2736. EBB to Julia Martin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 15, 87–90.
Palazzo Guidi– Florence–
but direct as usual Poste Restante
June 20. [1848] [1]
My dearest Mrs Martin, Now I am going to answer your letter which I all but lost & got ever so many days beyond the right day, because you directed it to Mrs William Browning. Pray remember Robert Browning, for the future, .. in right descent from Robert Brunnyng, [2] the first English poet. Mrs Jameson says “it’s ominous of the actual Robert’s being the last English poet”; a saying which I give you to remember us by, rejecting the omen. I was so glad to have your letter & your cheerful words about France. Deeply interested, of course, I could not choose but be on that subject, and your opinion is always valuable—and then, it was delightful to find that you & dear Mr Martin were well & had passed the winter so satisfactorily. Observe .. in time for your autumnal plans .. that our railroad is just open the whole way from Florence to Leghorn. You pay four & sixpence by the first train, & arrive in three hours. The French railroad from Paris to Marseilles was moreover to be open this summer; & with few interruptions, it is already open. If they will but be reasonable & keep to their intentions, you may go from Boulogne to Marseilles by rail, .. then, from Leghorn to Florence, by rail. No long journey is possible to you, threatening less fatigue,—and at the end of it, you have every sort of comfort & civilization, with Italy thrown in. If Florence did not agree, you are at Pisa in an hour. Do think of these things. It is my deep interest to persuade you, for we have grown to be Florentine citizens, as perhaps you have heard. Health & means, both forbade our settlement in England; & the journey backward & forwards being another sort of expense, & very necessary, with our ties & affections, .. we had to think how to live here, when we were here, at the cheapest. The difference between taking a furnished apartment & an unfurnished one is something immense. For our furnished rooms, we have had always to pay some four guineas a month; & unfurnished rooms of equal pretension, we cd have, for twelve a year .. & the furniture (out & out) for fifty pounds. This calculation, together with the consideration that we could let our apartment whenever we travelled, & receive back the whole cost, could not choose of course but determine us. On coming to the point, however, we grew ambitious, & preferred giving five & twenty guineas for a noble suite of rooms in the palazzo Guidi, a stone’s throw from the Pitti, & furnishing them after our own taste rather than after our economy—the economy having a legitimate share of respect notwithstanding; & the satisfactory thing being, that the whole expense of this furnishing .. rococo chairs, spring sofas, carved bookcases, satin from cardinals beds, & the rest, .. is covered by the proceeds of our books during the last two winters. This is satisfying—is’nt it? we shall stand safe within the borders of our narrow income, even this year—&, next year, comes the harvest! We shall go to England in the spring .. & return home to Italy––do you understand? Mr Kenyon our friend & counsellor, writes to applaud:—such prudence was never known before among poets. Then we have a plan, .. that, when the summer (this summer) grows too hot, we shall just take up our carpet bag & Wilson, & plunge into the mountains in search of the monasteries beyond Vallombrosa, .. from Arezzo, go to St Sepolchro in the Appenines, & thence to Fano on the sea shore, .. making a round back, perhaps, (after seeing the great fair at Sinigaglia [3] ) to Ravenna, & Bologna, home. As to Rome, our plan is to give up Rome next winter, .. seeing that we must go to England in the spring .. I must see my dearest sisters & whoever else dear will see me,—& Robert must see his family beside: & going to Rome will take us too far from the route, & cost too much: & then we are not inclined to give the first fruits of our new apartment to strangers, if we could let it ever so easily this year. You cant think how well the rooms look already—you must come & see them, you & dear Mr Martin! Three immense rooms we have, & a fourth small one for a bookroom & winter-room—windows opening on a little terrace .. eight windows to the south: two good bedrooms behind, with a smaller terrace—& kitchen &c.: all on a first floor & Count Guidi’s favorite suite. The Guidi were connected by marriage with the Ugolini of Pisa—Dante’s Ugolino: only we shun all traditions of the tower of Famine, & promise to give you excellent coffee whenever you will come to give us the opportunity. We shall have vines & myrtles & orangetrees on the terrace, & I shall have a watering pot, & garden just as you do, .. though it must be on the bricks instead of the ground. For temperature, the stoves are said to be very effective in the winter; & in the summer we are cool & airy: the advantage of these thickwalled palazzos, is coolness in summer & warmth in winter. I am very well & quite strong again .. or rather, stronger than ever, & able to walk as far as Cellini’s Perseus in the moonlight evenings, on the other side of the Arno. Oh, that Arno in the sunset, with the moon & evening star standing by!—how divine it is! I long to have George at vacation time: he might come at so little expence, & we should make such glad room for him & show him all the wonders!—but no, he is too proud .. or something! If he wont write to me, I cant expect the visit, I suppose. There,—now .. I turn off that current of thought abruptly. Besides, this letter is too egotistical already. Do avenge yourself in kind. Do let me hear everything of both of you & what you mean to do with your summer, & what you think of France at present, & of the probable results. The communists seem to have ruined the republicans. The republic being the most rational of governments, & communism the most impossible of systems, one trips the other up. Then they want men. Lamartine is not strong enough. I do fear very much for France .. that is, for the French republic. Robert is out of patience with their “mythological” consolations, & their mania of taking the sign of a thing for the thing itself. Meanwhile, we are struggling on gallantly in Italy, .. and Austria will never, whatever else she does, recover her position. Nearly everybody English has run away—but we, (having been assured of the facility of getting money, even if it should hail swords) never for an instant contemplated doing the like. When you write, (& let it be soon) do particularly mention Fanny Flood, [4] & if she has suffered any alarm in Ireland. I confess I should not have liked being in Ireland in the time of these latter-day saints, Mitchell & the rest. [5] But because men talk rashly, are they to be associated with criminals? The autocrat of Russia does better, when he sends writers against his government, to the nearest madhouse. [6] As it is, your English governments have a tendency that way, themselves. Enlightened liberal England, with her Jew-bill [7] & anti-chartism, is in ar[r]ears with the civilization & liberty of the rest of Europe—& one can but sigh to see it so. Tell me if Fanny Flood is well & in spirits, & if you are likely to have sight of her this summer. Tell me too of our friends in Herefordshire? How is Lady Margaret Cocks?– And the Peytons? Is Berry happy in her prospects, & are they likely to be much prolonged? Did Miss Commeline persevere in her solitude? & is it true that Mr Commeline is going to be married? My sisters rumoured something of the sort to me. May God bless you dearest friends.
Think of me as ever your most affectionate Ba–
My husband’s regards always. I have been saddened lately by the loss of my dear friend Mr Boyd—you heard, perhaps.
Address, on integral page: Mrs Martin / Colwall / near Malvern. / Worcestershire.
Publication: LEBB, I, 371–373 (in part).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by EBB’s references to the Brownings’ return to Palazzo Guidi, which occurred on 9 May 1848.
2. See letter 2668, note 5.
3. Also spelled Senigallia, it is located midway between Fano and Ancona on the Adriatic coast. According to Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Central Italy (1843), the town is noteworthy for its “Fair of St. Mary Magdalen … . It commences on the 20th July, and lasts to the 8th August; during these twenty days the town is crowded with visitors from all parts of Italy, with merchants from countries beyond the Alps and from the Levant” (p. 114).
4. Frances Hanford (see letter 2627, note 8) married William Lloyd Flood (1809?–92, later, 1861, Hanford-Flood) of Farmley, co. Kilkenny, Ireland, on 18 November 1847.
5. John Mitchel (1815–75), an Irish revolutionary who had broken with Daniel O’Connell in 1846 and subsequently founded the Irish Confederation, was convicted of treason felony in May 1848 and sentenced to 14 years transportation.
6. In light of events in early 1848 in the West, Nicholas I acted quickly to ensure “that Russia herself would remain totally untouched by the revolutionary menace … in Central and Eastern Europe. … His programme of paternal guidance for all Russian society therefore degenerated into a system of obscurantism which suppressed even the most innocuous expressions of independent views, and made it impossible to discuss even remotely progressive ideas in print” (W. Bruce Lincoln, Nicholas I: Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias, 1978, p. 298). Referring to censorship of writers in the reign of Nicholas I, another biographer reported: “When it was a case of young offenders, Nicholas was satisfied by summoning them suddenly before him, saying a few words of fatherly reproach and them sending them as soldiers to a distant garrison (he did this with the student Polejaev), or shutting them up in a mental hospital (this happened to Chichkov, grandson of a Minister)” (Constantin de Grunwald, Tsar Nicholas I, trans. Brigit Patmore, 1954, p. 240).
7. A bill for the emancipation of English Jews was defeated in the House of Lords on 25 May 1848.
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