exactly of the shape of the Greek chariots), with the grapes heaped up round him; and then riding on his own pony, which Robert is going to buy for him (though Robert never spoils him; no, not he, it is only I who do that!), galloping through the lanes on this pony the colour of his curls. I was looking over his journal (Pen keeps a journal), and fell on the following memorial which I copy for you — I must.

  ‘This is the happiest day of my hole (sic) life, for now dearest Vittorio Emanuele is really nostro re.’

  Pen’s weak point does not lie in his politics, Mr. Chorley, but in his spelling. When his contadini have done their day’s work he takes it on him to read aloud to them the poems of the revolutionary Venetian poet Dall’ Ongaro, to their great applause. Then I must tell you of his music. He is strong in music for ten years old — and plays a sonata of Beethoven already (in E flat — opera 7) and the first four books of Stephen Heller; to say nothing of various pieces by modern German composers in which there is need of considerable execution. Robert is the maestro, and sits by him two hours every day, with an amount of patience and persistence really extraordinary. Also for two months back, since I have been thrown out of work, Robert has heard the child all his other lessons. Isn’t it very, very good of him?

  Do write to us and tell me how your sister is, and also how you are in spirits and towards the things of the world? Give her my love — will you?

  I had a letter some time ago from poor Jessie Mario, from Bologna. Respect her. She hindered her husband from fighting with Garibaldi for his country, because Garibaldi fought under L.N., which was so highly improper. Her letter was not unkind to me, but altogether and insanely wrong as I considered. (Not more wrong though, and much less wicked, than the ‘Times.’) I was too ill at the time to answer it, and afterwards Robert would not let me, but I should have liked to do it; it’s such a comfort to a woman (and a man?) to sfogarsi, as we say here. Also, I was really uneasy at what might be doing at Bologna; so, in spite of friendship, it was a relief to me to hear of the police taking charge of all overt possibilities in that direction.

  Is it really true that ‘Adam Bede’ is the work of Miss Evans? The woman (as I have heard of her) and the author (as I read her) do not hold together. May God bless you, my dear friend! Robert shall say so for himself.

  Ever affectionately yours,

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

  My dear Mr. Chorley, — Reading over what I have written I find that I have been so basely ungrateful as not to say the thing I would when I would thank you. Your Dedication will be accepted with a true sense of kindness and honor together; I shall be proud and thankful. But perhaps you have changed your mind in the course of this long silence.

  And now where’s room for Robert?

  To Miss I. Blagden

  Villa Alberti, [Siena]:

  Tuesday [September-October, 1859].

  Ever dearest Isa, — Yes, I am delighted.

  Evviva il nostro re! It isn’t a very distinct acceptance, however, but as distinct as could be expected reasonably. Under conditions, of course.

  On Friday morning before noon up to our door came Mr. Russell’s carriage. He had closed with Robert’s proposition at once, and we made room for him without much difficulty, and were very glad to see him. I didn’t go in to dinner, and he and Robert went to the Storys in the evening — so that it wasn’t too much for me — and then I really like him — he is refined and amiable, and acute and liberal (as an Englishman can be), full of ‘traditions’ or prejudices, to use the right word. To my surprise he knew scarcely anything; and, as I modestly observed to Robert, ‘didn’t understand the Italian question half as well as I understand it.’ Of course there was a quantity of gossip in the anti-Napoleon sense; how the Emperor told the King of the peace over the soup, twirling his moustache; and how the King swore like a trooper at the Emperor in consequence; and how the Emperor took it all very well — didn’t mind at all and how, and how — things which are manifestly impossible and which Robert tells me I ought not to repeat, in order not to multiply such vain tales. There is Metternich the younger (ambassador in Paris), a personal friend of Odo Russell’s, in whose bosom Louis Napoleon seems to pour the confidences of his heart about that ‘coquin de Cavour who led him into the Italian war,’ &c., &c., but it simply proves to you and me how an Austrian can lie, which we could guess before.

  My facts are these: First, Ferdinando IV. has an ambassador in Rome, who has been received officially by the Pope (!!) (‘The coolest thing that ever was’), and is paid out of the private purse of the Royal Highness. There is another ambassador at Naples, and another at Vienna — on the same terms; so let no one talk of ‘Déchéance.’

  Then let me tell you what Mr. Russell said to me. ‘Napoleon,’ said he, ‘has been too fin for the English Government. He made us acknowledge the Tuscan vote. Now he has strictly forbidden Piedmont to accept, and Piedmont must therefore refuse. The consequences of which will be that there must be another vote in Tuscany, by which Prince Napoleon will be elected; and we, having acknowledged the first vote, must acknowledge the second.’

  Of course I protested; disbelieved in the forbidding, and believed in the accepting. He ‘hoped it might be so’ — in the civil way with which people put away preposterous opinions — and left us on Saturday night at ten, just too late to hear of the ‘fait accompli.’

  Out of all that, I rescue my fact that Napoleon made the English Government acknowledge the Tuscan vote.

  Don’t let Kate put any of this into American papers, because Mr. Russell was our guest, observe, and spoke trustingly to us. He had just arrived from England, and went on to Rome without further delay.

  The word Venice makes my heart beat. Has Guiducci any grounds for hope about Venice? If Austria could be bought off at any price! Something has evidently been promised at Villafranca on the subject of Venice; and evidently the late strengthening of the hands of Piedmont will render the Austrian occupation on any terms more and more difficult and precarious.

  I should agree with you on Prince Napoleon, if it were not that I want the Emperor�
�s disinterestedness to remain in its high place. We can’t spare great men and great deeds out of the honour of the world. There are so few.

  For the rest, the Prince would have been a popular and natural choice at one time, and as far as central Italy was concerned. Also he is very liberal in opinion, and full of ideas, I have been told.