2735. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 15, 83–86.
[Florence]
May 28 [1848] [1]
So you have been in danger from the poney which took bread from K’s hand! [2] There’s a treacherous poney! Dearest Miss Mitford, how it touches me to think of the fright you have had, you who I fear, I fear, are not at the strongest as to nerves & health just now! I catch my breath at the image of the kicking creature & of you petrified in the carriage .. unable to move .. and K’s courage, well rewarded by your safety. Now do tell me how the whole evil resolves itself—because, that a man (let him be an attorney ever so) should refuse to take back his poney after such a circumstance, he having in the first instance answered for its docility, would be a miracle of atrocity, and I really cant receive it as credible any way. Why not make one of your male friends, Mr May for instance, call on the man & state the facts? Face to face he could not decently refuse. It is enough that you have been nearly killed, frightened, shaken enough even for an attorney. And this fright .. oh, I hope it wont give you a distaste to driving out altogether: it ought’nt indeed! there are ponies in the world, quiet as sheep, remember; and air & exercise must be necessary things for you. K. may be right about the going to London—but certainly my impression remains that to go somewhere, .. say to Mrs Partridge’s neighbourhood, .. to have quietly & without excitement, change of scene & air, would do you infinite good. This failure of spirits, what is it but a pure failure of health? & yet there’s no breaking up of health neither!—nothing but what a little shifting of the scenery will remedy in a way which perhaps you do not reckon upon, you who plant yourself like a tree, & have not studied the miraculous effects of a new air upon the constitution, when softly glided into. Do you ever think of the sea side for instance? A lodging in a sea bathing place—sea baths .. wandering by the shore .. donkey carts—have the words pleasant ideas in them for you?– And now I must tell you what we have done since I wrote last little thinking of doing so? You see our problem was, to get to England as much in our summers as possible, the expence of the intermediate journeys making it difficult of solution. On examination of the whole case, it appeared manifest that we were throwing money into the Arno, by our way of taking furnished rooms, while to take an apartment & furnish it, would leave us a clear return of the furniture at the end of the first year in exchange for our outlay, & of all but a free residence afterwards, with the priviledge of making it productive by under-letting at our good pleasure. For instance, rooms we paid four guineas a month for, we could have the whole year unfurnished for ten or twelve, .. the cheapness of the furniture being besides something quite fabulous, especially at the present crisis– Laying which facts together, & seeing besides the all but necessity for us to reside abroad the colder part of every year, we leapt on our feet to the obvious conclusion you have before you!—and though the temptation was too strong for us to adopt quite the cheapest ways of the cheap scheme, by the dense economy of preferring small rooms &c, .. though in fact we have really done it magnificently, & planted ourselves in the Guidi palace, in the favorite suite of the last count, (his arms are in scagliola on the floor of my bedroom, ..) though we have six beautiful rooms & a kitchen, .. three of them quite palace rooms & opening on a terrace, .. & though such furniture as comes by slow degrees into them is antique & worthy of the place, we yet shall have saved money by the close of this year, .. while, for next year, see! We shall let our apartment & go to England, drawing from it the product of “furnished rooms”!– Now, I tell you all this, lest you hear dreadful rumours of our having forsaken our native land, venerable institutions & all,—whereas we remember it so well (it’s a dear land in many senses) that we have done this thing chiefly in order to make sure of being able to get back comfortably. My friends the Martins used to have a home in Normandy, & carry the key of it in their pocket—going there just every year at fishing-time. A corner in Florence may pass for a still better thing, even without the terrace, & the orangetrees & camelias we mean to throng it with. A stone’s throw, too, it is, from the Pitti,—& really, in my present mind, I would scarcely exchange with the Grand Duke himself. Our rooms are delightful, & Flush agrees to praise them—all but the terrace, which he considers full of risks. There, he will go only by himself or with me—to walk there, three at a time, may involve a pushing off into the street, of which he has a lively sense in his imagination. By the bye, as to street, we have no spectators at windows .. just the grey wall of a church called San Felice for good omen. [3] Now, have you heard enough of us? What I claimed first, in way of priviledge, was a spring-sofa to loll upon, & a supply of rain water to wash in! and you should see what a picturesque oil-jar they have given us for the latter purpose. It wd just hold the captain of the forty thieves. [4] As to the chairs & tables I yield the more especial interest in them to Robert. Only, you would laugh to hear us correct one another sometimes– “Dear, you get too many drawers, & not enough washing stands. Pray dont let us have any more drawers, when we’ve nothing more to put into them.” There was no divison on the necessity of having six spoons—some questions pass themselves. Now do write to me & be as egotistical!– At last we have caught sight of Tennyson’s Princess & I may or must profess to be a good deal disappointed. What woman will tell the great poet that Mary Wol[l]stonecraft herself never dreamt of setting up collegiate states, proctordoms & the rest, [5] .. which is a worn-out plaything in the hands of one sex already, & need not be transferred in order to be proved ridiculous? As for the poetry, beautiful in some parts, he never seems to me to come up to his own highest mark, in the rhythm especially. The old blank verse of Tennyson was a divine thing, but this new, .. mounted for certain critics … may please them perhaps better than it pleases me. Still the man is Tennyson, take him for all & all, [6] & I never shall forgive whatever princesses of my sex may have ill-treated him.–
Are you aware that Miss Garrow, praised by Landor, has married Mr Tom Trollope, praised, I believe, of horse-jockeys generally? [7] He is said to be goodnatured—& they are to live with Mrs Trollope .. & Robert was sitting with Powers the sculptor, when a tribute of wedding cake arrived for the latter. It strikes me as a strange marriage—only the natural marriages are the exception always perhaps. Glad I am heartily that poor Mrs Partridge has the desire of her heart. May the little babe [8] be joy & life to her together! a better thing to twine one’s soul about than amateur-art, in any case. Well—poor France? How I shd like to hear you talk of poor France—how I hope that you are able to hope for her! Oh, this absurdity of communism & mythological fête-ism [9] .. where can it end? They had better have kept Louis Phillipe after all, if they are no more practical– Your Madame [10] must be insufferable indeed, seeing that her knowledge of these subjects & men did not make her sufferable to you. My curiosity never is exhausted. What I hold is, that the French have a higher ideal than we, & that all this clambering, leaping, struggling of indefinite awkwardness, simply proves it. But success in the republic is different still. I fear for them. My uncle & his family are safe at Tunbridge Wells, my aunt longing to be able to get back again. [11] For those who are still nearer to me, I have no heart to speak of them, loving them as I do & must to the end, whatever that end may be—but my dearest sisters write often to me .. never let me miss their affection. I am quite well again & strong .. & Robert & I go out after tea in a wandering walk to sit in the Loggia & look at the Perseus, [12] or, better still, at the divine sunsets on the Arno, turning it to pure gold under the bridges. After more than twenty months of marriage, we are happier than ever—I may saw we. Italy will regenerate herself in all senses, I hope & believe– In Florence we are very quiet, & the English fly in proportion. N.B. Always first fly the Majors & gallant captains, unless there’s a general! How I shd like to see dear Mr Horne’s poem? [13] He’s bold, at least—yes, & has a great heart to be bold with!– A cloud has fallen on me some few weeks ago, in the illness & death of my dear friend Mr Boyd: but he did not suffer & is not to be mourned by those without hope. [14] Still, it has been a cloud. May God bless you my beloved friend. Write soon & of yourself to
your ever affectionate
Ba
My husband’s regards go to you of course.
Address, on integral page: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 238–242.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. See letter 2733.
3. This church is opposite Casa Guidi, across Via Mazzetta.
4. A reference to “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” in The Arabian Nights, where the captain of the thieves hides his men in the oil jars he brings to the house of Ali Baba.
5. An allusion to Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). The heroine of Tennyson’s poem establishes a university for women.
6. Cf. Hamlet, I, 2, 187.
7. See letter 2718, note 4.
8. See letter 2720, note 3.
9. France’s provisional government attempted to unify disparate parties within the revolutionary movement by orchestrating a series of national public celebrations. A Times correspondent reported on the Festival of Concord held on 21 May 1848: “if the fête … is to be regarded as a type of the Republic it was intended to glorify, certainly the Republic possesses not the elements necessary to render it attractive in the eyes of the world” (24 May 1848, p. 6). EBB’s mention of “communism” refers to the socialist aspect of the revolution as exhibited in the establishment of national workshops.
10. See letter 2727, note 18.
11. i.e., to France. Robert and Jane Hedley and their children had been residing at Tours, but left because of the 1848 revolution.
12. “Perseus and Medusa” by Cellini, which EBB mentioned having seen “in a sort of flash” a year earlier; see letter 2676, note 6.
13. Judas Iscariot; see letter 2727, note 24.
14. Cf. I Thessalonians 4:13.
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