2627. EBB to Julia Martin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 14, 40–44.
[Pisa]
November 5. [1846] [1]
It was pleasant to me my dearest friend, to think while I was reading your letter yesterday, that almost by that time, you had received mine, & could not even seem to doubt a moment longer whether I admitted your claim of hearing & of speaking to the uttermost. I recognized you too entirely as my friend. Because you had put faith in me, so much the more reason there was that I should justify it as far as I could, & with as much frankness (which was a part of my gratitude to you) as was possible from a woman to a woman. Always I have felt that you have believed in me & loved me,—&, for the sake of the past & of the present, your affection & your esteem are more to me than I could afford to lose, even in these changed, & happy circumstances. So I thank you once more my dear kind friends, I thank you both– I never shall forget your goodness. I feel it of course the more deeply in proportion to the painful disappointment in other quarters—. For instance, I tell you at once that Mrs Hedley’s manner of speech & of silence (she does not notice my letter sent to her as we left Paris) both disappoints & makes me feel angry. As to dear Bummy .. it is different: when people act according to their own nature & foregone conclusions, I never could blame them for my part. I mean, not for the act. But when I consider all that has passed between the Hedleys & myself .. how they knew what my position was, & entered into it with such apparent feeling, & moreover certainly encouraged & advised me to go to Italy at whatever cost .. when I remember all the conversation & professions I do feel angry & as people are apt to feel at any ungenerous looking inconsequence. I feel that a good deal of cowardice enters into it .. a desire of avoiding the unpopular side. Ah well!—there may be inconsistency perhaps unconsciously to the inconsistent .. though I do wonder & marvel how my aunt Hedley can reason out to herself the line of conduct she seems to have adopted. But just see what is called love in this world!– how it acts, when set against a mere convention!– You should have pitied your bird through the bars of the cage, & left it there to die .. & so, the sensibility & the safety might have gone together. Or you might have said, “Fly over the tops of the trees, you bird,” fastening carefully the cage-door. Am I bitter? The feeling however passes while I write it out, & my own affection for everybody will wait patiently to be “forgiven” in the proper form, when everybody shall be at leisure properly. Assuredly, in the meanwhile however, my case is not to be classed with other cases—what happened to me could not have happened perhaps with any other family in England—& no one knows this more entirely than Mrs Hedley does. I hate & loathe everything too which is clandestine—we both do, Robert & I—& the manner the whole business was carried on in, might have instructed the least acute of the bystanders. The flowers standing perpetually on my table for the last two years, were brought there by only one hand as everybody knew,—& really it would have argued an excess of benevolence in an unmarried man, with quite enough resources in London, to pay the continued visits he paid to me, without some strong motive indeed. Was it his fault that he did not associate with everybody in the house as well as with me? He desired it—but no .. that was not to be. The endurance of the pain of the position was not the least proof of his attachment to me. How I thank you for believing in him .. how grateful it makes me. He will justify to the uttermost that faith. We have been married two months & every hour has bound me to him more & more—if the beginning was well, still better it is now—that is what he says to me & I say back again, day by day. Then it is an “advantage,” to have an inexhaustible companion who talks wisdom of all things in heaven & earth, & shows besides as perpetual a good humour & gayety as if he were a .. fool!. shall I say—or a considerable quantity more perhaps. As to our domestic affairs, it is not to my honour & glory that the bills are made up every week & paid more regularly “than bard beseems” [2] —while dear Mrs Jameson laughs outright at our miraculous prudence & œconomy & declares that it is past belief & precedent that we shd not burn the candles at both ends, & the next moment will have it that we remind her of the children in a poem of Heine’s who set up housekeeping in a tub, & enquired gravely the price of coffee. [3] Ah, but she has left Pisa at last—left it yesterday .. it was a painful parting to everybody– Seven weeks spent in such close neighbourhood .. a month of it under the same roofs & in the same carriages, will fasten people together—& then travelling shakes them together. A more affectionate generous woman never lived than Mrs Jameson .. & it is pleasant to be sure that she loves us both from her heart—& not only ‘du bout des lèvres.’ [4] Think of her making Robert promise (as he has told me since) that in the case of my being unwell, he wd write to her instantly, & she would come at once, if anywhere in Italy. So kind, so like her!– She spends the winter in Rome, but an intermediate month at Florence—& we are to keep tryst with her somewhere in the spring .. perhaps at Venice. If not, she says that she will come back here, for that certainly she will see us. She would have stayed altogether perhaps, if it had not been for her book upon art which she is engaged to bring out next year, & the materials for which are to be sought. As to Pisa, she liked it just as we like it. Oh, it is so beautiful, & so full of repose, yet not desolate: it is rather the repose of sleep than of death. Then after the first ten days of rain, which seemed to refer us fatally to Alfieri’s ‘piova e ripiova,’ [5] came as perpetual a divine sunshine, such cloudless, exquisite weather that we ask whether it may not be June instead of November. Everyday I am out walking while the golden oranges look at me over the walls, .. & when I am tired R. & I sit down on a stone to watch the lizards. We have been to your seashore, too, & seen your island—only he insists on it (Robert does) that it is not Corsica but Gorgona, & that Corsica is not in sight. [6] Beautiful & blue the island was, however, in any case. It might have been Prospero’s instead of either. Also we have driven up to the foot of mountains, & seen them reflected down in the little pure lake of Asciano—& we have seen the pine woods, & met the camels laden with faggots, all in a line. [7] So now ask me again if I enjoy my liberty as you expect. My head goes round sometimes—that is all. I never was happy before in my life–
Ah—but of course the painful thoughts recur! There are some whom I love too tenderly to be easy under their displeasure .. or even under their injustice– Only it seems to me, that with time & patience, my poor dearest Papa will be melted into opening his arms to us—will be melted into a clearer understanding of motives & intentions—I cannot believe that he will forget me as he says he will, & go on thinking me to be dead rather than alive & happy. So I manage to hope for the best—& all that remains .. all my life here .. is best already .. could not be better or happier. And willingly tell dear Mr Martin .. I would take him & you for witnesses of it—& in the meanwhile, he is not to send me tantalizing messages, no, indeed!– Unless you really, really, should let yourselves be wafted our way– And could you do so much better at Pau? Particularly if Fanny Hanford [8] shd come here—— Will she really? The climate is described by the inhabitants as a “pleasant spring throughout the winter” .. & if you were to see Robert & me treading our path along the shady side everywhere, to avoid the “excessive heat of the sun” in this November(!) … it would appear a good beginning. We are not in the warm, orthodox position by the Arno, because we heard with our ears, one of the best physicians of the place advise against it– “Better” he said “to have cool rooms to live in, & warm walks to go out along.” The rooms we have, are rather over-cool perhaps—we are obliged to have a little fire in the sitting room in the mornings & evenings, that is: but I do not fear for the winter—there is too much difference to my feelings between this november & any English november I ever knew. We have our dinners from the Trattoria at two oclock, & can dine our favorite way on thrushes & Chianti with a miraculous cheapness—& no trouble, no cook, no kitchen, .. the prophet Elijah <or the lilies of the field> [9] took as little thought for their dining––which exactly suits us– It is a continental fashion, which we never cease commending. Then at six we have coffee & rolls of milk––made of milk, I mean: & at nine, our supper (call it supper, if you please) of roast chesnuts & grapes– So you see how primitive we are, & how I forget to praise the eggs at breakfast. The worst of Pisa is, or would be to some persons, that, socially speaking it has its dulnesses .. it is not lively like Florence .. not in that way– But we do not want society—we shun it rather. We like the Duomo & the Campo Santo instead. Then we know a little of Professor Ferucci who gives us access to the University library, & we subscribe to a modern one—& we have plenty of writing to do of our own– If we can do anything for Fanny Hanford, let us know– It wd be too happy, I suppose, to have to do it for yourselves– Think .. however!—— I am quite well, quite well. I can thank God too, for being alive & well!– Make dear Mr Martin keep well, & not forget himself in the Herefordshire cold—draw him into the sun somewhere. Now write, & tell me everything of your plans & of you both, dearest friends!—— My husband bids me say that he desires to have my friends for his own friends, & that he is grateful to you for not crossing that feeling. Let him send his regards to you. And let me be through all changes,
your ever faithful & most affectionate
Ba
Do thank everybody who has been kind to me—among the first, I am sure .. the Peytons. Also I have a particular motive for thanking Rosa, [10] who had a kindness to send me a shoe-embaliner (is that word fine enough for its pretty red ribbons?) received by me the very morning of my leaving Wimpole Street. I could not answer her note, therefore. But do thank her, & say that her present has been accounted both useful & kind.
I am expecting everyday to hear from my dearest sisters– Write to them & love them for me.
This letter has been kept for several days from different causes. Will you enclose the little note to Miss Mitford? I do not hear from home & am uneasy– May God bless you!——
Novr 9.
I am so vexed about those poems appearing just now in Blackwood!– Papa must think it impudent of me– It is unfortunate.
Address, on cover sheet: Angleterre– viâ France. / Mrs Martin / Colwall / Malvern / Worcestershire.
Publication: LEBB, I, 300–304 (in part).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. James Thomson, The Castle of Indolence (1748), bk. 1, st. lxviii.
3. Cf. Heinrich Heine, Reisebilder (1826), “Die Heimkehr” (“The Homecoming”), XXXVIII.
4. Literally, “from the tip of the lips,” here the meaning seems to be “in a forced manner,” or “paying lip service.”
5. “Rain and more rain” (cf. Vittorio Alfieri, “Sonneto CXXXIV” (1789), lines 1–4).
6. According to Murray’s Hand-Book for Travellers in Northern Italy (1847), water for Pisa was provided by a “watercourse … from the Valle d’Asciano” (p. 441). Murray’s Hand-Book also points out that “the island of Gorgona in the far horizon, and, in fine weather, even the island of Capraia” are visible from the top of the Campanile (p. 446).
7. In a description of the Cascine near Pisa, Murray’s Hand-Book notes that “upwards of 1500 cows are kept here; but the camels are the principal curiosities. There are about 200 of these useful beasts, who do not here do much work; and the keeping of them is merely a whim” (p. 477).
8. Frances Hanford (1823–75) and her brother Compton John Hanford (1819–60), en route to Rome from England, called on the Brownings on 28 November 1846 (see SD1299). On their return from Rome they visited the Brownings in Florence in May 1847, and while they were there he witnessed the Brownings’ marriage settlement, which they took back to England (see the end of letter 2678). Their mother, Elizabeth Hanford (1783–1844), was James Martin’s sister. The Hanford family seat was Woollas Hall, Worcestershire, located approximately sixteen miles from Hope End.
9. Bracketed passage is interpolated above the line. Cf. I Kings 17:1–16 and Matthew 6:28.
10. Elizabeth Rosetta (“Rosa”) Peyton (1824–74).
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