Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Well, I have lived thirteen years on the Continent, and, far as England is from Italy, far as the heavens are from the earth, I dissent from you, dissent from you, dissent from you.

  I say so, and there is an end. It is relief to me, and will make no impression on you; but for my sake you permit me to say it, I feel sure.

  Dear Mr. Chorley, Robert and I have had true pleasure (in spite of all this fault-finding) in feeling ourselves close to you in your book. Volume after volume we have exchanged, talking of you, praising you here, blaming you there, but always feeling pleasure in reading your words and speaking your name. Don’t say it’s the last novel. You, who can do so much. Write us another at once rather, doing justice to our sublime Azeglios and acute Cavours and energetic Farinis. If I could hear an English statesman (Conservative or Liberal) speak out of a large heart and generous comprehension as I did Azeglio this last spring, I should thank God for it. I fear I never shall. My boy may, perhaps. Red tape has garrotted this political generation....

  I persist in being in high hopes for my Italy.

  Ever affectionately yours

  Elizabeth B. Browning.

  Early in December the move to Rome took place, and they found rooms at 28 Via del Tritone. During the winter Mrs. Browning was preparing for the press her last volume, the ‘Poems before Congress,’ while her husband, in a fit of disinclination to write poetry, occupied himself by trying his hand at sculpture.

  To Miss Browning

  [Rome: December 1859.]

  Dearest Sarianna, — Robert will have told you of the success of our journey, which the necessities of Mr. Landor very nearly pushed back into the cold too late. We had even resolved that if the wind changed before morning we would accept it ‘as a sign’ and altogether give up Rome. We were all but run to ground, you see. Happily it didn’t end so; and here we are in a very nice sunny apartment, which would have been far beyond our means last year or any year except just now when the Pope’s obstinacy and the rumoured departure of the French have left Rome a solitude and called it peace — very problematical peace. (Peni, in despair at leaving Florence, urged on us that ‘for mama to have cold air in her chest would be better than to have a cannon-ball in her stomach’; but she was unreasonably more afraid of one than of the other.) Apartments here for which friends of ours paid forty pounds English the month last winter are going for fifteen or under — or rather not going — for nobody scarcely comes to take them. The Pope’s ‘reforms’ seem to be limited, in spite of his alarming position, which is breaking his heart, he told a friend of Mrs. Stowe’s the other day, and out of which he looks to be relieved only by some special miracle (the American was quite affected to hear the old man bewail himself!), to an edict against crinolines, the same being forbidden to sweep the sacred pavement of St. Peter’s. This is true, though it sounds like a joke.

  Even Florence has very few English. A crisis is looked for everywhere. Prices there are rising fast; but one is prepared to pay more for liberty. Carriages are dearer than in Paris by our new tariff, which is an item important to me. We left Mr. Landor in great comfort. I went to see his apartment before it was furnished. Rooms small, but with a look out into a little garden; quiet and cheerful; and he doesn’t mind a situation rather out of the way. He pays four pound ten (English) the month. Wilson has thirty pounds a year for taking care of him, which sounds a good deal; but it is a difficult position. He has excellent, generous, affectionate impulses, but the impulses of the tiger every now and then. Nothing coheres in him, either in his opinions, or I fear, affections. It isn’t age; he is precisely the man of his youth, I must believe. Still, his genius gives him the right of gratitude on all artists at least, and I must say that my Robert has generously paid the debt. Robert always said that he owed more as a writer to Landor than to any contemporary. At present Landor is very fond of him; but I am quite prepared for his turning against us as he has turned against Forster, who has been so devoted for years and years. Only one isn’t kind for what one gets by it, or there wouldn’t be much kindness in this world.

  I keep well; and of course, at Rome there is more chance for me than there was in Florence; but I hated to inflict an unpopular journey, of which the advantage was solely mine. Poor Peni said that if he had to leave his Florence he would rather go to Paris than to Rome. I dare say he would. Then his Florentines frightened him with ideas of the awful massacre we were to be subjected to here. The pony travelled like a glorified Houyhnhnm and we have brought a second male servant to take care of him. It was an economy; for the wages of Rome are inordinate. Pen’s tender love to his nonno and you with that of

  Your ever affectionate sister,

  Ba.

  To Miss E.F. Haworth

  [Rome]: 28 Via Tritone: Friday [winter 1859].

  My dearest Fanny, — Set me down as a wretch, but hear me. I have been ill again, in the first place; then as weak as a rag in consequence, and then with business accumulated on impotent hands; proofs to see to, and the like. You may have heard in the buzz of newspapers of certain presentation swords, subscribed for by twenty thousand Romans, at a franc each, and presented in homage and gratitude to Napoleon III. and Victor Emmanuel. Castellani of course was the artist, and the whole business had to be huddled up at the end, because of his Holiness denouncing all such givers of gifts as traitors to the See. So just as the swords had to be packed up and disappear, some one came with a shut carriage to take me for a sight of these most exquisite works of art. It was five o’clock in the evening and raining, but not cold, so that the whole world here agreed it couldn’t hurt me. I went with Robert therefore; we were received at Castellani’s most flatteringly as poets and lovers of Italy; were asked for autographs; and returned in a blaze of glory and satisfaction, to collapse (as far as I’m concerned) in a near approach to mortality. You see I can’t catch a simple cold. All my bad symptoms came back. Suffocations, singular heart-action, cough tearing one to atoms. A gigantic blister, however, let me crawl out of bed at the end of a week, and the advantage of a Roman climate told, I dare say, for the attack was less violent and much less long than the one in the summer. Only I feel myself brittle, and become aware, of increased susceptibility. Dr. Gresonowsky warns me against Florence in the winter. I must be warm, they say. Well, never mind! Now I am well again, and I don’t know why I should have whined so to you. I am well, and living on asses’ milk by way of sustaining the mental calibre; yes, and able to have tête-à-têtes with Theodore Parker, who believes nothing, you know, and has been writing a little Christmas book for the young just now, to prove how they should keep Christmas without a Christ, and a Mr. Hazard, a spiritualist, who believes everything, walks and talks with spirits, and impresses Robert with a sense of veracity, which is more remarkable. I like the man much. He holds the subject on high grounds, takes the idea and lives on it above the earth. For years he has given himself to investigation, and has seen the Impossible. Certainly enough Robert met him and conversed with him, and came back to tell me what an intelligent and agreeable new American acquaintance he had made, without knowing that he was Hazard the spiritualist, rather famous in his department.... Don’t fall out of heart with investigation. It takes patient investigation to establish the number of legs of a newly remarked fly. Nothing riles me so much as the dogmatism of the people who pronounce on there being nothing to see, because in half a dozen experiments, perhaps, they have seen nothing conclusive.

  ‘Yet could not all creation pierce Beyond the bottom of his eye.’

  Mediums cheat certainly. So do people who are not mediums. I congratulate you on liking anybody better. That’s pleasant for you at any rate. My changes are always the other way. I begin by seeing the beautiful in most people, and then comes the disillusion. It isn’t caprice or unsteadiness; oh no! it’s merely fate. My fate, I mean. Alas, my bubbles, my bubbles!

  But I’m growing too original, and will break off. My Emperor at least has not deceived me, and I’m going into the fire for him with a litt
le ‘brochure’ of political poems, which you shall take at Chapman’s with the last edition of ‘Aurora’ when you go to England. Thank you a hundred times from both Robert and me for the interesting relation of Cobden’s sayings on him. If Cobden had not rushed beyond civilisation, I should like to offer him my little book. I should like it. Self-love is the great malady of England, and immortal would the statesman be who could and would tear a wider horizon for the popular mind. As to the rifle cry, I never doubted (for one) that it had its beginning with ‘interested persons.’ Never was any cry more ignoble. A rescues B from being murdered by C, and E cries out, ‘What if A should murder me!’ That’s the logic of the subject. And the sentiment is worthy of the logic.

  I expect to be torn to pieces by English critics for what I have ventured to write....

  Write me one of your amusing letters, and take our love, especially

  Your ever affectionate

  Ba’s.

  There is no Roman news, people are so scarce. The Storys have given a ball, Italians chiefly. We think of little but politics.

  To Mrs. Martin

  28 Via del Tritone, Rome: December 29 .

  It was pleasant to have news of you, dearest friends, and to know of your being comfortably established at Pau this cold winter, as it seems to be in the north. We came here, flying from the Florence tramontana, at the very close of November, on the Perugia road, after having been weather-bound at Casa Guidi till we almost gave up our Roman plan. Most happily the cold spared us during our six days’ journey, which was very pleasant. I like travelling by vetturino. The fatigue is small, and if you take a supply of books with you the time does not hang fire. We had some old Balzacs, which came new (he is one of our gods — heathen, you will say) and we had, besides, Charles Reade’s ‘Love me Little, Love me Long,’ which is full of ability. Then Peni had his pony as a source of interest. The pony was fastened to the vettura horses, and came into Rome, not merely fresh, but fat. And we have fallen into pleasant places by way of lodgings here, our friends having prepared a list to choose from, so that I had only to drop out of the hotel into bright sunny rooms, which do not cost too much on account of the comparative desertion of this holy city this year. We arrived on December 3, and here it is nearly January 1 — almost a month. The older one grows the faster time passes. Do you observe that? You catch the wind of the wheels in your face, it seems, as you get nearer the end. I observe it strongly.

  Let me say of myself first that I am particularly well, and feel much more sure and steady than since my illness. How are you both? I do hope and trust you can give me good news of yourselves. Do you read aloud to one another or each alone? Robert and I do the last always. May God bless you both in health of body and soul, and every source of happiness for the coming and other years! I wish and pray it out of my heart....

  And you are studying music? I honour you for it. Do tell me, dearest Mrs. Martin, did you know nothing of music before, and have you taken up the piano? I hold a peculiar heresy as to the use hereafter of what we learn here. When there is no longer any growth in me, I desire to die — for one. And at present I by no means desire to die.

  So you and others upbraid me with having put myself out of my ‘natural place.’ What is one’s natural place, I wonder? For the Chinese it is the inner side of the wall. For the red man it is the forest. The natural place of everybody, I believe, is within the crust of all manner of prejudices, social, religious, literary. That is as men conceive of ‘natural places.’ But, in the highest sense, I ask you, how can a man or a woman leave his or her natural place. Wherever God’s universe is round, and God’s law above, there is a natural place. Circumstances, the force of natural things, have brought me here and kept me; it is my natural place. And, intellectually speaking, having grown to a certain point by help of certain opportunities, my way of regarding the world is also natural to me, my opinions are the natural deductions of my mind. Isn’t it so? Still I do beg to say both to you and to others accusing that Italy is not my ‘adopted country.’ I love Italy, but I love France, too, and certainly I love England. Because I have broken through what seems to me the English ‘Little Pedlingtonism,’ am I to be supposed to take up an Italian ‘Little Pedlingtonism’? No, indeed. I love truth and justice, or I try to love truth and justice, more than any Plato’s or Shakespeare’s country. I certainly do not love the egotism of England, nor wish to love it. I class England among the most immoral nations in respect to her foreign politics. And her ‘National Defence’ cry fills me with disgust. But this by no means proves that I have adopted another country — no, indeed! In fact, patriotism in the narrow sense is a virtue which will wear out, sooner or later, everywhere. Jew and Greek must drop their antagonisms; and if Christianity is ever to develop it will not respect frontiers.

  As to Italy, though I nearly broke my heart over her last summer, and love the Italians deeply, I should feel passionately any similar crisis anywhere. You cannot judge the people or the question out of the ‘Times’ newspaper, whose sole policy is, it seems to me, to get up a war between France and England, though the world should perish in the struggle. The amount of fierce untruth uttered in that paper, and sworn to by the ‘Saturday Review,’ makes the moral sense curdle within one. You do not know this as we do, and you therefore set it down as matter of Continental prejudice on my part. Well, time will prove. As to Italy, I have to put on the rein to prevent myself from hoping into the ideal again. I am on my guard against another fall from that chariot of the sun. But things look magnicently, and if I could tell you certain facts (which I can’t) you would admit it. Odo Russell, the English Minister here (in an occult sense), who, with a very acute mind, is strongly Russell and English, and was full of the English distrust of L.N., when with us at Siena last September, came to me two days ago, and said, ‘It is plain now. The Emperor is rather Italian than French. He has worked, and is working, only for Italy; and whatever has seemed otherwise has been forced from him in order to keep on terms with his colleagues, the kings and queens of Europe. Everything that comes out proves it more and more.’ In fact, he has risked everything for the Italians except their cause. I am delighted, among other things, at Cavour’s representation of Italy at the Congress. Antonelli and his party are in desperation, gnashing their teeth at the Tuileries. The position of the Emperor is most difficult, but his great brain will master it. We are rather uneasy about the English Ministry — its work in Congress; it might go out for me (falling to pieces on the pitiful Suez question or otherwise), but we do want it at Congress.

  To Mrs. Jameson

  28 Via del Tritone, Rome: February 22 .

  Dearest, naughtiest Mona Nina, — Where is the place of your soul, your body abiding at Brighton, that never, no, never, do I hear from you? It seems hard. Last summer I was near to slipping out of the world, and then, except for a rap, you might have called on me in vain (and said rap you wouldn’t have believed in). Also, even this winter, even in this Rome, the city of refuge, I have had an attack, less long and sharp, indeed, but weakening, and, though I am well now, and have corrected the proofs of a very thin and wicked ‘brochure’ on Italian affairs (in verse, of course), yet still I am not too strong for cod-liver oil and the affectionateness of such friends as you (I speak as if I had a shoal of such friends — povera mi!). Write to me, therefore. Especially as the English critics will worry me alive for my book and you will have to say, ‘Well done, critics!’ so write before you read it, to say, ‘Ba, I love you.’ That makes up for everything. Oh, I know you did write to me in the summer. And then I wrote to you; and then there came a pause, which is hard on me, I repeat.

  Geddie has come here, lamenting also. Besides, we have been somewhat disappointed by your not coming to Italy. Never will you come to Rome as Geddie expects, late in the spring, to take an apartment close to her, looking charmingly on the river. I told her quite frankly that you would not be so unwise. Rome is empty of foreigners this year, a few Americans standing for all. Then, in th
e midst of the quiet, deeply does the passion work: on one side, with the people, on the other in the despair and rage of the Papal Government. The Pope can’t go out to breakfast, to drink chocolate and talk about ‘Divine things’ to the ‘Christian youth,’ but he stumbles upon the term ‘new ideas,’ and, falling precipitately into a fury, neither evangelical nor angelical, calls Napoleon a sicario (cut-throat), and Vittorio Emanuele an assassino. The French head of police, who was present, whispered to acquaintances of ours, ‘Comme il enrage le saint père!’ In fact, all dignity has been repeatedly forgotten in simple rage. Affairs of Italy generally are going on to the goal, and we look for the best and glorious results, perhaps not without more fighting. Certainly we can’t leave Venetia in the mouth of Austria by a second Villafranca. We cannot and will not. And, sooner or later, the Emperor is prepared, I think, to carry us through. Odo Russell told me (without my putting any question to him) that everything, as it came out, proved how true he had been to Italy — that, in fact, he had ‘rather acted as an Italian than as a Frenchman.’ And Mr. Russell, while liberal, is himself very English, and free from Buonaparte tendencies from hair to heel.