CHAPTER V

1846-1849

It is now time to tell the story of the romance which, during the last

eighteen months, had entered into Elizabeth Barrett's life, and was

destined to divert its course into new and happier channels. It is

a story which fills one of the brightest pages in English literary

history.

The foregoing letters have shown something of Miss Barrett's

admiration for the poetry of Robert Browning, and contain allusions

to the beginning of their personal acquaintance. Her knowledge of his

poetry dates back to the appearance of 'Paracelsus,' not to 'Pauline,'

of which there is no mention in her letters, and which had been

practically withdrawn from circulation by the author. Her personal

acquaintance with him was of much later date, and was directly due

to the publication of the 'Poems' in 1844. Chancing to express his

admiration of them to Mr. Kenyon, who had been his friend since 1839

and his father's school-fellow in years long distant, Mr. Browning

was urged by him to write to Miss Barrett himself, and tell her of

his pleasure in her work. Possibly the allusion to him in 'Lady

Geraldine's Courtship' may have been felt as furnishing an excuse for

addressing her; however that may be, he took Mr. Kenyon's advice,

and in January 1845 we find Miss Barrett in 'ecstasies' over a letter

(evidently the first) from 'Browning the poet, Browning the author of

"Paracelsus" and king of the mystics' (see p. 236, above).

The correspondence, once begun, continued to flourish, and in the

course of the same month Miss Barrett tells Mrs. Martin that she is

'getting deeper and deeper into correspondence with Robert Browning,

poet and mystic; and we are growing to be the truest of friends.' At

the end of May, when the return of summer brought her a renewal of

strength, they met face to face for the first time; and from that time

Robert Browning was included in the small list of privileged friends

who were admitted to visit her in person.

How this friendship ripened into love, and love into courtship, it is

not for us to inquire too closely. Something has been told already in

Mrs. Orr's 'Life of Robert Browning;' something more is told in the

long and most interesting letter which stands first in the present

chapter. More precious than either is the record of her fluctuating

feelings which Mrs. Browning has enshrined for ever in her 'Sonnets

from the Portuguese,' and in the handful of other poems--'Life

and Love,' 'A Denial,' 'Proof and Disproof,' 'Inclusions,'

'Insufficiency,'[142] which likewise belong to this period and

describe its hesitations, its sorrows and its overwhelming joys. In

the difficult circumstances under which they were placed, the conduct

of both was without reproach. Mr. Browning knew that he was asking to

be allowed to take charge of an invalid's life--believed indeed

that she was even worse than was really the case, and that she was

hopelessly incapacitated from ever standing on her feet--but was sure

enough of his love to regard that as no obstacle. Miss Barrett, for

her part, shrank from burdening the life of the man she loved with

a responsibility so trying and perhaps so painful, and refused his

unchanging devotion for his sake, not for her own.

[Footnote 142: _Poetical Works_, iv. 20-32.]

The situation was complicated by the character of Mr. Barrett, and by

the certainty--for such it was to his daughter--that he would refuse

to entertain the idea of her marriage, or, indeed, that of any of his

children. The truth of this view was absolutely vindicated not only in

the case of Elizabeth, but also in those of two others of the family

in later years. The reasons for his feeling it is probable he could

not have explained to himself. He was fond of his family after his own

fashion--proud, too, of his daughter's genius; but he could not,

it would seem, regard them in any other light than as belonging to

himself. The wish to leave his roof and to enter into new relations

was looked upon as unfilial treachery; and no argument or persuasion

could shake him from his fixed idea. So long as this disposition could

be regarded as the result of a devoted love of his children, it

could be accepted with respect, if not with full acquiescence; but

circumstances brought the proof that this was not the case, and

thereby ultimately paved the way to Elizabeth's marriage.

These circumstances are stated in several of her letters, and alluded

to in several others, but it may help to the understanding of them

if a brief summary be given here. In the autumn of 1845, as described

above, Miss Barrett's doctors advised her to winter abroad. The

advice was strongly pressed, as offering a good prospect of a real

improvement of health, and as the only way of avoiding the annual

relapse brought on by the English winter. One or more of her brothers

could have gone with her, and she was willing and able to try the

experiment; but in face of this express medical testimony, Mr. Barrett

interposed a refusal. This indifference to her health naturally

wounded Miss Barrett very deeply; but it also gave her the right of

taking her fate into her own hands. Convinced at last that no refusal

on her part could alter Mr. Browning's devotion to her, and that

marriage with him, so far from being an increase of risk to her

health, offered the only means by which she might hope for an

improvement in it, she gave him the conditional promise that if she

came safely through the then impending winter, she would consent to a

definite engagement.

The winter of 1845-6 was an exceptionally mild one, and she suffered

less than usual; and in the spring of 1846 her lover claimed her

promise. Throughout the summer she continued to gain strength, being

able, not only to drive out, but even to walk short distances, and to

visit a few of her special friends such as Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Boyd.

Accordingly it was agreed that at the end of the summer they should

be married, and leave England for Italy before the cold weather should

return. The uselessness of asking her father's consent was so evident,

and the certainty that it would only result in the exclusion of Mr.

Browning from the house so clear, that no attempt was made to obtain

it. Only her two sisters were aware of what was going on; but even

they were not informed of the final arrangements for the marriage, in

order that they might not be involved in their father's anger when it

should become known. For the same reason the secret was kept from so

close a friend of both parties as Mr. Kenyon; though both he and Mr.

Boyd, and possibly also Mrs. Jameson, had suspicions amounting to

different degrees of certainty as to the real state of affairs. It had

been intended that they should wait until the end of September, but

a project for a temporary removal of the family into the country

precipitated matters; and on September 12, accompanied only by her

maid, Wilson, Miss Barrett slipped from the house and was married to

Robert Browning in Marylebone Church.[143] The associations which that

ponderous edifice has gained from this act for all lovers of English

poetry tempt one to forgive its unromantic appearance, and to remember

rather the pilgrimages which Robert Browning on his subsequent visits

to England never failed to pay to its threshold.

[Footnote 143: Mrs. Sutherland Orr says that the marriage took place

in St. Pancras Church; but this is a mistake, as the parish register

of St. Marylebone proves.]

For a week after the marriage Mrs. Browning--by which more familiar

name we now have the right to call her--remained in her father's

house; her husband refraining from seeing her, since he could not now

ask for her by her proper name without betraying their secret.

Then, on September 19, accompanied once more by her maid and the

ever-beloved Flushie, she left her home, to which she was never

to return, crossed the Channel with her husband to Havre, and so

travelled on to Paris. Her father's anger, if not loud, was deep and

unforgiving. From that moment he cast her off and disowned her. He

would not read or open her letters; he would not see her when she

returned to England. Even the birth of her child brought no relenting;

he expressed no sympathy or anxiety, he would not look upon its face.

He died as he lived, unrelenting, cut off by his own unbending anger

from a daughter who could with difficulty bring herself to speak a

harsh word of him, even to her most intimate friends.

It was a more unexpected and consequently an even more bitter blow to

find that her brothers at first disapproved of her action; the

more so, since they had sympathised with her in the struggle of the

previous autumn. This disapprobation was, however, less deep-seated,

resting partly upon doubts as to the practical prudence of the match,

partly, no doubt, upon a natural annoyance at having been kept in the

dark. Such an estrangement could only be temporary, and as time went

on was replaced by a full renewal of the old affection towards herself

and a friendly acceptance of her husband. With her sisters, on the

other hand, there was never a shadow of difference or estrangement.

That love remained unaffected; and almost the only circumstance that

caused Mrs. Browning to regret her enforced absence from England was

the separation which it entailed from her two sisters.

In Paris the fugitives found a friend who proved a friend indeed. A

few weeks earlier Mrs. Jameson, knowing of the needs of Miss Barrett's

health, had offered to take her to Italy; but her offer had been

refused. Her astonishment may be imagined when, after this short

interval of time, she found her invalid friend in Paris as the wife of

Robert Browning. The prospect filled her with almost as much dismay as

pleasure. 'I have here,' she wrote to a friend from Paris, 'a poet

and a poetess--two celebrities who have run away and married under

circumstances peculiarly interesting, and such as to render imprudence

the height of prudence. Both excellent; but God help them! for I know

not how the two poet heads and poet hearts will get on through this

prosaic world.'[144] Mrs. Jameson, who was travelling with her young

niece, Miss Geraldine Bate,[145] lent her aid to smooth the path of

her poet friends, and it was in her company that, after a week's rest

in Paris, the Brownings proceeded on their journey to Italy. It is

easy to imagine what a comfort her presence must have been to the

invalid wife and her naturally anxious husband; and this journey

sealed a friendship of no ordinary depth and warmth. Mrs. Browning

bore the journey wonderfully, though suffering much from fatigue.

During a rest of two days at Avignon, a pilgrimage was made to

Vaucluse, in honour of Petrarch and his Laura; and there, as Mrs.

Macpherson has recorded in an often quoted passage of her biography of

her aunt, 'there, at the very source of the "chiare, fresche e dolci

acque," Mr. Browning took his wife up in his arms, and carrying her

across the shallow, curling water, seated her on a rock that rose

throne-like in the middle of the stream. Thus love and poetry took

a new possession of the spot immortalised by Petrarch's loving

fancy.'[146]

[Footnote 144: _Memoirs of Anna Jameson_, by G. Macpherson, p. 218.]

[Footnote 145: Afterwards Mrs. Macpherson, and Mrs. Jameson's

biographer.]

[Footnote 146: _Memoirs_, p. 231.]

So at the beginning of October the party reached Pisa; and there

the newly wedded pair settled for the winter. Here first since the

departure from London was there leisure to renew the intercourse with

friends at home, to answer congratulations and good wishes, to explain

what might seem strange and unaccountable. From this point Mrs.

Browning's correspondence contains nearly a full record of her life,

and can be left to tell its own story in better language than the

biographer's. The first letter to Mrs. Martin is an 'apologia pro

connubio suo' in fullest detail; the others carry on the story from

the point at which that leaves it.

With regard to this first letter, full as it is of the most intimate

personal and family revelations, it has seemed right to give it

entire. The marriage of Robert and Elizabeth Browning has passed into

literary history, and it is only fair that it should be set, once for

all, in its true light. Those who might be pained by any expressions

in it have passed away; and those in whose character and reputation

the lovers of English literature are interested have nothing to fear

from the fullest revelation. If anything were kept back, false and

injurious surmises might be formed; the truth leaves little room for

controversy, and none for slander.

_To Mrs. Martin_

Collegio Ferdinando, Pisa; October 20(?), 1846.[147]

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Will you believe that I began a letter to you

before I took this step, to give you the whole story of the impulses

towards it, feeling strongly that I owed what I considered my

justification to such dear friends as yourself and Mr. Martin, that

you might not hastily conclude that you had thrown away upon one

who was quite unworthy the regard of years? I had begun such a

letter--when, by the plan of going to Little Bookham, my plans were

all hurried forward--changed--driven prematurely into action, and the

last hours of agitation and deep anguish--for it was the deepest

of its kind, to leave Wimpole Street and those whom I tenderly

loved--_so_ would not admit of my writing or thinking: only I was able

to think that my beloved sisters would send you some account of me

when I was gone. And now I hear from them that your generosity has not

waited for a letter from me to do its best for me, and that instead

of being vexed, as you might well be, at my leaving England without

a word sent to you, you have used kind offices in my behalf, you

have been more than the generous and affectionate friend I always

considered you. So my first words must be that I am deeply grateful

to you, my very dear friend, and that to the last moment of my life I

shall remember the claim you have on my gratitude. Generous people are

inclined to acquit generously; but it has been very painful to me to

observe that with all my mere friends I have found more sympathy and

_trust_, than in those who are of my own household and who have

been daily witnesses of my life. I do not say this for papa, who is

peculiar and in a peculiar position; but it pained me that----, who

_knew_ all that passed last year--for instance, about Pisa--who knew

that the alternative of making a single effort to secure my health

during the winter was the severe displeasure I have incurred now, and

that the fruit of yielding myself a prisoner was the sense of being of

no use nor comfort to any soul; papa having given up coming to see

me except for five minutes, a day; ==--, who said to me with his own

lips, 'He does not love you--do not think it' (said and repeated it

two months ago)--that ---- should now turn round and reproach me for

want of affection towards my family, for not letting myself drop

like a dead weight into the abyss, a sacrifice without an object and

expiation--this did surprise me and pain me--pained me more than all

papa's dreadful words. But the personal feeling is nearer with most of

us than the tenderest feeling for another; and my family had been so

accustomed to the idea of my living on and on in that room, that while

my heart was eating itself, their love for me was consoled, and at

last the evil grew scarcely perceptible. It was no want of love in

them, and quite natural in itself: we all get used to the thought of a

tomb; and I was buried, that was the whole. It was a little thing even

for myself a short time ago, and really it would be a pneumatological

curiosity if I could describe and let you see how perfectly for years

together, after what broke my heart at Torquay, I lived on the outside

of my own life, blindly and darkly from day to day, as completely dead

to hope of any kind as if I had my face against a grave, never feeling

a personal instinct, taking trains of thought to carry out as an

occupation absolutely indifferent to the _me_ which is in every human

being. Nobody quite understood this of me, because I am not morally

a coward, and have a hatred of all the forms of audible groaning. But

God knows what is within, and how utterly I had abdicated myself and

thought it not worth while to put out my finger to touch my share of

life. Even my poetry, which suddenly grew an interest, was a thing on

the outside of me, a thing to be done, and then done! What people said

of it did not touch _me_. A thoroughly morbid and desolate state it

was, which I look back now to with the sort of horror with which one

would look to one's graveclothes, if one had been clothed in them by

mistake during a trance.

[Footnote 147: The date at the head of the letter is October 2,

but that is certainly a slip of the pen, since at that date, as the

following letter to Miss Mitford shows, they had not reached Pisa.

See also the reference to 'six weeks of marriage' on p. 295. The Pisa

postmark appears to be October 20 (or later), and the English postmark

is November 5.]

And now I will tell you. It is nearly two years ago since I have known

Mr. Browning. Mr. Kenyon wished to bring him to see me five years ago,

as one of the lions of London who roared the gentlest and was best

worth my knowing; but I refused then, in my blind dislike to seeing

strangers. Immediately, however, after the publication of my last

volumes, he wrote to me, and we had a correspondence which ended in my

agreeing to receive him as I never had received any other man. I

did not know why, but it was utterly impossible for me to refuse to

receive him, though I consented against my will. He writes the most

exquisite letters possible, and has a way of putting things which I

have not, a way of putting aside--so he came. He came, and with

our personal acquaintance began his attachment for me, a sort of

_infatuation_ call it, which resisted the various denials which were

my plain duty at the beginning, and has persisted past them all. I

began with--a grave assurance that I was in an exceptional position

and saw him just in consequence of it, and that if ever he recurred to

that subject again I never could see him again while I lived; and

he believed me and was silent. To my mind, indeed, it was a bare

impulse--a generous man of quick sympathies taking up a sudden

interest with both hands! So I thought; but in the meantime the

letters and the visits rained down more and more, and in every one

there was something which was too slight to analyse and notice, but

too decided not to be understood; so that at last, when the 'proposed

respect' of the silence gave way, it was rather less dangerous.

So then I showed him how he was throwing into the ashes his best

affections--how the common gifts of youth and cheerfulness were behind

me--how I had not strength, even of _heart_, for the ordinary duties

of life--everything I told him and showed him. 'Look at this--and

this,' throwing down all my disadvantages. To which he did not answer

by a single compliment, but simply that he had not then to choose,

and that I might be right or he might be right, he was not there to

decide; but that he loved me and should to his last hour. He said

that the freshness of youth had passed with him also, and that he

had studied the world out of books and seen many women, yet had never

loved one until he had seen me. That he knew himself, and knew that,

if ever so repulsed, he should love me to his last hour--it should be

first and last. At the same time, he would not tease me, he would wait

twenty years if I pleased, and then, if life lasted so long for both

of us, then when it was ending perhaps, I might understand him and

feel that I might have trusted him. For my health, he had believed

when he first spoke that I was suffering from an incurable injury of

the spine, and that he never could hope to see me stand up before his

face, and he appealed to my womanly sense of what a pure attachment

should be--whether such a circumstance, if it had been true, was

inconsistent with it. He preferred, he said, of free and deliberate

choice, to be allowed to sit only an hour a day by my side, to the

fulfilment of the brightest dream which should exclude me, in any

possible world.

I tell you so much, my ever dear friend, that you may see the manner

of man I have had to do with, and the sort of attachment which for

nearly two years has been drawing and winning me. I know better than

any in the world, indeed, what Mr. Kenyon once unconsciously said

before me--that 'Robert Browning is great in everything.' Then, when

you think how this element of an affection so pure and persistent,

cast into my dreary life, must have acted on it--how little by little

I was drawn into the persuasion that something was left, and that

still I could do something to the happiness of another--and he what he

was, for I have deprived myself of the privilege of praising him--then

it seemed worth while to take up with that unusual energy (for me!),

expended in vain last year, the advice of the physicians that I should

go to a warm climate for the winter. Then came the Pisa conflict

of last year. For years I had looked with a sort of indifferent

expectation towards Italy, knowing and feeling that I should escape

there the annual relapse, yet, with that _laisser aller_ manner which

had become a habit to me, unable to form a definite wish about it. But

last year, when all this happened to me, and I was better than

usual in the summer, I _wished_ to make the experiment--to live the

experiment out, and see whether there was hope for me or not hope.

Then came Dr. Chambers, with his encouraging opinion. 'I wanted simply

a warm climate and _air_,' he said; 'I might be well if I pleased.'

Followed what you know--or do not precisely know--the pain of it was

acutely felt by me; for I never had doubted but that papa would catch

at any human chance of restoring my health. I was under the delusion

always that the difficulty of making such trials lay in _me_, and not

in _him_. His manner of acting towards me last summer was one of the

most painful griefs of my life, because it involved a disappointment

in the affections. My dear father is a very peculiar person. He is

naturally stern, and has exaggerated notions of authority, but these

things go with high and noble qualities; and as for feeling, the water

is under the rock, and I had faith. Yes, and have it. I admire such

qualities as he has--fortitude, integrity. I loved him for his courage

in adverse circumstances which were yet felt by him more literally

than I could feel them. Always he has had the greatest power over my

heart, because I am of those weak women who reverence strong men. By a

word he might have bound me to him hand and foot. Never has he spoken

a gentle word to me or looked a kind look which has not made in me

large results of gratitude, and throughout my illness the sound of his

step on the stairs has had the power of quickening my pulse--I have

loved him so and love him. Now if he had said last summer that he was

reluctant for me to leave him--if he had even allowed me to think

_by mistake_ that his affection for me was the motive of such

reluctance--I was ready to give up Pisa in a moment, and I told him

as much. Whatever my new impulses towards life were, my love for him

(taken so) would have resisted all--I loved him so dearly. But his

course was otherwise, quite otherwise, and I was wounded to the

bottom of my heart--cast off when I was ready to cling to him. In the

meanwhile, at my side was another; I was driven and I was drawn. Then

at last I said, 'If you like to let this winter decide it, you may. I

will allow of no promises nor engagement. I cannot go to Italy, and I

know, as nearly as a human creature can know any fact, that I shall be

ill again through the influence of this English winter. If I am, you

will see plainer the foolishness of this persistence; if I am not, I

will do what you please.' And his answer was, 'If you are ill and keep

your resolution of not marrying me under those circumstances, I will

keep mine and love you till God shall take us both.' This was in last

autumn, and the winter came with its miraculous mildness, as you know,

and I was saved as I dared not hope; my word therefore was claimed

in the spring. Now do you understand, and will you feel for me? An

application to my father was certainly the obvious course, if it had

not been for his peculiar nature and my peculiar position. But there

is no speculation in the case; it is a matter of _knowledge_ that if

Robert had applied to him in the first instance he would have been

forbidden the house without a moment's scruple; and if in the last (as

my sisters thought best as a respectable _form_), I should have been

incapacitated from any after-exertion by the horrible scenes to which,

as a thing of course, I should have been exposed. Papa will not bear

some subjects, it is a thing _known_; his peculiarity takes that

ground to the largest. Not one of his children will ever marry without

a breach, which we all know, though he probably does not--deceiving

himself in a setting up of _obstacles_, whereas the real obstacle is

in his own mind. In my case there was, or would have been, a great

deal of apparent reason to hold by; my health would have been motive

enough--ostensible motive. I see that precisely as others may see

it. Indeed, if I were charged now with want of generosity for casting

myself so, a dead burden, on the man I love, nothing of the sort could

surprise me. It was what occurred to myself, that thought was, and

what occasioned a long struggle and months of agitation, and which

nothing could have overcome but the very uncommon affection of a very

uncommon person, reasoning out to me the great fact of love making its

own level. As to vanity and selfishness blinding me, certainly I

may have made a mistake, and the future may prove it, but still more

certainly I was not blinded _so_. On the contrary, never have I been

more humbled, and never less in danger of considering any personal

pitiful advantage, than throughout this affair. You, who are generous

and a woman, will believe this of me, even if you do not comprehend

the _habit_ I had fallen into of casting aside the consideration of

possible happiness of my own. But I was speaking of papa. Obvious it

was that the application to him was a mere form. I knew the result of

it. I had made up my mind to act upon my full right of taking my own

way. I had long believed such an act (the most strictly personal act

of one's life) to be within the rights of every person of mature age,

man or woman, and I had resolved to exercise that right in my own case

by a resolution which had slowly ripened. All the other doors of life

were shut to me, and shut me in as in a prison, and only before

this door stood one whom I loved best and who loved me best, and who

invited me out through it for the good's sake which he thought I

could do him. Now if for the sake of the mere form I had applied to

my father, and if, as he would have done directly, he had set up his

'curse' against the step I proposed to take, would it have been doing

otherwise than placing a knife in his hand? A few years ago, merely

through the reverberation of what he said to another on a subject like

this, I fell on the floor in a fainting fit, and was almost delirious

afterwards. I cannot bear some words. I would much rather have blows

without them. In my actual state of nerves and physical weakness, it

would have been the sacrifice of my whole life--of my convictions,

of my affections, and, above all, of what the person dearest to me

persisted in calling _his_ life, and the good of it--if I had observed

that 'form.' Therefore, wrong or right, I determined not to observe

it, and, wrong or right, I did and do consider that in not doing so I

sinned against no duty. That I was _constrained_ to act clandestinely,

and did not _choose_ to do so, God is witness, and will set it down as

my heavy misfortune and not my fault. Also, up to the very last act we

stood in the light of day for the whole world, if it pleased, to judge

us. I never saw him out of the Wimpole Street house; he came twice a

week to see me--or rather, three times in the fortnight, openly in

the sight of all, and this for nearly two years, and neither more

nor less. Some jests used to be passed upon us by my brothers, and I

allowed them without a word, but it would have been infamous in me to

have taken any into my confidence who would have suffered, as a direct

consequence, a blighting of his own prospects. My secrecy towards them

all was my simple duty towards them all, and what they call want of

affection was an affectionate consideration for them. My sisters did

indeed know the truth to a certain point. They knew of the attachment

and engagement--I could not help that--but the whole of the event I

kept from them with a strength and resolution which really I did not

know to be in me, and of which nothing but a sense of the injury to

be done to them by a fuller confidence, and my tender gratitude

and attachment to them for all their love and goodness, could have

rendered me capable. Their faith in me, and undeviating affection for

me, I shall be grateful for to the end of my existence, and to

the extent of my power of feeling gratitude. My dearest

sisters!--especially, let me say, my own beloved Arabel, who, with

no consolation except the exercise of a most generous tenderness, has

looked only to what she considered my good--never doubting me, never

swerving for one instant in her love for me. May God reward her as I

cannot. Dearest Henrietta loves me too, but loses less in me, and has

reasons for not misjudging me. But both my sisters have been faultless

in their bearing towards me, and never did I love them so tenderly as

I love them now.

The only time I met R.B. clandestinely was in the parish church, where

we were married before two witnesses--it was the first and only time.

I looked, he says, more dead than alive, and can well believe it, for

I all but fainted on the way, and had to stop for sal volatile at a

chemist's shop. The support through it all was _my trust in him_,

for no woman who ever committed a like act of trust has had stronger

motives to hold by. Now may I not tell you that his genius, and all

but miraculous attainments, are the least things in him, the moral

nature being of the very noblest, as all who ever knew him admit? Then

he has had that wide experience of men which ends by throwing the mind

back on itself and God; there is nothing incomplete in him, except

as all humanity is incompleteness. The only wonder is how such a man,

whom any woman could have loved, should have loved _me_; but men of

genius, you know, are apt to love with their imagination. Then there

is something in the sympathy, the strange, straight sympathy which

unites us on all subjects. If it were not that I look up to him, we

should be too alike to be together perhaps, but I know my place better

than he does, who is too humble. Oh, you cannot think how well we

get on after six weeks of marriage. If I suffer again it will not be

through _him_. Some day, dearest Mrs. Martin, I will show you and dear

Mr. Martin how his _prophecy was fulfilled_, saving some picturesque

particulars. I did not know before that Saul was among the prophets.

My poor husband suffered very much from the constraint imposed on him

by my position, and did, for the first time in his life, for my sake

do that in secret which he could not speak upon the housetops. _Mea

culpa_ all of it! If one of us two is to be blamed, it is I, at whose

representation of circumstances he submitted to do violence to his

own self-respect. I would not suffer him to tell even our dear common

friend Mr. Kenyon. I felt that it would be throwing on dear Mr. Kenyon

a painful responsibility, and involve him in the blame ready to fall.

And dear dear Mr. Kenyon, like the noble, generous friend I love so

deservedly, comprehends all at a word, sends us _not_ his forgiveness,

but his sympathy, his affection, the kindest words which can be

written! I cannot tell you all his inexpressible kindness to us both.

He justifies us to the uttermost, and, in that, all the grateful

attachment we had, each on our side, so long professed towards him.

Indeed, in a note I had from him yesterday, he uses this strong

expression after gladly speaking of our successful journey: 'I

considered that you had _perilled your life_ upon this undertaking,

and, reflecting upon your last position, I thought that _you had done

well_.' But my life was not perilled in the journey. The agitation and

fatigue were evils, to be sure, and Mrs. Jameson, who met us in Paris

by a happy accident, thought me 'looking horribly ill' at first, and

persuaded us to rest there for a week on the promise of accompanying

us herself to Pisa to help Robert to take care of me. He, who was in

a fit of terror about me, agreed at once, and so she came with us, she

and her young niece, and her kindness leaves us both very grateful. So

kind she was, and is--for still she is in Pisa--opening her arms to

us and calling us 'children of light' instead of ugly names, and

declaring that she should have been 'proud' to have had anything to

do with our marriage. Indeed, we hear every day kind speeches and

messages from people such as Mr. Chorley of the 'Athenaeum,' who 'has

tears in his eyes,' Monckton Milnes, Barry Cornwall, and other friends

of my husband's, but who only know _me_ by my books, and I want the

love and sympathy of those who love me and whom I love. I was talking

of the influence of the journey. The change of air has done me

wonderful good notwithstanding the fatigue, and I am renewed to the

point of being able to throw off most of my invalid habits; and of

walking quite like a woman. Mrs. Jameson said the other day, 'You are

not _improved_, you are _transformed_.' We have most comfortable rooms

here at Pisa and have taken them for six months, in the best situation

for health, and close to the Duomo and Leaning Tower. It is a

beautiful, solemn city, and we have made acquaintance with Professor

Ferucci, who is about to admit us to [a sight][148] of the [University

Lib]rary. We shall certainly [spend] next summer in Italy _somewhere_,

and [talk] of Rome for the next winter, but, of course, this is all in

air. Let me hear

from you, dearest Mrs. Martin, and direct, 'M. Browning, Poste

Restante, Pisa'--it is best. Just before we left Paris I wrote to my

aunt Jane, and from Marseilles to Bummy, but from neither have I heard

yet.

With best love to dearest Mr. Martin, ever both my dear kind friends,

Your affectionate and grateful

BA.

[Footnote 148: The original is torn here.]

_To Miss Mitford_[149]

Moulins: October 2, 1846.

I began to write to you, my beloved friend, earlier, that I might

follow your kindest wishes literally, and also to thank you at once

for your goodness to me, for which may God bless you. But the fatigue

and agitation have been very great, and I was forced to break off--as

now I dare not revert to what is behind. I will tell you more another

day. At Orleans, with your kindest letter, I had one from my dearest,

gracious friend Mr. Kenyon, who, in his goodness, does more than

exculpate--even _approves_--he wrote a joint letter to both of us.

But oh, the anguish I have gone through! You are good, you are kind. I

thank you from the bottom of my heart for saying to me that you would

have gone to the church with me. _Yes, I know you would_. And for

that very reason I forbore involving you in such a responsibility and

drawing you into such a net. I took Wilson with me. I had courage to

keep the secret to my sisters for their sakes, though I will tell you

in strict confidence that it was known to them _potentially_, that

is, the attachment and engagement were known, the necessity remaining

that, for stringent reasons affecting their own tranquillity, they

should be able to say at last, 'We were not instructed in this and

this.' The dearest, fondest, most affectionate of sisters they are to

me, and if the sacrifice of a life, or of all prospect of happiness,

would have worked any lasting good to them, it should have been made

even in the hour I left them. I knew _that_ by the anguish I suffered

in it. But a sacrifice, without good to anyone--I shrank from it. And

also, it was the sacrifice of _two_. And _he_, as you say, had done

everything for me, had loved me for reasons which had helped to weary

me of myself, loved me heart to heart persistently--in spite of my own

will--drawn me back to life and hope again when I had done with both.

My life seemed to belong to him and to none other at last, and I had

no power to speak a word. Have faith in me, my dearest friend, till

you can know him. The intellect is so little in comparison to all the

rest, to the womanly tenderness, the inexhaustible goodness, the high

and noble aspiration of every hour. Temper, spirits, manners: there is

not a flaw anywhere. I shut my eyes sometimes and fancy it all a dream

of my guardian angel. Only, if it had been a dream, the pain of some

parts of it would have awakened me before now; it is not a dream. I

have borne all the emotion of fatigue miraculously well, though, of

course, a good deal exhausted at times. We had intended to hurry on

to the South at once, but at Paris we met Mrs. Jameson, who opened her

arms to us with the most literal affectionateness, _kissed us both_,

and took us by surprise by calling us 'wise people, wild poets or

not.' Moreover, she fixed us in an apartment above her own in the

Hôtel de la Ville de Paris, that I might rest for a week, and crowned

the rest of her goodnesses by agreeing to accompany us to Pisa, where

she was about to travel with her young niece. Therefore we are five

travelling, Wilson being with me. Oh, yes, Wilson came; her attachment

to me never shrank for a moment. And Flush came and I assure you that

nearly as much attention has been paid to Flush as to me from the

beginning, so that he is perfectly reconciled, and would be happy

if the people at the railroads were not barbarians, and immovable in

their evil designs of shutting him up in a box when we travel that

way.

You understand now, ever dearest Miss Mitford, how the pause has

come about writing. The week at Paris! Such a strange week it was,

altogether like a vision. Whether in the body or out of the body I

cannot tell scarcely. Our Balzac should be flattered beyond measure

by my thinking of him at all. Which I did, but of _you_ more. I will

write and tell you more about Paris. You should go there indeed. And

to our hotel, if at all. Once we were at the Louvre, but we kept very

still of course, and were satisfied with the _idea_ of Paris. I

could have borne to live on there, it was all so strange and full of

contrast....

Now you will write--I feel my way on the paper to write this.

Nothing is changed between us, nothing can ever interfere with sacred

confidences, remember. I do not show letters, you need not fear my

turning traitress.... Pray for me, dearest friend, that the bitterness

of old affections may not be too bitter with me, and that God may turn

those salt waters sweet again.

Pray for your grateful and loving

E.B.B.

[Footnote 149: This letter is of earlier date than the last, having

been written _en route_ between Orleans and Lyons; but it has seemed

better to place the more detailed narrative first.]

_To Mrs. Martin_

[Pisa:] November 5, [1846].

It was pleasant to me, my dearest friend, to think while I was reading

your letter yesterday, that almost by that time you had received mine,

and could not even seem to doubt a moment longer whether I admitted

your claim of hearing and of speaking to the uttermost. I recognised

you too entirely as my friend. Because you had put faith in me, so

much the more reason there was that I should justify it as far as I

could, and with as much frankness (which was a part of my gratitude to

you) as was possible from a woman to a woman. Always I have felt that

you have believed in me and loved me; and, for the sake of the past

and of the present, your affection and your esteem are more to me than

I could afford to lose, even in these changed and happy circumstances.

So I thank you once more, my dear kind friends, I thank you both--I

never shall forget your goodness. I feel it, of course, the more

deeply, in proportion to the painful disappointment in other

quarters.... Am I, bitter? The feeling, however, passes while I write

it out, and my own affection for everybody will wait patiently to

be 'forgiven' in the proper form, when everybody shall be at leisure

properly. Assuredly, in the meanwhile, however, my case is not to be

classed with other cases--what happened to me could not have happened,

perhaps, with any other family in England.... I hate and loathe

everything too which is clandestine--we _both_ do, Robert and I; and

the manner the whole business was carried on in might have instructed

the least acute of the bystanders. The flowers standing perpetually

on my table for the last two years were brought there by one hand,

as everybody knew; and really it would have argued an excess of

benevolence in an unmarried man with quite enough resources in London,

to pay the continued visits he paid to me without some strong motive

indeed. Was it his fault that he did not associate with everybody in

the house as well as with me? He desired it; but no--that was not to

be. The endurance of the pain of the position was not the least proof

of his attachment to me. How I thank you for believing in him--how

grateful it makes me! He will justify to the uttermost that faith. We

have been married two months, and every hour has bound me to him more

and more; if the beginning was well, still better it is now--that is

what he says to me, and I say back again day by day. Then it is an

'advantage,' to have an inexhaustible companion who talks wisdom of

all things in heaven and earth, and shows besides as perpetual a

good humour and gaiety as if he were--a fool, shall I say? or a

considerable quantity more, perhaps. As to our domestic affairs, it is

not to _my_ honour and glory that the 'bills' are made up every week

and paid more regularly 'than hard beseems,' while dear Mrs. Jameson

laughs outright at our miraculous prudence and economy, and declares

that it is past belief and precedent that we should not burn the

candles at both ends, and the next moment will have it that we remind

her of the children in a poem of Heine's who set up housekeeping in

a tub, and inquired gravely the price of coffee. Ah, but she has

left Pisa at last--left it yesterday. It was a painful parting to

everybody. Seven weeks spent in such close neighbourhood--a month of

it under the same roof and in the same carriages--will fasten

people together, and then travelling _shakes_ them together. A more

affectionate, generous woman never lived than Mrs. Jameson, and it

is pleasant to be sure that she loves us both from her heart, and not

only _du bout des lèvres_. Think of her making Robert promise (as he

has told me since) that in the case of my being unwell he would write

to her instantly, and she would come at once if anywhere in Italy. So

kind, so like her. She spends the winter in Rome, but an intermediate

month at Florence, and we are to keep tryst with her somewhere in the

spring, perhaps at Venice. If not, she says that she will come back

here, for that certainly she will see us. She would have stayed

altogether perhaps, if it had not been for her book upon art which she

is engaged to bring out next year, and the materials for which are to

be _sought_. As to Pisa, she liked it just as we like it. Oh, it is so

beautiful and so full of repose, yet not _desolate_: it is rather the

repose of sleep than of death. Then after the first ten days of rain,

which seemed to refer us fatally to Alfieri's 'piove e ripiove,' came

as perpetual a divine sunshine, such cloudless, exquisite weather that

we ask whether it may not be June instead of November. Every day I am

out walking while the golden oranges look at me over the walls, and

when I am tired Robert and I sit down on a stone to watch the lizards.

We have been to your seashore, too, and seen your island, only he

insists on it (Robert does) that it is not Corsica but Gorgona, and

that Corsica is not in sight. _Beautiful_ and blue the island was,

however, in any case. It might have been Romero's instead of either.

Also we have driven up to the foot of mountains, and seen them

reflected down in the little pure lake of Ascuno, and we have seen the

pine woods, and met the camels laden with faggots all in a line. So

now ask me again if I enjoy my liberty as you expect. My head goes

round sometimes, that is all. I never was happy before in my life. Ah,

but, of course, the painful thoughts recur!

There are some whom I love too tenderly to be easy under their

displeasure, or even under their injustice. Only it, seems to me

that with time and patience my poor dearest papa will be melted into

opening his arms to us--will be melted into a clearer understanding of

motives and intentions; I cannot believe that he will forget me, as he

says he will, and go on thinking me to be dead rather than alive and

happy. So I manage to hope for the best, and all that remains, all

my life here, _is_ best already, could not be better or happier. And

willingly tell dear Mr. Martin I would take him and you for witnesses

of it, and in the meanwhile he is not to send me tantalising messages;

no, indeed, unless you really, really, should let yourselves be wafted

our way, and could you do so much better at Pau? particularly if Fanny

Hanford should come here. Will she really? The climate is described by

the inhabitants as a 'pleasant spring throughout the winter,' and if

you were to see Robert and me threading our path along the shady side

everywhere to avoid the 'excessive heat of the sun' in this November

(!) it would appear a good beginning. We are not in the warm orthodox

position by the Arno because we heard with our ears one of the best

physicians of the place advise against it. 'Better,' he said, 'to have

cool rooms to live in and warm walks to go out along.' The rooms we

have are rather over-cool perhaps; we are obliged to have a little

fire in the sitting-room, in the mornings and evenings that is; but

I do not fear for the winter, there is too much difference to my

feelings between this November and any English November I ever knew.

We have our dinner from the Trattoria at two o'clock, and can dine our

favorite way on thrushes and chianti with a miraculous cheapness, and

no trouble, no cook, no kitchen; the prophet Elijah or the lilies of

the field took as little thought for their dining, which exactly suits

us. It is a continental fashion which we never cease commending. Then

at six we have coffee, and rolls of milk, made of milk, I mean, and at

nine our supper (call it supper, if you please) of roast chestnuts and

grapes. So you see how primitive we are, and how I forget to praise

the eggs at breakfast. The worst of Pisa is, or would be to some

persons, that, socially speaking, it has its dullnesses; it is not

lively like Florence, not in that way. But we do not want society, we

shun it rather. We like the Duomo and the Campo Santo instead. Then

we know a little of Professor Ferucci, who gives us access to the

University library, and we subscribe to a modern one, and we have

plenty of writing to do of our own. If we can do anything for Fanny

Hanford, let us know. It would be too happy, I suppose, to have to do

it for yourselves. Think, however, I am quite well, quite well. I can

thank God, too, for being alive and well. Make dear Mr. Martin keep

well, and not forget himself in the Herefordshire cold--draw him into

the sun somewhere. Now write and tell me everything of your plans and

of you both, dearest friends. My husband bids me say that he desires

to have my friends for his own friends, and that he is grateful to you

for not crossing that feeling. Let him send his regards to you. And

let me be throughout all changes,

Your ever faithful and most affectionate

BA.

I am expecting every day to hear from my dearest sisters. Write to

them and love them for me.

This letter has been kept for several days from different causes. Will

you inclose the little note to Miss Mitford? I do not hear from home,

and am uneasy.

May God bless you!

November 9.

I am so vexed about those poems appearing just now in

'Blackwood.'[150] Papa must think it _impudent_ of me. It is

unfortunate.

[Footnote 150: _Blackwood's Magazine_ for October 1846 contained

the following poems by Mrs. Browning, some phrases in which might

certainly be open to comment if they were supposed to have been

deliberately chosen for publication at this particular time: 'A

Woman's Shortcomings,' 'A Man's Requirements,' 'Maude's Spinning,' 'A

Dead Rose,' 'Change on Change,' 'A Reed,' and 'Hector in the Garden.']

_To Miss Mitford_

[Pisa]: November 5, 1846.

I have your letter, ever dearest Miss Mitford, and it is welcome even

more than your letters have been used to be to me--the last charm

was to come, you see, by this distance. For all your affection and

solicitude, may you trust my gratitude; and if you love me a little,

I love you indeed, and never shall cease. The only difference shall be

that two may love you where one did, and for my part I will answer for

it that if you could love the poor one you will not refuse any love

to the other when you come to know him. I never could bear to speak to

you of _him_ since quite the beginning, or rather I never could dare.

But when you know him and understand how the mental gifts are scarcely

half of him, you will not wonder at your friend, and, indeed, two

years of steadfast affection from such a man would have, overcome any

woman's heart. I have been neither much wiser nor much foolisher than

all the shes in the world, only much happier--the difference is in the

happiness. Certainly I am not likely to repent of having given myself

to him. I cannot, for all the pain received from another quarter, the

comfort for which is that my conscience is pure of the sense of having

broken the least known duty, and that the same consequence would

follow any marriage of any member of my family with any possible man

or woman. I look to time, and reason, and natural love and pity, and

to the justification of the events acting through all; I look on so

and hope, and in the meanwhile it has been a great comfort to have had

not merely the indulgence but the approbation and sympathy of most

of my old personal friends--oh, such kind letters; for instance,

yesterday one came from dear Mrs. Martin, who has known me, she and

her husband, since the very beginning of my womanhood, and both of

them are acute, thinking people, with heads as strong as their hearts.

I in my haste left England without a word to them, for which they

might naturally have reproached me; instead of which they write to say

that never _for a moment_ have they doubted my having acted for the

best and happiest, and to assure me that, having sympathised with me

in every sorrow and trial, they delightedly feel with me in the new

joy; nothing could be more cordially kind. See how I write to you as

if I could speak--all these little things which are great things when

seen in the light. Also R, and I are not in the least tired of one

another notwithstanding the very perpetual _tête-à-tête_ into which

we have fallen, and which (past the first fortnight) would be rather a

trial in many cases. Then our housekeeping may end perhaps in being a

proverb among the nations, for at the beginning it makes Mrs. Jameson

laugh heartily. It disappoints her theories, she admits--finding that,

albeit poets, we abstain from burning candles at both ends at once,

just as if we did statistics and historical abstracts by nature

instead. And do not think that the trouble falls on me. Even the

pouring out of the coffee is a divided labour, and the ordering of the

dinner is quite out of my hands. As for me, when I am so good as to

let myself be carried upstairs, and so angelical as to sit still on

the sofa, and so considerate, moreover, as _not_ to put my foot into

a puddle, why _my_ duty is considered done to a perfection which is

worthy of all adoration; it really is not very hard work to please

this taskmaster. For Pisa, we both like it extremely. The city is

full of beauty and repose, and the purple mountains gloriously seem

to beckon us on deeper into the vineland. We have rooms close to the

Duomo and Leaning Tower, in the great Collegio built by Vasari, three

excellent bedrooms and a sitting-room, matted and carpeted, looking

comfortable even for England. For the last fortnight, except the very

last few sunny days, we have had rain; but the climate is as mild as

possible, no cold, with all the damp. Delightful weather we had for

the travelling. Ah, you, with your terrors of travelling, how you

amuse me! Why, the constant change of air in the continued fine

weather made me better and better instead of worse. It did me

infinite good. Mrs. Jameson says she 'won't call me _improved_, but

_transformed_ rather.' I like the new sights and the movement; my

spirits rise; I live--I can adapt myself. If you really tried it and

got as far as Paris you would be drawn on, I fancy, and on--on to the

East perhaps with H. Martineau, or at least as near it as we are here.

By the way, or out of the way, it struck me as unfortunate that my

poems should have been printed _just now_ in 'Blackwood;' I wish it

had been otherwise. Then I had a letter from one of my Leeds readers

the other day to expostulate about the _inappropriateness_ of certain

of them! The fact is that I sent a heap of verses swept from my desk

and belonging to old feelings and impressions, and not imagining that

they were to be used in that quick way. There can't be very much to

like, I fear, apart from your goodness for what calls itself mine.

Love me, dearest dear Miss Mitford, my dear kind friend--love me, I

beg of you, still and ever, only ceasing when I cease to think of you;

I will allow of that clause. Mrs. Jameson and Gerardine are staying at

the hotel here in Pisa still, and we manage to see them every day; so

good and true and affectionate she is, and so much we shall miss

her when she goes, which will be in a day or two now. She goes to

Florence, to Siena, to Rome to complete her work upon art, which

is the object of her Italian journey. I read your vivid and glowing

description of the picture to her, or rather I showed your picture

to her, and she quite believes with you that it is most probably a

_Velasquez_. Much to be congratulated the owner must be. I mean to

know something about pictures some day. Robert does, and I shall get

him to open my eyes for me with a little instruction. You know that

in this place are to be seen the first steps of art, and it will be

interesting to trace them from it as we go farther ourselves. Our

present residence we have taken for six months; but we have dreams,

dreams, and we discuss them like soothsayers over the evening's

roasted chestnuts and grapes. Flush highly approves of Pisa (and the

roasted chestnuts), because here he goes out every day and speaks

Italian to the little dogs. Oh, Mr. Chorley, such a kind, feeling

note he wrote to Robert from Germany, when he read of our marriage

in 'Galignani;' we were both touched by it. And Monckton Milnes and

others--very kind all. But in a particular manner I remember the

kindness of my valued friend Mr. Horne, who never failed me nor could

fail. Will you explain to him, or rather ask him to understand, why I

did not answer his last note? I forget even Balzac here; tell me what

he writes, and help me to love that dear, generous Mr. Kenyon, whom I

can love without help. And let me love you, and you love me.

Your ever affectionate and grateful

E.B.B.

_To Mrs. Jameson_

Collegio Ferdinando [Pisa]:

Saturday, November 23, 1846 [postmark].

We were delighted to have your note, dearest Aunt Nina, and I answer

it with my feet on your stool, so that my feet are full of you even if

my head is not, always. Now, I shall not go a sentence farther without

thanking you for that comfort; you scarcely guessed perhaps what a

comfort it would be, that stool of yours. I am even apt to sit on it

for hours together, leaning against the sofa, till I get to be scolded

for putting myself so into the fire, and prophesied of in respect to

the probability of a 'general conflagration' of stools and Bas; on

which the prophet is to leap from the Leaning Tower, and Flush to

be left to make the funeral oration of the establishment. In the

meantime, it really is quite a comfort that our housekeeping should be

your 'example' at Florence; we have edifying countenances whenever we

think of it. And Robert will not by any means believe that you passed

us on our own ground, though the eleven pauls a week for breakfast,

and my humility, seemed to suggest something of the sort. I am so

glad, we are both so glad, that you are enjoying yourself at the

fullest and highest among the wonders of art, and cannot be chilled

in the soul by any of those fatal winds you speak of. For me, I am

certainly better here at Pisa, though the penalty is to see Frate

Angelico's picture with the remembrance of you rather than the

presence. Here, indeed, we have had a little too much cold for two

days; there was a feeling of frost in the air, and a most undeniable

east wind which prevented my going out, and made me feel less

comfortable than usual at home. But, after all, one felt ashamed to

call it _cold_, and Robert found the heat on the Arno insupportable;

which set us both mourning over our 'situation' at the Collegio, where

one of us could not get out on such days without a blow on the chest

from the 'wind at the corner.' Well, experience teaches, and we shall

be taught, and the cost of it is not so very much after all. We have

seen your professor once since you left us (oh, the leaving!), or

_spoken_ to him once, I should say, when he came in one evening and

caught us reading, sighing, yawning over 'Nicolò de' Lapi,' a romance

by the son-in law of Manzoni. Before we could speak, he called it

'excellent, très beau,' one of their very best romances, upon which,

of course, dear Robert could not bear to offend his literary and

national susceptibilities by a doubt even. _I_, not being so humane,

thought that any suffering reader would be justified (under the

rack-wheel) in crying out against such a book, as the dullest,

heaviest, stupidest, lengthiest. Did you ever read it? If not,

_don't_. When a father-in-law imitates Scott, and a son-in-law

imitates his father-in-law, think of the consequences! Robert, in his

zeal for Italy and against Eugène Sue, tried to persuade me at first

(this was before the scene with your professor) that 'really, Ba, it

wasn't so bad,' 'really you are too hard to be pleased,' and so on;

but after two or three chapters, the dullness grew too strong for even

his benevolence, and the yawning catastrophe (supposed to be peculiar

to the 'Guida') overthrew him as completely as it ever did me, though

we both resolved to hold on by the stirrup to the end of the two

volumes. The catalogue of the library (for observe that we subscribe

now--the object is attained!) offers a most melancholy insight

into the actual literature of Italy. Translations, translations,

translations from third and fourth and fifth rate French and English

writers, chiefly French; the roots of thought, here in Italy, seem

dead in the ground. It is well that they have great memories--nothing

else lives.

We have had the kindest of letters from dear noble Mr. Kenyon; who,

by the way, speaks of you as we like to hear him. Dickens is going to

Paris for the winter, and Mrs. Butler[151] (he adds) is expected

in London. Dear Mr. Kenyon calls me 'crotchety,' but Robert 'an

incarnation of the good and the true,' so that I have everything to

thank him for. There are noble people who take the world's side and

make it seem 'for the _nonce_' almost respectable; but he gives up all

the talk and fine schemes about money-making, and allows us to wait to

see whether we want it or not--the money, I mean.

It is Monday, and I am only finishing this note. In the midst came

letters from my sisters, making me feel so glad that I could not

write. Everybody is well and happy, and dear papa _in high spirits_

and _having people to dine with him every day_, so that I have not

really done anyone harm in doing myself all this good. It does not

indeed bring us a step nearer to the forgiveness, but to hear of his

being in good spirits makes me inclined to jump, with Gerardine.[152]

Dear Geddie! How pleased I am to hear of her being happy, particularly

(perhaps) as she is not too happy to forget _me_. Is all that glory of

art making her very ambitious to work and enter into the court of the

Temple?...

Robert's love to you both. We often talk of our prospect of meeting

you again. And for the _past_, dearest Aunt Nina, believe of me that

I feel to you more gratefully than ever I can say, and remain, while I

live,

Your faithful and affectionate

BA.

[Footnote 151: Better known as Fanny Kemble.]

[Footnote 152: Miss Gerardine Bate, Mrs. Jameson's niece.]

_To Miss Mitford_

Pisa: December 19, [1846].

Ever dearest Miss Mitford, your kindest letter is three times welcome

as usual. On the day you wrote it in the frost, I was sitting out of

doors, just in my summer mantilla, and complaining 'of the heat this

December!' But woe comes to the discontented. Within these three or

four days we too have had frost--yes, and a little snow, for the

first time, say the Pisans, during five years. Robert says that

the mountains are powdered toward Lucca, and I, who cannot see the

mountains, can see the cathedral--the Duomo--how it glitters whitely

at the summit, between the blue sky and its own walls of yellow

marble. Of course I do not stir an inch from the fire, yet have to

struggle a little against my old languor. Only, you see, this can't

last! it is exceptional weather, and, up to the last few days, has

been divine. And then, after all we talk of frost, my bedroom, which

has no fireplace, shows not an English sign on the window, and the

air is not _metallic_ as in England. The sun, too, is so hot that

the women are seen walking with fur capes and parasols, a curious

combination.

I hope you had your visit from Mr. Chorley, and that you both had the

usual pleasure from it. Indeed I _am_ touched by what you tell me, and

was touched by his note to my husband, written in the first surprise;

and because Robert has the greatest regard for him, besides my own

personal reasons, I do count him in the forward rank of our friends.

You will hear that he has obliged us by accepting a trusteeship to

a settlement, forced upon me in spite of certain professions or

indispositions of mine; but as my husband's gifts, I had no right, it

appeared, by refusing it to place him in a false position for the sake

of what dear Mr. Kenyon calls my 'crotchets.' Oh, dear Mr. Kenyon! His

kindness and goodness to us have been past thinking of, past thanking

for; we can only fall into silence. He has thrust his hand into the

fire for us by writing to papa himself, by taking up the management of

my small money-matters when nearer hands let them drop, by justifying

us with the whole weight of his personal influence; all this in the

very face of his own habits and susceptibilities. He has resolved

that I shall not miss the offices of father, brother, friend, nor the

tenderness and sympathy of them all. And this man is called a mere man

of the world, and would be called so rightly if the world were a place

for angels. I shall love him dearly and gratefully to my last breath;

we both shall....

Robert and I are deep in the fourth month of wedlock; there has not

been a shadow between us, nor a _word_ (and I have observed that all

married people confess to _words_), and that the only change I can lay

my finger on in him is simply and clearly an increase of affection.

Now I need not say it if I did not please, and I should not please,

you know, to tell a story. The truth is, that I who always did

certainly believe in love, yet was as great a sceptic as you about the

evidences thereof, and having held twenty times that Jacob's serving

fourteen years for Rachel was not too long by fourteen days, I was

not a likely person (with my loathing dread of marriage as a loveless

state, and absolute contentment with single life as the alternative

to the great majorities of marriages), I was not likely to accept a

feeling not genuine, though from the hand of Apollo himself, crowned

with his various godships. Especially too, in my position, I could

not, would not, should not have done it. Then, genuine feelings are

genuine feelings, and do not pass like a cloud. We are as happy as

people can be, I do believe, yet are living in a way to _try_ this

new relationship of ours--in the utmost seclusion and perpetual

_téte-à-téte_--no amusement nor distraction from without, except some

of the very dullest Italian romances which throw us back on the

memory of Balzac with reiterated groans. The Italians seem to hang on

translations from the French--as we find from the library--not merely

of Balzac, but Dumas, your Dumas, and reaching lower--long past De

Kock--to the third and fourth rate novelists. What is purely Italian

is, as far as we have read, purely dull and conventional. There is no

breath nor pulse in the Italian genius. Mrs. Jameson writes to us

from Florence that in politics and philosophy the people are getting

alive--which may be, for aught we know to the contrary, the poetry and

imagination leave them room enough by immense vacancies.

Yet we delight in Italy, and dream of 'pleasures new' for the

summer--_pastures_ new, I should have said--but it comes to the same

thing. The _padrone_ in this house sent us in as a gift (in gracious

recognition, perhaps, of our lawful paying of bills) an immense dish

of oranges--two hanging on a stalk with the green leaves still moist

with the morning's dew--every great orange of twelve or thirteen with

its own stalk and leaves. Such a pretty sight! And better oranges, I

beg to say, never were eaten, when we are barbarous enough to eat them

day by day after our two o'clock dinner, softening, with the vision

of them, the winter which has just shown itself. Almost I have been

as pleased with the oranges as I was at Avignon by the _pomegranate_

given to me much in the same way. Think of my being singled out of

all our caravan of travellers--Mrs. Jameson and Gerardine Jameson[153]

both there--for that significant gift of the pomegranates! I had never

seen one before, and, of course, proceeded instantly to cut one 'deep

down the middle'[154]--accepting the omen. Yet, in shame and confusion

of face, I confess to not being able to appreciate it properly. Olives

and pomegranates I set on the same shelf, to be just looked at and

called by their names, but by no means eaten bodily.

But you mistake me, dearest friend, about the 'Blackwood' verses. I

never thought of writing _applicative poems_--the heavens forfend!

Only that just _then_, [in] the midst of all the talk, _any_ verses

of mine should come into print--and some of them to that _particular

effect_--looked unlucky. I dare say poor papa (for instance) thought

me turned suddenly to brass itself. Well, it is perhaps more my

fancy than anything else, and was only an impression, even there. Mr.

Chorley will tell you of a play of his, which I hope will make its

way, though I do wonder how people can bear to write for the theatres

in the present state of things. Robert is busy preparing a new edition

of his collected poems which are to be so clear that everyone who has

understood them hitherto will lose all distinction. We both mean to

be as little idle as possible.... We shall meet one day in joy, I do

hope, and then you will love my husband for his own sake, as for mine

you do not hate him now.

Your ever affectionate

E.B.B.

[Footnote 153: This surname is a mistake on Mrs. Browning's part; see

her letter of October 1, 1849.]

[Footnote 154: See _Lady Geraldine's Courtship_, stanza xli.]

_To H.S. Boyd_

[Pisa:] December 21 [1846].

You must let me tell you, my dearest Mr. Boyd, that I dreamed of you

last night, and that you were looking very well in my dream, and that

you told me to break a crust from a loaf of bread which lay by you

on the table; which I accept on recollection as a sacramental sign

between us, of peace and affection. Wasn't it strange that I should

dream so of you? Yet no; thinking awake of you, the sleeping thoughts

come naturally. Believe of me this Christmas time, as indeed at every

time, that I do not forget you, and that all the distance and change

of country can make no difference. Understand, too (for _that_ will

give pleasure to your goodness), that I am very happy, and not unwell,

though it is almost Christmas....

Dearest friend, are you well and in good spirits? Think of me over

the Cyprus, between the cup and the lip, though bad things are said to

fall out so. We have, instead of Cyprus, _Montepulciano_, the famous

'King of Wine,' crowned king, you remember, by the grace of a poet!

Your Cyprus, however, keeps supremacy over me, and will not abdicate

the divine right of being associated with you. I speak of wine, but we

live here the most secluded, quiet life possible--reading and writing,

and talking of all things in heaven and earth, and a little besides;

and sometimes even laughing as if we had twenty people to laugh with

us, or rather _hadn't_. We know not a creature, I am happy to say,

except an Italian professor (of the university here) who called on us

the other evening and praised aloud the scholars of England. 'English

Latin was best,' he said, 'and English Greek foremost.' Do you clap

your hands?

The new pope is more liberal than popes in general, and people write

odes to him in consequence.

Robert is going to bring out a new edition of his collected poems,

and you are not to read any more, if you please, till this is done.

I heard of Carlyle's saying the other day 'that he hoped more from

Robert Browning, for the people of England, than from any living

English writer,' which pleased me, of course. I am just sending off

an anti-slavery poem for America,[155] too ferocious, perhaps, for the

Americans to publish: but they asked for a poem and shall have it.

If I ask for a letter, shall I have it, I wonder? Remember me and

love me a little, and pray for me, dearest friend, and believe how

gratefully and ever affectionately

I am your

ELIBET,

though Robert always calls me _Ba_, and thinks it the prettiest name

in the world! which is a proof, you will say, not only of blind love

but of deaf love.

[Footnote 155: 'The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point' _(Poetical

Works_, ii. 192). It was first printed in a collection called _The

Liberty Bell_, for sale at the Boston National Anti-slavery Bazaar

of 1848. It was separately printed in England in 1849 as a small

pamphlet, which is now a rare bibliographical curiosity.]

It was during the stay at Pisa, and early in the year 1847, that Mr.

Browning first became acquainted with his wife's 'Sonnets from

the Portuguese.' Written during the course of their courtship and

engagement, they were not shown even to him until some months after

their marriage. The story of it was told by Mr. Browning in later

life to Mr. Edmund Gosse, with leave to make it known to the world in

general; and from Mr. Gosse's publication it is here quoted in his own

words.[156]

[Footnote 156: '_Critical Kit-Kats_,' by E. Gosse, p. 2 (1896).]

'Their custom was, Mr. Browning said, to write alone, and not to show

each other what they had written. This was a rule which he sometimes

broke through, but she never. He had the habit of working in a

downstairs room, where their meals were spread, while Mrs. Browning

studied in a room on the floor above. One day, early in 1847, their

breakfast being over, Mrs. Browning went upstairs, while her husband

stood at the window watching the street till the table should be

cleared. He was presently aware of some one behind him, although the

servant was gone. It was Mrs. Browning, who held him by the shoulder

to prevent his turning to look at her, and at the same time pushed

a packet of papers into the pocket of his coat. She told him to read

that, and to tear it up if he did not like it; and then she fled again

to her own room.'

The sonnets were intended for her husband's eye alone; in the first

instance, not even for his. No poems can ever have been composed with

less thought of the public; perhaps for that very reason they are

unmatched for simplicity and sincerity in all Mrs. Browning's work.

Her genius in them has full mastery over its material, as it has in

few of her other poems. All impurities of style or rhythm are purged

away by the fire of love; and they stand, not only highest among the

writings of their authoress, but also in the very forefront of English

love-poems. With the single exception of Rossetti, no modern English

poet has written of love with such genius, such beauty, and such

sincerity, as the two who gave the most beautiful example of it in

their own lives.

Fortunately for all those who love true poetry, Mr. Browning judged

rightly of the obligation laid upon him by the possession of these

poems. 'I dared not,' he said, 'reserve to myself the finest sonnets

written in any language since Shakespeare's.' Accordingly he persuaded

his wife to commit the printing of them to her friend, Miss Mitford;

and in the course of the year they appeared in a slender volume,

entitled 'Sonnets, by E.B.B.,' with the imprint 'Reading, 1847,' and

marked 'Not for publication.' It was not until three years later that

they were offered to the general public, in the volumes of 1850.

Here first they appeared under the title of 'Sonnets from the

Portuguese'--a title suggested by Mr. Browning (in preference to his

wife's proposal, 'Sonnets translated from the Bosnian') for the sake

of its half-allusion to her other poem, 'Catarina to Camoens,' which

was one of his chief favourites among her works.

To these sonnets there is, however, no allusion in the letters here

published, which say little for some time of her own work.

_To Miss Mitford_

February 8, 1847.

But, my dearest Miss Mitford, your scheme about Leghorn is drawn out

in the clouds. Now just see how impossible. Leghorn is fifteen miles

off, and though there is a railroad there is no liberty for French

books to wander backwards and forwards without inspection and seizure.

Why, do remember that we are in Italy after all! Nevertheless, I will

tell you what we have done: transplanted our subscription from the

Italian library, which was wearing us away into a misanthropy, or at

least despair of the wits of all Southerns, into a library which has

a tolerable supply of French books, and gives us the privilege

besides of having a French newspaper, the 'Siècle,' left with us every

evening. Also, this library admits (is allowed to admit on certain

conditions) some books forbidden generally by the censureship, which

is of the strictest; and though Balzac appears very imperfectly, I

am delighted to find him at all, and shall dun the bookseller for the

'Instruction criminelle,' which I hope discharges your Lucien as a

'forçat'--neither man nor woman--and true poet, least of all....

The 'Siècle' has for a _feuilleton_ a new romance of Soulié's, called

'Saturnin Fichet,' which is really not good, and tiresome to boot.

Robert and I began by each of us reading it, but after a little while

he left me alone, being certain that no good could come of such a

work. So, of course, ever since, I have been exclaiming and exclaiming

as to the wonderful improvement and increasing beauty and glory of

it, just to justify myself, and to make him sorry for not having

persevered! The truth is, however, that but for obstinacy I should

give up too. Deplorably dull the story is, and there is a crowd of

people each more indifferent than each, to you; the pith of the plot

being (very characteristically) that the hero has somebody exactly

like him. To the reader, it's _all one_ in every sense--who's who, and

what's what. Robert is a warm admirer of Balzac and has read most of

his books, but certainly--oh certainly--he does not in a general way

appreciate our French people quite with our warmth; he takes too high

a standard, I tell him, and won't listen to a story for a story's

sake. I can bear to be amused, you know without a strong pull on my

admiration. So we have great wars sometimes, and I put up Dumas' flag,

or Soulié's, or Eugène Sue's (yet he was properly possessed by the

'Mystères de Paris') and carry it till my arms ache. The plays and

vaudevilles he knows far more of than I do, and always maintains

they are the happiest growth of the French school--setting aside the

_masters_, observe--for Balzac and George Sand hold all their honours;

and, before your letter came, he had told me about the 'Kean' and the

other dramas. Then we read together the other day the 'Rouge et Noir,'

that powerful book of Stendhal's (Beyle), and he thought it very

striking, and observed--what I had thought from the first and again

and again--that it was exactly like Balzac _in the raw_, in the

material and undeveloped conception. What a book it is really, and so

full of pain and bitterness, and the gall of iniquity! The new Dumas

I shall see in time, perhaps, and it is curious that Robert had just

been telling me the very story you speak of in your letter, from the

'Causes Célèbres.' I never read it--the more shame! Dearest friend,

all this talk of French books and no talk about _you_--the _most_

shame! You don't tell me enough of yourself, and I want to hear,

because (besides the usual course of reasons) Mr. Chorley spoke of you

as if you were not as cheerful as usual; do tell me. Ah! if you fancy

that I do not love you as near, through being so far, you are unjust

to me as you never were before. For myself, the brightness round me

has had a cloud on it lately by an illness of poor Wilson's.... She

would not go to Dr. Cook till I was terrified one night, while she was

undressing me, by her sinking down on the sofa in a shivering fit. Oh,

so frightened I was, and Robert ran out for a physician; and I could

have shivered too, with the fright. But she is convalescent now,

thank God! and in the meanwhile I have acquired a heap of practical

philosophy, and have learnt how it is possible (in certain conditions

of the human frame) to comb out and twist up one's own hair, and lace

one's very own stays, and cause hooks and eyes to meet behind one's

very own back, besides making toast and water for Wilson--which last

miracle, it is only just to say, was considerably assisted by Robert's

counsels 'not quite to set fire to the bread' while one was toasting

it. He was the best and kindest all that time, as even _he_ could be,

and carried the kettle when it was too heavy for me, and helped me

with heart and head. Mr. Chorley could not have praised him too much,

be very sure. I, who always rather appreciated him, do set down the

thoughts I had as merely unjust things; he exceeds them all, indeed.

Yes, Mr. Chorley has been very kind to us. I had a kind note myself

from him a few days since, and do you know that we have a sort of hope

of seeing him in Italy this year, with dearest Mr. Kenyon, who has the

goodness to crown his goodness by a 'dream' of coming to see us? We

leave Pisa in April (did I tell you that?) and pass through Florence

towards the north of Italy--to _Venice_, for instance. In the way of

writing, I have not done much yet--just finished my rough sketch of

an anti-slavery ballad and sent it off to America, where nobody will

print it, I am certain, because I could not help making it bitter. If

they _do_ print it, I shall thank them more boldly in earnest than

I fancy now. Tell me of Mary Howitt's new collection of ballads--are

they good? I warmly wish that Mr. Chorley may succeed with his play;

but how can Miss Cushman promise a hundred nights for an untried

work?... Perhaps you may find the two last numbers of the 'Bells and

Pomegranates' less obscure--it seems so to me. Flush has grown an

absolute monarch and barks one distracted when he wants a door opened.

Robert spoils him, I think. Do think of me as your ever affectionate

and grateful

BA.

Have you seen 'Agnes de Misanie,' the new play by the author of

'Lucretia'? A witty feuilletoniste says of it that, besides all the

unities of Aristotle, it comprises, from beginning to end, _unity of

situation_. Not bad, is it? Madame Ancelot has just succeeded with a

comedy, called 'Une Année à Paris.' By the way, _shall you go to Paris

this spring_?[157]

[Footnote 157: A list of the works composing Balzac's _Comédie

Humaine_ is attached to this letter for Miss Mitford's benefit.]

From Mr. Browning's family, though she had as yet had no opportunity

of making acquaintance with them face to face, Mrs. Browning from the

first met with an affectionate reception. The following is the first

now extant of a series of letters written by her to Miss Browning,

the poet's sister. The abrupt and private nature of the marriage

never seems to have caused the slightest coldness of feeling in this

quarter, though it must have caused anxiety; and the tone of the early

letters, in which so new and unfamiliar a relation had to be taken up,

does equal honour to the writer and to the recipient.

_To Miss Browning_

[Pisa: about February 1847.]

I must begin by thanking dearest Sarianna again for her note, and by

assuring her that the affectionate tone of it quite made me happy and

grateful together--that I am grateful to _all of you_: do _feel_ that

I am. For the rest, when I see (afar off) Robert's minute manuscripts,

a certain distrust steals over me of anything I can possibly tell you

of our way of living, lest it should be the vainest of repetitions,

and by no means worth repeating, both at once. Such a quiet silent

life it is--going to hear the Friar preach in the Duomo, a grand event

in it, and the wind laying flat all our schemes about Volterra and

Lucca! I have had to give up even the Friar for these three days past;

there is nothing for me when I have driven out Robert to take his

necessary walk but to sit and watch the pinewood blaze. He is grieved

about the illness of his cousin, only I do hope that your next letter

will confirm the happy change which stops the further anxiety, and

come soon for that purpose, besides others. Your letters never can

come too often, remember, even when they have not to speak of illness,

and I for my part must always have a thankful interest in your cousin

for the kind part he took in the happiest event of my life. You have

to tell us too of your dear mother--Robert is so anxious about her

always. How deeply and tenderly he loves her and all of you, never

could have been more manifest than now when he is away from you and

has to talk _of_ you instead of _to_ you. By the way (or rather out

of the way) I quite took your view of the purposed ingratitude to poor

Miss Haworth[158]--it would have been worse in him than the sins of

'Examiner' and 'Athenaeum.' If authors won't feel for one another,

there's an end of the world of writing! Oh, I think he proposed it in

a moment of hardheartedness--we all put on tortoiseshell now and then,

and presently come out into the sun as sensitively as ever. Besides

Miss Haworth has written to us very kindly; and kindness doesn't

spring up everywhere, like the violets in your gravel walks. See how I

understand Hatcham. Do try to love me a little, dearest Sarianna, and

(with my grateful love always to your father and mother) let me be

your affectionate sister,

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING,

or rather BA.

[Footnote 158: Miss E.F. Haworth (several letters to whom are given

farther on) was an old friend of Robert Browning's, and published a

volume of verse in 1847, to which this passage seems to allude.]

The correspondence with Mr. Westwood, which had lapsed for a

considerable time, was resumed with the following letter:

_To Mr. Westwood_

Collegio Ferdinando, Pisa: March 10, 1847.

If really, my dear Mr. Westwood, it was an 'ill temper' in you,

causing the brief note, it was a most flattering ill temper, and I

thank you just as I have had reason to do for the good nature which

has caused you to bear with me so often and so long. You have been

misled on some points. I did not go to Italy last year, or rather the

year before last! I was disappointed and forced to stay in Wimpole

Street after all; but the winter being so mild, so miraculously mild

for England you may remember, I was spared my winter relapse and

left liberty for new plans such as I never used to think were in

my destiny! Such a change it is to me, such a strange happiness and

freedom, and you must not in your kindness wish me back again, but

rather be contented, like a friend as you are, to hear that I am very

happy and very well, and still doubtful whether all the brightness can

be meant for _me_! It is just as if the sun rose again at 7 o'clock

P.M. The strangeness seems so great....

I am now very well, and so happy as not to think much of it, except

for the sake of another. And do you fancy how I feel, carried; into

the visions of nature from my gloomy room. Even now I walk as in a

dream. We made a pilgrimage from Avignon to Vaucluse in right poetical

duty, and I and my husband sate upon two stones in the midst of the

fountain which in its dark prison of rocks flashes and roars and

testifies to the memory of Petrarch. It was louder and fuller than

usual when we were there, on account of the rains; and Flush, though

by no means born to be a hero, considered my position so outrageous

that he dashed through the water to me, splashing me all over, so he

is baptised in Petrarch's name. The scenery is full of grandeur, the

rocks sheathe themselves into the sky, and nothing grows there except

a little cypress here and there, and a straggling olive tree; and the

fountain works out its soul in its stony prison, and runs away in a

green rapid stream. Such a striking sight it is. I sate upon deck,

too, in our passage from Marseilles to Genoa, and had a vision of

mountains, six or seven deep, one behind another. As to Pisa, call it

a beautiful town, you cannot do less with Arno and its palaces, and

above all the wonderful Duomo and Campo Santo, and Leaning Tower and

Baptistery, all of which are a stone's throw from our windows. We

have rooms in a great college-house built by Vasari, and fallen into

desuetude from collegiate purposes; and here we live the quietest and

most _tête-à-tête_ of lives, knowing nobody, hearing nothing, and for

nearly three months together never catching a glimpse of a paper. Oh,

how wrong you were about the 'Times'! Now, however, we subscribe to a

French and Italian library, and have a French newspaper every evening,

the 'Siècle,' and so look through a loophole at the world. Yet, not

too proud are we, even now, for all the news you will please to send

us in charity: 'da obolum Belisario!'

What do you mean about poor Tennyson? I heard of him last on his

return from a visit to the Swiss mountains, which 'disappointed him,'

he was _said to say_. Very wrong, either of mountains or poet!

Tell me if you make acquaintance with Mrs. Hewitt's new ballads.

Mrs. Jameson is engaged in a work on art which will be very

interesting....

Flush's love to your Flopsy. Flush has grown very overbearing in this

Italy, I think because my husband spoils him (if not for the glory

at Vaucluse); Robert declares that the said Flush considers him, my

husband, to be created for the especial purpose of doing him service,

and really it looks rather like it.

Never do I see the 'Athenaeum' now, but before I left England some

pure gushes between the rocks reminded me of you. Tell me all you can;

it will all be like rain upon dry ground. My husband bids me offer his

regards to you--if you will accept them; and that you may do it ask

your heart. I will assure you (aside) that his poetry is as the prose

of his nature: he himself is so much better and higher than his own

works.

In the middle of April the Brownings left Pisa and journeyed to

Florence, arriving there on April 20. There, however, the programme

was arrested, and, save for an abortive excursion to Vallombrosa,

whence they were repulsed by the misogynist principles of the monks,

they continued to reside in Florence for the remainder of the year.

Their first abode was in the Via delle Belle Donne; but after the

return from Vallombrosa, in August, they moved across the river, and

took furnished rooms in the Palazzo Guidi, the building which, under

the name of 'Casa Guidi,' is for ever associated with their memory.

_To Mrs. Martin_

Florence: April 24, 1847.

I received your letter, my dearest friend, by this day's post, and

wrote a little note directly to the office as a trap for the feet

of your travellers. If they escape us after all, therefore, they may

praise their stars for it rather than my intentions--_our_ intentions,

I should say, for Robert will gladly do everything he can in the way

of expounding a text or two of the glories of Florence, and we both

shall be much pleased and cordially pleased to learn more of Fanny

and her brother than the glance at Pisa could teach us. As for me, she

will let me have a little talking for my share: I can't walk about or

see anything. I lie here flat on the sofa in order to be wise; I rest

and take port wine by wineglasses; and a few more days of it will

prepare me, I hope and trust, for an interview with the Venus de'

Medici. Think of my having been in Florence since Tuesday, this

being Saturday, and not a step taken into the galleries. It seems a

disgrace, a sort of involuntary disgraceful act, or rather no-act,

which to complain of relieves one to some degree. And how kind of you

to wish to hear from me of myself! There is nothing really much the

matter with me; I am just _weak_, sleeping and eating dreadfully well

considering that Florence isn't seen yet, and 'looking well,' too,

says Mrs. Jameson, who, with her niece, is our guest just now. It

would have been wise if I had rested longer at Pisa, but, you see,

there was a long engagement to meet Mrs. Jameson here, and she

expressed a very kind unwillingness to leave Italy without keeping it:

also she had resolved to come out of her way on purpose for this, and,

as I had the consent of my physician, we determined to perform our

part of the compact; and in order to prepare for the longer journey I

went out in the carriage a little too soon, perhaps, and a little too

long. At least, if I had kept quite still I should have been strong

by this time--not that I have done myself harm in the serious sense,

observe--and now the affair is accomplished, I shall be wonderfully

discreet and self-denying, and resist Venuses and Apollos like some

one wiser than the gods themselves. My chest is very well; there has

been no symptom of evil in that quarter.... We took the whole coupé

of the diligence--but regretted our first plan of the _vettura_

nevertheless--and now are settled in very comfortable rooms in the

'Via delle Belle Donne' just out of the Piazza Santa Maria Novella,

very superior rooms to our apartment in Pisa, in which we were cheated

to the uttermost with all the subtlety of Italy and to the full

extent of our ignorance; think what _that_ must have been! Our present

apartment, with the hire of a grand piano and music, does not cost us

so much within ever so many francisconi. Oh, and you don't frighten me

though we are on the north side of the Arno! We have taken our rooms

for two months, and may be here longer, and the fear of the heat was

stronger with me than the fear of the cold, or we might have been in

the Pitti and 'arrostiti' by this time. We expected dear Mrs.

Jameson on Saturday, but she came on Friday evening, having suddenly

remembered that it was Shakespeare's birthday, and bringing with her

from Arezzo a bottle of wine to 'drink to his memory with two other

poets,' so there was a great deal of merriment, as you may fancy, and

Robert played Shakespeare's favorite air, 'The Light of Love,' and

everybody was delighted to meet everybody, and Roman news and Pisan

dullness were properly discussed on every side. She saw a good deal

of Cobden in Rome, and went with him to the Sistine Chapel. He has no

feeling for art, and, being very true and earnest, could only do his

best to _try_ to admire Michael Angelo; but here and there, where he

understood, the pleasure was expressed with a blunt characteristic

simplicity. Standing before the statue of Demosthenes, he said:

'That man is persuaded himself of what he speaks, and will therefore

persuade others.' She liked him exceedingly. For my part, I should

join in more admiration if it were not for his having _accepted

money_, but paid patriots are no heroes of mine. 'Verily they have

their reward.' O'Connell had arrived in Rome, and it was considered

that he came only to die. Among the artists, Gibson and Wyatt were

doing great things; she wishes us to know Gibson particularly. As to

the Pope he lives in an atmosphere of love and admiration, and 'he is

doing _what he can_,' Mrs. Jameson believes. Robert says: 'A dreadful

situation, after all, for a man of understanding and honesty! I pity

him from my soul, for he can, at best, only temporise with truth.'

But human nature is doomed to pay a high price for its opportunities.

Delighted I am to have your good account of dear Mr. Martin, though

you are naughty people to persist in going to England so soon. Do

write to me and tell me all about both of you. I will do what I

can--like the Pope--but what can I do? Yes, indeed, I mean to enjoy

art and nature too; one shall not exclude the other. This Florence

seems divine as we pass the bridges, and my husband, who knows

everything, is to teach and show me all the great wonders, so that I

am reasonably impatient to try my advantages. His kind regards to you

both, and my best love, dearest friends....

Your very affectionate

BA.

_To Mrs. Jameson_

Florence: May 12, [1847].

I was afraid, we both were afraid for you, dearest friend, when we

saw the clouds gather and heard the rain fall as it did that day at

Florence. It seemed impossible that you should be beyond the evil

influence, should you have travelled ever so fast; but, after all,

a storm in the Apennines, like many a moral storm, will be better

perhaps than a calm to look back upon. We talked of you and thought of

you, and missed you at coffee time, and regretted that so pleasant a

week (for us) should have gone so fast, as fast as a dull week, or,

rather, a good deal faster. Dearest friend, do believe that we _felt_

your goodness in Coming to us--in making us an object--before you left

Italy; it fills up the measure of goodness and kindness for which we

shall thank and love you all our lives. Never fancy that we can forget

you or be less touched by the memory of what you have been to us in

affection and sympathy--never. And don't _you_ lose sight of _us_; do

write often, and do, _do_ make haste and come back to Italy, and

then make use of us in any and every possible way as house-takers

or house-mates, for we are ready to accept the lowest place or the

highest. The week you gave us would be altogether bright and glad if

it had not been for the depression and anxiety on your part. May God

turn it all to gain and satisfaction in some unlooked-for way. To be a

_road-maker_ is weary work, even across the Apennines of life. We

have not science enough for it if we have strength, which we haven't

either. Do you remember how Sindbad shut his eyes and let himself

be carried over the hills by an eagle? _That_ was better than to set

about breaking stones. Also what you could do you have done; you have

finished your part, and the sense of a fulfilled duty is in itself

satisfying--is and must be. My sympathies go with you entirely, while

I wish your dear Gerardine to be happy; I wish it from my heart....

Just after you left us arrived our box with the precious deeds, which

are thrown into the cabinet for want of witnesses. And then Robert

has had a letter from Mr. Forster with the date of _Shakespeare's

birthday_, and overflowing with kindness really both to himself and

me. It quite touched me, that letter. Also we have had a visitation

from an American, but on the point of leaving Florence and very tame

and inoffensive, and we bore it very well considering. He sent us

a new literary periodical of the old world, in which, among other

interesting matter, I had the pleasure of reading an account of my own

'blindness,' taken from a French paper (the 'Presse'), and mentioned

with humane regret. Well! and what more news is there to tell you?

I have been out once, only once, and only for an inglorious glorious

drive round the Piazza Gran Duca, past the Duomo, outside the walls,

and in again at the Cascine. It was like the trail of a vision in the

evening sun. I saw the Perseus in a sort of flash. The Duomo is more

after the likeness of a Duomo than Pisa can show; I like those masses

in ecclesiastical architecture. Now we are plotting how to, engage

a carriage for a month's service without ruining ourselves, for we

_must_ see, and I _can't_ walk and see, though much stronger than when

we parted, and looking much better, as Robert and the looking glass

both do testify. I have seemed at last 'to leap to a conclusion' of

convalescence. But the heat--oh, so hot it is. If it is half as hot

with you, you must be calling on the name of St. Lawrence by this

time, and require no 'turning.' I should not like to travel under

such a sun. It would be too like playing at snapdragon. Yes, 'brightly

happy.' Women generally _lose_ by marriage, but I have gained the

world by mine. If it were not for some griefs, which are and must be

griefs, I should be too happy perhaps, which is good for nobody. May

God bless you, my dear, dearest friend! Robert must be content with

sending his love to-day, and shall write another day. We both love you

every day. My love and a kiss to dearest Gerardine, who is to remember

to write to me.

Your ever affectionate

BA.

_To H.S. Boyd_

Florence: May 26, 1847.

I should have answered your letter, my dearest friend, more quickly,

but when it came I was ill, as you may have heard, and afterwards I

wished to wait until I could send you information about the Leaning

Tower and the bells[159]. The book you required, about the cathedral,

Robert has tried in vain to procure for you. Plenty of such books,

but _not in English_. In London such things are to be found, I

should think, without difficulty, for instance, 'Murray's Handbook

to Northern Italy,' though rather dear (12_s._), would give you

sufficiently full information upon the ecclesiastical glories both of

Pisa and of this beautiful Florence, from whence I write to you.... I

will answer for the harmony of the bells, as we lived within a stone's

throw of them, and they began at four o'clock every morning and

rang my dreams apart. The Pasquareccia (the fourth) especially has

a profound note in it, which may well have thrilled horror to the

criminal's heart.[160] It was ghastly in its effects; dropped into

the deep of night like a thought of death. Often have I said, 'Oh, how

ghastly!' and then turned on my pillow and dreamed a bad dream. But if

the bell founders at Pisa have a merited reputation, let no one say as

much for the bellringers. The manner in which all the bells of all

the churches in the city are shaken together sometimes would certainly

make you groan in despair of your ears. The discord is fortunately

indescribable. Well--but here we are at Florence, the most beautiful

of the cities devised by man....

In the meanwhile I have seen the Venus, I have seen the divine

Raphaels. I have stood by Michael Angelo's tomb in Santa Croce. I

have looked at the wonderful Duomo. This cathedral! After all, the

elaborate grace of the Pisan cathedral is one thing, and the massive

grandeur of this of Florence is another and better thing; it struck

me with a sense of the sublime in architecture. At Pisa we say, 'How

beautiful!' here we say nothing; it is enough if we can breathe. The

mountainous marble masses overcome as we look up--we feel the weight

of them on the soul. Tesselated marbles (the green treading its

elaborate pattern into the dim yellow, which seems the general hue of

the structure) climb against the sky, self-crowned with that prodigy

of marble domes. It struck me as a wonder in architecture. I had

neither seen nor imagined the like of it in any way. It seemed

to carry its theology out with it; it signified more than a mere

building. Tell me everything you want to know. I shall like to answer

a thousand questions. Florence is beautiful, as I have said before,

and must say again and again, most beautiful. The river rushes through

the midst of its palaces like a crystal arrow, and it is hard to tell,

when you see all by the clear sunset, whether those churches, and

houses, and windows, and bridges, and people walking, in the water or

out of the water, are the real walls, and windows, and bridges, and

people, and churches. The only difference is that, down below, there

is a double movement; the movement of the stream besides the movement

of life. For the rest, the distinctness of the eye is as great in one

as in the other.... Remember me to such of my friends as remember me

kindly when unreminded by me. I am very happy--happier and happier.

ELIBET.

Robert's best regards to you always.

[Footnote 159: It will be remembered that Mr. Boyd took a great

interest in bells and bell ringing. The passage omitted below contains

an extract from Murray's _Handbook_ with reference to the bells of

Pisa.]

[Footnote 160: This bell was tolled on the occasion of an execution.]

_To Mrs. Jameson_

Palazzo Guidi, Via Maggio, Florence:

August 7, 1847 [postmark].

You will be surprised perhaps, and perhaps not, dearest friend,

to find that we are still at Florence. Florence 'holds us with a

glittering eye;' there's a charm cast round us, and we can't get away.

In the first place, your news of Recoaro came so late that, as you

said yourself, we ought to have been there before your letter reached

us. Nobody would encourage us to go north on any grounds, indeed,

and if anybody speaks a word now in favour of Venice, straight comes

somebody else speaking the direct contrary. Altogether, we took to

making a plan of our own--a great, wild, delightful plan of plunging

into the mountains and spending two or three months at the monastery

of Vallombrosa, until the heat was passed, and dear Mr. Kenyon

decided, and we could either settle for the winter at Florence or pass

on to Rome. Could anything look more delightful than that? Well, we

got a letter of recommendation to the abbot, and left our apartment,

Via delle Belle Donne, a week before our three months were done,

thoroughly burned out by the sun; set out at four in the morning,

reached Pelago, and from thence travelled five miles along a 'via non

rotabile' through the most romantic scenery. Oh, such mountains!--as

if the whole world were alive with mountains--such ravines--black in

spite of flashing waters in them--such woods and rocks--travelled

in basket sledges drawn by four white oxen--Wilson and I and the

luggage--and Robert riding step by step. We were four hours doing the

five miles, so you may fancy what rough work it was. Whether I was

most tired or charmed was a _tug_ between body and soul. The worst was

that, there being a new abbot at the monastery--an austere man jealous

of his sanctity and the approach of women--our letter, and Robert's

eloquence to boot, did nothing for us, and we were ingloriously and

ignominiously expelled at the end of five days. For three days we were

welcome; for two more we kept our ground; but after _that_, out we

were thrust, with baggage and expectations. Nothing could be much more

provoking. And yet we came back very merrily for disappointed people

to Florence, getting up at three in the morning, and rolling or

sliding (as it might happen) down the precipitous path, and seeing

round us a morning glory of mountains, clouds, and rising sun, such

as we never can forget--back to Florence and our old lodgings, and an

eatable breakfast of coffee and bread, and a confession one to another

that if we had won the day instead of losing it, and spent our summer

with the monks, we should have grown considerably _thinner_ by the

victory. They make their bread, I rather imagine, with the sawdust of

their fir trees, and, except oil and wine--yes, and plenty of beef

(of _fleisch_, as your Germans say, of all kinds, indeed), which isn't

precisely the fare to suit us--we were thrown for nourishment on the

great sights around. Oh, but so beautiful were mountains and forests

and waterfalls that I could have kept my ground happily for the two

months--even though the only book I saw there was the chronicle of

their San Gualberto. Is he not among your saints? Being routed fairly,

and having breakfasted fully at our old apartment, Robert went out to

find cool rooms, if possible, and make the best of our position, and

now we are settled magnificently in this Palazzo Guidi on a first

floor in an apartment which _looks_ quite beyond our means, and _would

be_ except in the dead part of the season--a suite of spacious rooms

opening on a little terrace and furnished elegantly--rather to suit

our predecessor the Russian prince than ourselves--but cool and in a

delightful situation, six paces from the Piazza Pitti, and with right

of daily admission to the Boboli gardens. We pay what we paid in the

Via Belle Donne. Isn't this prosperous? You would be surprised to see

_me_, I think, I am so very well (and look so)--dispensed from being

carried upstairs, and inclined to take a run, for a walk, every now

and then. I scarcely recognise myself or my ways, or my own spirits,

all is so different....

We have made the acquaintance of Mr. Powers,[161] who is

delightful--of a most charming simplicity, with those great burning

eyes of his. Tell me what you think of his boy listening to the

shell. Oh, your Raphaels! how divine! And M. Angelo's sculptures! His

pictures I leap up to in vain, and fall back regularly. Write of your

book and yourself, and write soon; and let me be, as always, your

affectionate BA.

We are here for two months certain, and perhaps longer. Do write.

Dear Aunt Nina,--Ba has said something for me, I hope. In any case, my

love goes with hers, I trust you are well and happy, as we are, and as

we would make you if we could. Love to Geddie. Ever yours, [R.B.]

[Footnote 161: The American sculptor.]

_To Mrs. Martin_

Florence: August 7, 1847.