My dearest Mrs. Martin,--How I have been longing to get this letter,

which comes at last, and justifies the longing by the pleasure it

gives!... How kind, how affectionate you are to me, and how strong

your claim is that I should thrust on you, in defiance of good taste

and conventions, every evidence and assurance of my happiness, so

as to justify your _faith_ to yourselves and others. Indeed, indeed,

dearest Mrs. Martin, you may 'exult' for me--and this though it should

all end here and now. The uncertainties of life and death seem nothing

to me. A year (nearly) is saved from the darkness, and if that

one year has compensated for those that preceded it--which it has,

abundantly--why, let it for those that shall follow, if it so please

God. Come what may, I feel as if I never could have a right to murmur.

I have been happy enough. Brought about too it was, indeed, by a sort

of miracle which to this moment, when I look back, bewilders me to

think of; and if you knew the details, counted the little steps,

and could; compare my moral position three years and a half ago with

_this_, you would come to despise San Gualberto's miraculous tree at

Vallombrosa, which, being dead, gave out green leaves in recognition

of his approach, as testified by the inscription--do you remember? But

you can't stop to-day to read mine, so rather I shall tell you of our

exploit in the mountains. Only one thing I must say first, one thing

which you must forgive me for the vanity of resolving to say at last,

having had it in my head very often. There's a detestable engraving,

which, if you have the ill luck to see (and you _may_, because,

horrible to relate, it is in the shop windows), will you have the

kindness, for my sake, not to fancy _like Robert_?--it being, as he

says himself, the very image of '_a young man at Waterloo House_, in

a moment of inspiration--"A lovely blue, ma'am."' It is as like Robert

as Flush. And now I am going to tell you of Vallombrosa. You heard how

we meant to stay two months there, and you are to imagine how we got

up at three in the morning to escape the heat (imagine me!)--and with

all our possessions and a 'dozen of port' (which my husband doses me

with twice a day because once it was necessary) proceeded to Pelago

by vettura, and from thence in two sledges, drawn each by two

white bullocks up to the top of the holy mountain. (Robert was on

horseback.) Precisely it must be as you left it. Who can make a road

up a house? We were four hours going five miles, and I with all my

goodwill was dreadfully tired, and scarcely in appetite for the beef

and oil with which we were entertained at the House of Strangers. We

are simple people about diet, and had said over and over that we would

live on eggs and milk and bread and butter during these two months. We

might as well have said that we would live on manna from heaven.

The things we had fixed on were just the impossible things. Oh, that

bread, with the fetid smell, which stuck in the throat like Macbeth's

amen! I am not surprised, you recollect it! The hens had 'got them to

a nunnery,' and objected to lay eggs, and the milk and the holy water

stood confounded. But of course we spread the tablecloth, just as you

did, over all drawbacks of the sort; and the beef and oil, as I

said, and the wine too, were liberal and excellent, and we made our

gratitude apparent in Robert's best Tuscan--in spite of which we

were turned out ignominiously at the end of five days, having been

permitted to overstay the usual three days by only two. No, nothing

could move the lord abbot. He is a new abbot, and; given to sanctity,

and has set his face against women. 'While he is abbot,' he said to

our mediating monk, 'he _will_ be abbot. So he is abbot, and we had to

come back to Florence.' As I read in the 'Life of San Gualberto,' laid

on the table for the edification of strangers, the brothers attain to

sanctification, among other means, by cleaning out pigsties with

their bare hands, without spade or shovel; but _that_ is uncleanliness

enough--they wouldn't touch the little finger of a woman. Angry I was,

I do assure you. I should have liked to stay there, in spite of the

bread. We should have been only a little thinner at the end. And

the scenery--oh, how magnificent! How we enjoyed that great, silent,

ink-black pine wood! And do you remember the sea of mountains to the

left? How grand it is! We were up at three in the morning again to

return to Florence, and the glory of that morning sun breaking the

clouds to pieces among the hills is something ineffaceable from my

remembrance. We came back ignominiously to our old rooms, but found it

impossible to stay on account of the suffocating heat, yet we scarcely

could go far from Florence, because of Mr. Kenyon and our hope of

seeing him here (since lost). A perplexity ended by Robert's discovery

of our present apartments, on the Pitti side of the river (indeed,

close to the Grand Duke's palace), consisting of a suite of spacious

and delightful rooms, which come within our means only from the

deadness of the summer season, comparatively quite cool, and with

a terrace which I enjoy to the uttermost through being able to walk

there without a bonnet, by just stepping out of the window. The church

of San Felice is opposite, so we haven't a neighbour to look through

the sunlight or moonlight and take observations. Isn't that pleasant

altogether? We ordered back the piano and the book subscription, and

settled for two months, and forgave the Vallombrosa monks for the

wrong they did us, like secular Christians. What is to come after, I

can't tell you. But probably we shall creep slowly along toward Rome,

and spend some hot time of it at Perugia, which is said to be cool

enough. I think more of other things, wishing that my dearest, kindest

sisters had a present as bright as mine--to think nothing at all of

the future. Dearest Henrietta's position has long made me uneasy, and,

since she frees me into confidence by her confidence to you, I will

tell you so. Most undesirable it is that this should be continued, and

yet where is there a door open to escape?[162] ... My dear brothers

have the illusion that nobody should marry on less than two thousand a

year. Good heavens! how preposterous it does seem to me! _We_ scarcely

spend three hundred, and I have every luxury, I ever had, and which

it would be so easy to give up, at need; and Robert wouldn't sleep,

I think, if an unpaid bill dragged itself by any chance into another

week. He says that when people get into 'pecuniary difficulties,' his

'sympathies always go with the butchers and bakers.' So we keep out of

scrapes yet, you see....

Your grateful and most affectionate

BA.

We have had the most delightful letter from Carlyle, who has the

goodness to say that not for years has a marriage occurred in his

private circle in which he so heartily rejoiced as in ours. He is a

personal friend of Robert's, so that I have reason to be very proud

and glad.

Robert's best regards to you both always, and he is no believer in

magnetism (only _I_ am). Do mention Mr. C. Hanford's health. How

strange that he should come to witness my marriage settlement! Did you

hear?

[Footnote 162: Miss Henrietta Barrett was engaged to Captain Surtees

Cook, an engagement of which her brothers, as well as her father,

disapproved, partly on the ground of insufficiency of income.

Ultimately the difficulty was solved in the same way as in the case of

Mrs. Browning.]

_To Miss Mitford_

Florence: August 20, [1847],

I have received your letter at last, my ever dearest Miss Mitford, not

the missing letter, but the one which comes to make up for it and to

catch up my thoughts, which were grumbling at high tide, I do assure

you.... As you observed last year (not without reason), these are the

days of marrying and giving in marriage. Mr. Horne, you see[163] ...

With all my heart I hope he may be very happy. Men risk a good deal in

marriage, though not as much as women do; and on the other hand, the

singleness of a man when his youth is over is a sadder thing than the

saddest which an unmarried woman can suffer. Nearly all my friends

of both sexes have been draining off into marriage these two years,

scarcely one will be left in the sieve, and I may end by saying that

I have happiness enough for my own share to be divided among them all

and leave everyone, contented. For me, I take it for pure magic, this

life of mine. Surely nobody was ever so happy before. I shall wake

some morning with my hair all dripping out of the enchanted bucket,

or if not we shall both claim the 'Flitch' next September, if you can

find one for us in the land of Cockaigne, drying in expectancy of the

revolution in Tennyson's 'Commonwealth.' Well, I don't agree with Mr.

Harness in admiring the lady of 'Locksley Hall.' I _must_ either pity

or despise a woman who could have married Tennyson and chose a common

man. If happy in her choice, I despise her. That's matter of opinion,

of course. You may call it matter of foolishness when I add that I

personally would rather be teased a little and smoked over a good deal

by a man whom I could look up to and be proud of, than have my feet

kissed all day by a Mr. Smith in boots and a waistcoat, and thereby

chiefly distinguished. Neither I nor another, perhaps, had quite a

right to expect a combination of qualities, such as meet, though, in

my husband, who is as faultless and pure in his private life as any

Mr. Smith of them all, who would not owe five shillings, who lives

like a woman in abstemiousness on a pennyworth of wine a day, never

touches a cigar even.... Do you hear, as we do, from Mr. Forster, that

his[164] new poem is his best work? As soon as you read it, let me

have your opinion. The subject seems almost identical with one of

Chaucer's. Is it not so? We have spent here the most delightful of

summers, notwithstanding the heat, and I begin to comprehend the

possibility of St. Lawrence's ecstasies on the gridiron. Very hot it

certainly has been and is, yet there have been cool intermissions; and

as we have spacious and airy rooms, and as Robert lets me sit all day

in my white dressing gown without a single masculine criticism, and

as we can step out of the window on a sort of balcony terrace which is

quite private and swims over with moonlight in the evenings, and as

we live upon water melons and iced water and figs and all manner of

fruit, we bear the heat with an angelic patience and felicity which

really are edifying. We tried to make the monks of Vallombrosa let

us stay with them for two months, but their new abbot said or

implied that Wilson and I stank in his nostrils, being women, and San

Gualberto, the establishes of their order, had enjoined on them only

the mortification of cleaning out pigsties without fork or shovel.

So here a couple of women besides was (as Dickens's American said) 'a

piling it up rayther too mountainious.' So we were sent away at the

end of five days. So provoking! Such scenery, such hills, such a

sea of hills looking alive among the clouds. _Which_ rolled, it was

difficult to discern. Such pine woods, supernaturally silent, with the

ground black as ink, such chestnut and beech forests hanging from the

mountains, such rocks and torrents, such chasms and ravines. There

were eagles there, too, [and] there was _no road_. Robert went on

horseback, and Flush, Wilson, and I were drawn in a sledge (i.e.

an old hamper, a basket wine hamper without a wheel) by two white

bullocks up the precipitous mountains. Think of my travelling in that

fashion in those wild places at four o'clock in the morning, a little

frightened, dreadfully tired, but in an ecstasy of admiration above

all! It was a sight to see before one died and went away to another

world. Well, but being expelled ignominiously at the end of five days,

we had to come back to Florence, and find a new apartment cooler than

the old, and wait for dear Mr. Kenyon. And dear Mr. Kenyon does

not come (not this autumn, but he may perhaps at the first dawn of

spring), and on September 20 we take up our knapsacks and turn our

faces towards Rome, I think, creeping slowly along, with a pause at

Arezzo, and a longer pause at Perugia, and another perhaps at Terni.

Then we plan to take an apartment we have heard of, over the Tarpeian

Rock, and enjoy Rome as we have enjoyed Florence. More can scarcely

be. This Florence is unspeakably beautiful, by grace both of nature

and art, and the wheels of life slide on upon the grass (according

to continental ways) with little trouble and less expense. Dinner,

'unordered,' comes through the streets and spreads itself on our

table, as hot as if we had smelt cutlets hours before. The science

of material life is understood here and in France. Now tell me, what

right has England to be the dearest country in the world? But I love

dearly dear England, and we hope to spend many a green summer in her

yet. The winters you will excuse us, will you not? People who are,

like us, neither rich nor strong, claim such excuses. I am wonderfully

well, and far better and stronger than before what you call the Pisan

'crisis.' Robert declares that nobody would know me, I _look_ so much

better. And you heard from dearest Henrietta. Ah, both of my dearest

sisters have been perfect to me. No words can express my feelings

towards their goodness. Otherwise, I have good accounts from home of

my father's excellent health and spirits, which is better even than

to hear of his loving and missing me. I had a few kind lines yesterday

from Miss Martineau, who invites us from Florence to Westmoreland. She

wants to talk to me, she says, of 'her beloved Jordan.' She is

looking forward to a winter of work by the lakes, and to a summer of

gardening. The kindest of letters Robert has had from Carlyle, who

makes us very happy by what he says of our marriage. Shakespeare's

favorite air of the 'Light of Love,' with the full evidence of

its being Shakespeare's favorite air, is given in Charles Knight's

edition. Seek for it there. Now do write to me and at length, and tell

me everything of yourself. Flush hated Vallombrosa, and was frightened

out of his wits by the pine forests. Flush likes civilised life, and

the society of little dogs with turned-up tails, such as Florence

abounds with. Unhappily it abounds also with _fleas_, which afflict

poor Flush to the verge sometimes of despair. Fancy Robert and me

down on our knees combing him, with a basin of water on one side! He

suffers to such a degree from fleas that I cannot bear to witness it.

He tears off his pretty curls through the irritation. Do you know of a

remedy? Direct to me, Poste Restante, Florence. Put _via_ France. Let

me hear, do; and everything of yourself, mind. Is Mrs. Partridge in

better spirits? Do you read any new French books? Dearest friend, let

me offer you my husband's cordial regards, with the love of your own

affectionate

E.B.B., BA.

[Footnote 163: Mr. Horne was just engaged to be married.]

[Footnote 164: Tennyson's _Princess_ had just been published.]

_To Mr. Westwood_

Florence: September 1847.

Yes, indeed, my dear Mr. Westwood, I have seen 'friars.' We have been

on a pilgrimage to Vallombrosa, and while my husband rode up and down

the precipitous mountain paths, I and my maid and Flush were dragged

in a hamper by two white bullocks--and such scenery; such hilly peaks,

such black ravines and gurgling waters, and rocks and forests above

and below, and at last such a monastery and such friars, who wouldn't

let us stay with them beyond five days for fear of corrupting the

fraternity. The monks had a new abbot, a St. Sejanus of a holy

man, and a petticoat stank in his nostrils, said he, and all the I

beseeching which we could offer him with joined hands was classed with

the temptations of St. Anthony. So we had to come away as we went, and

get the better as we could of our disappointment, and really it was

a disappointment not to be able to stay our two months out in the

wilderness as we had planned it, to say nothing of the heat of

Florence, to which at the moment it was not pleasant to return. But

we got new lodgings in the shade and comforted ourselves as well as we

could. 'Comforted'--there's a word for Florence--that ingratitude was

a slip of the pen, believe me. Only we had set our hearts upon a two

months' seclusion in the deep of the pine forests (which have such

a strange dialect in the silence they speak with), and the mountains

were divine, and it was provoking to be crossed in our ambitions by

that little holy abbot with the red face, and to be driven out of

Eden, even to Florence. It is said, observe, that Milton took his

description of Paradise from Vallombrosa--so driven out of Eden we

were, literally. To Florence, though! and what Florence is, the tongue

of man or poet may easily fail to describe. The most beautiful of

cities, with the golden Arno shot through the breast of her like an

arrow, and 'non dolet' all the same. For what helps to charm here

is the innocent gaiety of the people, who, for ever at feast day and

holiday celebrations, come and go along the streets, the women in

elegant dresses and with glittering fans, shining away every thought

of Northern cares and taxes, such as make people grave in England.

No little orphan on a house step but seems to inherit, naturally

his slice of water-melon and bunch of purple grapes, and the rich

fraternise with the poor as we are unaccustomed to see them, listening

to the same music and walking in the same gardens, and looking at the

same Raphaels even! Also we were glad to be here just now, when there

is new animation and energy given to Italy by this new wonderful

Pope, who is a great man and doing greatly. I hope you give him your

sympathies. Think how seldom the liberation of a people begins from

the throne, _à fortiori_ from a papal throne, which is so high and

straight.[165] And the spark spreads! here is even our Grand

Duke conceding the civic guard,[166] and forgetting his Austrian

prejudices. The world learns, it is pleasant to observe....

So well I am, dear Mr. Westwood, and so happy after a year's trial of

the stuff of marriage, happier than ever, perhaps, and the revolution

is so complete that one has to learn to stand up straight and steadily

(like a landsman in a sailing ship) before one can do any work with

one's hand and brain.

We have had a delightful letter from Carlyle, who loves my husband, I

am proud to say.

[Footnote 165:'This country saving is a glorious thing:

And if a common man achieved it? well.

Say, a rich man did? excellent. A king?

That grows sublime. A priest? Improbable.

A pope? Ah, there we stop, and cannot bring

Our faith up to the leap, with history's bell

So heavy round the neck of it--albeit

We fain would grant the possibility

For thy sake, Pio Nono!'

_Casa Guidi Windows_, part i.]

[Footnote 166: The grant of a National Guard was made by the Grand

Duke of Tuscany on September 4, 1847, in defiance of the threat of

Austria to occupy any Italian state in which such a concession was

made to popular aspirations.]

_To Miss Mitford_

[Florence:] October I, 1847 [postmark].

Ever dearest Miss Mitford,--I am delighted to have your letter, and

lose little time in replying to it. The lost letter meanwhile does not

appear. The moon has it, to make more shine on these summer nights; if

still one may say 'summer' now that September is deep and that we are

cool as people hoped to be when at hottest.... Do tell me your full

thought of the commonwealth of women.[168] I begin by agreeing with

you as to his implied under-estimate of women; his women are

too voluptuous; however, of the most refined voluptuousness. His

gardener's daughter, for instance, is just a rose: and 'a Rose,'

one might beg all poets to observe, is as precisely _sensual_ as

fricasseed chicken, or even boiled beef and carrots. Did you read Mrs.

Butler's 'Year of Consolation,' and how did you think of it in the

main? As to Mr. Home's illustrations of national music, I don't know;

I feel a little jealous of his doing well what many inferior men have

done well--men who couldn't write 'Orion' and the 'Death of Marlowe.'

Now, dearest dear Miss Mitford, you shall call him 'tiresome' if you

like, because I never heard him talk, and he may be tiresome for aught

I know, of course; but you _sha'n't_ say that he has not done some

fine things in poetry. Now, you _know_ what the first book of 'Orion'

is, and 'Marlowe,' and 'Cosmo;' and you _sha'n't_ say that you don't

know it, and that when you forgot it for a moment, I did not remind

you.... It was our plan to leave Florence on the 21st. We stay,

however, one month longer, half through temptation, half through

reason. Which is strongest, who knows? We quite love Florence, and

have delightful rooms; and then, though I am quite well now as to my

general health, it is thought better for me to travel a month hence.

So I suppose we shall stay. In the meanwhile our Florentines kept the

anniversary of our wedding day (and the establishment of the civic

guard) most gloriously a day or two or three ago, forty thousand

persons flocking out of the neighbourhood to help the expression of

public sympathy and overflowing the city. The procession passed under

our eyes into the Piazza Pitti, where the Grand Duke and all his

family stood at the palace window melting into tears, to receive the

thanks of his people. The joy and exultation on all sides were most

affecting to look upon. Grave men kissed one another, and grateful

young women lifted up their children to the level of their own smiles,

and the children themselves mixed their shrill little _vivas_ with

the shouts of the people. At once, a more frenetic gladness and a more

innocent manifestation of gladness were never witnessed. During three

hours and a half the procession wound on past our windows, and every

inch of every house seemed alive with gazers all that time, the white

handkerchiefs fluttering like doves, and clouds of flowers and laurel

leaves floating down on the heads of those who passed. Banners, too,

with inscriptions to suit the popular feeling--'Liberty'--the 'Union

of Italy'--the 'Memory of the Martyrs'--'Viva Pio Nono'--'Viva

Leopoldo Secondo'--were quite stirred with the breath of the shouters.

I am glad to have seen that sight, and to be in Italy at this moment,

when such sights are to be seen.[167] My wrist aches a little even now

with the waving I gave to my handkerchief, I assure you, for Robert

and I and Flush sate the whole sight out at the window, and would not

be reserved with the tribute of our sympathy. Flush had his two

front paws over the window sill, with his ears hanging down, but he

confessed at last that he thought they were rather long about it,

particularly as it had nothing to do with dinner and chicken bones

and subjects of consequence. He is less tormented and looks better;

in excellent spirits and appetite always--and _thinner_, like your

Flush--and very fond of Robert, as indeed he ought to be. On the

famous evening of that famous day I have been speaking of, we lost

him--he ran away and stayed away all night--which was too bad,

considering that it was our anniversary besides, and that he had no

right to spoil it. But I imagine he was bewildered with the crowd and

the illumination, only as he _did_ look so very guilty and conscious

of evil on his return, there's room for suspecting him of having been

very much amused, 'motu proprio,' as our Grand Duke says in the

edict. He was found at nine o'clock in the morning at the door of our

apartment, waiting to be let in--mind, I don't mean the Grand Duke.

Very few acquaintances have we made at Florence, and very quietly

lived out our days. Mr. Powers the sculptor is our chief friend and

favorite, a most charming, simple, straight-forward, genial American,

as simple as the man of genius he has proved himself needs be. He

sometimes comes to talk and take coffee with us, and we like him much.

His wife is an amiable woman, and they have heaps of children from

thirteen downwards, all, except the eldest boy, Florentines, and the

sculptor has eyes like a wild Indian's, so black and full of light.

You would scarcely wonder if they clave the marble without the help of

his hands. We have seen besides the Hoppners, Lord Byron's friends at

Venice, you will remember. And Miss Boyle, the niece of the Earl

of Cork, and authoress and poetess on her own account, having been

introduced once to Robert in London at Lady Morgan's, has hunted

us out and paid us a visit. A very vivacious little person, with

sparkling talk enough. Lord Holland has lent her mother and herself

the famous Careggi Villa, where Lorenzo the Magnificent died, and they

have been living there among the vines these four months. These and a

few American visitors are all we have seen at Florence. We live a

far more solitary life than you do, in your village and with

the 'prestige' of the country wrapping you round. Pray give your

sympathies to our Pope, and call him a great man. For liberty

to spring from a throne is wonderful, but from a papal throne is

miraculous. That's my doxy. I suppose dear Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Chorley

are still abroad. French books I get at, but at scarcely a new one,

which is very provoking. At Rome it may be better. I have not read

'Martin' even, since the first volume in England, nor G. Sand's

'Lucretia.'

May God bless you. Think sometimes of your ever affectionate

E.B.B.

[Footnote 167: In Tennyson's _Princess_.]

[Footnote 168: A picture of the same scene in verse will be found in

_Casa Guidi Windows_, part i.:

'Shall I say

What made my heart beat with exulting love

A few weeks back,' &c.]

The 'month' lengthened itself out, and December found the Brownings

still in Florence, and definitely established there for the winter.

During this time, although there is no allusion to it in the letters,

Mrs. Browning must have been engaged in writing the first part of

'Casa Guidi Windows' with its hopeful aspirations for Italian liberty.

It was, indeed, a time when hope seemed justifiable. Pius IX. had

ascended the papal throne--then a temporal as well as a spiritual

sovereignty--in June 1846, with the reputation of being anxious to

introduce liberal reforms, and even to promote the formation of a

united Italy. The English Government was diplomatically advocating

reform, in spite of the opposition of Austria; and its representative,

Lord Minto, who was sent on a special mission to Italy to bring this

influence to bear on the rulers of the various Italian States, was

received with enthusiastic joy by the zealots for Italian liberty. The

Grand Duke of Tuscany, as was noticed above, had taken the first

step in the direction of popular government by the institution of a

National Guard; and Charles Albert of Piedmont was always supposed to

have the cause of Italy at heart in spite of the vacillations of his

policy. The catastrophe of 1848 was still in the distance; and for

the moment a friend of freedom and of Italy might be permitted to hope

much.

Yet a difference will be noticed between the tone of Mrs. Browning's

letters at this time and that which marks her language in 1859. In

1847 she was still comparatively new to the country. She is interested

in the experiment which she sees enacted before her; she feels, as any

poet must feel, the attraction of the idea of a free and united Italy.

But her heart is not thrown into the struggle as it was at a later

time. She can write, and does, for the most part, write, of other

matters. The disappointment of Milan and Novara could not break her

heart, as the disappointment of Villafranca went near to doing. They

are not, indeed, so much as mentioned in detail in the letters that

follow. It is in 'Casa Guidi Windows'--the first part written

in 1847-8, the second in 1851--that her reflections upon Italian

politics, alike in their hopes and in their failures, must be sought.

_To Miss Mitford_

Florence: December 8, 1847.

Have you thought me long, my dearest Miss Mitford, in writing? When

your letter came we were distracted by various uncertainties, torn by

wild horses of sundry speculations, and then, when one begins by delay

in answering a letter, you are aware how a silence grows and grows.

Also I heard _of_ you through my sisters and Mrs. Duprey[?], and

_that_ made me lazier still. Now don't treat me according to the

Jewish law, an eye for an eye; no! but a heart for a heart, if you

please; and you never can have reason to reproach mine for not loving

you. Think what we have done since I wrote last to you. Taken two

houses, that is, two apartments, each for six months, presigning the

contract. You will set it down as excellent poet's work in the way of

domestic economy; but the fault was altogether mine as usual, and

my husband, to please me, took rooms which I could not be pleased

by three days, through the absence of sunshine and warmth. The

consequence was that we had to pay heaps of guineas away for leave

to go away ourselves, any alternative being preferable to a return of

illness, and I am sure I should have been ill if we had persisted in

staying there. You can scarcely fancy the wonderful difference which

the sun makes in Italy. Oh, he isn't a mere 'round O' in the air in

this Italy, I assure you! He makes us feel that he rules the day to

all intents and purposes. So away we came into the blaze of him here

in the Piazza Pitti, precisely opposite the Grand Duke's palace, I

with my remorse, and poor Robert without a single reproach. Any other

man, a little lower than the angels, would have stamped and sworn a

little for the mere relief of the thing, but as to _his_ being angry

with _me_ for any cause, except not eating enough dinner, the said

sun would turn the wrong way first. So here we are on the Pitti till

April, in small rooms yellow with sunshine from morning to evening;

and most days I am able to get out into the piazza, and walk up and

down for some twenty minutes without feeling a shadow of breath from

the actual winter. Also it is pleasant to be close to the Raffaels,

to say nothing of the immense advantage of the festa days, when,

day after day, the civic guard comes to show the whole population of

Florence, their Grand Duke inclusive, the new helmets and epaulettes

and the glory thereof. They have swords, too, I believe, somewhere.

The crowds come and come, like children to see rows of dolls, only the

children would tire sooner than the Tuscans. Robert said musingly the

other morning as we stood at the window, 'Surely, after all this, they

would _use_ those muskets.' It's a problem, a 'grand peut-être.' I

was rather amused by hearing lately that our civic heroes had the

gallantry to propose to the ancient military that these last should

do the night work, i.e. when nobody was looking on and there was no

credit, as they found it dull and fatiguing. Ah, one laughs, you see;

one can't help it now and then. But at the real and rising feeling of

the people by night and day one doesn't laugh indeed. I hear and

see with the deepest sympathy of soul, on the contrary. I love the

Italians, too, and none the less that something of the triviality and

innocent vanity of children abounds in them. A delightful and most

welcome letter was the last you sent me, my dearest friend. Your

bridal visit must have charmed you, and I am glad you had the gladness

of witnessing some of the happiness of your friend, Mrs. Acton Tyndal,

_you_ who have such quick sympathies, and to whom the happiness of a

friend is a gain counted in your own. The swan's shadow is something

in a clear water. For poor Mrs.----, if she is really, as you say Mrs.

Tyndal thinks, pining in an access of literary despondency, why _that_

only proves to me that she is not happy otherwise, that her life

and soul are not sufficiently filled for her woman's need. I cannot

believe of any woman that she can think of _fame first_. A woman of

genius may be absorbed, indeed, in the exercise of an active power,

engrossed in the charges of the course and the combat; but this is

altogether different to a vain and bitter longing for prizes, and what

prizes, oh, gracious heavens! The empty cup of cold metal! _so_ cold,

_so_ empty to a woman with a heart. So, if your friend's belief is

true, still more deeply do I pity that other friend, who is supposed

to be unhappy from such a cause. A few days ago I saw a bride of

my own family, Mrs. Reynolds, Arlette Butler, who married Captain

Reynolds some five months since.... Many were her exclamations at

seeing me. She declared that such a change was never seen, I was

so transfigured with my betterness: 'Oh, Ba, it is quite wonderful

indeed!' We had been calculated on, during her three months in Rome,

as a 'piece of resistance,' and it was a disappointment to find us

here in a corner with the salt. Just as I was praised was poor Flush

criticised. Flush has not recovered from the effects yet of the summer

plague of fleas, and his curls, though growing, are not grown. I never

saw him in such spirits nor so ugly; and though Robert and I flatter

ourselves upon 'the sensible improvement,' Arlette could only see him

with reference to the past, when in his Wimpole Street days he was

sleek and over fat, and she cried aloud at the loss of his beauty.

Then we have had [another] visitor, Mr. Hillard, an American critic,

who reviewed me in [the old] world, and so came to _view_ me in the

new, a very intelligent man, of a good, noble spirit. And Miss Boyle,

ever and anon, comes at night, at nine o'clock, to catch us at our

hot chestnuts and mulled wine, and warm her feet at our fire; and

a kinder, more cordial little creature, full of talent and

accomplishment, never had the world's polish on it. Very amusing, too,

she is, and original, and a good deal of laughing she and Robert make

between them. Did I tell you of her before, and how she is the niece

of Lord Cork, and poetess by grace of certain Irish Muses? Neither

of us know her writings in any way, but we like her, and for the best

reasons. And this is nearly all, I think, we see of the 'face divine,'

masculine and feminine, and I can't make Robert go out a single

evening, not even to a concert, nor to hear a play of Alfieri's, yet

we fill up our days with books and music (and a little writing has

its share), and wonder at the clock for galloping. It's twenty-four

o'clock with us almost as soon as we begin to count. Do tell me of

Tennyson's book, and of Miss Martineau's. I was grieved to hear a

distant murmur of a rumour of an apprehension of a return of her

complaint: somebody said that she could not bear the _pressure of

dress_, and that the exhaustion resulting from the fits of absorption

in work and enthusiasm on the new subject of Egypt was painfully

great, and that her friends feared for her. I should think that the

bodily excitement and fatigue of her late travels must have been

highly hazardous, and that indeed, throughout her convalescence, she

should have more spared herself in climbing hills and walking and

riding distances. A strain obviously might undo everything. Still, I

do hope that the bitter cup may not be filled for her again. What a

wonderful discovery this substitute for ether inhalations[169] seems

to be. Do you hear anything of its operation in your neighbourhood? We

have had a letter from Mr. Horne, who appears happy, and speaks of his

success in lecturing on Ireland, and of a new novel which he is about

to publish in a separate form after having printed it in a magazine.

We have not set up the types even of our _plans_ about a book, very

distinctly, but we shall do something some day, and you shall hear

of it the evening before. Being too happy doesn't agree with literary

activity quite as well as I should have thought; and then, dear Mr.

Kenyon can't persuade us that we are not rich enough, so as to bring

into force a lower order of motives. He talks of Rome still. Now

write, dear, dearest Miss Mitford, and tell me of yourself and your

health, and do, _do_ love me as you used to do. As to French books,

one may swear, but you can't get a new publication, except by

accident, at this excellent celebrated library of Vieusseux, and I

am reduced to read some of my favorites over again, I and Robert

together. You ought to hear how we go to single combat, ever and anon,

with shield and lance. The greatest quarrel we have had since our

marriage, by the way (always excepting my crying conjugal wrong of not

eating enough!), was brought up by Masson's pamphlet on the Iron Mask

and Fouquet. I wouldn't be persuaded that Fouquet was 'in it,' and

so 'the anger of my lord waxed hot.' To this day he says sometimes:

'Don't be cross, Ba! _Fouquet wasn't the Iron Mask after all_.'

God bless you, dearest Miss Mitford.

Your ever affectionate

E.B.B.

We are here till April.

[Footnote 169: Chloroform, then beginning to come into use.]

_To Mrs. Jameson_

Florence: December 1847.

Indeed, my dear friend, you have a right to complain of _me_, whether

or not _we_ had any in thinking ourselves deeply injured creatures

by your last silence. Yet when in your letter which came at last, you

said, 'Write directly,' I _meant_ to write directly; I did not take

out my vengeance in a foregone malice, be very sure. Just at the time

we were in a hard knot of uncertainties about Rome and Venice and

Florence, and a cold house and a warm house; for instance we managed

(that is _I_ did, for altogether it was my fault) to take two

apartments in the course of ten days, each for a term of six months,

getting out of one of them by leaving the skirts of our garments,

_rent_, literally, in the hand of the proprietor. You have heard most

of this, I dare say, from Mr. Kenyon or my sisters. Now, too, you are

aware of our being in Piazza Pitti, in a charmed circle of sun blaze.

Our rooms are small, but of course as cheerful as being under the very

eyelids of the sun must make everything; and we have a cook in the

house who takes the office of _traiteur_ on him and gives us English

mutton chops at Florentine prices, both of us quite well and in

spirits, and (though you never will believe this) happier than ever.

For my own part, you know I need not say a word if it were not true,

and I must say to you, who saw the beginning with us, that this end of

fifteen months is just fifteen times better and brighter; the mystical

'moon' growing larger and larger till scarcely room is left for any

stars at all: the only differences which have touched me being the

more and more happiness. It would have been worse than unreasonable if

in marrying I had expected one quarter of such happiness, and indeed I

did not, to do myself justice, and every now and then I look round

in astonishment and thankfulness together, yet with a sort of horror,

seeing that this is not heaven after all. We live just as we did when

you knew us, just as shut-up a life. Robert never goes anywhere except

to take a walk with Flush, which isn't my fault, as you may imagine:

he has not been out one evening of the fifteen months; but what with

music and books and writing and talking, we scarcely know how the days

go, it's such a gallop on the grass. We are going through some of

old Sacchetti's novelets now: characteristic work for Florence, if

somewhat dull elsewhere. Boccaccios can't be expected to spring up

with the vines in rows, even in this climate. We got a newly printed

addition to Savonarola's poems the other day, very flat and cold, they

did not catch fire when he was burnt. The most poetic thing in the

book is his face on the first page, with that eager, devouring soul in

the eyes of it. You may suppose that I am able sometimes to go over

to the gallery and adore the Raphaels, and Robert will tell you of the

divine Apollino which you missed seeing in Poggio Imperiale, and which

I shall be set face to face before, some day soon, I hope....

Father Prout was in Florence for some two hours in passing to Rome,

and of course, according to contract of spirits of the air, Robert met

him, and heard a great deal of you and Geddie (saw Geddie's picture,

by the way, and thought it very like), was told much to the advantage

of Mr. Macpherson,[170] and at the end of all, kissed in the open

street as the speaker was about to disappear in the diligence. When

you write, tell me of the _book_. Surely it will be out anon, and then

you will be free, shall you not? Have you seen Tennyson's new poem,

and what of it? Miss Martineau is to discourse about Egypt, I suppose;

but in the meanwhile do you hear that she forswears mesmerism, as Mr.

Spenser Hall does, according to the report Robert brings me home from

the newspaper reading. Now I shall leave him room to stand on and

speak a word to you. Give my love to Gerardine, and don't forget to

mention her letter. I hope you are happy about your friends, and that,

in particular, Lady Byron's health is strengthening and to strengthen.

Always my dear friend's

Most affectionate

E.B.B.

Dear Aunt Nina,--A corner is just the place for eating Christmas pies

in, but for venting Christmas wishes, hardly! What has Ba told you and

wished you in the way of love? I wish you the same and love you the

same, but Geddie, being part of you, gets her due part. We are as

happy as two owls in a hole, two toads under a tree stump; or any

other queer two poking creatures that we let live, after the fashion

of their black hearts, only Ba is fat and rosy; yes, indeed! Florence

is empty and pleasant. Goodbye, therefore, till next year--shall it

not be then we meet? God bless you. R.B.

[Footnote 170: Miss Bate's _fiancé_.]

_To Miss Mitford_

Florence: February 22, [1848].

Your letter, my dearest friend, which was written, a part at least,

before Christmas, came lingering in long after the new year had seen

out its matins. Oh, I had wondered so, and wished so over the long

silence. My fault, perhaps in a measure, for I know how silent _I_ was

before. Yes, and you tell me of your having been unwell (bad news),

and of your dear Flush's death, which made me sorrowful for you, as

I might reasonably be. And now tell me more. Have you a successor to

him? Once you told me that one of the race was in training, but as you

say nothing now I am all in a doubt. Let me hear everything. If I had

been you, I think I should have preferred some quite other kind of

dog, as the unlikeness of a likeness would be apt to bring a pain to

me; but people can't reason about feelings, and feelings are like the

colour of eyes, not the same in different faces, however general may

be the proximity of noses.... The great subject with _everybody_ just

now is the new hope of Italy, and the liberal constitution, given

nobly by our good, excellent Grand Duke, whose praise is in all the

houses, streets, and piazzas. The other evening, the evening after the

gift, he went privately to the opera, was recognised, and in a burst

of triumph and a glory of waxen torches was brought back to the Pitti

by the people. I was undressing to go to bed, had my hair down over my

shoulders under Wilson's ministry, when Robert called me to look out

of the window and see. Through the dark night a great flock of stars

seemed sweeping up the piazza, but not in silence, nor with very

heavenly noises. The '_Evvivas_' were deafening. So glad I was. _I,

too_, stood at the window and clapped my hands. If ever Grand Duke

deserved benediction this Duke does. We hear that he was quite moved,

overpowered, and wept like a child. Nevertheless the most of Italy is

under the cloud, and God knows how all may end as the thunder ripens.

Now I mustn't, I suppose, write politics. Our plans about England are

afloat. Impossible to know what we shall do, but if not this summer,

the summer after _must_ help us to the sight of some beloved faces. It

will be a midsummer dream, and we shall return to winter in Italy. My

Flush is as well as ever, and perhaps gayer than ever I knew him. He

runs out in the piazza whenever he pleases, and plays with the dogs

when they are pretty enough, and wags his tail at the sentinels and

civic guard, and takes the Grand Duke as a sort of neighbour of his,

whom it is proper enough to patronise, but who has considerably less

inherent merit and dignity than the spotted spaniel in the alley

to the left. We have been reading over again 'André' and 'Leone

Leoni,'[171] and Robert is in an enthusiasm about the first. Happy

person, you are, to get so at new books. Blessed is the man who reads

Balzac, or even Dumas. I have got to admire Dumas doubly since that

fight and scramble for his brains in Paris. Now do think of me and

love me, and let me be as ever your affectionate

BA.

Robert's regards always. Say particularly how you are, and may God

bless you, dearest Miss Mitford, and make you happy.

[Footnote 171: Novels by George Sand.]

_To Miss Mitford_

Florence: April 15, [1848].

... My Flush has recovered his beauty, and is in more vivacious

spirits than I remember to have seen him. Still, the days come when he

will have no pleasure and plenty of fleas, poor dog, for Savonarola's

martyrdom here in Florence is scarcely worse than Flush's in the

summer. Which doesn't prevent his enjoying the spring, though, and

just now, when, by medical command, I drive out two hours every day,

his delight is to occupy the seat in the carriage opposite to Robert

and me, and look disdainfully on all the little dogs who walk afoot.

We drive day by day through the lovely Cascine (where the trees have

finished and spread their webs of full greenery, undimmed by the sun

yet), first sweeping through the city, past such a window where Bianca

Capello looked out to see the Duke go by,[172] and past such a door

where Lapo stood, and past the famous stone where Dante drew his chair

out to sit.[173] Strange, to have all that old-world life about us,

and the blue sky so bright besides, and ever so much talk on our lips

about the new French revolution, and the King of Prussia's cunning,

and the fuss in Germany and elsewhere. Not to speak of our own

particular troubles and triumphs in Lombardy close by. The English are

flying from Florence, by the way, in a helter skelter, just as they

always do fly, except (to do them justice) on a field of battle. The

family Englishman is a dreadful coward, be it admitted frankly. See

how they run from France, even to my dear excellent Uncle Hedley, who

has too many little girls in his household to stay longer at Tours.

Oh, I don't _blame_ him exactly. I only wish that he had waited a

little longer, the time necessary for being quite reassured. He has

great stakes in the country--a house at Tours and in Paris, and twenty

thousand pounds in the Rouen railway. But Florence will fall upon her

feet we may all be certain, let the worst happen that can. Meanwhile,

republicans as I and my, husband are by profession, we very anxiously,

anxiously even to pain, look on the work being attempted and done just

now by the theorists in Paris; far from half approving of it we are,

and far from being absolutely confident of the durability of the other

half. Tell me what you think, and if you are not anxious too. As to

communism, surely the practical part of _that_, the only not dangerous

part, is attainable simply by the consent of individuals who may try

the experiment of associating their families in order to the cheaper

employment of the means of life, and successfully in many cases. But

make a government scheme of _even so much_, and you seem to trench on

the individual liberty. All such patriarchal planning in a government

issues naturally into absolutism, and is adapted to states of society

more or less barbaric. Liberty and civilisation when married together

lawfully rather evolve individuality than tend to generalisation.

Is this not true? I fear, I fear that mad theories promising the

impossible may, in turn, make the people mad. I Louis Blanc knows

not what he says. Have I not mentioned to you a very gifted woman, a

sculptress, Mademoiselle de Fauveau, who lives in Florence with her

mother practising her profession, an exile from France, in consequence

of their royalist opinions and participation in the Vendée struggle,

some sixteen or fifteen years? On that occasion she was mistaken for

and allowed herself to be arrested as Madame de la Roche Jacquelin;

therefore she has justified, by suffering in the cause, her passionate

attachment to it. A most interesting person she is; she called upon us

a short time ago and interested us much. And Mrs. Jameson would tell

you that her celebrity in her art is not comparative 'for a woman,'

but that, since Benvenuto Cellini, more beautiful works of the kind

have not been accomplished. An exquisite fountain she has lately

done for the Emperor of Russia. She has workmen under her, and is as

'professional' in every respect as if neither woman nor noble. At the

first throb of this revolution of course she dreamt the impossible

about that dear 'Henri Cinq,' who is as much out of the question

as Henri Quatre himself; and now it ends with the 'French Legation'

coming to settle in the house precisely opposite to hers, with a

hideous sign-painting appended O the Gallic cock on one leg and at

full crow inscribed, 'Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.' This, and the

death of her favorite dog, whom, after seventeen years' affection, she

was forced to have destroyed on account of a combination of diseases,

has quite saddened the sculptress. When she came to see us I observed

that after so long a residence at Florence she must regard it as a

second country. 'Ah non!' (the answer was) 'il n'y a pas de seconde

patrie.' What you tell me of 'Jane Eyre' makes me long to see the

book. I may long, I fancy. It is dismal to have to disappoint my

dearest sisters, who hoped for me in England this summer, but our

English visit _must_ be for next summer instead; there seems too

much against it just now. The drawback of Italy is the distance from

England. If it were but as near as Paris, for instance, why in that

case we should settle here at once, I do think, the conveniences and

luxuries of life are of such incredible cheapness, the climate so

divine, and the way of things altogether so serene and suited to our

tastes and instincts. But to give up England and the _English_, the

dear, dearest treasure of English love, is impossible, so we just

linger and linger. The Boyles go to England from the press of panic,

Lady Boyle being old and infirm. Ah, but your talking friend would

interest you, and you might accept the talk in infinitesimal

doses, you know. Lamartine has surely acted down the fallacy of the

impractical tendencies of imaginative men. I am full of France just

now. Are you all prepared for an outbreak in Ireland? I hope so. My

husband has the second edition of his collected poems[174] in the

press by this time, by grace of Chapman and Hall, who accept all

risks. You speak of Tennyson's vexation about the reception of

the 'Princess.' Why did Mr. Harness and others, who 'never could

understand' his former divine works, praise this in manuscript

till the poet's hope grew to the height of his ambition? Strangely

unfortunate. We have not read it yet. I hear that Tennyson had the

other day everything packed for Italy, then turned his face toward

Ireland, and went there. Oh, for a talk with you. But this is a sort

of talk, isn't it? Accept my husband's regards. As to my love, I throw

it to you over the [sea] with both hands. God bless you.

Your ever affectionate

BA.

[Footnote 172: See Browning's _The Statue and the Bust_.]

[Footnote 173: 'the stone Called Dante's--a plain flat stone scarce

discerned From others in the pavement--whereupon He used to bring his

quiet chair out, turned To Brunelleschi's church, and pour alone The

lava of his spirit when it burned.' _Casa Guidi Windows_, part i.]

[Footnote 174: This edition, published in 1849 in two volumes

contained only _Paracelsus_ and the plays and poems of the _Bells and

Pomegranates_ series.]

_To John Kenyan_

[Florence:] May I, [1848].

My dearest Mr. Kenyon,--Surely it is quite wrong that we three,

Robert, you, and I, should be satisfied with writing little dry notes,

as short as so many proclamations, and those of the order of your

anti-Chartist magistracy, 'Whereas certain evil disposed persons &c.

&c.,' instead of our anti-Austrian Grand duchy's 'O figli amati'

(how characteristic of the north and the south, to be sure, is this

contrast! Yet, after all, they might have managed it rather better

in England!)--little dry notes brief and business-like as an

anti-Chartist proclamation! And, indeed, two of us are by no means

satisfied, whatever the third may be. The other day we were looking

over some of the dear delightful letters you used to write to us.

Real letters those were, and not little dry notes at all. Robert said,

'When I write to dear Mr. Kenyon I really do feel overcome by the

sense of what I owe to him, and so, as it is beyond words to say, why

generally I say as little as possible of anything, keeping myself to

matters of business.' An alternative very objectionable, I told him;

for to have 'a dumb devil' from ever such grateful and sentimental

reasons, when the Alps stand betwixt friend, is damnatory in the

extreme. Then, as _you_ are not 'too grateful' to _us_, why don't

_you_ write? Pray do, my dear friend. Let us all write as we used to

do. And to make sure of it, I begin.

Since I ended last the world has turned over on its other side, in

order, one must hope, to some happy change in the dream. Our friend,

Miss Bayley, in that very kind letter which has just reached me and

shall be answered directly (will you tell her with my thankful love?),

asks if Robert and I are communists, and then half draws back her

question into a discreet reflection that _I_, at least, was never

much celebrated for acumen on political economy. Most true indeed! And

therefore, and on that very ground, is it not the more creditable to

me that I don't set up for a communist immediately? In proportion to

the ignorance might be the stringency of the embrace of 'la vérité

sociale:' so I claim a little credit that it isn't. For really we

are not communists, farther than to admit the wisdom of voluntary

association in matters of material life among the poorer classes. And

to legislate even on such points seems as objectionable as possible;

all intermeddlings of government with domesticities, from Lacedaemon

to Peru, were and must be objectionable; and of the growth of

absolutism, let us, theorise as we choose. I would have the government

educate the people absolutely, and _then_ give room for the individual

to develop himself into life freely. Nothing can be more hateful to me

than this communist idea of quenching individualities in the mass. As

if the hope of the world did not always consist in the eliciting

of the individual man from the background of the masses, in the

evolvement of individual genius, virtue, magnanimity. Do you know how

I love France and the French? Robert laughs at me for the mania of it,

or used to laugh long before this revolution. When I was a prisoner,

my other mania for imaginative literature used to be ministered to

through the prison bars by Balzac, George Sand, and the like immortal

improprieties. They kept the colour in my life to some degree and did

good service in their time to me, I can assure you, though in dear

discreet England women oughtn't to confess to such reading, I believe,

or you told me so yourself one day. Well, but through reading the

books I grew to love France, in a mania too; and the interest, which

all must feel in the late occurrences there, has been with me, and is,

quite painful. I read the newspapers as I never did in my life, and

hope and fear in paroxysms, yes, and am guilty of thinking far more

of Paris than of Lombardy itself, and try to understand financial

difficulties and social theories with the best will in the world;

much as Flush tries to understand me when I tell him that barking and

jumping may be unseasonable things. Both of us open our eyes a good

deal, but the comprehension is questionable after all. What, however,

I do seem least of all to comprehend, is your hymn of triumph in

England, just because you have a lower ideal of liberty than the

French people have. See if in Louis Philippe's time France was not

in many respects more advanced than England is now, property better

divided, hereditary privilege abolished! Are we to blow with the

trumpet because we respect the ruts while everywhere else they are

mending the roads? I do not comprehend. As to the Chartists, it is

only a pity in my mind that you have not more of them. That's their

fault. Mine, you will say, is being pert about politics when you would

rather have anything else in a letter from Italy. You have heard of

my illness, and will have been sorry for me, I am certain; but with

blessings edging me round, I need not catch at a thistle in the hedge

to make a 'sorrowful complaignte' of. Our plans have floated round and

round, in and out of all the bays and creeks of the Happy Islands....

Meanwhile here we are--and when do you mean to come to see us, pray?

Mind, I hold by the skirts of the vision for next winter. Why, surely

_you_ won't talk of 'disturbances' and 'revolutions,' and the like

disloyal reasons which send our brave countrymen flying on all sides,

as if every separate individual expected to be bombarded _per

se_. Now, mind you come; dear dear Mr. Kenyon, how delighted past

expression we should be to see you! Ah, do you fancy that I have no

regret for our delightful gossips? If I have the feeling I told you of

for Balzac and George Sand, what must I have for _you_? Now come,

and let us see you! And still sooner, if you please, write to us--and

write of yourself and in detail--and tell us particularly, first if

the winter has left no sign of a cough with you, and next, what you

mean by something which suggests to my fancy that you have a book in

the course of printing. Is that true? Tell me all about it--_all_! Who

can be interested, pray, if _I_ am not? For your and Mr. Chorley's

and Mr. Forster's kind dealings with Robert's poems I thank you

gratefully; and as a third volume can bring up the rear quickly in the

case of success, I make no wailing for my 'Luria,' however dear it may

be.[175]

[Illustration: _Casa Guidi From a Photograph_]

You are not to fancy that I am unwell now. On the contrary, I am

nearly as strong as ever, and go out in the carriage for two hours

every day, besides a little walk sometimes. Not a word more to-day.

Write--do--and you shall hear from us at length. Robert sends his own

love, I suppose. We both love you from our hearts.

Your ever affectionate and grateful

BA.

(who can't read over, and writes in such a hurry!)

It was about this time, as appears from the following letter, that

the Brownings finally anchored themselves in Florence by taking an

unfurnished suite of rooms in the Palazzo Guidi, and making there

a home for themselves, Here, in the Via Maggio, almost opposite the

Pitti Palace, and within easy distance of the Ponte Vecchio, is the

dwelling known to all lovers of English poetry as Casa Guidi, and

bearing now upon its walls the name of the English poetess whose life

and writings formed, in the graceful words of the Italian poet,

'a golden ring between Italy and England.' Whatever might be their

migrations--and they were many, especially in later years--Casa Guidi

was henceforth their home.[176]

[Footnote 175: Apparently it had been proposed to omit _Luria_ from

the new edition; but, if so, the intention was not carried out.]

[Footnote 176: It will interest many readers to know that Casa Guidi

is now the property of Mr. R. Barrett Browning.]

_To Miss Mitford_

May 28, 1848.

... And now I must tell you what we have done since I wrote last,

little thinking of doing so. You see our problem was to get to England

as much in our summers as possible, the expense of the intermediate

journeys making it difficult of solution. On examination of the whole

case, it appeared manifest that we were throwing money into the like

to hear you talk of poor France; how I hope that you are able to hope

for her. Oh, this absurdity of communism and mythological fête-ism!

where can it end? They had better have kept Louis Philippe after

all, if they are no more practical. Your Madame must be insufferable

indeed, seeing that her knowledge of these subjects and men did not

make her sufferable to you. My curiosity never is exhausted. What I

hold is that the French have a higher ideal than we, and that all

this clambering, leaping, struggling of indefinite awkwardness simply

proves it. But _success in the republic_ is different still. I fear

for them. My uncle and his family are safe at Tunbridge Wells, my aunt

longing to be able to get back again. For those who are still nearer

to me, I have no heart to speak of _them_, loving them as I do and

must to the end, whatever that end may be; but my dearest sisters

write often to me--never let me miss their affection. I am quite well

again, and strong, and Robert and I go out after tea in a wandering

walk to sit in the Loggia and look at the Perseus, or, better still,

at the divine sunsets on the Arno, turning it to pure gold under the

bridges. After more than twenty months of marriage, we are happier

than ever--I may say _we_. Italy will regenerate herself in all

senses, I hope and believe. In Florence we are very quiet, and the

English fly in proportion. N.B.--_Always_ first fly the majors and

gallant captains, unless there's a general. How I should like to see

dear Mr. Horne's poem! _He's_ bold, at least--yes, and has a great

heart to be bold with. A cloud has fallen on me some few weeks ago, in

the illness and death of my dear friend Mr. Boyd,[177] but he did not

suffer, and is not to be mourned by those without hope [_sic_]. Still,

it has been a cloud. May God bless you, my beloved friend. Write soon,

and of yourself, to your ever affectionate

BA.

My husband's regards go to you, of course.

[Footnote 177: Mr. Boyd died on May 10, 1848.]

_To Miss Browning_

[Florence: about June 1848.]

My dearest Sarianna,--At last, you see, I give sign of life. The

_love_, I hope you believed in without sign or symbol; and even

for the rest, Robert promised to answer for me like godfather or

godmother, and bear the consequence of my sins....

We are a little uneasy just now as to whether you will be overjoyed or

_under_ joyed by our new scheme of taking an unfurnished apartment.

It would spoil all, for instance, if your dear mother seemed

disappointed--vexed--in the least degree. And I can understand how,

to persons at a distance and of course unable to understand the

whole circumstances of the case, the fact of an apartment taken and

furnished may seem to involve some dreadful giving up for ever and

ever of country and family--which would be as dreadful to us as to

you! How could we give you up, do you think, when we love you more and

more? Oh no. If Robert has succeeded in making clear the subject to

you, you will all perceive, just as _we know_, that we have simply

thus solved the problem of making our small income carry us to

England, not only next summer, but many a summer after. We should like

to give every summer to dear England, and hide away from the cold only

when it comes. By our scheme we shall have saved money even at the end

of the present year; while for afterward, here's a residence--that is,

a_pied à terre_--in Italy, all but free when we wish to use it; and

when we care to let it, producing eight or ten pounds a month in help

of travelling expenses. It's the best investment for Mr. Moxon's money

we could have looked the world over for. So the learned tell us; and

after all, you know, we only pay in the proportion of your working

classes in the Pancras building contrived for them by the philanthropy

of your Southwood Smiths. I do wish you could see what rooms we have,

what ceilings, what height and breadth, what a double terrace for

orange trees; how cool, how likely to be warm, how perfect every way!

Robert leaned once to a ground floor in the Frescobaldi Palace, being

bewitched by a garden full of camellias, and a little pond of gold and

silver fish; but while he saw the fish I saw the mosquitos in clouds,

such an apocalypse of them as has not yet been visible to me in all

Florence, and I dread mosquitos more than Austrians; and he, in his

unspeakable goodness, deferred to my fear in a moment and gave up the

camellias without one look behind. A heavy conscience I should have if

it were not that the camellia garden was certainly less private than

our terrace here, where we can have camellias also if we please. How

pretty and pleasant your cottage at Windsor must be! We had a long

_muse_ over your father's sketch of it, and set faces at the windows.

That the dear invalid is better for the change must have brightened

it, too, to her companions, and the very sound of a 'forest' is

something peculiarly delightful and untried to me. I know hills well,

and of the sea too much; but now I want forests, or quite, quite

mountains, such as you have not in England.

Robert says that if 'Blackwood' likes to print a poem of mine and send

you the proofs, you will be so very good as to like to correct them.

To me it seems too much to ask, when you have work for him to do

beside. Will it be too much, or is nothing so to your kindness? I

would ask my _other_ sisters, who would gladly, dear things, do it for

me; but I have misgivings through their being so entirely unaccustomed

to occupations of the sort, or any critical reading of poetry of

any sort. Robert is quite well and in the best spirits, and has the

headache now only very occasionally. I am as well as he, having quite

recovered my strength and power of walking. So we wander to the bridge

of Trinità every evening after tea to see the sunset on the Arno. May

God bless you all! Give my true love to your father and mother, and my

loving thanks to yourself for that last stitch in the stool. How good

you are, Sarianna, to your ever affectionate sister

BA.

Always remind your dear mother that we are no more _bound_ here than

when in furnished lodgings. It is a mere name.

_To Mrs. Martin_

Palazzo Guidi: June 20, [1848].

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Now I am going to answer your letter, which I

all but lost, and got ever so many days beyond the right day, because

you directed it to Mrs. _William_ Browning. Pray remember

_Robert Browning_ for the future, in right descent from _Robert

Brunnyng_,[178] the first English poet. Mrs. Jameson says, 'It's

ominous of the actual Robert's being the _last_ English poet;' a

saying which I give you to remember us by, rejecting the omen....

We have grown to be Florentine citizens, as perhaps you have heard.

Health and means both forbade our settlement in England; and the

journey backwards and forwards being another sort of expense, and very

necessary with our ties and affections, we had to think how to live

here, when we were here, at the cheapest. The difference between

taking a furnished apartment and an unfurnished one is something

immense. For our furnished rooms we have had always to pay some four

guineas a month; and unfurnished rooms of equal pretension we could

have for twelve a year, and the furniture (out and out) for fifty

pounds. This calculation, together with the consideration that we

could let our apartment whenever we travelled and receive back the

whole cost, could not choose, of course, but determine us. On coming

to the point, however, we grew ambitious, and preferred giving

five-and-twenty guineas for a noble suite of rooms in the Palazzo

Guidi, a stone's throw from the Pitti, and furnishing them after

our own taste rather than after our economy, the economy having a

legitimate share of respect notwithstanding; and the satisfactory

thing being that the whole expense of this furnishing--rococo chairs,

spring sofas, carved bookcases, satin from cardinals' beds, and the

rest--is covered by the proceeds of our books during the last two

winters. This is satisfying, isn't it? We shall stand safe within the

borders of our narrow income even this year, and next year comes the

harvest! We shall go to England in the spring, and return _home_

to Italy. Do you understand? Mr. Kenyon, our friend and counsellor,

writes to applaud--such prudence was never known before among poets.

Then we have a plan, that when the summer (this summer) grows too hot,

we shall just take up our carpet-bag and Wilson and plunge into the

mountains in search of the monasteries beyond Vallombrosa, from

Arezzo go to St. Sepolchro in the Apennines, and thence to Fano on the

seashore, making a round back perhaps (after seeing the great fair at

Sinigaglia) to Ravenna and Bologna home. As to Rome, our plan is to

give up Rome next winter, seeing that we _must_ go to England in the

spring. I _must_ see my dearest sisters and whoever else dear will see

me, and Robert _must_ see his family beside; and going to Rome will

take us too far from the route and cost too much; and then we are not

inclined to give the first-fruits of our new apartment to strangers if

we could let it ever so easily this year. You can't think how well

the rooms look already; you must come and see them, you and dear Mr.

Martin. Three immense rooms we have, and a fourth small one for a

book room and winter room--windows opening on a little terrace,

eight windows to the south; two good bedrooms behind, with a smaller

terrace, and kitchen, &c., all on a first floor and Count Guidi's

favorite suite. The Guidi were connected by marriage with the Ugolino

of Pisa, Dante's Ugolino, only we shun all traditions of the Tower

of Famine, and promise to give you excellent coffee whenever you will

come to give us the opportunity. We shall have vines and myrtles

and orange trees on the terrace, and I shall have a watering-pot and

garden just as you do, though it must be on the bricks instead of the

ground. For temperature, the stoves are said to be very effective in

the winter, and in the summer we are cool and airy; the advantage

of these thick-walled palazzos is coolness in summer and warmth in

winter. I am very well and quite strong again, or rather, stronger

than ever, and able to walk as far as Cellini's Perseus in the

moonlight evenings, on the other side of the Arno. Oh, that Arno in

the sunset, with the moon and evening star standing by, how divine it

is!...

Think of me as ever your most affectionate

BA.

[Footnote 178: Otherwise known as Robert Mannyng, or Robert de Brunne,

author of the _Handlyng Synne_ and a _Chronicle of England_. He

flourished about 1288-1338.]

_To Miss Mitford_

Florence: July 4, [1848].

It does grieve me, my ever dearest Miss Mitford, to hear of the

suffering which has fallen upon you! Oh, rheumatism or not, whatever

the name may be, do take care, do consider, and turn your dear face

toward the seaside; somewhere where you can have warm sea bathing

and sea air, and be able to associate the word 'a drive' not with mad

ponies, but the mildest of donkeys, on a flat sand. The good it would

do you is incalculable, I am certain; it is precisely a case for

change of air, with quiet....

As for when you come to Florence, we won't have 'a pony carriage

between us,' if you please, because we may have a carriage and a pair

of horses and a coachman, and pay as little as for the pony-chair in

England. For three hundred a year one may live much like the Grand

Duchess, and go to the opera in the evening at fivepence-halfpenny

inclusive. Indeed, poor people should have their patriotism tenderly

dealt with, when, after certain experiments, they decide on living

upon the whole on the Continent. The differences are past belief,

beyond expectation, and when the sunshine is thrown in, the head turns

at once, and you fall straight into absenteeism. Ah, for the 'long

chats' and the 'having England at one another's fireside!' You talk of

delightful things indeed. We are very quiet, politically speaking,

and though we hear now and then of melancholy mothers who have to part

with their sons for Lombardy,[179] and though there are processions

for the blessing of flags and an occasional firing of guns for a

victory, or a cry in the streets, 'Notizie della guerra--leggete,

signori;' this is all we know of Radetsky in Florence; while, for

civil politics, the meeting of the senate took place a few days since

to the satisfaction of everybody, and the Grand Duke's speech was

generally admired. The elections have returned moderate men, and many

land-proprietors, and Robert, who went out to see the procession of

members, was struck by the grave thoughtful faces and the dignity

of expression. We are going some day to hear the debates, but it has

pleased their signoria to fix upon twelve (noon) for meeting, and

really I do not dare to go out in the sun. The hour is sufficiently

conclusive against dangerous enthusiasm. Poor France, poor France!

News of the dreadful massacre at Paris just reaches us, and the

letters and newspapers not arriving to-day, everybody fears a

continuation of the crisis. How is it to end? Who 'despairs of the

republic?' Why, _I_ do! I fear, I fear, that it cannot stand in

France, and you seem to have not much more hope. My husband has a

little, with melancholy intermediate prospects; but my own belief

that the people have had enough of democratic institutions and will be

impatient for a kingship anew. Whom will they have? How did you feel

when the cry was raised, 'Vive l'Empereur'? Only Prince Napoleon is a

Napoleon cut out in paper after all. The Prince de Joinville is said

to be very popular. It makes me giddy to think of the awful precipices

which surround France--to think, too, that the great danger is on the

question of _property_, which is perhaps divided there more justly

than in any other country of Europe. Lamartine has comprehended

nothing, that is clear, even if his amount of energy had been

effectual.... Yes, do send me the list of Balzac, _after_ 'Les Misères

de la Vie Conjugale,' I mean. I left him in the midst of 'La Femme de

Soixante Ans,' who seemed on the point of turning the heads of all

'la jeunesse' around her; and, after all, she did not strike me as so

charming. But Balzac charms me, let him write what he will; he's an

inspired man. Tell me, too, exactly what Sue has done after 'Martin.'

I read only one volume of 'Martin.' And did poor Soulié finish his

'Dramas'? And after 'Lucretia' what did George Sand write? When Robert

and I are ambitious, we talk of buying Balzac in full some day, to put

him up in our bookcase from the convent, if the carved-wood angels,

infants and serpents, should not finish mouldering away in horror at

the touch of him. But I fear it will rather be an expensive purchase,

even here. Would that he gave up the drama, for which, as you observe,

he has no faculty whatever. In fact, the faculty he has is the very

reverse of the dramatic, ordinarily understood.... Dearest Mr. Kenyon

is called quite well and delightful by the whole world, though he

suffered from cough in the winter; and he is bringing out a new book

of poems, a 'Day at Tivoli,' and others; and he talks energetically of

coming to Florence this autumn. Also, we have hopes of Mr. Chorley. I

congratulate you on the going away of Madame. Coming and going bring

very various associations in this life of ours. Why, if _you_ were

to come we should appreciate our fortune, and you should have my

particular chair, which Robert calls mine because I like sitting in a

cloud; it's so sybaritically soft a chair. Now I love you for the kind

words you say of _him_, who deserves the best words of the best women

and men, wherever spoken! Yes, indeed, I am happy. Otherwise, I should

have a stone where the heart is, and sink by the weight of it.

You must have faith in me, for I never can make you thoroughly

to understand what he is, of himself, and to me--the noblest and

perfectest of human beings. After a year and ten months' absolute

soul-to-soul intercourse and union, I have to look higher still for my

first ideal. You won't blame me for bad taste that I say these things,

for can I help it, when I am writing my heart to you? It is a heart

which runs over very often with a grateful joy for a most peculiar

destiny, even in the midst of some bitter drawbacks which I need not

allude to farther....

May God bless you continually, even as I am

Your affectionate

BA.

[Footnote 179: The insurrection of Lombardy against Austrian rule

had taken place in March, and was immediately followed by war between

Sardinia and Austria, in which the Italians gained some initial

successes. Fighting continued through the summer, and was temporarily

closed by an armistice in August.]

_To Mrs. Jameson_

Palazzo Guidi: July 15, [1848].

Now at last, my very dear friend, I am writing to you, and the

reproach you sent to me in your letter shall not be driven inwardly

any more by my self-reproaches. Wasn't it your fault after all, a

little, that we did not hear one another's voice oftener? You are

_so long_ in writing. Then I have been putting off and putting off my

letter to you, just because I wanted to make a full letter of it; and

Robert always says that it's the bane of a correspondence to make a

full letter a condition of writing at all. But so much I had to tell

you! while the mere outline of facts you had from others, I knew.

Which is just said that you may forgive us both, and believe that we

think of you and love you, yes, and talk of you, even when we don't

write to you, and that we shall write to you for the future more

regularly, indeed. Your letter, notwithstanding its reproach, was

very welcome and very kind, only you must be fagged with the book, and

saddened by Lady Byron's state of health, and anxious about Gerardine

perhaps. The best of all was the prospect you hold out to us of coming

to Italy this year. Do, do come. Delighted we shall be to see you in

Florence, and wise it will be in you to cast behind your back both the

fear of Radetsky and as much English care as may be. Now, would it not

do infinite good to Lady Byron if you could carry her with you into

the sun? Surely it would do her great good; the change, the calm, the

atmosphere of beauty and brightness, which harmonises so wonderfully

with every shade of human feeling. Florence just now, and thanks to

the panic, is tolerably _clean_ of the English--you scarcely see an

English face anywhere--and perhaps this was a circumstance that helped

to give Robert courage to take our apartment here and 'settle down.'

You were surprised at so decided a step I dare say, and, I believe,

though too considerate to say it in your letter, you have wondered in

your thoughts at our fixing at Florence instead of Rome, and without

seeing more of Italy before the finality of making a choice. But

observe, Florence is wonderfully cheap, one lives here for just

nothing; and the convenience in respect to England, letters, and

the facility of letting our house in our absence, is incomparable

altogether. At Rome a house would be habitable only half the year, and

the distance and the expense are objections at the first sight of the

subject.... Altogether, if I could but get a supply of French books,

turning the cock easily, it would be perfect; but as to _anything_ new

in the book way, Vieusseux seems to have made a vow against it, and

poor Robert comes and goes in a state of desperation between me and

the bookseller ('But what _can_ I do, Ba?'), and only brings news

of some pitiful revolution or other which promises a full flush of

republican virtues and falls off into the fleur de lis as usual. Think

of our not having read 'Lucretia' yet--George Sand's. And Balzac is

six or seven works deep from us; but these are evils to be borne. We

live on just in the same way, having very few visitors, and receiving

them in the quietest of hospitalities. Mr. Ware, the American, who

wrote the 'Letters from Palmyra,' and is a delightful, earnest, simple

person, comes to have coffee with us once or twice a week, and very

much we like him. Mr. Hillard, another cultivated American friend of

ours, you have in London, and we should gladly have kept longer.

Mr. Powers does not spend himself much upon visiting, which is quite

right, but we do hope to see a good deal of Mademoiselle de Fauveau.

Robert exceedingly admires her. As to Italian society, one may as

well take to longing for the evening star, for it seems quite as

inaccessible; and indeed, of society of any sort, we have not much,

nor wish for it, nor miss it. Dearest friend, if I could open my heart

to you in all seriousness, you would see nothing there but a sort

of enduring wonder of happiness--yes, and some gratitude, I do hope,

besides. Could everything be well in England, I should only have to

melt out of the body at once in the joy and the glow of it. Happier

and happier I have been, month after month; and when I hear _him_ talk

of being happy too, my very soul seems to swim round with feelings

which cannot be spoken. But I tell you a little, because I owe the

telling to you, and also that you may set down in your philosophy the

possibility of book-making creatures living happily together. I admit,

though, to begin (or end), that my husband is an exceptional human

being, and that it wouldn't be just to measure another by him. We

are planning a great deal of enjoyment in this 'going to the fair' at

Sinigaglia, meaning to go by Arezzo and San Sepolchro, and Urbino, to

Fano, where we shall pitch our tent for the benefit, as Robert says,

of the sea air and the oysters. Fano is very habitable, and we may

get to Pesaro and the footsteps of Castiglione's 'courtier,' to say

nothing of Bernardo Tasso; and Ancona beckons from the other side

of Sinigaglia, and Loreto beside, only we shall have to restrain

our flights a little. The passage of the Apennine is said to be

magnificent, and, altogether, surely it must be delightful; and we

take only two carpet bags--not to be weighed down by 'impedimenta,'

and have our own home, left in charge of the porter, to return to at

last, I am very well and shall be better for the change, though Robert

is dreadfully afraid, as usual, that I shall fall to pieces at the

first motion....

May God bless you!

Ever I am your affectionate

BA.

Write to Florence as usual--Poste Restante. You will hear how we are

in great hopes of dear Mr. Kenyon.

Dear Aunt Nina,--Only a word in all the hurry of setting off. We love

you as you love us, and are pretty nearly as happy as you would have

us. All love and prosperity to dear Geddie, too; what do you say of

'Landor,' and my not sending it to Forster or somebody? _Che che_ (as

the Tuscans exclaim), _who_ was it promised to call at my people's,

who would have tendered it forthwith? I will see about it as it is.

Goodbye, dearest aunt, and let no revolution disturb your good will to

Ba and

R.B.

_To Miss Mitford_

Florence: August 24, 1848.

Ever dearest Miss Mitford,--It's great comfort to have your letter;

for as it came more lingeringly than usual, I had time to be a little

anxious, and even my husband has confessed since that he thought what

he would not say aloud for fear of paining me, as to the probability

of your being less well than usual. Your letters come so regularly

to the hour, you see, that when it strikes without them, we ask why.

Thank God, you are better after all, and reviving in spirits, as I saw

at the first glance before the words said it clearly....

As for ourselves, we have scarcely done so well, yet well; having

enjoyed a great deal in spite of drawbacks. Murray, the traitor, sent

us to Fano as a 'delightful summer residence for an English family,'

and we found it uninhabitable from the heat, vegetation scorched with

paleness, the very air swooning in the sun, and the gloomy looks of

the inhabitants sufficiently corroborative of their words, that no

drop of rain or dew ever falls there during the summer. A 'circulating

library' 'which doesn't give out books,' and 'a refined and

intellectual Italian society' (I quote Murray for that phrase) which

'never reads a book through' (I quote Mrs. Wiseman, Dr. Wiseman's

mother, who has lived in Fano seven years), complete the advantages

of the place, yet the churches are beautiful, and a divine picture

of Guercino's is worth going all that way to see.[180] By a happy

accident we fell in with Mrs. Wiseman, who, having married her

daughter to Count Gabrielli with ancestral possessions in Fano, has

lived on there from year to year, in a state of permanent moaning

as far as I could apprehend. She is a very intelligent and vivacious

person, and having been used to the best French society, bears but ill

this exile from the common civilities of life. I wish Dr. Wiseman, of

whose childhood and manhood she spoke with touching pride, would

ask her to minister to the domestic rites of his bishop's palace in

Westminster; there would be no hesitation, I fancy, in her acceptance

of the invitation. Agreeable as she and her daughter were, however, we

fled from Fano after three days, and, finding ourselves cheated out of

our dream of summer coolness, resolved on substituting for it what

the Italians call 'un bel giro.' So we went to Ancona, a striking sea

city, holding up against the brown rocks and elbowing out the purple

tides, beautiful to look upon. An exfoliation of the rock itself, you

would call the houses that seem to grow there, so identical is the

colour and character. I should like to visit Ancona again when there

is a little air and shadow; we stayed a week as it was, living upon

fish and cold water. Water, water, was the cry all day long, and

really you should have seen me (or you should not have seen me) lying

on the sofa, and demoralised out of all sense of female vanity, not

to say decency, with dishevelled hair at full length, and 'sans gown,

sans stays, sans shoes, sans everything,' except a petticoat and white

dressing wrapper. I said something feebly once about the waiter; but

I don't think I meant it for earnest, for when Robert said, 'Oh, don't

mind, dear,' certainly I didn't mind in the least. People _don't_,

I suppose, when they are in ovens, or in exhausted receivers. Never

before did I guess what heat was--that's sure. We went to Loreto for a

day, back through Ancona, Sinigaglia (oh, I forgot to tell you, there

was no fair this year at Sinigaglia; Italy will be content, I suppose,

with selling her honour), Fano, Pesaro, Rimini to Ravenna, back again

over the Apennines from Forli. A 'bel giro,' wasn't it? Ravenna, where

Robert positively wanted to go to live once, has itself put an end to

those yearnings. The churches are wonderful: holding an atmosphere

of purple glory, and if one could live just in them, or in Dante's

tomb--well, otherwise keep me from Ravenna. The very antiquity of the

houses is whitewashed, and the marshes on all sides send up stenches

new and old, till the hot air is sick with them. To get to the pine

forest, which is exquisite, you have to go a mile along the canal, the

exhalations pursuing you step for step, and, what ruffled me more

than all beside, we were not admitted into the house of Dante's tomb

'without an especial permission from the authorities.' Quite furious I

was about this, and both of us too angry to think of applying: but

we stood at the grated window and read the pathetic inscription as

plainly as if we had touched the marble. We stood there between three

and four in the morning, and then went straight on to Florence from

that tomb of the exiled poet. Just what we should have done, had the

circumstances been arranged in a dramatic intention. From Forli, the

air grew pure and quick again; and the exquisite, almost visionary

scenery of the Apennines, the wonderful variety of shape and colour,

the sudden transitions and vital individuality of those mountains, the

chestnut forests dropping by their own weight into the deep ravines,

the rocks cloven and clawed by the living torrents, and the hills,

hill above hill, piling up their grand existences as if they did it

themselves, changing colour in the effort--of these things I cannot

give you any idea, and if words could not, painting could not either.

Indeed, the whole scenery of our journey, except when we approached

the coast, was full of beauty. The first time we crossed the Apennine

(near Borgo San Sepolcro) we did it by moonlight, and the flesh was

weak, and one fell asleep, and saw things between sleep and wake, only

the effects were grand and singular so, even though of course we lost

much in the distinctness. Well, but you will understand from all this

that we were delighted to get home--_I_ was, I assure you. Florence

seemed as cool as an oven after the fire; indeed, we called it quite

cool, and I took possession of my own chair and put up my feet on the

cushions and was charmed, both with having been so far and coming back

so soon. Three weeks brought us home. Flush was a fellow traveller of

course, and enjoyed it in the most obviously amusing manner. Never

was there so good a dog in a carriage before his time! Think of Flush,

too! He has a supreme contempt for trees and hills or anything of that

kind, and, in the intervals of natural scenery, he drew in his head

from the window and didn't consider it worth looking at; but when the

population thickened, and when a village or a town was to be passed

through, then his eyes were starting out of his head with eagerness;

he looked east, he looked west, you would conclude that he was taking

notes or preparing them. His eagerness to get into the carriage first

used to amuse the Italians. Ah, poor Italy! I am as mortified as

an Italian ought to be. They have only the rhetoric of patriots and

soldiers, I fear! Tuscany is to be spared forsooth, if she lies still,

and here she lies, eating ices and keeping the feast of the Madonna.

Perdoni! but she has a review in the Cascine besides, and a gallant

show of some 'ten thousand men' they are said to have made of it--only

don't think that I and Robert went out to see that sight. We should

have sickened at it too much. An amiable, refined people, too, these

Tuscans are, conciliating and affectionate. When you look out into

the streets on feast days, you would take it for one great 'rout,'

everybody appears dressed for a drawing room, and you can scarcely

discern the least difference between class and class, from the Grand

Duchess to the Donna di facenda; also there is no belying of the

costume in the manners, the most gracious and graceful courtesy

and gentleness being apparent in the thickest crowds. This is all

attractive and delightful; but the people wants _stamina_, wants

conscience, wants self-reverence. Dante's soul has died out of

the land. Enough of this. As for France, I have 'despaired of the

republic' for very long, but the nation is a great nation, and will

right itself under some flag, white or red. Don't you think so? Thank

you for the news of our authors, it is as 'the sound of a trumpet afar

off,' and I am like the war-horse. Neglectful that I am, I forgot to

tell you before that you heard quite rightly about Mr. Thackeray's

wife, who is ill _so_. Since your question, I had in gossip from

England that the book 'Jane Eyre' was written by a governess in his

house, and that the preface to the foreign edition refers to him

in some marked way. We have not seen the book at all. But the first

letter in which you mentioned your Oxford student caught us in the

midst of his work upon art.[181] Very vivid, very graphic, full of

sensibility, but inconsequent in some of the reasoning, it seemed to

me, and rather flashy than full in the metaphysics. Robert, who

knows a good deal about art, to which knowledge I of course have no

pretence, could agree with him only by snatches, and we, both of

us, standing before a very expressive picture of Domenichino's (the

'David'--at Fano) wondered how he could blaspheme so against a great

artist. Still, he is no ordinary man, and for a critic to be so much

a poet is a great thing. Also, we have by no means, I should imagine,

seen the utmost of his stature. How kindly you speak to me of my

dearest sisters. Yes, go to see them whenever you are in London, they

are worthy of the gladness of receiving you. And will you write soon

to me, and tell me everything of yourself, how you are, how home

agrees with you, and the little details which are such gold dust to

absent friends....

May God bless you, my beloved friend. Let me ever be (my husband

joining in all warm regards) your most affectionate

BA.

[Footnote 180:'Guercino drew this angel I saw teach

(Alfred, dear friend!) that little child to pray

Holding his little hands up, each to each

Pressed gently, with his own head turned away,

Over the earth where so much lay before him

Of work to do, though heaven was opening o'er him,

And he was left at Fano by the beach.

'We were at Fano, and three times we went

To sit and see him in his chapel there,

And drink his beauty to our soul's content

My angel with me too.']

[Footnote 181: The first two volumes of _Modern Painters_ bore no

author's name, but were described as being 'by a graduate of Oxford.'

At a later date Mrs. Browning made Mr. Ruskin's acquaintance, as some

subsequent letters testify.]

_To Miss Mitford_

Florence: October 10, 1848.

My ever dearest Miss Mitford,--Have you not thought some hard thoughts

of me, for not instantly replying to a letter which necessarily must

have been, to one who loved you, of such painful interest? Do I not

love you truly? Yes, indeed. But while preparing to write to you

my deep regret at hearing that you had been so ill, illness came in

another form to prevent me from writing, my husband being laid up for

nearly a month with fever and ulcerated sore throat. I had not the

heart to write a line to anyone, much less to prepare a packet to

escort your letter free from foreign postage; and to make you pay for

a chapter of Lamentations' without the spirit of prophecy, would have

been too hard on you, wouldn't it? Quite unhappy I have been over

those burning hands and languid eyes, the only unhappiness I ever had

by _them_, and then he wouldn't see a physician; and if it hadn't been

that, just at the right moment, Mr. Mahony, the celebrated Jesuit, and

Father Prout of 'Fraser,' knowing everything as those Jesuits are apt

to do, came in to us on his way to Rome, pointed out that the fever

got ahead through weakness and mixed up with his own kind hand a

potion of eggs and port wine, to the horror of our Italian servant,

who lifted up his eyes at such a prescription for a fever, crying, 'O

Inglesi, Inglesi!' the case would have been far worse, I have no kind

of doubt. For the eccentric prescription gave the power of sleeping,

and the pulse grew quieter directly. I shall always be grateful to

Father Prout, always. The very sight of some one with a friend's name

and a cheerful face, his very jests at me for being a 'bambina' and

frightened without cause, were as comforting as the salutation of

angels. Also, he has been in Florence ever since, and we have seen

him every day; he came to doctor and remained to talk. A very singular

person, of whom the world tells a thousand and one tales, you know,

but of whom I shall speak as I find him, because the utmost kindness

and warmheartedness have characterised his whole bearing towards us.

Robert met him years ago at dinner at Emerson Tennent's, and since has

crossed paths with him on various points of Europe. The first time I

saw him was as he stood on a rock at Leghorn, at our disembarkation

in Italy. Not refined in a social sense by any manner of means, yet

a most accomplished scholar and vibrating all over with learned

associations and vivid combinations of fancy and experience--having

seen all the ends of the earth and the men thereof, and possessing the

art of talk and quotation to an amusing degree. In another week or

two he will be at Rome.... How graphically you give us your Oxford

student! Well! the picture is more distinct than Turner's, and if you

had called it, in the manner of the Master, 'A Rock Limpet,' we

should have recognised in it the corresponding type of the gifted and

eccentric writer in question. Very eloquent he is, I agree at once,

and true views he takes of Art in the abstract, true and elevating. It

is in the application of connective logic that he breaks away from one

so violently.... We are expecting our books by an early vessel, and

are about to be very busy, building up a rococo bookcase of carved

angels and demons. Also we shall get up curtains, and get down bedroom

carpets, and finish the remainder of our furnishing business, now

that the hot weather is at an end. I say 'at an end,' though the glass

stands at seventy. As to the 'war,' _that_ is rather different, it is

painful to feel ourselves growing gradually cooler and cooler on the

subject of Italian patriotism, valour, and good sense; but the process

is inevitable. The child's play between the Livornese and our Grand

Duke provokes a thousand pleasantries. Every now and then a day is

fixed for a revolution in Tuscany, but up to the present time a shower

has come and put it off. Two Sundays ago Florence was to have been

'sacked' by Leghorn, when a drizzle came and saved us. You think this

a bad joke of mine or an impotent sarcasm, perhaps; whereas I merely

speak historically. Brave men, good men, even sensible men there are

of course in the land, but they are not strong enough for the times

or for masterdom. For France, it is a great nation; but even in

France they want a man, and Cavaignacso[182] only a soldier. If Louis

Napoleon had the muscle of his uncle's little finger in his soul, he

would be president, and king; but he is flaccid altogether, you see,

and Joinville stands nearer to the royal probability after all.

'Henri Cinq' is said to be too closely espoused to the Church, and his

connections at Naples and Parma don't help his cause. Robert has more

hope of the _republic_ than I have: but call ye _this_ a republic? Do

you know that Miss Martineau takes up the 'History of England' under

Charles Knight, in the continuation of a popular book? I regret her

fine imagination being so wasted. So you saw Mr. Chorley? What a

pleasant flashing in the eyes! We hear of him in Holland and Norway.

Dear Mr. Kenyon won't stir from England, we see plainly. Ah! Frederic

Soulié! he is too dead, I fear. Perhaps he goes on, though, writing

romances, after the fashion of poor Miss Pickering, that prove

nothing. I long for my French fountains of living literature, which,

pure or impure, plashed in one's face so pleasantly. Some old French

'Mémoires' we have got at lately, 'Brienne' for instance. It is

curious how the leaders of the last revolution (under Louis XVIII.)

seem to have despised one another. Brienne is very dull and flat. For

Puseyism, it runs counter to the spirit of our times, after all, and

will never achieve a church. May God bless you! Robert's regards go

with the love of your ever affectionate

BA.

[Footnote 182: At this time President of the Council, after

suppressing the Communist rising of June 1848.]

_To Mrs. Martin_

Florence: December 3, 1848.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--It seemed long to me that you had not

written, and it seems long to me now that I have not answered the kind

letter which came at last. Then Henrietta told me of your being unwell

at the moment of her mad excursion into Herefordshire. Altogether

I want to speak to you and hear from you, and shall be easier and

gladder when both are done. Do forgive my sins and write directly, and

tell me everything about both of you, and how you are in spirits and

health, and whether you really make up your minds to see more danger

in the stormy influences of the Continent in the moral point of view

than in those of England in the physical. For my part I hold to my

original class of fear, and would rather face two or three revolutions

than an east wind of an English winter. If I were you I would go to

Pau as usual and take poor Abd-el-Kader's place (my husband is furious

about the treatment of Abd-el-Kader, so I hear a good deal about

him[183]), or I would go to Italy and try Florence, where really

democratic ministries roar as gently as sucking doves, particularly

when they are safe in place. We have listened to dreadful

rumours--Florence was to have been sacked several times by the

Livornese; the Grand Duke went so far as to send away his family

to Siena, and we had 'Morte a Fiorentini!' chalked up on the walls.

Still, somehow or other, the peace has been kept in Florentine

fashion; it has rained once or twice, which is always enough here to

moderate the most revolutionary when they wear their best surtouts,

and I look forward to an unbroken tranquillity just as I used to

do, even though the windows of the Ridolfi Palace (the ambassador in

London) were smashed the other evening a few yards from ours. Perhaps

a gentle and affectionate approach to contempt for our Florentines

mixes a little with this feeling of security, but what then? They

are an amiable, refined, graceful people, with much of the artistic

temperament as distinguished from that of men of genius--effeminate,

no, rather _feminine_ in a better sense--of a fancy easily turned into

impulse, but with no strenuous and determinate strength in them. What

they comprehend best in the 'Italian League' is probably a league to

wear silk velvet and each a feather in his hat, to carry flags and cry

_vivas_, and keep a grand festa day in the piazzas. Better and happier

in this than in stabbing prime ministers, or hanging up their dead

bodies to shoot at; and not much more childish than these French

patriots and republicans, who crown their great deeds by electing to

the presidency such a man as Prince Louis Napoleon, simply because

'C'est le neveu de son oncle!'[184] A curious precedent for a

president, certainly; but, oh heavens and earth, what curious things

abroad everywhere just now, inclusive of the sea serpent! I agree

with you that much of all is very melancholy and disheartening, though

holding fast by my hope and belief that good will be the end, as it

always _is_ God's end to man's frenzies, and that all we observe is

but the fermentation necessary to the new wine, which presently we

shall drink pure. Meanwhile, the saddest thing is the impossibility

(which I, for one, feel) to sympathise, to go along with, the _people_

to whom and to whose cause all my natural sympathies yearn. The

word 'Liberty' ceases to make me thrill, as at something great and

unmistakable, as, for instance, the other great words Truth, and

Justice; do. The salt has lost its savour, the meaning has escaped

from the term; we know nothing of what people will _do_ when they

aspire to Liberty. The holiness of liberty is desecrated by the sign

of the ass's hoof. Fixed principles, either of opinion or action, seem

clearly gone out of the world. The principle of Destruction is in the

place of the principle of Re-integration, or of Radical Reform, as we

called it in England. I look all round and can sympathise nowhere.

The rulers hold by rottenness, and the people leap into the abyss,

and nobody knows why this is, or why that is. As to France, my tears

(which I really couldn't help at the time of the expulsion of poor

Louis Philippe and his family, not being very strong just then) are

justified, it appears, though my husband thought them foolish (and so

did I), and though we both began by an adhesion to the Republic in

the cordial manner. But, just see, the Republic was a 'man in an iron

mask' or helmet, and turns out a military dictatorship, a throttling

of the press, a starving of the finances, and an election of Louis

Napoleon to be President. Louis Philippe was better than all this,

take him at worst, and at worst he did _not_ deserve the mud and

stones cast at him, which I have always maintained and maintain still.

England might have got up ('happy country') more crying grievances

than France at the moment of outbreak; but what makes outbreaks

now-a-days is not 'the cause, my soul,' but the stuff of the people.

You are huckaback on the other side of the Channel, and you wear out

the poor Irish linen, let the justice of the case be what it may.

Politics enough and too much, surely, especially now when they are

depressing to you, and more or less to everybody.... We are still

in the slow agonies of furnishing our apartment. You see, being

the poorest and most prudent of possible poets, we had to solve the

problem of taking our furniture out of our year's income (proceeds

of poems and the like), and of not getting into debt. Oh, I take no

credit to myself; I was always in debt in my little way ('small _im_

morals,' as Dr. Bowring might call it) before I married, but Robert,

though a poet and dramatist by profession, being descended from

the blood of all the Puritans, and educated by the strictest of

dissenters, has a sort of horror about the dreadful fact of owing

five shillings five days, which I call quite morbid in its degree and

extent, and which is altogether unpoetical according to the traditions

of the world. So we have been dragging in by inches our chairs and

tables throughout the summer, and by no means look finished and

furnished at this late moment, the slow Italians coming at the heels

of our slowest intentions with the putting up of our curtains, which

begin to be necessary in this November tramontana. Yet in a month or

three weeks we shall look quite comfortable--before Christmas; and

in the meantime we heap up the pine wood and feel perfectly warm

with these thick palace walls between us and the outside air. Also my

husband's new edition is on the _edge_ of coming out, and we have had

an application from Mr. Phelps, of Sadler's Wells, for leave to act

his 'Blot on the 'Scutcheon,' which, if it doesn't succeed, its

public can have neither hearts nor intellects (that being an impartial

opinion), and which, if it succeeds, will be of pecuniary advantage to

us. Look out in the papers.... My love and my husband's go to you, our

dear friends. Let me be always

Your affectionate and grateful

BA.

While Italy shows herself so politically demoralised, and the blood of

poor Russia smokes from the ground, the ground seems to care no more

for it than the newspapers, or anybody else.

Such a jar of flowers we have to keep December. White roses, as in

June.

[Footnote 183: Abd-el-Kader surrendered to the French in Algeria early

in 1848, under an express promise that he should be sent either to

Alexandria or to St. Jean d'Acre; in spite of which he was sent to

France and kept there as a prisoner for several years.]

[Footnote 184: Louis Napoleon was elected President of the French

Republic by a popular vote on December 10.]

_To Miss Mitford_

Florence: December 16, [1848].

... You are wondering, perhaps, how we are so fool-hardy as to keep on

furnishing rooms in the midst of 'anarchy,' the Pope a fugitive, and

the crowned heads packing up. Ah, but we have faith in the _softness_

of our Florentines, who must be well spurred up to the leap before

they do any harm. These things look worse at a distance than they do

near, although, seen far and near, nothing _can_ be worse than the

evidence of demoralisation of people, governors, and journalists, in

the sympathy given everywhere to the assassination of poor Rossi.[185]

If Rossi was retrocessive, he was at least a constitutional minister,

and constitutional means of opposing him were open to all, but Italy

understands nothing constitutional; liberty is a fair word and a

watchword, nothing more; an idea it is not in the minds of any. The

poor Pope I deeply pity; he is a weak man with the noblest and most

disinterested intentions. His faithful flock have nearly broken his

heart by the murder of his two personal friends, Rossi and Palma, and

the threat, which they sent him by embassy, of murdering every man,

woman, and child in the Quirinal, with the exception of his Holiness,

unless he accepted their terms. He should have gone out to them and so

died, but having missed that opportunity, nothing remained but flight.

He was a mere Pope hostage as long as he stayed in Rome. Curious, the

'intervention of the French,' so long desired by the Italians,

and vouchsafed _so_.[186] The Florentines open their eyes in mute

astonishment, and some of them 'won't read the journals any more.' The

boldest say softly that the _Romans are sure not to bear it_. And what

is to happen in France? Why, what a world we have just now.... Father

Prout is gone to Rome for a fortnight, has stayed three weeks, and

day by day we expect him back again. I don't understand how the Prout

papers should have hurt him ecclesiastically, but that he should be

_known_ for their writer is not astonishing, as the secret was never,

I believe, attempted to be kept. We have been, at least _I_ have

been, a little anxious lately about the fate of the 'Blot on the

'Scutcheon,' which Mr. Phelps applied for my husband's permission to

revive at Sadler's. Of course, putting the request was a mere form,

as he had every right to act the play, and there was nothing to answer

but one thing. Only it made one anxious--made _me_ anxious--till we

heard the result, and we, both of us, are very grateful to dear Mr.

Chorley, who not only made it his business to be at the theatre the

first night, but, before he slept, sat down like a true friend to give

us the story of the result, and never, he says, was a more complete

and legitimate success. The play went straight to the heart of the

audience, it seems, and we hear of its continuance on the stage from

the papers. So far, so well. You may remember, or may not have heard,

how Macready brought it out and put his foot on it in the flash of

a quarrel between manager and author, and Phelps, knowing the whole

secret and feeling the power of the play, determined on making a

revival of it on his own theatre, which was wise, as the event proves.

Mr. Chorley called his acting really 'fine.' I see the second edition

of the 'Poetical Works' advertised at last in the 'Athenaeum,' and

conclude it to be coming out directly. Also my second edition is

called for, only nothing is yet arranged on that point. We have had a

most interesting letter from Mr. Home, giving terrible accounts, to be

sure, of the submersion of all literature in England and France since

the French Revolution, but noble and instructive proof of individual

wave-riding energy, such as I have always admired in him. He and his

wife, he says, live chiefly on the produce of their garden, and keep

a cheerful heart for the rest; even the 'Institutes' expect gratuitous

lectures, so that the sweat of the brain seems less productive than

the sweat of the brow. I am glad that Mr. Serjeant Talfourd and his

wife spoke affectionately of my husband, for he is attached to both

of them.... My Flush has grown to be passionately fond of grapes,

devouring bunch after bunch, and looking so fat and well that we

attribute some virtue to them. When he goes to England he will be as

much in a strait as an Italian who related to us his adventures in

London; he had had a long walk in the heat, and catching sight of

grapes hanging up in a grocer's shop, he stopped short to have a

pennyworth, as he said inwardly to himself. Down he sat and made out

a Tuscan luncheon in purple bunches. At last, taking out his purse to

look for the halfpence: 'Fifteen shillings, sir, if you please,' said

the shopman. Now do write soon, and speak particularly of your health,

and take care of it and don't be too complaisant to visitors. May God

bless you, my very dear friend! Think of me as

Ever your affectionate and grateful

E.B.B.

_My husband's regards always._

[Footnote 185: Count Pellegrino Rossi, chief minister to the Pope, was

assassinated in Rome, at the entrance of the Chamber of Deputies,

on November 15, 1848. Ten days later the Pope fled to Gaeta, and his

experiments in 'reform' came to a final end.]

[Footnote 186: The Pope, having declared war against Austria before

his flight, had invited French support, with the concurrence of his

people; being expelled from Rome, he invited (and obtained) French

help to restore him, in spite of the desperate opposition of his

people.]