2744. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 15, 122–127.
Florence.
August 24– [1848] [1]
Ever dearest Miss Mitford, it’s great comfort to have your letter,—for as it came more lingeringly than usual I had time to be a little anxious, .. & even my husband has confessed since that he thought what he would not say aloud for fear of paining me, as to the probability of your being less well than usual. Your letters come so regularly to the hour, you see, that when it strikes without them, we ask why. Thank God, you are better after all, and reviving in spirits, as I saw at the first glance before the words said it clearly. I do thank God—and I thank you too for telling me the delightful news in your own delightful way, dearest Miss Mitford. What a lovely nest you must have found on the river-bank, & how you must have enjoyed the scenery & the freshness, the new drives & new impressions—(I am quite pleased & satisfied .. you could not have chosen better, certainly ..) the old friends & old resources being carried with you in a manner, so that you combined all things.
As for ourselves, we have scarcely done so well—yet well,—having enjoyed a great deal in spite of drawbacks. Murray, the traitor, sent us to Fano as a “delightful summer residence for an English family,” & we found it uninhabitable from the heat [2] .. vegetation scorched into paleness, the very air swooning in the sun, and the gloomy looks of the inhabitants sufficiently corroborative of their words, that no drop of rain or dew ever falls there during the summer. A “circulating library” which “does’nt give out books”, and “a refined & intellectual Italian society” (I quote Murray for that phrase) which “never reads a book through” (I quote Mrs Wiseman, Dr Wiseman’s mother who has lived in Fano seven years) [3] complete the advantages of the place—yet the churches are beautiful, and a divine picture of Guercino’s [4] is worth going all that way to see. By a happy accident we fell in with Mrs Wiseman, who having married her daughter [5] to Count Gabrielli with ancestral possessions in Fano, has lived on there from year to year, in a state of permanent moaning as far as I could apprehend. She is a very intelligent & vivacious person, & having been used to the best French society, bears but ill this exile from the common civilities of life. I wish Dr Wiseman, of whose childhood & manhood, she spoke with touching pride, would ask her to minister to the domestic rites of his bishop’s palace in Westminster—there wd be no hesitation I fancy, in her acceptance of the invitation. Agreeable as she & her daughter were however, we fled from Fano, after three days,—& finding ourselves cheated out of our dream of summer coolness, resolved on substituting for it what the Italians call ‘un bel giro’. [6] So we went to Ancona .. a striking sea-city, holding up against the brown rocks & elbowing out the purple tides—beautiful to look upon. An exfoliation of the rock itself, you would call the houses that seem to grow there—so identical is the colour & character. I shd like to visit Ancona again when there is a little air & shadow—we stayed a week as it was, living upon fish & cold water. Water, water, was the cry all day long: & really you shd have seen me (or you shd not have seen me) lying on the sofa, & demoralized out of all sense of female vanity, not to say decency—with dishevelled hair at full length .. and “sans gown, sans stays, sans shoes, sans everything” [7] .. except a petticoat & white dressing-wrapper. I said something feebly once about the waiter; but I dont think I meant it for earnest, for when Robert said “Oh, dont mind, dear”, certainly I did’nt mind in the least. People dont, I suppose; when they are in ovens, or in exhausted receivers. Never before did I guess what heat was—that’s sure. We went to Loretto for a day—back through Ancona, Sinigaglia .. (oh, I forgot to tell you—there was no fair this year at Sinigaglia– [8] Italy will be content, I suppose, with selling her honour! [9] ) Fano .. Pesaro, Rimini, to Ravenna, .. back again over the Apennines from Forli. A “bel giro”—was’nt it? Ravenna where Robert positively wanted to go to live once, has itself put an end to those yearnings. The churches are wonderful: holding an atmosphere of purple glory—and if one could live just in them, or in Dante’s tomb [10] .. well! otherwise, keep me from Ravenna! The very antiquity of the houses is whitewashed, and the marshes on all sides send up stenches new & old, till the hot air is sick with them. To get to the pine-forest [11] which is exquisite, you have to go a mile along the canal, the exhalations pursuing you step for step—and, what ruffled me more than all beside, we were not admitted into the house of Dante’s tomb “without an especial permission from the authorities”. Quite furious I was about this, & both of us, too angry to think of applying: but we stood at the grated window & read the pathetic inscription [12] as distinctly as if we had touched the marble. We stood there between three & four in the morning and then went straight on to Florence from that tomb of the exiled poet– Just what we should have done, had the circumstances been arranged in a dramatic intention! From Forli, the air grew pure & quick again; and the exquisite, almost visionary scenery of the Apennines, the wonderful variety of shape & colour, the sudden transitions, & vital individuality of those mountains .. the chesnut forests dropping by their own weight into the deep ravines, .. the rocks cloven & clawed by the living torrents .. and the hills, hill above hill, piling up their grand existences as if they did it themselves, changing colour in the effort—of these things I cannot give you an idea—and if words could not, painting could not either. Indeed the whole scenery of our journey .. except where we approached the coast .. was full of beauty. The first time we crossed the Apennine (near Borgo San Sepolchro) we did it by moonlight—& the flesh was weak, & one fell asleep, & saw things between sleep & wake—only the effects were grand & singular so, even though of course we lost much in the distinctness. Well,—but you will understand from all this, that we were delighted to get home—I was, I assure you. Florence seemed as cool as an oven after the fire .. indeed we called it quite cool! and I took possession of my own chair & put up my feet on the cushions, & was charmed, both with having been so far & coming back so soon. Three weeks brought us home. Flush was a fellow-traveller of course, & enjoyed it in the most obviously amusing manner. Never was there so good a dog in a carriage before his time! Think of Flush, too! He has a supreme contempt for trees & hills or anything of that kind, &, in the intervals of natural scenery, he drew in his head from the window & did’nt consider it worth looking at: but when the population thickened, & when a village or a town was to be passed through, .. then, his eyes were starting out of his head with eagerness .. he looked east, he looked west .. you would conclude that he was taking notes or preparing them. His eagerness to get into the carriage first used to amuse the Italians. Ah, poor Italy! I am as mortified as an Italian ought to be. They have only the rhetoric of patriots & soldiers, I fear! Tuscany is to be spared forsooth, if she lies still—& here, she lies, eating ices & keeping the feast of the Madonna. [13] Perdoni! [14] but she has a review in the Cascine besides—and a gallant show of some “ten thousand men”, they are said to have made of it!—only dont think that I & Robert went out to see that sight! We should have sickened at it too much. An amiable, refined people, too, these Tuscans are—conciliating & affectionate. When you look out into the streets on feast-days, you wd take it for one great “route” [15] —everybody appears dressed for a drawing room, & you can scarcely discern the least difference between class & class, from the Grand Duchess to the Donna di fac[c]enda: [16] also there is no belying of the costume in the manners,—the most gracious & graceful courtesy & gentleness being apparent in the thickest crowds. This is all attractive & delightful—but the people wants stamina, wants conscience, wants self-reverence: Dante’s soul has died out of the land. Enough of this. As for France, I have “despaired of the republic” for very long—but the nation is a great nation, & will right itself under some flag, white or red. [17] Dont you think so? Thank you for the news of our authors—it is as “the sound of a trumpet afar off,” [18] & I am like the war-horse. Neglectful that I am, I forgot to tell you before that you heard quite rightly about Mr Thackeray’s wife who is ill so. [19] Since your question, I had in gossip from England, that the book “Jane Eyre” was written by a governess in his house, & that the preface to the foreign edition refers to him in some masked way. [20] We have not seen the book at all. But the first letter in which you mentioned your Oxford student caught us in the midst of his work upon art. [21] Very vivid, very graphic, full of sensibility .. but inconsequent in some of the reasoning, it seemed to me, & rather flashy than full in the metaphysics. Robert who knows a good deal about art, to which knowledge I of course have no pretence, could agree with him only by snatches—and we both of us, standing before a very expressive picture of Dominichino’s (the David—at Fano) wondered how he could blaspheme so against a great artist. [22] Still, he is no ordinary man—and for a critic to be so much a poet, is a great thing. Also, we have by no means, I should imagine, seen the utmost of his stature.
How kindly you speak to me of my dearest sisters! Yes, go to see them whenever you are in London—they are worthy of the gladness of receiving you. And will you write soon to me, & tell me everything of yourself—how you are, how home agrees with you, & the little details which are such gold-dust to absent friends. We have taken a man-servant [23] in place of the woman who used to help Wilson: a cook, housemaid, valet de chambre, butler, all in one .. (that’s the way people do things in Italy!) and we find advantages in this new arrangement, both as to comfort & œconomy. Wilson makes my bed & her own, & attends to me personally as usual—& the rest of the business is made over to him in a heap. I must tell you that my friend Nelly Bordman (do you remember the weakness in her eyes, & how you had some interest in her altogether?) has just married Mr Jago, with whom she had for years lived as a daughter– “She looks like his grand-daughter,” say my sisters—but he has been saint & angel to her, and I firmly believe that no younger man cd have made her as happy. His first wife died last year, & that was an unhappy marriage. She writes to me with a heart overflowing—dear Nelly!– The marriages on all sides take me by surprise. Nearly every one of my female friends have “been & done it”—or are being & doing it, at least. May God bless you, my beloved friend. Let me ever be (my husband joining in all warm regards)
your most affectionate
Ba.
Mr Ware has gone for a week to Vallombrosa. I read to him your message & much he appeared gratified: & if he goes to England, you will see him.
How I sympathize with you in the vexation of visitors. You know I used to wonder how you bore it. Mere visitors—not friends & sympathizers.
Address, on integral page: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 248–253.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. In Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Central Italy (1843), Fano’s climate is described as “extremely healthy, but cold in the winter and spring,” and summer there “would afford one of the most agreeable residences in Italy” (p. 111).
3. Xaviera Wiseman (née Strange) was the second wife of James Wiseman, an Irish merchant. “Dr. Wiseman” refers to their son, Nicholas Patrick Stephen Wiseman (1802–65), who had been made a Roman Catholic bishop in 1840. At the time of this letter he was serving as Pius IX’s envoy to Palmerston. Wiseman was the model for RB’s worldly bishop in “Bishop Blougram’s Apology.”
4. “The Guardian Angel” (“L’Angelo Custode”) by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591–1666), called “Guercino,” was the inspiration for RB’s poem “The Guardian-Angel: A Picture at Fano,” published in Men and Women (1855). When the Brownings saw the painting, it hung in the church of San Agostino. It is now in the City of Fano Archaelogical Museum and Art Gallery.
5. Frances Wiseman (b. 1804) was married to Count Andrea Gabrielli of Fano, a member of the Alto Consiglio degli Stati Pontifici at this time.
6. “A fine tour.”
7. Cf. As You Like It, II, 7, 166.
8. Doubtless because of revolution and war in Italy. Even though no fair was held, EBB recorded her thoughts about it in an unpublished poem entitled “Our Journey to Sinigaglia. Unfinished” (see Reconstruction, D698 and 699).
9. EBB refers to the armistice, requested by Piedmont and granted by Austria, that was signed on 9 August 1848 in Milan. One of its conditions was the withdrawal of all Piedmontese forces from Lombardy and Venetia (EB).
10. A special mausoleum built by Bernardo Bembo to honour the poet (Murray’s Handbook, p. 89).
11. The pine forest, or Pineta, which “supplied Rome with timber for her fleets,” was celebrated by Dante and other poets (Murray’s Handbook, p. 95).
12. “Jura monarchiae superos Phlegetonta lacusque / Lustrando cecini volverunt Fata quousque / Sed quia pars cessit melioribus hospita castris / Actoremque suum petiit felicior astris / Hic claudor Dantes patriis extorris ab oris / Quem genuit parvi Florentia mater amoris.” Translation: “The rights of Monarchy, the Heavens, the Stream of Fire, the Pit, / In vision seen, I sang as far as to the Fates seemed fit; / But since my soul, an alien here, hath flown to nobler wars, / And, happier now, hath gone to seek its Maker ’mid the stars, / Here am I Dante shut, exiled from the ancestral shore, / Whom Florence, the of all least-loving mother, bore” (James Russell Lowell, Among My Books, 2nd series, Boston, 1876, p. 17).
13. The feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is observed on 15 August.
14. “Forgive us!”
15. Sic, for “rout.”
16. “Housemaid.”
17. When the revolutionaries took control of Paris in February 1848, they adopted a red banner as their flag. A red flag known as the “Oriflamme” is also the traditional emblem of St. Denis, the patron saint of Paris. The historic banner of the Bourbon dynasty is a white flag.
18. Cf. Job 39:24–25.
19. Thackeray had married Isabella Gethen Creagh Shawe (1820–1893) in Paris in 1836. She became permanently deranged four years later, following the birth of their third daughter.
20. Commenting on the book, in a letter to William Smith Williams, dated 23 October 1847, Thackeray wrote: “The plot of the story is one with which I am familiar” (The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray, ed. Gordon N. Ray, Cambridge, Mass., 1945–46, 2, 319). Gordon N. Ray notes that “Thackeray’s phrasing is ambiguous, but it seems likely that he refers, not to a literary parallel, but to the similarity between his own history and certain parts of Jane Eyre” (2, 319n). A few months later, after the publication of the second edition of Jane Eyre, which was dedicated to Thackeray, he wrote to Charlotte Brontë, and although his letter has not survived, a letter from her to Williams, in which she refers to Thackeray’s letter makes it clear that Thackeray “did not conceal from Miss Brontë that her compliment was not altogether happy. ‘It appears,’ she writes … ‘that his private position is in some points similar to that I have ascribed to Mr. Rochester, that thence arose a report that “Jane Eyre” had been written by a governess in his family, and that the dedication coming now has confirmed everybody in the surmise’” (2, 341n).
21. i.e., Modern Painters by John Ruskin. It was first published in 1843, and a third edition, revised by the author, appeared in 1846. These editions were published anonymously by “a Graduate of Oxford.”
22. Domenico Zampieri (1581–1641), also known as “Il Domenichino,” whose “David with the Head of Goliath” is in the Collegio Nolfi, is described in volume one of Modern Painters as “palpably incapable of doing anything good, great, or right in any field, way, or kind, whatsoever” and Ruskin adds in a footnote “that whatever appears good in any of the doings of such a painter must be deceptive, and that we may be assured that our taste is corrupted and false whenever we feel disposed to admire him” (3rd. ed., 1846, p. 87).
23. Alessandro Barsotti, who remained in the Brownings’ service until they left Florence for England in May 1851. He replaced Annunziata.
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