2757. EBB to Julia Martin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 15, 173–177.
Florence.
Decr 3– [1848] [1]
My dearest Mrs Martin, It seemed long to me that you had not written, & it seems long to me now that I have not answered the kind letter which came at last. Then, Henrietta told me of your being unwell at the moment of her mad excursion into Herefordshire—altogether I want to speak to you & hear from you, & shall be easier & gladder when both are done. Do forgive my sins & write directly, & tell me everything about both of you, & how you are in spirits & health, & whether you really make up your minds to see more danger in the stormy influences of the continent, in the moral point of view, than in those of England in the physical. For my part I hold to my original class of fear, & wd rather face two or three revolutions than an East wind of an English winter. If I were you I wd go to Pau as usual & take poor Abdel Kader’s place [2] —(my husband is furious about the treatment of Abdel Kader, so I hear a good deal about him ..) or I would go to Italy & try Florence, where really, democratic ministries roar as gently as sucking doves, [3] particularly when they are safe in place. We have listened to dreadful rumours– Florence was to have been sacked several times by the Livornese .. the Grand Duke went so far as to send away his family to Siena, and we had “morte ai Fiorentini” [4] chalked up on the walls. Still, somehow or other, the peace has been kept in Florentine fashion .. it has rained once or twice .. which is always enough here to moderate the most revolutionary when they wear their best surtouts .. & I look forward to an unbroken tranquillity just as I used to do, even though the windows of the Ridolfi palace [5] (the ambassador in London) were smashed the other evening a few yards from ours. Perhaps a gentle & affectionate approach to contempt for our Florentines mixes a little with this feeling of security—but what then? They are an amiable, refined, graceful people, with much of the artistic temperament as distinguished from that of men of genius .. effeminate .. no, rather feminine in a better sense, .. of a fancy easily stirred into impulse, but with no strenuous & determinate strength in them. What they comprehend best in the “Italian League” [6] is probably a league to wear silk velvet & each a feather in his hat .. to carry flags, & cry vivas, & keep a grand festa-day in the piazzas. Better & happier in this, than in stabbing prime-ministers or hanging up their dead bodies to shoot at, .. & not much more childish, than these French patriots & republicans, who crown their great deeds by electing to the presidency such a man as Prince Louis Napoleon simply because “C’est le neveu de son oncle”!– [7] A curious precedent for a president, certainly! but, oh, Heavens & Earth, what curious things are abroad everywhere just now, inclusive of the Sea-serpent! [8] I agree with you that much of all is very melancholy & disheartening, though holding fast by my hope & belief, that good will be the end, as it always is God’s end to man’s frenzies, .. & that all we observe is but the fermentation necessary to the new wine which presently we shall drink pure– Meanwhile the saddest thing is, the impossibility (which I for one feel) to sympathize, to go along with, the people to whom & to whose cause all my natural sympathies yearn– The word ‘Liberty’ ceases to make one thrill, as at something great & unmistakeable, as for instance, the other great words Truth & Justice do! The salt has lost its savour, the meaning has escaped from the term .. we know nothing of what people will do, when they aspire to Liberty. The holiness of liberty is desecrated by the sign of the ass’s hoof. Fixed principles either of opinion or action, seem clearly gone out of the world. The principle of Destruction is in the place of the principle of Re-integration .. or of Radical Reform, as we called it in England– I look all round, & can sympathize no where! The rulers hold by rottenness, & the peoples leap into the abyss; & nobody knows why this is, or why that is– As to France, my tears (which I really could’nt help at the time of the expulsion of poor Louis Phillippe & his family, not being very strong just then) are justified, it appears, .. though my husband thought them foolish (& so did I), & though we both began by an adhesion to the republic in the cordial manner. But just see .. the Republic was a ‘man in an iron mask’ or helmet .. & turns out a military dictatorship .. a throttling of the press .. a starving of the finances, and an election of Louis Napoleon to be President!! Louis Phillippe was better than all this, take him at worst!—and at worst he did not deserve the mud & stones cast at him .. which I have always maintained & maintain still. England might have got up (“happy country!”) more crying grievances than France, at the moment of outbreak—but what makes outbreaks now a days, is not “the cause, my soul”, [9] but the stuff of the people. You are hackerback, [10] on the other side of the channel .. & you wear out the poor Irish linen, let the justice of the case be what it may. Politics enough & too much, surely, especially now when they are depressing to you, & more or less to everybody!! You must have had amends for Ireland, in your visit to dear Fanny Floyd, even though she was not strong as it struck you—but may that be proved a transient effect of measles & a past evil. Do remember to tell me how she is now, & how she & her husband persist in their admirable plans .. which I appreciate so much rather than covet a part in—& tell me too, how Mr Hanford, her brother, is. We are still in the slow agonies of furnishing our apartment– You see, being the poorest & most prudent of possible poets, we had to solve the problem of taking our furniture out of our year’s income (proceeds of poems & the like) & of not getting into debt. Oh, I take no credit to myself—I was always in debt in my little way (‘small Immorals’, as Dr Bowring might call it) [11] before I married—but Robert, though a poet & dramatist by profession, being descended from the blood of all the Puritans & educated by the strictest of dissenters, has a sort of horror about the dreadful fact of owing five shillings five days, which I call quite morbid in its degree & extent, & which is altogether unpoetical according to the traditions of the world. So, we have been dragging in by inches our chairs & tables throughout the summer, & by no means look finished & furnished at this late moment—the slow Italians coming at the heels of our slowest intentions, with the putting up of our curtains, which begin to be necessary in this november tramontana. [12] Yet in a month or three weeks we shall look quite comfortable—before Christmas; & in the meantime we heap up the pine-wood and feel perfectly warm with these thick palace-walls between us & the outside air. Also, my husband’s new edition is on the edge of coming out, & we have had an application from Mr Phelps of Sadler’s Wells, for leave to act his “Blot on the ’Scutcheon,” which, if it does’nt succeed, its public can have neither hearts nor intellects .. (that being an impartial opinion) .. & which, if it succeeds, will be of pecuniary advantage to us. Look out in the papers.
My good, kind maid Wilson, is engaged to be married to an excellent man, one of the guards in personal attendance on the Grand Duke, a man of superior education & prospects– The difference of religion I am sorry for, .. but in other respects, even in respect to the difference of country, there is little, I think to be otherwise than congratulatory about. You may suppose how delighted she continues to be with Italy, & how very fluent in Italian!– We are all happy in various ways. I tumbled, head over heels, over the high back of an easy chair, some six weeks ago, when it was particularly enjoined on me to keep in a uniform state of repose, .. & did not kill myself as might have been expected. I struck my head violently .. but the body escaped, & the head could bear it—& I begin to be sure that no harm was done after all, farther than the temporary disfigurement– Wilson is not to be married till the ‘sposo’ [13] gets a “situation” .. some clerkship at the Grand Duke’s disposal, .. & I hope & she hopes that we shall be able to take her to England next spring, should nothing prevent our going. Of course I shall miss her dreadfully whenever we have to part, & it wd be worse now than at a future time. Very well I am, but obliged to be careful. Improving in faith, hope, & small hems .. not hems from the throat, understand, but from the points of the needle. Some time ago Robert frightened me by having an attack of fever through cold, but he has quite recovered that, & so have I. While he was ill—we had cards left by Mr Charles Lever (of Irish literary reputation) who has lived at Florence for years—but before the convalescence came, he & his family had gone to the Baths of Lucca to spend the winter months .. a curious preference. Then, the famous Jesuit, Mr O’Mahoney, the Father Prout of Fraser, has spent hour after hour in this room– He won my heart by his kindness when Robert was ill, & has managed to keep a little of it, in spite of tobacco & the spitting-box. A most singular man, & alive with talent to the ends of his fingers without any proportionate refinement of manner or thought. I hold that he is kindhearted & amiable at bottom, though never was a man with more enemies from various causes. Not one evening since we married, have I been out, or has my husband left me—he wont. It is kindness & tenderness to almost the painful degree. In time I may be capable of more, & willing for his sake; for I cant bear to shut him up in this way though he maintains that he likes it. Flush lies by the fire, & eats grapes, bunch after bunch. In the midst of all, I yearn to Wimpole Street .. & to those whom I have loved & love unchangeably. Something has been said of Alfred & Sette’s writing to me: Henry has written: George is silent always. Papa, perhaps, does not even think of such an one being alive. This is more a sigh than a complaint—there’s no use complaining! I have had a very kind letter from Lady Margaret Cocks,—whom if you see, will you tell her that soon I will write to her? Do write to me, you! Surely you wont let dear Mr Martin dare the cold of Herefordshire through the winter– Tell me your plans. You might come here in absolute safety—much more safety than Henrietta went in to the Bartons! Pure madness I thought the whole scheme, & told her so, dear thing!– My dearest sisters appear to have both enjoyed their residence in the country, & I was heartily glad that the liberty of it was permitted to them. Write to me, do, .. & tell me especially of your health. My love & my husband’s go to you, our dear friends! Let me be always your affectionate & grateful Ba.
We just hear of the triumph of our play!——
While Italy shows herself so politically demoralized, & the blood of poor Russia smokes from the ground, the ground seems to care no more for it than the newspapers or anybody else–
Such a jar of flowers we have to keep December! White roses, as in June!——
Address, on integral page: Mrs Martin / Colwall / near Malvern / Worcestershire.
Publication: LEBB, I, 387–391 (in part).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Abd-el-Kader (1807?–83) as the Emir of Mascara had led the fight against the French in Algeria until his surrender on 21 December 1847, given on the promise that he and his family would be allowed to go to Alexandria or St. Jean d’Acre. However, the promise was not kept. He was detained in France, first at Toulons and then at Pau from where he had been transferred in November 1848 to the château of Amboise (EB). EBB would later include Kader’s likeness in her carte-de-visite album (see EBB-AB, II, 581). He is the subject of RB’s poem, “Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr.”
3. Cf. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I, 2, 82–83.
4. “Death to the Florentines.”
5. The home of Cosimo Ridolfi (1794–1865), it is located in Via Maggio a few doors away from Casa Guidi. According to The Times for 21 October 1848, Ridolfi had been given an audience with the Queen as “Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary on a special mission from the Grand Duke” (p. 3). Ridolfi also served as the Grand Duke’s prime minister and minister of foreign affairs in 1847 and 1848.
6. A name applied to a loose and short-lived confederation of Italian states that included Piedmont, Tuscany, the Papal States, and The Two Sicilies (Naples and Sicily). It was originally formed, in 1847, as a customs union.
7. “He is his uncle’s nephew!” Louis Napoleon would be elected President of the French Republic by a popular vote on 10 December 1848. In order to bolster his popularity, posters in Paris depicted him with his uncle Napoleon I.
8. See letter 2756, note 5.
9. Othello, V, 2, 1.
10. Sic, for huckaback.
11. An allusion to Minor Morals for Young People (1834–39) by John Bowring (1792–1872), traveller, linguist, and editor of The Westminster Review (1824–36).
12. “North wind.”
13. Literally “spouse,” or “husband” but in this case, “betrothed.”
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