Correspondence

2807.  EBB & RB to Anna Brownell Jameson

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 15, 322–326.

August 11– [1849] [1]

To thank you, dearest friend, for your most affectionate & welcome letter, would seem to come by instinct—and we have thanked you in our thoughts long before this moment, when I begin at last, to write some of them. Do believe that to value your affection & to love you back again are parts of our life, and that it must be always delightful to us to read in your handwriting or to hear in your voice that we are not exiled from your life– Give us such an assurance whenever you can. Shall we not have it face to face at Florence, when the booksellers let you go? And meantime, there is the post—do write to us– We have had a very sad spring & summer, in spite of our child,—and I was forced to use various sorts of necromancy to get Robert away from Florence, change of scene & air being absolutely necessary for him. His mother’s death affected him not only acutely for the time, but deeply & permanently, & when I saw appetite & sleep quite broken, & the very effort to recover his spirits throwing him back into profounder dejections, there was nothing for it but to insist on having my own way, .. so I had it & took him off to the Gulph of Spezzia which he wished rather to see than other places, .. just he & I together, leaving Wilson to preside over Baby and his balia. Our object was to select a summer-nest, somewhere in the shade & not too dear—but Spezzia was exorbitant, and I confess I was not sorry: the association [2] overcame, in my mind, every advantage of beautiful scenery, .. accacia-avenue a mile-long & within reach of the dashing spray, inclusive. My accacias, if we had stayed there, would have been within reach of a more miserable salt-sea, though of course as it seemed good for Robert, I had no hesitation about staying, had the staying been possible to our finances: it is difficult to get at the sea in Tuscany. So we returned on our steps, & tried Seravezza, in the marble-mountains—very beautiful, but close & too expensive: & then, on our way to San Marcello & some wilderness beyond, we meant to pass a few hours at the Bagni di Lucca, chiefly, I do believe, to be authorized to abuse them. Always we have been full of a presentimental hatred against the Baths of Lucca– Well—but we came, saw, & they conquered. [3] Did you ever see this place, I wonder? If you did, you will not wonder– The coolness, the charm of the mountains whose very heart you seem to hear beating in the rush of the little river, the green silence of the chesnut forests, and the seclusion which any one may make for himself by keeping clear of the valley-villages, .. all these things drew us– We took a delightful apartment over the heads of the whole world, in the highest house of the Bagni Caldi, where only the donkies & the portantini [4] can penetrate, & where we sit at the open windows & hear nothing but the cicali. Not a mosquito! think of that! The thermometer ranges from sixty eight to seventyfour,—but the seventyfour has been a rare excess: the nights, mornings & evenings are exquisitely cool. Robert & I go out & lose ourselves in the woods & mountains, & sit by the waterfalls on the starry & moonlit nights, & neither by night nor day have the fear of pic nics before our eyes– We were observing the other day that we never met anybody except a monk girt with a rope, now & then, or a bare-footed peasant– The sight of a pink parasol never startles us into unpleasant theories of comparative anatomy. One cause perhaps may be, that on account of political matters, it is a delightfully “bad season”—but also, we are too high for the ordinary walkers, who keep to the valley & the flatter roads– Robert is better, looking better, & in more healthy spirits,—& we are both enjoying this great sea of mountains,—& our way of life here altogether. Of course we remembered to go back to Florence for Baby & the rest of our little establishment, & we mean to stay as long as we can—perhaps to the end of October. Baby is in the triumph of health & full blown roses, and as he does not hide himself in the woods like his ancestors, but smiles at everybody, he is the most popular of possible babies,—and Wilson declares, that by the consent of all the nurses, there is not a child in Lucca to be compared to him. You never saw a more rosy, glowing little thing, full of life, flapping his dimpled arms up & down in a tremble of delight as if they were wings & he thought of flying away– Robert says every now & then, “Well, I never thought I could care so much for a child.” Such a good child he is too, not fretful, not given to crying, in such good humour with the world. One of his great amusements is to see Flush eat. That Flush should eat, strikes him as extraordinary– He laughs out loud whenever he sees it. We had him baptised before we left Florence, without godfathers & godmothers, in the simplicities of the French Lutheran church. I gave him your kiss as a precious promise that you would love him one day, like a true dear aunt Nina,—& I promise you on my part that he shall be taught to understand both the happiness & the honour of it. Robert is expecting a visit from his sister in the course of this autumn– She has suffered much, & the change will be good for her, even if, as she says, she can stay with us only a few weeks. With her we shall have your book, to be disinherited of which so long has been hard on us. Robert’s own, we have not seen yet. It must be satisfactory to you to have had such a clear triumph after all the dust & toil of the way—and now tell me, wont it be necessary for you to come again to Italy, for what remains to be done? Poor Florence is quiet enough under the heel of Austria, & Leopold “l’intrepido” [5] as he was happily called by a poet of Viareggio [6] in a welcoming burst of inspiration, sits undisturbed at the Pitti. I despair of the republic in Italy, or rather of Italy altogether. The instructed are not patriotic, and the patriots are not instructed– We want not only a man, but men—and we must throw, I fear, the bones of their race behind us, before the true Deliverers can spring up. Still, it is not all over—there will be deliverance presently .. but it will not be now. We are full of painful sympathy for poor Venice. There! Why write more about politics? It makes us sick enough to think of Austrians in our Florence, without writing the thought out into greater expansion– Only dont let the Times newspaper persuade you that there is no stepping with impunity out of England. Dear, dear friend, I am sorry that you are not more consoled on the subject of Gerardine’s prospects .. sorry both for you & for her, because I cant help trusting your judgement too much to be easy for the results of her choice. Still, some steadiness of attachment has been proved .. has it not? and love is the sufficient means of a happy union I am romantic enough to be persuaded. Such charming people make other people miserable sometimes, that married happiness is apt to strike one as a thing distinct in many cases from the exercise of high qualities. Not that I have reason to say so, I who have met with all united, all to be thankful for, & proud of, & happy in, together. Next month we shall have been three years married, & we are happier & closer than at the beginning– I tell you always, because I know your heart to us. Oh yes—& you are right– England wd never do for us—not to live in .. never! I was affected by Mrs Butler’s beautiful letters to her unworthy husband [7] —but how can divorce under such circumstances, leave a stain on any woman’s character? Impossible. She seems to me to stand higher than ever. We have “lectures on Shakespeare” just now by a Mr Stuart, [8] who is enlightening the English barbarians at the lower village, & quoting Mrs Jameson to make his discourse more brilliant. We liked to hear, “Mrs Jameson observes”– Give our love to dear Gerardine– I am anxious for her happiness & yours involved in it– Love & remember us, dearest friend–

Your EBB——or rather, Ba.

[Continued by RB]

Dear Aunt Nina, will there be three more years before I see you again? And Geddie,—does she not come to Italy? When we passed thro’ Pisa the other day we went to your old Inn, in love of you, and got your very room to dine in (the landlord is dead and gone, as is Peverada,—of the other House, you remember?)– [9] There were the old vile prints, the old look-out into the garden, with its orange trees and painted-sentinel watching them. Ba must have told you about our babe, and the little else that is to tell—that is, for her to tell—for she is not likely to encroach upon my story which I could tell, of her entirely angel nature—as divine a heart as God ever made; I learn more of her every day,—I who thought I knew something of her five years ago! I think I know you, too, so I love you & am

ever yours & dear Geddie’s

RB

Address, on integral page, in EBB’s hand: Mrs Jameson / Ealing.

Publication: LEBB, I, 414–417 (in part).

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Year provided by postmark.

2. See letter 2803, note 3.

3. Cf. “I came, I saw, I conquered” (“veni, vidi, vici,” Plutarch, Lives: Caesar, 50, trans. Bernadotte Perrin).

4. “Sedan chairs.”

5. “The intrepid.”

6. Possibly Giuseppi Giusti (1809–50), Tuscan poet born in Monsummano. He was living in Viareggio during the summer of 1849 for the sake of his health.

7. Pierce Butler (1806–67), an American slave owner, had sued his English wife, Frances Anne Butler (née Kemble, 1809–93), for divorce in April 1848. Extracts from Mrs. Butler’s personal letters to her husband regarding the breakdown of their marriage were cited as evidence in the court proceedings and were reported in the press; for example, see The Morning Chronicle, 23 December 1848, p. 3. The divorce was granted in September 1849.

8. James Montgomery Stuart (1816–89) was born in Edinburgh to Robert Grassich Stuart and his wife Julia (née Combe). In 1841 he travelled to Italy for the sake of his health and subsequently settled there, marrying Maria Gherardini (1821?–92). Stuart served as a correspondent on Italian affairs for various British newspapers in the late 1840’s. In 1851 he received an appointment to the British Legation in Florence under Sir Henry Bulwer, which post he held until 1855. Years later he published a volume entitled Reminiscences and Essays (1884), in which he mentioned “the writings of Mr. and Mrs. Browning, and the Shakespearean drama on which I was then lecturing in Florence” (p. 18).

9. In the autumn of 1846, the Brownings remained a few days at Hôtel Peverada before taking up residence at Collegio Ferdinando. On 27 October 1846, Mrs. Jameson wrote to Lady Byron that she was “now in the ‘Gran Bretagna’—far less noisy than the ‘Vittoria hotel’—cheaper—& to be recommended for every thing” (Typescript at Bodleian).

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