Dearest friend, I do not speak of your own anxious watch and tender

grief, but think of them deeply. Believe that I love you always and in

all truth.

Your

E.B.B.

* * * * *

_To Miss E.F. Haworth_

[Rome:] 43 Bocca di Leone: December 27, [1853].

My dearest Fanny,--I can't judge of your 'obstacles,' of course, but as

to your being snowed up on the road or otherwise impeded between Rome

and Cività (Castellana or Vecchia), there's certainly not room for even

a dream of it. There has been beautiful weather here ever since we came,

except for exacting invalids. I, for instance, have been kept in the

house for a fortnight or more (till Christmas Day, when I was able to

get to St. Peter's) by tramontana; but there has been sun on _most_ days

of cold, and nothing has been _severe_ as cold. The hard weather came in

November, before we arrived. I was out yesterday, and may be to-day,

perhaps. 'Judge ye!'...

You bid me write. But to what end, if you are here on New Year's Day?

There's not time for a letter.

And at first I intended not to write, till beginning to consider how, as

you are not actually of the race of Medes and Persians, you might

possibly so modify your plans as to be able to receive these lines. Oh,

a provoking person or persons you are, since you and Ellen Heaton are

plural henceforth! No, I won't include her. _You_ are _singular_, by

your own confession, on this occasion. And, instead of Christmas

solemnisations, I shall take to reading the Commination Service over you

if you stay any longer at Florence because of the impracticable,

snowed-up roads around Rome. You really might as well object to coming

on account of the heat!...

I thank you very much for meaning to bring my goods for me. I wish I

could have seen your pictures before they took to themselves golden

wings and fled away. Is it true, really, that you think to exhibit in

London Penini's portrait at the piano, as Sophie Eckley tells me? I

shall like to hear that you succeed in that.

I see _her_ every day almost, if not quite. Nobody is like her. And

there are quantities of people here to choose from. I have not taken

heart and 'an evening for reception' yet, but we have had '_squeezes_'

of more or less stringency. Miss Ogle is here--and her family, of

course, for she is young--the author of 'A Lost Love,' that very pretty

book; and she is natural and pleasing. Do you know Lady Oswald, and her

daughter and son? She is Lady Elgin's sister-in-law, and brought a

letter to me from Lady Augusta Bruce. Then the Marshalls found us out

through Mr. De Vere (_her_ cousin), and in the name of Alfred Tennyson

(their intimate friend). Mrs. Marshall was a Miss Spring Rice, and is

very refined in all senses. Refinement expresses the whole woman. Yes,

there are some nice people here--nice people; it's the word. Nobody as

near to me as Mr. Page, whom we often see, I am happy to say, and who

has just presented the world (only _that_ is generally said of the lady)

with a _son_, and is on the point of presenting said world with a Venus.

_Will_ you come to see? I wonder....

I want you here to see a portrait taken of me in chalks by Miss Fox. I

said 'No' to her in London, which was my sole reason for saying 'Yes' to

her in Rome, when she asked me for a patient--or victim. She draws well,

and has been very successful with the hair at least. For the likeness

you shall judge for yourself. She comes here for an hour in the morning

to execute me, and I'm as well as can be expected under it....

May God bless you, dearest Fanny. What Christmas wishes warm from the

heart by heartfuls I throw at you! And say to Ellen Heaton, with cordial

love, that I thank her much for her kind letter, and remember her in all

affectionate wishes made for friends. I shall write to Mr. Ruskin.

_Don't_ get this letter, I say.

Your

E.B.B.

Robert's love, and _Penini's_. If 'Fanny' strikes you, 'Madame Bovary'

will thunder-strike you.

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

43 Via di Leone, Rome: January 7, 18[54].

It is long, my ever dearest Miss Mitford, since I wrote to you last, but

since we came to Rome we have had troubles, out of the deep pit of which

I was unwilling to write to you, lest the shadows of it should cleave as

blots to my pen. Then one day followed another, and one day's work was

laid on another's shoulders. Well, we are all well, to begin with, and

have been well; our troubles came to us through sympathy entirely. A

most exquisite journey of eight days we had from Florence to Rome,

seeing the great monastery and triple church of Assisi and the wonderful

Terni by the way--that passion of the waters which makes the human heart

seem so still. In the highest spirits we entered Rome, Robert and Penini

singing actually; for the child was radiant and flushed with the

continual change of air and scene, and he had an excellent scheme about

'tissing the Pope's foot,' to prevent his taking away 'mine gun,'

somebody having told him that such dangerous weapons were not allowed by

the Roman police. You remember my telling you of our friends the

Storys--how they and their two children helped to make the summer go

pleasantly at the baths of Lucca? They had taken an apartment for us in

Rome, so that we arrived in comfort to lighted fires and lamps as if

coming home, and we had a glimpse of their smiling faces that evening.

In the morning, before breakfast, little Edith was brought over to us by

the manservant with a message--'The boy was in convulsions; there was

danger.' We hurried to the house, of course, leaving Edith with Wilson.

Too true! All that first day was spent beside a death-bed; for the child

never rallied, never opened his eyes in consciousness, and by eight in

the evening he was gone. In the meanwhile, Edith was taken ill at our

house--could not be moved, said the physicians. We had no room for her,

but a friend of the Storys on the floor immediately below--Mr. Page, the

artist--took her in and put her to bed. Gastric fever, with a tendency

to the brain, and within two days her life was almost despaired of;

exactly the same malady as her brother's. Also the English nurse was

apparently dying at the Storys' house, and Emma Page, the artist's

youngest daughter, sickened with the same symptoms. Now you will not

wonder that, after the first absorbing flow of sympathy, I fell into a

selfish human panic about my child. Oh, I 'lost my head,' said Robert;

and if I _could_ have caught him up in my arms and run to the ends of

the world, the hooting after me of all Rome could not have stopped me. I

wished--how I wished!--for the wings of a dove, or any unclean bird, to

fly away with him to be at peace. But there was no possibility but to

stay; also the physicians assured me solemnly that there was no

contagion possible, otherwise I would have at least sent him from us to

another house. To pass over this dreary time, I will tell you at once

that the three patients recovered; only in poor little Edith's case

Roman fever followed the gastric, and has persisted so, ever since, in

periodical recurrence, that she is very pale and thin. Roman fever is

not dangerous to life--simple fever and ague--but it is exhausting if

not cut off, and the quinine fails sometimes. For three or four days now

she has been free from the symptoms, and we are beginning to hope. Now

you will understand at once what ghastly flakes of death have changed

the sense of Rome to me. The first day by a death-bed! The first drive

out to the cemetery, where poor little Joe is laid close to Shelley's

heart (_Cor cordium_, says the epitaph), and where the mother insisted

on going when she and I went out in the carriage together. I am horribly

weak about such things. I can't look on the earth-side of death; I

flinch from corpses and graves, and never meet a common funeral without

a sort of horror. When I look deathwards I look _over_ death, and

upwards, or I can't look that way at all. So that it was a struggle

with me to sit upright in that carriage in which the poor stricken

mother sate so calmly--not to drop from the seat, which would have been

worse than absurd of me. Well, all this has blackened Rome to me. I

can't think about the Cæsars in the old strain of thought; the antique

words get muddled and blurred with warm dashes of modern, every-day

tears and fresh grave-clay. Rome is spoiled to me--there's the truth.

Still, one lives through one's associations when not too strong, and I

have arrived at almost enjoying some things--the climate, for instance,

which, though perilous to the general health, agrees particularly with

me, and the sight of the blue sky floating like a sea-tide through the

great gaps and rifts of ruins. We read in the papers of a tremendously

cold winter in England and elsewhere, while I am able on most days to

walk out as in an English summer, and while we are all forced to take

precautions against the sun. Also Robert is well, and our child has not

dropped a single rose-leaf from his radiant cheeks. We are very

comfortably settled in rooms turned to the sun, and do work and play by

turns--having almost too many visitors--hear excellent music at Mrs.

Sartoris's (Adelaide Kemble) once or twice a week, and have Fanny Kemble

to come and talk to us with the doors shut, we three together. This is

pleasant. I like her decidedly. If anybody wants small-talk by handfuls

of glittering dust swept out of salons, here's Mr. Thackeray besides;

and if anybody wants a snow-man to match Southey's snow-woman (see

'Thalaba'), here's Mr. Lockhart, who, in complexion, hair, conversation,

and manners, might have been made out of one of your English

'_drifts_'--'sixteen feet deep in some places,' says Galignani. Also,

here's your friend _V._--Mrs. Archer Clive.[31] We were at her house the

other evening. She seems good-natured, but what a very peculiar person

as to looks, and even voice and general bearing; and what a peculiar

unconsciousness of peculiarity. I do not know her much. I go out very

little in the evening, both from fear of the night air and from

disinclination to stir. Mr. Page, our neighbour downstairs, pleases me

much, and you ought to know more of him in England, for his portraits

are like Titian's--flesh, blood, and soul. I never saw such portraits

from a living hand. He professes to have discovered secrets, and plainly

_knows_ them, from his wonderful effects of colour on canvas--not merely

in words. His portrait of Miss Cushman is a miracle. Gibson's famous

painted Venus is very pretty--that's my criticism. Yes, I will say

besides that I have seldom, if ever, seen so indecent a statue. The

colouring with an approximation to flesh tints produces that effect, to

my apprehension. I don't like this statue colouring--no, not at all.

Dearest Miss Mitford, will you write to me? I don't ask for a long

letter, but a letter--a letter. And I entreat you not to _prepay_. Among

other disadvantages, that prepaying tendency of yours may lose me a

letter one day. I want much to hear how you are bearing the winter--how

you are. Give me details about your dear self.

[_The remainder of this letter is missing_]

* * * * *

_To Mr. Westwood_

43 Via Bocca di Leone, Rome: February 2, [1854].

Thank you, my dear Mr. Westwood, for your kind defence of me against the

stupid, blind, cur-dog backbiting of the American writer. I will tell

you. Three weeks ago I had a letter from my brother, apprising me of

what had been said, and pressing on me the propriety of a contradiction

in form. Said I in reply: 'When you marry a wife, George, take her from

the class of those who have never printed a book, if this thing vexes

you. A woman in a crowd can't help the pushing up against her of dirty

coats; happy if somebody in boots does not tread upon her toes! Words

to that effect, I said. I really could not do the American the honour of

sitting down at the table with him to say: 'Sir, you are considerably

mistaken.' He was not only mistaken, you see, but so stupid and

self-willed in his mistake, so determined to make a system of it, but he

was too disreputable to set right. Also of the tendency of one's

writings one's readers are the best judges. I don't profess to write a

religious commentary on my writings. I am content to stand by the

obvious meaning of what I have written, according to the common sense of

the general reader.

The tendency of my writings to Swedenborgianism has been observed by

others, though I had read Swedenborg, when I wrote most of them, as

little as the American editor of 'Robert Hall' can have done, and less

can't be certainly. Otherwise, the said editor would have known that the

central doctrine of Swedenborgianism being the Godhead of Jesus Christ,

no Unitarian, liberal or unliberal, could have produced works

Swedenborgian in character, and that William and Mary Howitt being

Unitarian (which I believe they are) couldn't have a tendency at the

same time to Swedenborgianism, unless it should be possible for them to

be bolt upright with a leaning to the floor. I speak to a wise man.

Judge what I say. For my own part I have thought freely on most

subjects, and upon the state of the Churches among others, but never at

any point of my life, and now, thank God, least of all, have I felt

myself drawn towards Unitarian opinions. I should throw up revelation

altogether if I ceased to recognise Christ as divine. Sectarianism I do

not like, even in the form of a State Church, and the Athanasian way of

stating opinions, between a scholastic paradox and a curse, is

particularly distasteful to me. But I hold to Christ's invisible Church

as referred to in Scripture, and to the Saviour's humanity and divinity

as they seem to me conspicuous in Scripture, and so you have done me

justice and the American has done me injustice....

Well, I have seen your Mrs. Brotherton, only once, though, because she

can't come to see me at all, and lives too far for me to go in the

winter weather. I shall see more of her presently, I hope, and in the

meantime she is very generous to me, and sends me violets, and notes

that are better, and we have a great sympathy on the spiritual subjects

which set you so in a passion. What do I say? She sends me Greek (of

which she does not know a single character), written by her, or rather

_through_ her; mystical Greek, from a spirit-world, produced by her

hands, she herself not knowing what she writes. The character is

beautifully written, and the separate words are generally correct--such

words as 'Christ,' 'God,' 'tears,' 'blood,' 'tempest,' 'sea,' 'thunder,'

'calm,' 'morning,' 'sun,' 'joy.' No grammatical construction hitherto,

but a significant sort of grouping of the separate words, as if the

meaning were struggling out into coherence. My idea is that she is being

exercised in the language, in the _character_, in order to fuller

expression hereafter. Well, you would have us snowed upon with poppies

till we sleep and forget these things. I, on the contrary, would have

our eyes wide open, our senses 'all attentive,' our souls lifted in

reverential expectation. Every _fact_ is a word of God, and I call it

irreligious to say, 'I will deny this because it displeases me.' 'I will

look away from that because it will do me harm.' Why be afraid of the

_truth_? God is in the truth, and He is called also Love. The evil

results of certain experiences of this class result mainly from the

superstitions and distorted views held by most people concerning the

spiritual world. We have to learn--we in the body--that Death does not

teach all things. Death is simply an accident. Foolish Jack Smith who

died on Monday, is on Tuesday still foolish Jack Smith. If people who on

Monday scorned his opinions prudently, will on Tuesday receive his least

words as oracles, they very naturally may go mad, or at least do

something as foolish as their inspirer is. Also, it is no argument

against any subject, that it drives people mad who suffer themselves to

be absorbed in it. That would be an argument against all religion, and

all love, by your leave. Ask the Commissioners of Lunacy; knock at the

door of mad-houses in general, and inquire what two causes act almost

universally in filling them. Answer--love and religion. The common

objection of the degradation of knocking with the leg of the table, and

the ridicule of the position for a spirit, &c., &c., I don't enter into

at all. Twice I have been present at table-experiments, and each time I

was deeply impressed--impressed, there's the word for it! The panting

and shivering of that dead dumb wood, the human emotion conveyed through

it--by what? had to me a greater significance than the St. Peter's of

this Rome. O poet! do you not know that poetry is not confined to the

clipped alleys, no, nor to the blue tops of 'Parnassus hill'? Poetry is

where we live and have our being--wherever God works and man

understands. Hein! ... if you are in a dungeon and a friend knocks

through the outer wall, spelling out by knocks the words you comprehend;

you don't think the worse of the friend standing in the sun who

remembers you. He is not degraded by it, you rather think. Now apply

this. Certainly, there is a reaction from the materialism of the age,

and this is certainly well, in my mind, but then there is something more

than this, more than a mere human reaction, I believe. I have not the

power of writing myself at all, though I have felt the pencil turn in my

hand--a peculiar spiral motion like the turning of the tables, and

independent of volition, but the power is not with me strong enough to

make words or letters even.

We see a good deal of Fanny Kemble, a noble creature, and hear her

sister sing--Mrs. Sartoris. Do admit a little society. It is good for

soul and body, and on the Continent it is easy to get a handful of

society without paying too dear for it. That, I think, is an advantage

of Continental life.

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

43 Via Bocca di Leone, Rome: March 19, 1854.

My dearest Miss Mitford,--Your letter made my heart ache. It is sad, sad

indeed, that you should have had this renewed cold just as you appeared

to be rallying a little from previous shocks, and I know how depressing

and enfeebling a malady the influenza is. It's the vulture finishing the

work of the wolf. I pray God that, having battled through this last

attack, you may be gradually strengthened and relieved by the incoming

of the spring (though an English spring makes one shiver to think of

generally), and with the summer come out into the garden, to sit in a

chair and be shone upon, dear, dear friend. I shall be in England then,

and get down to see you this time, and I tenderly hold to the dear hope

of seeing you smile again, and hearing you talk in the old way....

We see a good deal of the Kembles here, and like them both, especially

the Fanny, who is looking magnificent still, with her black hair and

radiant smile. A very noble creature, indeed. Somewhat unelastic,

unpliant to the eye, attached to the old modes of thought and

convention, but noble in quality and defects; I like her much. She

thinks me credulous and full of dreams, but does not despise me for that

reason, which is good and tolerant of her, and pleasant, too, for I

should not be quite easy under her contempt. Mrs. Sartoris is genial and

generous, her milk has had time to stand to cream, in her happy family

relations. The Sartoris's house has the best society at Rome, and

exquisite music, of course. We met Lockhart there, and my husband sees a

good deal of him--more than I do, because of the access of cold weather

lately which has kept me at home chiefly. Robert went down to the

seaside in a day's excursion with him and the Sartoris's; and, I hear,

found favor in his sight. Said the critic: 'I like Browning, he isn't at

all like a damned literary man.' That's a compliment, I believe,

according to your dictionary. It made me laugh and think of you

directly. I am afraid Lockhart's health is in a bad state; he looks very

ill, and every now and then his strength seems to fail. Robert has been

sitting for his picture to Fisher, the English artist, who painted Mr.

Kenyon and Landor; you remember those pictures in Mr. Kenyon's house?

Landor's was praised much by Southey. Well, he has painted Robert, and

it is an admirable likeness.[32] The expression is an exceptional

expression, but highly characteristic; it is one of Fisher's best works.

Now he is about our Wiedeman, and if he succeeds as well in painting

angels as men, will do something beautiful with that seraphic face. You

are to understand that these works are done by the artist _for_ the

artist. Oh, we couldn't afford to have such a luxury as a portrait done

for us. But I am pleased to have a good likeness of each of my treasures

_extant_ in the possession of somebody. Robert's will, of course, be

eminently saleable, and Wiedeman's too, perhaps, for the beauty's sake,

with those blue far-reaching eyes, and that innocent angel face emplumed

in the golden ringlets! Somebody told me yesterday that she never had

known, in a long experience of children, so attractive a child. He is so

full of sweetness and vivacity together, of imagination and grace. A

poetical child really, and in the best sense. Such a piece of innocence

and simplicity with it all, too! A child you couldn't lie to if you

tried. I had a fit of remorse for telling him the history of Jack and

the Beanstalk, when he turned his earnest eyes up to me at the end and

said, 'I think, if Jack went up so high, he must have seen God.'

To see those two works through the press must be a fatigue to you in

your present weak state, dearest friend, and I keep wishing vainly I

could be of use to you in the matter of the proof sheets. I might, you

know, if I were in England. I do some work myself, but doubt much

whether I shall be ready for the printers by July; no, indeed, it is

clear I shall not. If Robert is, it will be well. Doesn't it surprise

you that Alexander Smith should be already in a third edition? I can't

make it out for my part. I 'give it up' as is my way with riddles. He is

both too bad and too good to explain this phenomenon, which is harder to

me than any implied in the turning tables or involuntary writing. By the

way, a lady whom I know here _writes Greek_ without knowing or having

ever known a single letter of it. The unbelievers writhe under it.

Oh, I have been reading poor Haydon's biography. There is tragedy! The

pain of it one can hardly shake off. Surely, surely, wrong was done

somewhere, when the worst is admitted of Haydon. For himself, looking

forward beyond the grave, I seem to understand that all things when most

bitter worked ultimate good to him, for that sublime arrogance of his

would have been fatal perhaps to the moral nature if developed further

by success. But for the nation we had our duties, and we should not

suffer our teachers and originators to sink thus. It is a book written

in blood of the heart. Poor Haydon!

May God bless you, my dear friend! I think of you and love you dearly,

Robert's love, put to mine, and Penini's love put to Robert's. I give

away Penini's love as I please just now.

Your ever affectionate

E.B.B.

Send my bulletins; only _two lines_ if you will.

* * * * *

_To Miss Browning_

[Rome: about March, 1854.]

My dearest Sarianna,--We are all well, and so is the weather, which is

diviner. We sit with the windows wide open, and find it almost too warm,

and to-day Robert and I have been wandering under the trees of the

Pincio and looking to the Monte Marino pine. Let the best come, I don't

like Rome, I never shall; and as they have put into the English

newspapers that I don't, I might as well acknowledge the barbarism. Very

glad I shall be to see you and Paris, even though my beloved Florence

shall be left behind. Dearest Sarianna, after a short rest at Paris, we

go on to London for the printing of Robert's book (mine won't be ready

till later in the year), and for the sight of some dear English faces

while the weather shall admit of it, before we settle for the winter in

France. Well, you will go with us to England, won't you? The dear

nonno[33] will spare you to go with us? It will do you good, and it will

do us good, certainly.

I quite agree with you that there's no situation like the Champs

Elysées--really, there is scarcely anything like it in Europe, if you

put away Venice--for a situation in a city.

The worst of the Champs Elysées is that it is out of the way, and

expensive on the point of carriages when you can't walk far. People tell

you, too, that the air is sharper at the end of the avenue; yet the sun

is so brilliant as to make amends for the disadvantage, if it exists.

Then you pay more for houses on account of the concourse of English. And

what if I object a little to the English besides? If I do, the

desirableness of the pure air and free walking for Penini

counterbalances them.

The Thackeray girls have had the scarlatina at Naples, and have been

very desolate, I fear, without a female servant or friend near them.

They probably were indisposed towards Naples by their own illness (which

was slight, however; the scarlet fever is always slight in Italy they

say), and by their father's more serious attack, for I have heard very

different accounts of the Neapolitan weather. Still, it has been an

abnormal winter everywhere, and there are cold winds on that coast on

certain months of the year always. Lockhart has gone away with the Duke

of Wellington, who was in deep consideration how he should manage his

funeral on the road. Robert was present when the question was mooted on

the Duke's last evening. _Should_ he send the body to England or bury

it? Would it be delicate to ask Lockhart which he preferred? Somebody

said: 'Suppose you were to ask what he would do with your body if you

died yourself.' I am afraid poor Lockhart is really in a dangerous state

of health, and that it would have been better if he had had something

tenderer and more considerate than a dukedom travelling with him under

his circumstances. He called upon us, and took a great fancy to Robert,

I understand, as being 'not at all like a damned literary man.'

Penini is overwhelmed with attentions and gifts of all kinds, and

generally acknowledged as the king of the children here. Mrs. Page, the

wife of the distinguished American artist, gave a party in honor of him

the other day. There was an immense cake inscribed '_Penini_' in sugar;

and he sat at the head of the table and did the honors. You never saw a

child so changed in point of shyness. He will go anywhere with anybody,

and talk, and want none of us to back him. Wilson is only instructed not

to come till it is 'velly late' to fetch him away. He talks to Fanny

Kemble, who 'dashes' most people. 'I not aflaid of nossing,' says he, in

his eloquent English. Mr. Fisher's cartoon of him is very pretty, but

doesn't do him justice in the delicacy of the lower part of the face.

Yet I can't complain of Mr. Fisher after the admirable likeness he has

painted of Robert. It is really _satisfying_ to me. You will see it in

London. Oh, how cruel it is that we can't buy it, Sarianna; I have a

sort of hope that Mr. Kenyon may--but zitto, zitto![34] Arabel will be

very grateful to you for the drawings....

[_Endorsed by Miss Browning_, '_Part of a letter_']

* * * * *

The plans, thus confidently spoken of, for a visit to Paris and London

in the summer of this year, did not attain fulfilment. The Brownings

left Rome for Florence about the end of May, intending to stay there

only a few weeks; but their arrangements were altered by letters

received from England, and ultimately they remained in Florence until

the summer of the following year. Whether for this reason, or because

the poems were not, after all, ready for press, the printing of Mr.

Browning's new volumes ('Men and Women') was also postponed, and they

did not appear until 1855; while 'Aurora Leigh' was still a long way

from completion.

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

Rome: May 10, 1854.

My ever dearest Miss Mitford,--Your letter pained me to a degree which I

will not pain you by expressing farther. Now, I do not write to press

for another letter. On the contrary, I _entreat_ you not to attempt to

write a word to me with your own hand, until you can do so without

effort and suffering. In the meanwhile, would it be impossible for K. to

send me in one line some account of you? I don't mean to tease, but I

should be very glad and thankful to have news of you though in the

briefest manner, and if a letter were addressed to me at Poste Restante,

Florence, it would reach me, as we rest there on our road to Paris and

London. In any case I shall see you this summer, if it shall please God;

and stay with you the half hour you allow, and kiss your dear hands and

feel again, I hope, the brightness of your smile. As the green summer

comes on you must be the better surely; if you can bear to lie out under

the trees, the general health will rally and the local injury correct

itself. You must have a strong, energetic vitality; and, after all,

spinal disorders do not usually attack life, though they disable and

overthrow. The pain you endure is the terrible thing. Has a local

application of chloroform been ever tried? I catch at straws, perhaps,

with my unlearned hands, but it's the instinct of affection. While you

suffer, my dear friend, the world is applauding you. I catch sight of

stray advertisements and fragmentary notices of 'Atherton,' which seems

to have been received everywhere with deserved claps of hands. This will

not be comfort to you, perhaps; but you will feel the satisfaction which

every workman feels in successful work. I think the edition of plays and

poems has not yet appeared, and I suppose there will be nothing in

_that_ which can be new to us. 'Atherton' I thirst for, but the cup will

be dry, I dare say, till I get to England, for new books even at

Florence take waiting for far beyond all necessary bounds. We shall not

stay long in Tuscany. We want to be in England late in June or very

early in July, and some days belong to Paris as we pass, since Robert's

family are resident there. To leave Rome will fill me with barbarian

complacency. I don't pretend to have a rag of sentiment about Rome. It's

a palimpsest Rome--a watering-place written over the antique--and I

haven't taken to it as a poet should, I suppose; only let us speak the

truth, above all things. I am strongly a creature of association, and

the associations of the place have not been personally favorable to me.

Among the rest my child, the light of my eyes, has been more unwell

lately than I ever saw him in his life, and we were forced three times

to call in a physician. The malady was not serious, it was just the

result of the climate, relaxation of the stomach, &c., but the end is

that he is looking a delicate, pale, little creature, he who was radiant

with all the roses and stars of infancy but two months ago. The

pleasantest days in Rome we have spent with the Kembles--the two

sisters--who are charming and excellent, both of them, in different

ways; and certainly they have given us some exquisite hours on the

Campagna, upon picnic excursions, they and certain of their friends--for

instance, M. Ampère, the member of the French Institute, who is witty

and agreeable; M. Gorze, the Austrian Minister, also an agreeable man;

and Mr. Lyons, the son of Sir Edmund, &c. The talk was almost too

brilliant for the sentiment of the scenery, but it harmonised entirely

with the mayonnaise and champagne. I should mention, too, Miss Hosmer

(but she is better than a talker), the young American sculptress, who is

a great pet of mine and of Robert's, and who emancipates the eccentric

life of a perfectly 'emancipated female' from all shadow of blame by the

purity of hers. She lives here all alone (at twenty-two); dines and

breakfasts at the _cafés_ precisely as a young man would; works from six

o'clock in the morning till night, as a great artist must, and this with

an absence of pretension and simplicity of manners which accord rather

with the childish dimples in her rosy cheeks than with her broad

forehead and high aims. The Archer Clives have been to Naples, but have

returned for a time. Mr. Lockhart, who went to England with the Duke of

Wellington (the same prepared to bury him on the road), writes to Mrs.

Sartoris that he has grown much better under the influence of the native

beef and beer. To do him justice he looked, when here, innocent of the

recollection even of either. I wonder if you have seen Mrs. Howe's

poems, lately out, called 'Passion Flowers.' They were sent to me by an

American friend but were intercepted _en route_, so that I have not set

eyes on them yet, but one or two persons, not particularly reliable as

critics, have praised them to me. She is the wife of Dr. Howe, the deaf

and dumb philanthropist, and herself neither deaf nor dumb (very much

the contrary) I understand--a handsome woman and brilliant in society. I

gossip on to you, dearest dear Miss Mitford, as if you were in gossiping

humour. Believe that my tender thoughts, deeper than any said, are with

you always.

Robert's love with that of your attached

BA.

We go on the 22nd of this month. You have seen Mr. Chorley's book, I

daresay, which I should like much to see.

* * * * *

_To Miss Browning_

Casa Guidi: Thursday, [end of May 1854].

My dearest Sarianna,--I am delighted to say that we have arrived, and

see our dear Florence, the queen of Italy, after all. On the road I said

to Penini, 'Make a poem about Florence.' Without a moment's hesitation

he began, 'Florence is more pretty of all. Florence is a beauty.

Florence was born first, and then Rome was born. And Paris was born

after.' Penini is always _en verve_. He's always ready to make a poem on

any subject, and doesn't ask you to wait while he clears his voice. The

darling will soon get over the effect of that poisonous Roman air, I do

trust, though it is humiliating to hear our Florentines wailing over the

loss of bloom and dimples; it doesn't console me that his amount of

growth is properly acknowledged. Well, good milk and good air will do

their work in a little time with God's blessing, and a most voracious

appetite is developed already, I am glad to say. Even in the journey he

revived, the blue marks under the darling eyes fading gradually away,

and now he looks decidedly better, though unlike himself of two months

ago. You are to understand that the child is perfectly well, and that

the delicate look is traceable distinctly and only to the attacks he had

in Rome during the last few weeks. Throughout the winter he was radiant,

as I used to tell you, and the confessed king of the whole host of his

contemporaries and country-babies....

_The Kembles_ were our gain in Rome. I appreciate and admire both of

them. They fail in nothing as you see them nearer. Noble and upright

women, whose social brilliancy is their least distinction! Mrs. Sartoris

is the more tender and tolerant, the more loveable and sympathetical,

perhaps, to me. I should like you to know them both. Then there is that

dear Mr. Page. Yes, and Harriet Hosmer, the young American sculptress,

who is an immense favorite with us both.

A comfort is that Robert is considered here to be looking better than he

ever was known to look. And this notwithstanding the greyness of his

beard, which indeed is, in my own mind, very becoming to him, the

argentine touch giving a character of elevation and thought to the whole

physiognomy. This greyness was suddenly developed; let me tell you how.

He was in a state of bilious irritability on the morning of his arrival

in Rome from exposure to the sun or some such cause, and in a fit of

suicidal impatience shaved away his whole beard, whiskers and all! I

_cried_ when I saw him, I was so horror-struck. I might have gone into

hysterics and still been reasonable; for no human being was ever so

disfigured by so simple an act. Of course I said, when I recovered

breath and voice, that everything was at an end between him and me if he

didn't let it all grow again directly, and (upon the further advice of

his looking-glass) he yielded the point, and the beard grew. But it grew

_white_, which was the just punishment of the gods--our sins leave their

traces.

Well, poor darling, Robert won't shock you after all, you can't choose

but be satisfied with his looks. M. de Monclar swore to me that he was

not changed for the intermediate years.

Robert talks of money, of waiting for _that_, among other hindrances to

setting out directly. Not _my_ fault, be certain, Sarianna! We seem to

have a prospect of letting our house for a year, which, if the thing

happens, will give us a lift.

We spent yesterday evening with Lytton at his villa, meeting there Mr.

and Mrs. Walpole, Frederick Tennyson, and young Norton (Mrs. Norton's

son), who married the Capri girl. She was not present, I am sorry to

say. We walked home to the song of nightingales by starlight and

firefly-light. Florence looks to us more beautiful than ever after

Rome. I love the very stones of it, to say nothing of the cypresses and

river.

Robert says, 'Are you nearly done?' I am done. Give Penini's love and

mine to the dear nonno, and tell him (and yourself, dear) how delighted

we shall be [to] have you both. You are prepared to go to England, I

hope. By the way, the weather there is said to be murderous through

bitter winds, but it must soften as the season advances. May God bless

you! I am yours in truest love.

BA.

We had a very pleasant vettura journey, Robert will have told you.

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

Florence: June 6, 1854.

Yes, dearest friend, I had your few lines which Arabel sent to me. I had

them on the very day I had posted my letter to you, and I need not say

how deeply it moved me that you should have thought of giving me that

pleasure of Mr. Ruskin's kind word at the expense of what I knew to be

so much pain to yourself....

We mean to stay at Florence a week or two longer and then go northward.

I love Florence, the place looks exquisitely beautiful in its

garden-ground of vineyards and olive trees, sung round by the

nightingales day and night, nay, sung _into_ by the nightingales, for as

you walk along the streets in the evening the song trickles down into

them till you stop to listen. Such nights we have between starlight and

firefly-light, and the nightingales singing! I would willingly stay

here, if it were not that we are constrained by duty and love to go, and

at some day not distant, I daresay we shall come back 'for good and all'

as people say, seeing that if you take one thing with another, there is

no place in the world like Florence, I am persuaded, for a place to

live in. Cheap, tranquil, cheerful, beautiful, within the limit of

civilisation yet out of the crush of it. I have not seen the Trollopes

yet; but we have spent two delicious evenings at villas on the outside

the gates, one with young Lytton, Sir Edward's son, of whom I have told

you, I think. I like him, we both do, from the bottom of our hearts.

Then our friend Frederick Tennyson, the new poet, we are delighted to

see again. Have you caught sight of his poems? If you have, tell me your

thought. Mrs. Howe's I have read since I wrote last. Some of them are

good--many of the thoughts striking, and all of a certain elevation. Of

poetry, however, strictly speaking, there is not much; and there's a

large proportion of conventional stuff in the volume. She must be a

clever woman. Of the ordinary impotencies and prettinesses of female

poets she does not partake, but she can't take rank with poets in the

good meaning of the word, I think, so as to stand without leaning. Also

there is some bad taste and affectation in the dressing of her

personality. I dare say Mr. Fields will bring you her book. Talking of

American literature, with the publishers on the back of it, we think of

offering the proofs of our new works to any publisher over the water who

will pay us properly for the advantage of bringing out a volume in

America simultaneously with the publication in England. We have heard

that such a proposal will be acceptable, and mean to try it. The words

you sent to me from Mr. Ruskin gave me great pleasure indeed, as how

should they not from such a man? I like him personally, too, besides my

admiration for him as a writer, and I was deeply gratified in every way

to have his approbation. His 'Seven Lamps' I have not read yet. Books

come out slowly to Italy. It's our disadvantage, as you know. Ruskin and

art go together. I must tell you how Rome made me some amends after all.

Page, the American artist, painted a picture of Robert like an Italian,

and then presented it to me like a prince. It is a wonderful picture,

the colouring so absolutely _Venetian_ that artists can't (for the most

part) keep their temper when they look at it, and the breath of the

likeness is literal.[35] Mr. Page has _secrets_ in the art--certainly

nobody else paints like him--and his nature, I must say, is equal to his

genius and worthy of it. Dearest Miss Mitford, the 'Athenæum' is always

as frigid as Mont Blanc; it can't be expected to grow warmer for looking

over your green valleys and still waters. It wouldn't be Alpine if it

did. They think it a point of duty in that journal to shake hands with

one finger. I dare say when Mr. Chorley sits down to write an article he

puts his feet in cold water as a preliminary. Still, I oughtn't to be

impertinent. He has been very good-natured to _me_, and it isn't his

fault if I'm not Poet Laureate at this writing, and engaged in cursing

the Czar in Pindarics very prettily. 'Atherton,' meanwhile, wants nobody

to praise it, I am sure. How glad I shall be to seize and read it, and

how I thank you for the gift! May God bless and keep you! I may hear

again if you write soon to Florence, but don't pain yourself for the

world, I entreat you. I shall see you before long, I think.

Your ever affectionate

E.B.B.

Robert's love.

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

Florence: July 20, [1854].

My dearest Miss Mitford,--I this moment receive your little note. It

makes me very sad and apprehensive about you, and I would give all this

bright sunshine for weeks for one explanatory word which might make me

more easy. Arabel speaks of receiving your books--I suppose

'Atherton'--and of having heard from yourself a very bad account of

your state of health. Are you worse, my beloved friend? I have been

waiting to hear the solution of our own plans (dependent upon letters

from England) in order to write to you; and when I found our journey to

London was definitively rendered impossible till next spring, I deferred

writing yet again, it was so painful to me to say to you that our

meeting could not take place this year. Now, I receive your little note

and write at once to say how sad _that_ makes me. It is the first time

that the expression of your love, my beloved friend, has made me sad,

and I start as from an omen. On the other hand, the character you write

in is so firm and like yourself, that I do hope and trust you are not

sensibly worse. Let me hear by a word, if possible, that the change of

weather has done you some little good. I understand there has scarcely

been any summer in England, and this must necessarily have been adverse

to you. A gleam of fine weather would revive you by God's help. Oh, that

I could look in your face and say, 'God bless you!' as I feel it. May

God bless you, my dear, dear friend.

Our reason for not going to England has not been from caprice, but a

cross in money matters. A ship was to have brought us in something, and

brought us in nothing instead, with a discount; the consequence of which

is that we are transfixed at Florence, and unable even to 'fly to the

mountains' as a refuge from the summer heat. It has been a great

disappointment to us all, and to our respective families, my poor

darling Arabel especially; but we can only be patient, and I take

comfort in the obvious fact that my Penini is quite well and almost as

rosy as ever in spite of the excessive Florence heat. One of the worst

thoughts I have is about _you_. I had longed so to see you this summer,

and had calculated with such certainty upon doing so. I would have gone

to England for that single reason if I could, but I can't; we can't

stir, really. That we should be able to sit quietly still at Florence

and eat our bread and maccaroni is the utmost of our possibilities this

summer.

Mrs. Trollope has gone to the Baths of Lucca, and thus I have not seen

her. She will be very interested about you, of course. How many hang

their hearts upon your sickbed, dearest Miss Mitford! Yes, and their

prayers too.

The other day, by an accident, an old number of the 'Athenæum' fell into

my hands, and I read for the second time Mr. Chorley's criticism upon

'Atherton.' It is evidently written in a hurried manner, and is quite

inadequate as a notice of the book; but, do you know, I am of opinion

that if you considered it more closely you would lose your impression of

its being depreciatory and cold. He says that the _only fault_ of the

work is its _shortness_; a rare piece of praise to be given to a work

nowadays. You see, your reputation is at the height; neither he nor

another could _help_ you; such books as yours make their own way. The

'Athenæum' doesn't give full critiques of Dickens, for instance, and it

is arctical in general temperature. I thought I would say this to you.

Certainly I _do know_ that Mr. Chorley highly regards you in every

capacity--as writer and as woman--and in the manner in which he named

you to me in his last letter there was no chill of sentiment nor recoil

of opinion. So do not admit a doubt of _him_; he is a sure and

affectionate friend, and absolutely high-minded and reliable; of an

intact and even chivalrous delicacy. I say it, lest you might have need

of him and be scrupulous (from your late feeling) about making him

useful. It is horrible to doubt of one's friends; oh, I know _that_, and

would save you from it.

We had a letter from Paris two days ago from one of the noblest and most

intellectual men in the country, M. Milsand, a writer in the 'Deux

Mondes.' He complains of a stagnation in the imaginative literature, but

adds that he is consoled for everything by the 'state of politics.' Your

Napoleon is doing you credit, his very enemies must confess.

As for me, I can't write to-day. Your little precious, melancholy note

hangs round the neck of my heart like a stone. Arabel simply says she

is afraid from what you have written to her that you must be very ill;

she does not tell me what you wrote to her--perhaps for fear of paining

me--and now I am pained by the silence beyond measure.

Robert's love and warmest wishes for you. He appreciates your kind word

to him. And I, what am I to say? I love you from a very sad and grateful

heart, looking backwards and forwards--and _upwards_ to pray God's love

down on you!

Your ever affectionate

E.B.B., rather BA.

Precious the books will be to me. I hope not to wait to read them till

they reach me, as there is a bookseller here who will be sure to have

them. Thank you, thank you.

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

Florence: September 4, 1854.

Five minutes do not pass, my beloved friend, since reading this dear

letter which has wrung from me tender and sorrowful tears, and answering

it thus. Pray for you? I do not wait that you should bid me. May the

divine love in the face of our Lord Jesus Christ shine upon you day and

night, and make all our human loves strike you as cold and dull in

comparison with that ineffable tenderness! As to wandering prayers, I

cannot believe that it is of consequence whether this poor breath of

ours wanders or does not wander. If we have strength to throw ourselves

upon Him for everything, for prayer, as well as for the ends of prayer,

it is enough, and He will prove it to be enough presently. I have been

when I could not pray at all. And then God's face seemed so close upon

me that there was no need of prayer, any more than if I were near _you_,

as I yearn to be, as I ought to be, there would be need for this letter.

Oh, be sure that He means well by us by what we suffer, and it is when

we suffer that He often makes the meaning clearer. You know how that

brilliant, witty, true poet Heine, who was an atheist (as much as a man

can pretend to be), has made a public profession of a change of opinion

which was pathetic to my eyes and heart the other day as I read it. He

has joined no church, but simply (to use his own words) has 'returned

home to God like the prodigal son after a long tending of the swine.' It

is delightful to go home to God, even after a tending of the sheep. Poor

Heine has lived a sort of living death for years, quite deprived of his

limbs, and suffering tortures to boot, I understand. It is not because

we are brought low that we must die, my dearest friend. I hope--I do not

say 'hope' for _you_ so much as for _me_ and for the many who hang their

hearts on your life--I hope that you may survive all these terrible

sufferings and weaknesses, and I take my comfort from your letter, from

the firmness and beauty of the manuscript; I who know how weak hands

will shudder and reel along the paper. Surely there is strength for more

life in that hand. Now I stoop to kiss it in my thought. Feel my kiss on

the dear hand, dear, dear friend.

A previous letter of yours pained me much because I seemed to have given

you the painful trouble in it of describing your state, your weakness.

Ah, I _knew_ what that state was, and it was _therefore_ that the slip

of paper which came with 'Atherton' seemed to me so ominous! By the way,

I shall see 'Atherton' before long, I dare say. The 'German Library' in

our street is to have a 'box of new books' almost directly, and in it

surely must be 'Atherton,' and you shall hear my thoughts of the book as

soon as I catch sight of it. Then you have sent me the Dramas. Thank

you, thank you; they will be precious. I saw the article in the

'Athenæum' with joy and triumph, and knew Mr. Chorley by the 'Roman

hand.' In the 'Illustrated News' also, Robert (not I) read an

enthusiastic notice. He fell upon it at the reading-room where I never

go on account of my _she_-dom, women in Florence being supposed not--

(_Part of this letter is missing_)

Think of me who am far, yet near in love and thought. Love me with that

strong heart of yours. May God bless it, bless it!

I am ever your attached

E.B.B., rather BA.

I have had a sad letter from poor Haydon's daughter. She has fifty-six

pounds a year, and can scarcely live on it in England, and inquires if

she could live in any family in Florence. I fear to recommend her to

come so far on such means. Robert's love. _May God bless you and keep

you! Love me._

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

Florence: October 19, 1854.

I will try not to be overjoyed, my dear, dearest Miss Mitford, but,

indeed, it is difficult to refrain from catching at hope with both

hands. If the general health will but rally, there is nothing fatal

about a spine disease. May God bless you, give you the best blessing in

earth and heaven, as the God of the living in both places. We ought not

to be selfish, nor stupid, so as to be afraid of leaving you in His

hands. What is beautiful and joyful to observe is the patience and

self-possession with which you endure even the most painful

manifestation of His will; and that, while you lose none of that

interest in the things of our mortal life which is characteristic of

your sympathetic nature, you are content, just as if you felt none, to

let the world go, according to the decision of God. May you be more and

more confirmed and elevated and at rest--being the Lord's, whether

absent from the body or present in it! For my own part, I have been long

convinced that what we call death is a mere incident in life--perhaps

scarcely a greater one than the occurrence of puberty, or the

revolution which comes with any new emotion or influx of new knowledge.

I am heterodox about sepulchres, and believe that no _part of us_ will

ever lie in a grave. I don't think much of my nail-parings--do you?--not

even of the nail of my thumb when I cut off what Penini calls the

'gift-mark' on it. I believe that the body of flesh is a mere husk which

drops off at death, while the spiritual body (see St. Paul) emerges in

glorious resurrection at once. Swedenborg says, some persons do not

immediately realise that they have passed death, and this seems to me

highly probable. It is curious that Maurice, Mr. Kingsley's friend,

about whom so much lately has been written and quarrelled (and who _has_

made certain great mistakes, I think), takes this precise view of the

resurrection, with an apparent unconsciousness of what Swedenborg has

stated upon the subject, and that, I, too, long before I knew

Swedenborg, or heard the name of Maurice, came to the same conclusions.

I wonder if Mr. Kingsley agrees with us. I dare say he does, upon the

whole--for the ordinary doctrine seems to me as little taught by

Scripture as it can be reconciled with philosophical probabilities. I

believe in an active, _human_ life, beyond death as before it, an

uninterrupted human life. I believe in no waiting in the grave, and in

no vague effluence of spirit in a formless vapour. But you'll be tired

with 'what I believe.'

I have been to the other side of Florence to call on Mrs. Trollope, on

purpose that I might talk to her of you, but she was not at home, though

she has returned from the Baths of Lucca. From what I hear, she appears

to be well, and has recommenced her 'public mornings,' which we shrink

away from. She 'receives' every Saturday morning in the most

heterogeneous way possible. It must be amusing to anybody not

overwhelmed by it, and people say that she snatches up 'characters' for

her 'so many volumes a year' out of the diversities of masks presented

to her on these occasions. Oh, our Florence! In vain do I cry out for

'Atherton.' The most active circulating library 'hasn't got it yet,'

they say. I must still wait. Meanwhile, of course, I am delighted with

all your successes, and your books won't spoil by keeping like certain

other books. So I may wait.

How young children unfold like flowers, and how pleasant it is to watch

them! I congratulate you upon yours--your baby-girl must be a dear

forward little thing. But I wish I could show you my Penini, with his

drooping golden ringlets and seraphic smile, and his talk about

angels--you would like him, I know. Your girl-baby has avenged my name

for me, and now, if you heard my Penini say in the midst of a coaxing

fit--'O, my sweetest little mama, my darling, _dearlest_, little Ba,'

you would admit that 'Ba' must have a music in it, to my ears at least.

The love of two generations is poured out to me in that name--and the

stream seems to run (in one instance) when alas! the fountain is dry. I

do not refer to the dead who live still.

Ah, dearest friend, you feel how I must have felt about the accident in

Wimpole Street.[36] I can scarcely talk to you about it. There will be

permanent lameness, Arabel says, according to the medical opinion,

though the general health was not for a moment affected. But permanent

lameness! That is sad, for a person of active habits. I ventured to

write a little note--which was not returned, I thank God--or read, I

dare say; but of course there was no result. I never even expected it,

as matters have been. I must tell you that our pecuniary affairs are

promising better results for next year, and that we shall not, in all

probability, be tied up from going to England. For the rest--if I

understand you--oh no! My husband has a family likeness to Lucifer in

being proud. Besides, it's not necessary. When literary people are

treated in England as in some other countries, in that case and that

time we may come in for our share in the pensions given by the people,

without holding out our hands. Now think of Carlyle--unpensioned! Why,

if we sate here in rags, we wouldn't press in for an obolus before

Belisarius. Mrs. Sartoris has been here on her way to Rome, spending

most of her time with us--singing passionately and talking eloquently.

She is really charming. May God bless and keep you and love you, beloved

friend! Love your own affectionate

BA.

May it be Robert's love?

* * * * *

_To Miss Browning_

[Florence:] November 11, 1854 [postmark].

My dearest Sarianna,--I shall be writing my good deeds in water to-day

with this mere pretence at inks.[37] We are all well, though it is much

too cold for me--a horrible tramontana which would create a cough under

the ribs of death, and sets me coughing a little in the morning. I am

afraid it's to be a hard winter again this year--or harder than last

year's. We began fires on the last day of October, after the most

splendid stretch of spring, summer, and autumn I ever remember. We have

translated our room into winter--sent off the piano towards the windows,

and packed tables, chairs, and sofas as near to the hearth as possible.

What a time of anxiety this war time is![38] I do thank God that _we_

have no reasons for its being a personal agony, through having anyone

very precious at the post of danger. I have two first cousins there, a

Hedley, and Paget Butler, Sir Thomas's son. I understand that the gloom

in England from the actual bereavements is great; that the frequency of

deep mourning strikes the eye; that even the shops are filled chiefly

with black; and that it has become a sort of _mode_ to wear black or

grey, without family losses, and from the mere force of sympathy.

My poor father is still unable to stir from the house, and he has been

unwell through a bilious attack, the consequence of want of exercise.

Nothing can induce him to go out in a carriage, because he 'never did in

his life drive out for mere amusement,' he says. There's what Mr. Kenyon

calls 'the Barrett obstinacy,' and it makes me uneasy as to the effect

of it in this instance upon the general health of the patient. Poor

darling Arabel seems to me much out of spirits--'out of humour,' _she_

calls it, dear thing--oppressed by the gloom of the house, and looking

back yearningly to the time when she had sisters to talk to. Oh

Sarianna, I wish we were all together to have a good gossip or groaning,

with a laugh at the end!...

Your ever affectionate sister,

BA.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Martin_

Florence: November 1854.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--You make me wait and I make you wait for

letters. It is bad of us both--and remember, _worse of you_, seeing that

you left two long letters of mine unanswered for months. I felt as if I

had fallen down an _oubliette_, and I was about to utter the loud

shrieks befitting the occasion, when you wrote at last. Don't treat me

so another time; I want to know your plans for the winter, since the

winter is upon us. Next summer, if it pleases God, we shall certainly

meet somewhere--say Paris, say London. We shall have money for it, which

we had not this year; and now the disappointment's over, I don't care.

The heat at Florence was very bearable, and our child grew into his

roses lost at Rome, and we have lived a very tranquil and happy six

months on our own sofas and chairs, among our own nightingales and

fireflies. There's an inclination in me to turn round with my Penini

and say, 'I'm an Italian.' Certainly both light and love seem stronger

with me at Florence than elsewhere....

The war! The alliance is the consolation; the necessity is the

justification. For the rest, one shuts one's eyes and ears--the rest is

too horrible. What do you mean by fearing that the war itself may not be

all the evil of the war? I expect, on the contrary, a freer political

atmosphere after this thunder. Louis Napoleon is behaving very tolerably

well, won't you admit, after all? And I don't look to a treason at the

end as certain of his enemies do, who are reduced to a 'wait, wait, and

you'll see.' There's a friend of mine here, a traditional anti-Gallican,

and very lively in his politics until the last few months. He can't

speak now or lift up his eyelids, and I am too magnanimous in opposition

to talk of anything else in his presence except Verdi's last opera,

which magnanimity he appreciates, though he has no ear. About a month

ago he came suddenly to life again. 'Have you heard the news? Napoleon

is suspected of making a secret treaty with Russia.' The next morning he

was as dead as ever--poor man! It's a desperate case for him.

Are you not happy--_you_--in this fast union between England and France?

Some of our English friends, coming to Italy through France, say that

the general feeling towards England, and the affectionate greetings and

sympathies lavished upon them as Englishmen by the French everywhere,

are quite strange and touching. 'In two or three years,' said a

Frenchman on a railroad, 'French and English, we shall make only one

nation.' Are you very curious about the subject of gossip just now

between Lord Palmerston and Louis Napoleon? We hear from somebody in

Paris, whose _métier_ it is to know everything, that it refers to the

readjustment of affairs in Italy. May God grant it! The Italians have

been hanging their whole hope's weight upon Louis Napoleon ever since he

came to power, and if he does now what he can for them I shall be proud

of my _protégé_--oh, and so glad! Robert and I clapped our hands

yesterday when we heard this; we couldn't refrain, though our informant

was reactionary and in a deep state of conservative melancholy. 'Awful

things were to be expected about Italy,' quotha!

Now do be good, and write and tell me what your plans are for the

winter. We shall remain here till May, and then, if God pleases, go

north--to Paris and London. Robert and I are at work on our books. I

have taken to ass's milk to counteract the tramontana, and he is in the

twenty-first and I in the twenty-second volume of Alexandre Dumas's

'Memoirs.' The book is _un peu hasardé_ occasionally, as might be

expected, but extremely interesting, and I really must recommend it to

your attention for the winter if you don't know it already.

We have seen a good deal of Mrs. Sartoris lately on her way to Rome

(Adelaide Kemble)--eloquent in talk and song, a most brilliant woman,

and noble. She must be saddened since then, poor thing, by her father's

death. Tell me if it is true that Harriet Martineau has seceded again

from her atheism? We heard so the other day. Dearest Mrs. Martin, do

write to me; and do, both of you, remember me, and think of both of us

kindly. With Robert's true regards,

I am your as ever affectionate

BA.

Tell me dear Mr. Martin's mind upon politics--in the Austrian and

Prussian question, for instance. We have no fears, in spite of Dr.

Cumming and the prophets generally, of ultimate results.

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

Florence: December 11, 1854.

I should have written long ago, my dearest Miss Mitford, to try to say

half the pleasure and gratitude your letter made for me, but I have

been worried and anxious about the illnesses, not exactly in my family

but nearly as touching to me, and hanging upon posts from England in a

painful way inevitable to these great distances....

I understand that literature is going on flaggingly in England just now,

on account of nobody caring to read anything but telegraphic messages.

So Thackeray told somebody, only he might refer chiefly to the fortunes

of the 'Newcomes,' who are not strong enough to resist the Czar. The

book is said to be defective in story. Certainly the subject of the war

is very absorbing; we are all here in a state of tremblement about it.

Dr. Harding has a son at Sebastopol, who has had already three horses

killed under him. What hideous carnage! The allies are plainly

numerically too weak, and the two governments are much blamed for not

reinforcing long ago. I am discontented about Austria. I don't like

handshaking with Austria; I would rather be picking her pocket of her

Italian provinces; and, while upon such civil terms, how _can_ we? Yet

somebody, who professes to know everything, told somebody at Paris, who

professes to tell everything, that Louis Napoleon and Lord Palmerston

talked much the other day about what is to be done for Italy; and here

in Italy we have long been all opening our mouths like so many young

thrushes in a nest, expecting some 'worme small' from your Emperor. Now,

if there's an Austrian alliance instead!...

Do you hear from Mr. Kingsley? and, if so, how is his wife? I am reading

now Mrs. Stowe's 'Sunny Memories,' and like the naturalness and

simplicity of the book much, in spite of the provincialism of the tone

of mind and education, and the really wretched writing. It's quite

wonderful that a woman who has written a book to make the world ring

should write so abominably....

Do you hear often from Mr. Chorley? Mr. Kenyon complains of never seeing

him. He seems to have withdrawn a good deal, perhaps into closer

occupations, who knows? Aubrey de Vere told a friend of ours in Paris

the other day that Mr. Patmore was engaged on a poem which 'was to be

the love poem of the age,' parts of which he, Aubrey de Vere, had seen.

Last week I was vexed by the sight of Mrs. Trollope's card, brought in

because we were at dinner. I should have liked to have seen her for the

sake of the opportunity of talking of _you_.

Do you know the engravings in the 'Story without an End'? The picture of

the 'child' is just my Penini. Some one was observing it the other day,

and I thought I would tell you, that you might image him to yourself.

Think of his sobbing and screaming lately because of the Evangelist John

being sent to Patmos. 'Just like poor Robinson Crusoe' said he. I

scarcely knew whether to laugh or cry, I was so astonished at this

crisis of emotion.

Robert's love will be put in. May God bless you and keep you, and love

you better than we all.

Your ever affectionate

BA.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Martin_

Casa Guidi: February 13, [1855].

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--How am I to thank you for this most beautiful

shawl, looking fresh from Galatea's flocks, and woven by something finer

than her fingers? You are too good and kind, and I shall wrap myself in

this piece of affectionateness on your part with very pleasant feelings.

Thank you, thank you. I only wish I could have seen you (though more or

less dimly, it would have been a satisfaction) in the face of your

friend who was so kind as to bring the parcel to me. But I have been

very unwell, and was actually in bed when he called; unwell with the

worst attack on the chest I ever suffered from in Italy. Oh, I should

have written to you long since if it had not been for this. For a month

past or more I have been ill. Now, indeed, I consider myself

convalescent; the exhausting cough and night fever are gone, I may say,

the pulse quiet, and, though considerably weakened and pulled down, that

will be gradually remedied as long as this genial mildness of the

weather lasts. You were quite right in supposing us struck here by the

cold of which you complained even at Pau. Not only here but at Pisa

there has been snow and frost, together with a bitter wind which my

precaution of keeping steadily to two rooms opening one into another

could not defend me from. My poor Robert has been horribly vexed about

me, of course, and indeed suffered physically at one time through

sleepless nights, diversified by such pastimes as keeping fires alight

and warming coffee, &c. &c. Except for love's sake it wouldn't be worth

while to live on at the expense of doing so much harm, but you needn't

exhort--I don't give it up. I mean to live on and be well.

In the meantime, in generous exchange for your miraculous shawl, I send

you back sixpence worth of rhymes. They were written for Arabel's Ragged

School bazaar last spring (she wanted our names), and would not be worth

your accepting but for the fact of their not being purchaseable

anywhere.[39] A few copies were sent out to us lately. Half I draw back

my hand as I give you this little pamphlet, because I seem to hear dear

Mr. Martin's sardonic laughter at my phrase about the Czar. 'If she

wink, &c.' Well, I don't generally sympathise with the boasting mania of

my countrymen, but it's so much in the blood that, even with _me_, it

exceeds now and then, you observe. Ask him to be as gentle with me as

possible.

Oh, the East, the East! My husband has been almost frantic on the

subject. We may all cover our heads and be humble.[40] Verily we have

sinned deeply. As to ministers, that there is blame I do not doubt. The

Aberdeen element has done its worst, but our misfortune is that nobody

is responsible; and that if you tear up Mr. So-and-so and Lord So-and-so

limb from limb, as a mild politician recommended the other day, you

probably would do a gross injustice against very well-meaning persons.

It's the system, the system which is all one gangrene; the most corrupt

system in Europe, is it not? Here is my comfort. Apart from the dreadful

amount of individual suffering which cries out against us to heaven and

earth, this adversity may teach us much, this shock which has struck to

the heart of England may awaken us much, and this humiliation will

altogether be good for us. We have stood too long on a pedestal talking

of our moral superiority, our political superiority, and all our other

superiorities, which I have long been sick of hearing recounted. Here's

an inferiority proved. Let us understand it and remedy it, and not talk,

talk, any more.

[_Part of this letter has been cut out_]

We heard yesterday from the editor of the 'Examiner,' Mr. Forster, who

expects some terrible consequence of present circumstances in England,

as far as I can understand. The alliance with France is full of

consolation. There seems to be a real heart-union between the peoples.

What a grand thing the Napoleon loan is! It has struck the English with

admiration.

I heard, too, among other English news, that Walter Savage Landor, who

has just kept his eightieth birthday, and is as young and impetuous as

ever, has caught the whooping cough by way of an illustrative accident.

Kinglake ('E[=o]then') came home from the Crimea (where he went out and

fought as an amateur) with fever, which has left one lung diseased. He

is better, however....

Dearest Mrs. Martin, dearest friends, be both of you well and strong.

Shall we not meet in Paris this early summer?

May God bless you! Your ever affectionate

BA.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Jameson_

Florence: February 24, 1855.

The devil (say charitable souls) is not as bad as he is painted, and

even I, dearest Mona Nina, am better than I seem. In the first place,

let me make haste to say that I _never received_ the letter you sent me

to Rome with the information of your family affliction, and that, if I

had, it could never have remained an unnoticed letter. I am not so

untender, so unsympathising, not so brutal--let us speak out. I lost

several letters in Rome, besides a good deal of illusion. I did not like

Rome, I think I confessed to you. In the second place, when your last

letter reached me--I mean the letter in which you told me to write to

you directly--I _would_ have written directly, but was so very unwell

that you would not have wished me even to try if, absent in the flesh,

you had been present in spirit. I have had a severe attack on the

chest--the worst I ever had in Italy--the consequence of exceptionally

severe weather--bitter wind and frost together--which quite broke me up

with cough and fever at night. Now I am well again, only of course much

weakened, and grown thin. I mean to get fat again upon cod's liver oil,

in order to appear in England with some degree of decency. You know I'm

a lineal descendant of the White Cat, and have seven lives accordingly.

Also I have a trick of falling from six-storey windows upon my feet, in

the manner of the traditions of my race. Not only I die hard, but I can

hardly die. 'Half of it would kill _me_,' said an admiring friend the

other day. 'What strength you must have!' A questionable advantage,

except that I have also--a Robert, and a Penini!

Dearest friend, I don't know how to tell you of our fullness of sympathy

in your late trials.[41] From a word which reached us from England the

other day, there will be, I do trust, some effectual arrangement to

relieve your friends from their anxieties about you. Then, there should

be an increase of the Government pension by another hundred, that is

certain; only the 'should be' lies so far out of sight in the ideal,

that nobody in his senses should calculate on its occurrence. As to Law,

it's different from Right--particularly in England perhaps--and appeals

to Law are disastrous when they cannot be counted on as victorious,

always and certainly. Therefore you may be wise in abstaining; you have

considered sufficiently, of course. I only hope you are not trammelled

in any degree by motives of delicacy which would be preposterous under

the actual circumstances. You meantime are as nobly laborious as ever.

We have caught hold of fragments in the newspapers from your

'Commonplace Book,' which made us wish for more; and Mr. Kenyon told me

of a kind mention of Robert which was very pleasant to me.

How will it be? Shall you be likely to come to Italy before we set out

to the north--that is, before the middle of May--or shall we cross on

the road, like our letters, or shall we catch you in London, or in Paris

at least? Oh, you won't miss the Exhibition in Paris. That seems

certain.

I know Florence Nightingale slightly. She came to see me when we were in

London last; and I remember her face and her graceful manner, and the

flowers she sent me after afterwards. I honor her from my heart. She is

an earnest, noble woman, and has fulfilled her woman's duty where many

men have failed.

At the same time, I confess myself to be at a loss to see any new

position for the sex, or the most imperfect solution of the 'woman's

question,' in this step of hers. If a movement at all, it is retrograde,

a revival of old virtues! Since the siege of Troy and earlier, we have

had princesses binding wounds with their hands; it's strictly the

woman's part, and men understand it so, as you will perceive by the

general adhesion and approbation on this late occasion of the masculine

dignities. Every man is on his knees before ladies carrying lint,

calling them 'angelic she's,' whereas, if they stir an inch as thinkers

or artists from the beaten line (involving more good to general

humanity; than is involved in lint), the very same men would curse the

impudence of the very same women and stop there. I can't see on what

ground you think you see here the least gain to the 'woman's question,'

so called. It's rather _the contrary_, to my mind, and, any way, the

women of England must give the precedence to the _soeurs de charité_,

who have magnificently won it in all matters of this kind. For my own

part (and apart from the exceptional miseries of the war), I acknowledge

to you that I do not consider the best use to which we can put a gifted

and accomplished woman is to _make her a hospital nurse_. If it is, why

then woe to us all who are artists! The woman's question is at an end.

The men's 'noes' carry it. For the future I hope you will know your

place and keep clear of Raffaelle and criticism; and I shall expect to

hear of you as an organiser of the gruel department in the hospital at

Greenwich, that is, if you have the luck to _percer_ and distinguish

yourself.

Oh, the Crimea! How dismal, how full of despair and horror! The results

will, however, be good if we are induced to come down from the English

pedestal in Europe of incessant self-glorification, and learn that our

close, stifling, corrupt system gives no air nor scope for healthy and

effective organisation anywhere. We are oligarchic in all things, from

our parliament to our army. Individual interests are admitted as

obstacles to the general prosperity. This plague runs through all things

with us. It accounts for the fact that, according to the last marriage

statistics, thirty per cent, of the male population signed with the

_mark_ only. It accounts for the fact that London is at once the largest

and ugliest city in Europe. For the rest, if we cannot fight righteous

and necessary battles, we must leave our place as a nation, and be

satisfied with making pins. Write to me, but don't pay your letters,

dear dear friend, and I will tell you why. Through some slip somewhere

we have had to pay your two last letters just the same. So don't try it

any more. Do you think we grudge postage from you? Tell me if it is true

that Harriet Martineau is very ill. What do you hear of her?

May God bless you! With Robert's true love,

Your ever affectionate

BA.

* * * * *

The following letter is the first of a few addressed to Mr. Ruskin,

which have been made available through the kindness of Mrs. Arthur

Severn. The acquaintanceship with Mr. Ruskin dated from the visit of the

Brownings to England in 1852 (see vol. ii. p. 87, above); but the

occasion of the present correspondence was the recent death of Miss

Mitford, which took place on January 10, 1855. Mr. Ruskin had shown much

kindness to her during her later years, and after her death had written

to Mrs. Browning to tell her of the closing scenes of her friend's life.

* * * * *

_To Mr. Ruskin_

Florence: March 17, 1855.

I have your letter, dear Mr. Ruskin. The proof is the pleasure it has

given me--yes, and given my husband, which is better. 'When has a

letter given me so much pleasure?' he exclaimed, after reading it; 'will

you write?' I thank you much--much for thinking of it, and I shall be

thankful of anything you can tell me of dearest Miss Mitford. I had a

letter from her just before she went, written in so firm a hand, and so

vital a spirit, that I could feel little apprehension of never seeing

her in the body again. God's will be done. It is better so, I am sure.

She seemed to me to see her way clearly, and to have as few troubling

doubts in respect to the future life as she had to the imminent end of

the present.

Often we have talked and thought of you since the last time we saw you,

and, before your letter came, we had ventured to put on the list of

expected pleasures connected with our visit to England, fixed for next

summer, the pleasure of seeing more of Mr. Ruskin. For the rest, there

will be some bitter things too. I do not miss them generally in England,

and among them this time will be an empty place where I used always to

find a tender and too indulgent friend.

You need not be afraid of my losing a letter of yours. The peril would

be mine in that case. But among the advantages of our Florence--the art,

the olives, the sunshine, the cypresses, and don't let me forget the

Arno and mountains at sunset time--is that of an all but infallible post

office. One loses letters at Rome. Here, I think, we have lost _one_ in

the course of eight years, and for that loss I hold my correspondent to

blame.

How good you are to me! How kind! The soul of a cynic, at its third

stage of purification, might feel the value of 'Gold' laid on the

binding of a book by the hand of John Ruskin. Much more I, who am apt to

get too near that ugly 'sty of Epicurus' sometimes! Indeed you have

gratified me deeply. There was 'once on a time,' as is said in the fairy

tales, a word dropped by you in one of your books, which I picked up and

wore for a crown. Your words of goodwill are of great price to me

always, and one of my dear friend Miss Mitford's latest kindnesses to me

was copying out and sending to me a sentence from a letter of yours

which expressed a favorable feeling towards my writings. She knew

well--she who knew me--the value it would have for me, and the courage

it would give me for any future work.

With my husband's cordial regards,

I remain most truly yours,

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

Our American friends, who sent to Dresden in vain for your letter, are

here now, but will be in England soon on their way to America, with the

hope of trying fate again in another visit to you. Thank you! Also thank

you for your inquiry about my health. I have had a rather bad attack on

my chest (never very strong) through the weather having been colder than

usual here, but now I am very well again--for _me_.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Martin_

Florence: April 20, 1855.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Having nine lives, as I say, I am alive again,

and prosperous--thanking you for wishing to know. People look at me and

laugh, because it's a clear case of bulbous root with me--let me pass

(being humble) for the onion. I was looking miserable in February, and

really could scarcely tumble across the room, and now I am up on my

perch again--nay, even out of my cage door. The weather is divine. One

feels in one's self why the trees are green. I go out, walk out, have

recovered flesh and fire--my very hair curls differently. '_Is I, I?_' I

say with the metaphysicians. There's something vital about this Florence

air, for, though much given to resurrection, I never made such a leap in

my life before after illness. Robert and I need to run as well as leap.

We have quantities of work to do, and small time to do it in. He is

four hours a day engaged in dictating to a friend of ours who

transcribes for him, and I am not even ready for transcription--have not

transcribed a line of my six or seven thousand. We go to England, or at

least to Paris, next month, but it can't be early. Oh, may we meet you!

Our little Penini is radiant, and altogether we are all in good spirits.

Which is a shame, you will say, considering the state of affairs at

Sebastopol. Forgive me. I never, at worst, thought that the great

tragedy of the world was going on _there_. It was tragic, but there are

more chronic cruelties and deeper despairs--ay, and more exasperating

wrongs. For the rest, we have the most atrocious system in Europe, and

we mean to work it out. Oh, you will see. Your committees nibble on, and

this and that poisonous berry is pulled off leisurely, while the bush to

the root of it remains, and the children eat on unhindered on the other

side. I had hoped that there was real feeling among politicians. But no;

we are put off with a fast day. There, an end! I begin to think that

nothing will do for England but a good revolution, and a 'besom of

destruction' used dauntlessly. We are getting up our vainglories again,

smoothing our peacock's plumes. We shall be as exemplary as ever by next

winter, you will see.

Meanwhile, dearest Mrs. Martin, that _you_ should ask me about

'Armageddon' is most assuredly a sign of the times. You know I pass for

being particularly mad myself, and everybody, almost universally, is

rather mad, as may be testified by the various letters I have to read

about 'visible spirit-hands,' pianos playing themselves, and

flesh-and-blood human beings floating about rooms in company with tables

and lamps. Dante has pulled down his own picture from the wall of a

friend of ours in Florence five times, signifying his pleasure that it

should be destroyed at once as unauthentic (our friend burnt it

directly, which will encourage me to pull down mine by [_word lost_]).

Savonarola also has said one or two things, and there are gossiping

guardian angels, of whom I need not speak. Let me say, though, that

nothing has surprised me quite so much as _your_ inquiring about

Armageddon, because I am used to think of you as the least in the world

of a theorist, and am half afraid of you sometimes, and range the chairs

before my speculative dark corners, that you may not think or see 'how

very wild that Ba is getting!' Well, now it shall be my turn to be

sensible and unbelieving. There's a forced similitude certainly, in the

etymology, between the two words; but if it were full and perfect I

should be no nearer thinking that the battle of Armageddon could ever

signify anything but a great spiritual strife. The terms, taken from a

symbolical book, are plainly to my mind symbolical, and Dr. Cumming and

a thousand mightier doctors could not talk it out of me, I think. I

don't, for the rest, like Dr. Cumming; his books seem to me very narrow.

Isn't the tendency with us all to magnify the great events of our own

time, just as we diminish the small events? For me, I am heretical in

certain things. I expect _no_ renewal of the Jewish kingdom, for

instance. And I doubt much whether Christ's 'second coming' will be

personal. The end of the world is probably the end of a dispensation.

What I expect is, a great development of Christianity in opposition to

the churches, and of humanity generally in opposition to the nations,

and I look out for this in much quiet hope. Also, and in the meanwhile,

the war seems to be just and necessary. There is nothing in it to

regret, except the way of conducting it....

Write to me soon again, and tell me as much of both of you as you can

put into a letter.

May God bless you always!

With Robert's warm regards, both of you think of me as

Your ever affectionate

BA.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Braun_

Florence: May 13, [1855].

My dearest Madame Braun,--You have classed me and ticketed me before

now, I think, as among the ungrateful of the world; yet I am grateful,

grateful, grateful! When your book[42] came (how very kind you were to

send it to me!) and when I had said so some five times running, in came

somebody who was _fanatico per Roma_, and reverential in proportion for

Dr. Braun, who with some sudden appeal to my sensibility--the softer

just then that I was only just recovering strength after a sharp winter

attack--swept the volume off the table and carried it off out of the

house to study the contents at leisure. I expected it back the next

week, but it lingered. And I really hadn't the audacity to write to you

and say, 'Thank you, but I have looked as yet simply at the title-page.'

Well, at last it comes home, and I turn the leaves, examine, read,

approve, like Ludovisi and the Belvedere, with a double pleasure of

association and become _qualified_ properly to thank you and Dr. Braun

from Robert and myself for this gift to us and valuable contribution to

archæological literature. I am only sorry I did not get to Rome after

the book; it would have helped my pleasure so, holding up the lanthorn

in dark places. So much suggestiveness in combination with so much

specific information makes a book (or a man) worth knowing.

Of late, other hindrances have come to writing this, in the shape of

various labours of Hercules, which fall sometimes to Omphale as well. We

go to England in a week or two or three, and we take between us some

sixteen thousand lines, eight on one side, eight on the other, which

ought to be ready for publication. I have not finished my seventh

thousand yet; Robert is at his mark. Then, I have to see that we have

shoes and stockings to go in, and that Penini's little trousers are

creditably frilled and tucked. Then, about twenty letters lie by me

waiting to be answered in time, so as to save me from a mobbing in

England. Then there are visits to be paid all round in Florence, to make

amends for the sins of the winter; visiting, like almsgiving, being put

generally in the place of virtue, when the latter is found too

inconvenient. Altogether, my head swims and my heart ticks before the

day's done, with positive weariness. For there are Penini's lessons, you

are to understand, besides the rest. And 'between the intersections,'

cod liver oil to be taken judiciously, in order to appear before my

English friends with due decency of corporeal coverture.

Well, now, do tell me, _shall_ you go to England, _you_? You will see my

reasons for being very interested. Oh, I hope you won't be snatched away

to Naples, or nailed down at Rome. Railroads open from Marseilles; the

Exhibition open at Paris! Surely, surely Dr. Braun will go to Paris to

see the Exhibition. His conscience won't let him off. Tell him too,

_from me_, that in London he may _see a spirit_ if he will go for it. I

have a letter from a friend who swears to me he has shaken hands with

three or four--'softer, more thrilling than any woman's hand'--'tenderly

touching'--think of that! The American 'medium' Hume is turning the

world upside down in London with this spiritual influx.

Let me remember to tell you. Your paper _was in the_ '_Athenæum_.'

Therefore, if you were not paid for it, it was the more abominable.

Robert saw it with his own eyes, printed. When I heard from you that you

had heard nothing, I mentioned the circumstance to Mrs. Jameson in a

letter I was writing to her, and I do hope she has not neglected since

to give you some information at least. You are aware probably of the

excellent effect with which that kind Mrs. Procter has managed a private

subscription in behalf of dear Mrs. Jameson, in consequence of which she

will be placed in circumstances of ease for the rest of her life. Fanny

Kemble nobly gave a hundred pounds towards this good purpose. Mrs.

Jameson spoke in her last letter of coming to Italy this summer, and I

dare say we shall have the ill luck to lose her, miss her, cross her _en

route_, perhaps.

We hear from dear Mr. Kenyon and from Miss Bayley; each very well and

full of animation. If it were not for them, and my dear sisters, and one

or two other hands I shall care to clasp (beside the spirits!) I would

give much not to go north. Oh, we Italians grow out of the English bark;

it won't hold us after a time. Such a happy year I have had this last! I

do love Florence so! When Penini says, 'Sono Italiano, voglio essere

Italiano,' I agree with him perfectly.

So we shall come back of course, if we live; indeed, we leave this house

ready to come back to, meaning, if we can, to let our rooms simply.

Little Penini looks like a rose, and has, besides, the understanding and

sweetness of a creature 'a little lower than the angels.' I don't care

any less for him than I did, upon the whole.

I hear the Sartoris's think of Paris for next winter, and mean to give

up Rome. She has been a good deal secluded, until quite lately, they

say, on account of her father's death and brother's worse than death,

which may account in part for any backwardness you may have observed. As

to her 'not liking Dr. Braun,' do _you_ believe in anybody's not liking

Dr. Braun? _I_ don't quite. It's more difficult for me to 'receive' than

the notion of the spiritual hand--'tenderly touching.'

Do you know young Leighton[43] of Rome? If so, you will be glad of this

wonderful success of his picture,[44] bought by the Queen, and applauded

by the Academicians, and he not twenty-five.

The lady who brought your book did not leave her name here, so of

course she did not _mean_ to be called on.

Our kindest regards for dear Dr. Braun, and repeated truest thanks to

both of you. Among his discoveries and inventions, he will invent some

day an Aladdin's lamp, and then you will be suddenly potentates, and

vanish in a clap of thunder.

Till then, think of me sometimes, dearest Madame Braun, as I do of

_you_, and of all your great kindness to me at Rome.

Ever your affectionate

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

* * * * *

_To Mr. Ruskin_

Florence: June 2, 1855.

My dear Mr. Ruskin,--I believe I shall rather prove in this letter how

my head turns round when I write it, than explain why I didn't write it

before--and so you will go on to think me the most insusceptible and

least grateful of human beings--no small distinction in our bad obtuse

world. Yet the truth is--oh, the truth is, that I am deeply grateful to

you and have felt to the quick of my heart the meaning and kindness of

your words, the worth of your sympathy and praise. One thing especially

which you said, made me thankful that I had been allowed to live to hear

it--since even to fancy that anything I had written could be the means

of the least good to _you_, is worth all the trumpet blowing of a vulgar

fame. Oh, of course, I do not exaggerate, though your generosity does. I

understand the case as it is. We burn straw and it warms us. My verses

catch fire from you as you read them, and so you see them in that light

of your own. But it is something to be used to such an end by such a

man, and I thank you, thank you, and so does my husband, for the deep

pleasure you have given us in the words you have written.

And why not say so sooner? Just because I wanted to say so fully, and

because I have been crushed into a corner past all elbow-room for doing

anything largely and comfortably, by work and fuss and uncertainty of

various kinds. Now it isn't any better scarcely, though it is quite

fixed now that we are going from Florence to England--no more of the

shadow dancing which is so pretty at the opera and so fatiguing in real

life. We are coming, and have finished most of our preparations;

conducted on a balance of--must we go? _may_ we stay? which is so very

inconvenient. If you knew what it is to give up this still dream-life of

our Florence, where if one is over-busy ever, the old tapestries on the

walls and the pre-Giotto pictures (picked up by my husband for so many

pauls) surround us ready to quiet us again--if you knew what it is to

give it all up and be put into the mill of a dingy London lodging and

ground very small indeed, you wouldn't be angry with us for being sorry

to go north--you wouldn't think it unnatural. As for me, I have all

sorts of pain in England--everything is against me, except a few things;

and yet, while my husband and I groan at one another, strophe and

antistrophe (pardon that rag of Greek!) we admit our compensations--that

it will be an excellent thing, for instance, to see Mr. Ruskin! Are we

likely to undervalue that?

Let me consider how to answer your questions. My poetry--which you are

so good to, and which you once thought 'sickly,' you say, and why not?

(I have often written sickly poetry, I do not doubt--I have been sickly

myself!)--has been called by much harder names, 'affected' for instance,

a charge I have never deserved, for I do think, if I may say it of

myself, that the desire of speaking or _spluttering_ the real truth out

broadly, may be a cause of a good deal of what is called in me careless

and awkward expression. My friends took some trouble with me at one

time; but though I am not self-willed naturally, as you will find when

you know me, I hope, I never could adopt the counsel urged upon me to

keep in sight always the stupidest person of my acquaintance in order to

clear and judicious forms of composition. Will you set me down as

arrogant, if I say that the longer I live in this writing and reading

world, the more convinced I am that the mass of readers _never_ receive

a poet (you, who are a poet yourself, must surely observe that) without

intermediation? The few understand, appreciate, and distribute to the

multitude below. Therefore to say a thing faintly, because saying it

strongly sounds odd or obscure or unattractive for some reason, to

'careless readers,' does appear to me bad policy as well as bad art. Is

not art, like virtue, to be practised for its own sake first? If we

sacrifice our ideal to notions of immediate utility, would it not be

better for us to write tracts at once?

Of course any remark of yours is to be received and considered with all

reverence. Only, be sure you please to say, 'Do it differently to

satisfy _me_, John Ruskin,' and not to satisfy Mr., Mrs., and the Miss

and Master Smith of the great majority. The great majority is the

majority of the little, you know, who will come over to you if you don't

think of them--and if they don't, you will bear it.

Am I pert, do you think? No, _don't_ think it. And the truth is, though

you may not see that, that your praise made me feel very humble. Nay, I

was quite _abashed_ at the idea of the 'illumination' of my poem; and

still I keep winking my eyes at the prospect of so much glory. If you

were a woman, I might say, when one feels ugly one pulls down the

blinds; but as a man you are superior to the understanding of such a

figure, and so I must simply tell you that you honor me over much

indeed. My husband is very much pleased, and particularly pleased that

you selected 'Catarina,' which is his favourite among my poems for some

personal fanciful reasons besides the rest.

But to go back. I said that any remark of yours was to be received by me

in all reverence; and truth is a part of reverence, so I shall end by

telling you the truth, that I think you quite wrong in your objection to

'nympholept.' Nympholepsy is no more a Greek word than epilepsy, and

nobody would or could object to epilepsy or apoplexy as a Greek word.

It's a word for a specific disease or mania among the ancients, that

mystical passion for an invisible nymph common to a certain class of

visionaries. Indeed, I am not the first in referring to it in English

literature. De Quincey has done so in prose, for instance, and Lord

Byron talks of 'The nympholepsy of a fond despair,' though _he_ never

was accused of being overridden by his Greek. Tell me now if I am not

justified, I also? We are all nympholepts in running after our

ideals--and none more than yourself, indeed!

Our American friend Mr. Jarves wrote to us full of gratitude and

gratification on account of your kindness to him, for which we also

should thank you. Whether he felt most overjoyed by the clasp of your

hand or that of a disembodied spirit, which he swears was as real (under

the mediumship of Hume, his compatriot), it was somewhat difficult to

distinguish. But all else in England seemed dull and worthless in

comparison with those two 'manifestations,' the spirit's and yours!

How very very kind of your mother to think of my child! and how happy I

am near the end of my paper, not to be tempted on into 'descriptions'

that 'hold the place of sense.' He is six years old, he reads English

and Italian, and writes without lines, and shall I send you a poem of

his for 'illumination'? His poems are far before mine, the very prattle

of the angels, when they stammer at first and are not sure of the

pronunciation of _e_'s and _i_'s in the spiritual heavens (see

Swedenborg). Really he is a sweet good child, and I am not bearable in

my conceit of him, as you see! My thankful regards to your mother, whom

I shall hope to meet with you, and do yourself accept as much from us

both.

Most truly yours,

ELIZABETH B. BROWNING.

We leave Florence next week, and spend at least a week in Paris, 138

Avenue des Champs-Elysées.

* * * * *

_To Miss Browning_

Florence: June 12, 1855 [postmark].

How kind and tender of you, my dearest Sarianna, to care so much to hear

that I am better! I was afraid that Robert had written in the Crimean

style about me, for he was depressed and uneasy, poor darling, and

looked at things from the blackest point of view. Nevertheless, I have

escaped some bad symptoms. No spitting of blood, for instance, no loss

of voice, and scarcely a threatening of pain in the side. Also I have

not grown thinner than is natural under the circumstances. At Genoa

(after our cold journey[45]) I _wasted_ in a few days, and thought much

worse of myself than there was reason to do this time.

I can assure you I am now much restored. The cough is decidedly got

under, and teases me, for the most part, only in the early morning; the

fever is gone, and the nights are quiet. I am able to take animal food

again, and shall soon recover my ordinary strength. Certainly it has

been a bad attack, and I never suffered anything like it in Italy

before. The illness at Genoa was the mere _tail_ of what began in

England, and was increased by the Alpine exposure. Our weather has been

very severe--wind and frost together--something peculiarly irritating in

the air. I am loth to blame my poor Florence, who never treated me so

before (and how many winters we have spent here!)--and our friends write

from Pisa that the weather was as trying there, while from Rome the

account is simply 'detestable weather.' At Naples it is sometimes

furiously cold; there's no perfect climate anywhere, that's certain. You

have only to choose the least evil. Here for the last week it has been

so mild that, if I had been in my usual state of health, I might have

gone out, they say; and, of course, I have felt the influence

beneficially. One encourages oneself in Italy when it is cold, with the

assurance that it can't last. Our misfortune this time has been that it

has lasted unusually long. How the Italians manage without fires I

cannot make out. So chilly as they are, too, it's a riddle.

You would wonder almost how I could feel the cold in these two rooms

opening into each other, and from which I have not stirred since the

cold weather began. Robert has kept up the fire in our bedroom

throughout the night. Oh, he has been spoiling me so. If it had not been

that I feared much to hurt him in having him so disturbed and worried,

it would have been a very subtle luxury to me, this being ill and

feeling myself dear. Do not set me down as too selfish. May God bless

him!...

Robert has been frantic about the Crimea, and 'being disgraced in the

face of Europe,' &c. &c. When he is mild he wishes the ministry to be

torn to pieces in the streets, limb from limb. I do not doubt that the

Aberdeen side of the Cabinet has been greatly to blame, but the system

is the root of the whole evil; if they don't tear up the system they may

tear up the Aberdeens 'world without end,' and not better the matter; if

they do tear up the system, then shall we all have reason to rejoice at

these disasters, apart from our sympathy with individual sufferings.

More good will have been done by this one great shock to the heart of

England than by fifty years' more patching, and pottering, and knocking

impotent heads together. What makes me most angry is the ministerial

apology. 'It's always so with us for three campaigns,'!!! 'it's our

way,' 'it's want of experience,' &c. &c. That's precisely the thing

complained of. As to want of experience, if the French have had Algerine

experiences, we have had our Indian wars, Chinese wars, Caffre wars, and

military and naval expenses _exceeding_ those of France from year to

year. If our people had never had to pay for an army, they might sit

down quietly under the taunt of wanting experience. But we have

soldiers, and soldiers should have military education as well as red

coats, and be led by properly qualified officers, instead of Lord

Nincompoop's youngest sons. As it is in the army, so it is in the State.

Places given away, here and there, to incompetent heads; nobody being

responsible, no unity of idea and purpose anywhere--the individual

interest always in the way of the general good. There is a noble heart

in our people, strong enough if once roused, to work out into light and

progression, and correct all these evils. Robert is a good deal struck

by the generous tone of the observations of the French press, as

contradistinguished from the insolences of the Americans, who really are

past enduring just now. Certain of our English friends here in Florence

have ceased to associate with them on that ground. I think there's a

good deal of jealousy about the French alliance. That may account for

something....

Dearest, kindest Sarianna, remember not to think any more about me,

except that I love you, that I am your attached

BA.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] _Life and Letters of Robert Browning_, by Mrs. Sutherland Orr, p.

216.

[16] The late Earl Lytton.

[17] Auguste Brizieux

[18] _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, published in 1852.

[19] Mrs. Jameson's _Legends of the Madonna_.

[20] General Franklin Pierce.

[21] 'Tamerton Church Tower, and other Poems.'

[22] In a letter to Miss Mitford, written four days later than this,

Mrs. Browning alludes again to the performance of 'Colombe's Birthday:'

'Yes--Robert's play succeeded, but there could be no "run" for a play of

that kind; it was a _succès d'estime_ and something more, which is

surprising, perhaps, considering the miserable acting of the men. Miss

Faucit was alone in doing us justice.'

[23] A few lines have been cut off the letter at this place.

[24] A letter to the _Athenæum_ on July 2, 1853, giving the result of

some experiments in table-turning, the tendency of which was to show

that the motion of the table was due to unconscious muscular action on

the part of the persons touching the table.

[25] Senatore Villari.

[26] Mr. George Barrett. The omitted passage describes an act of

generosity by him to one of his younger brothers.

[27] Hardly a successful horoscope of the future Ambassador at Paris and

Viceroy of India.

[28] Afterwards wife of Signor Carlo Botta, an Italian man of letters,

with whom she returned to America and lived in New York.

[29] This refers to the death of the infant child of the Storys, with

whom Mr. and Mrs. Browning were on intimate terms of friendship, as the

previous letters show.

[30] According to Mr. R.B. Browning, this is practically what has

happened with Page's portrait of Robert Browning (now in Venice). The

surface has become thick and waxy, and the portrait has almost

disappeared.

[31] Author of 'IX. Poems, by V.' (1840).

[32] This portrait is now in the possession of Mr. R.B. Browning at

Venice.

[33] _I.e._ 'grandfather,' a name by which Mr. Browning, senior, is

frequently referred to in these letters.

[34] 'Hush, hush!'

[35] For the subsequent fate of this picture, see note on p. 148, above.

[Transcriber's note: Reference is to Footnote [30].]

[36] To Mr. Barrett.

[37] This letter is written in very faint ink.

[38] The news of Inkerman had come only a few days before.

[39] Mrs. Browning's 'Song for the Ragged Schools of London' (_Poetical

Works_, iv. 270) and her husband's 'The Twins' were printed together as

a small pamphlet for sale at Miss Arabella Barrett's bazaar. Mrs.

Browning's poem had been written before they left Rome.

[40] The horrors of the Crimean winter were now becoming known, which

fully accounts for this outburst.

[41] The death of Mrs. Jameson's husband in 1854 had left her in very

straitened circumstances, which were ultimately relieved, in part, by a

subscription among her friends and the admirers of her works.

[42] Dr. Braun's _Ruins and Museums of Rome_ (1854).

[43] The late Lord Leighton, P.R.A.

[44] The picture of Cimabue's Madonna carried in procession through the

streets of Florence. It was exhibited in the Royal Academy Exhibition of

1855, and was bought by the Queen.

[45] In 1852.