Correspondence

2816.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 10–15.

Bagni di Lucca.

October 2. [1849] [1]

Thank you my dearest Miss Mitford! It is great comfort to know that you are better & that the cholera does not approach your neighbourhood. My brothers & sisters have gone to Worthing for a few weeks,—and though my father (dearest Papa!) is not persuadable, I fear, into joining them, yet it is something to know that the horrible pestilence is abating in London– Oh, it has made me so anxious! I have caught with such a frightened haste at the newspaper to read the “returns”, [2] leaving even such subjects as Rome & the President’s letter [3] to quite the last, as if they were indifferent, or, at most, bits of Mrs Manning’s murder. [4] By the way & talking of murder, how do you account for the crown of wickedness which England bears just now over the heads of other nations, in murders of all kinds, by poison, by pistol, by knife? In this poor Tuscany, which has not brains enough to govern itself, as you observe & as really I cant deny, there have been two murders (properly so called) since we came just three years ago, one from jealousy, & one from revenge, .. (respectable motives compared to the advantages of the burrying societies! [5] ) and the horror on all sides was great & as if the crime were some rare prodigy, which indeed it is in this country. We have no punishment of death here, observe! The people are gentle, courteous, refined, & tender-hearted. What Balzac wd call “femmelette”. <All Tuscany is ‘Lucien’ himself.> [6] The leaning to the artistic nature without the strength of genius, implies demoralization in most cases—& it is this which makes your “good for nothing poets & poetesses”, about which I love so to battle with you. Genius, I maintain always, you know, is a purifying power & goes with high moral capacities.—

Well, and so you invite us home to civilization & “the Times newspaper”. We mean to go next spring, and shall certainly do so unless some thing happen to catch us & keep us in a net:—but always something does happen,—and I have so often built upon seeing England & been precipitated from the fourth story, that I have learn[t] to think warily now. I hunger & thirst for the sight of some faces—must I not long, do you think, to see your face? .. and then, I shall be properly proud to show my child to those who loved me before him. He is beginning to understand everything—chiefly in Italian, of course, as his nurse talks in her sleep, I fancy, & cant be silent a second in the day, .. and when told to “dare un bacio a questo povero Flush,” [7] he mixes his little face with Flushe’s ears in a moment. Some English mothers maintain to me that Italy does not agree with young children; but the peculiarity is, as far as I can observe, that sucking is more & longer essential, & more exclusively essential than it is in England. Babies cant live half on arrowroot or pap as they do in England,—while on the other hand, delicate Englishwomen find it impossible to nourish them entirely for above a year. Therefore when they attempt to nurse their own children, the poor little creatures waste away & cut their teeth most painfully. Out of nine English babies who have been here this summer, six had wet-nurses, the seventh & eighth after several trials, are about to have them, and the ninth is pitiful to look upon– Hearing of all these fears & difficulties, made us more anxious about our baby’s teeth,—but he is in radiant health, thank God, & inextinguishable spirits, and only not too heavy for me to carry. I wonder Mrs Partridge does’nt learn the art by the inspiration—the two things go so naturally together. You would wonder to see Flush just now. He suffered this summer from the climate somewhat as usual, though not nearly as much as usual; & having been insulted oftener than once by a supposition of ‘mange’, Robert would’nt bear it any longer (he is as fond of Flush as I am) &, taking a pair of scissors, clipped him all over into the likeness of a lion, much to his advantage in both health & appearance. In the winter he is always quite well; but the heat & the fleas together are too much, in the summer. The affection between Baby & him is not equal, Baby’s love for him being far the stronger. He, on the other hand, looks down upon Baby.—

What bad news you tell me of our French writers? What!—is it possible that Dumas even, is struck dumb by the revolution? [8] His first works are so incomparably the worst, that I cant admit your theory of the “first runnings”. [9] So, of Balzac– So, of Sue! George Sand is probably writing “banners” for the “Reds”,—which, considering the state of parties in France, does not really give me a higher opinion of her intelligence or virtue. Ledru Rollin’s confidante & counsellor cant occupy an honourable position [10] —and I am sorry, for her sake & our’s. When we go to Florence, we must try to get the “Portraits” [11] —& Lamartine’s autobiographies which I still more long to see. [12] So, two women were in love with him, .. were they? That must be a comfort to look back upon, now, when nobody will have him. I see by extracts from his newspaper in Galignani, that he cant be accused of temporizing with the Socialists any longer, [13] whatever other charge may be brought against him: and if, as he says, it was he who made the French republic, he is by no means irreproachable, having made a bad & false thing. The President’s letter about Rome has delighted us– A letter worth writing & reading! We read it first in the Italian papers (long before it was printed in Paris) and the amusing thing was, that where he speaks of the “hostile influences,” (of the cardinals) they had misprinted it “orribili influenze”, [14] which must have turned still colder the blood in the veins of absolutist readers. The misprint was not corrected until long after—more than a week, I think. The pope is just a pope; and, since you give George Sand credit for having known it, [15] I am the more vexed that Blackwood (under ‘orribili influenze’) did not publish the poem I wrote two years ago, [16] in the full glare & burning of the pope-enthusiasm, which Robert & I never caught for a moment. Then, I might have passed a little for a prophetess, as well as George Sand! Only, to confess a truth, the same poem wd have proved how fairly I was taken in by our Tuscan Grand-Duke. Oh!—the traitor!!——

I saw the ‘Amba[r]valia’ [17] reviewed somewhere—I fancy in the Spectator—and was not much struck by the extracts. They may however have been selected without much discrimination, & probably were. I am very glad that you like the Gipsey Carrol in dear Mr Kenyon’s volume, because it is, & was in ms., a great favorite of mine. [18] There are excellent things otherwise—as must be when he says them; one of the most radiant of benevolences with one of the most refined of intellects! How the paper seems to dwindle as I would fain talk on more. I have performed a great exploit, .. ridden on a donkey five miles deep into the mountains to an almost inaccessible volcanic ground not far from the stars—Robert, on horseback, & Wilson & the nurse (with Baby!) on other donkies;—guides, of course. We set off at eight in the morning & returned at six p.m.—after dining on the mountain-pinnacle, I, dreadfully tired,—but the child laughing as usual, & burnt brick-colour for all bad effect. No horse or ass, untrained to the mountains, could have kept foot a moment where we penetrated, and even as it was, one cd not help the natural thrill. No road except the bed of exhausted torrents above & through the chesnut forests,—& precipitous beyond what you wd think possible for ascent or descent. Ravines tearing the ground to pieces under your feet! The scenery, sublime & wonderful, satisfied us wholly however, as we looked round on the world of innumerable mountains bound faintly with the grey sea .. & not a human habitation!

I hope you will go to London this winter—it will be good for you it seems to me. Take care of yourself, my much & ever loved friend! I love you & think of you indeed. Write of your health, remembering this—

and your affectionate

EBB–

My husband’s regards always. You had better, I think, direct to Florence, as we shall be there in the course of October.

Address, on integral page: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.

Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 279–283.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Year provided by postmark.

2. In July 1849, The Times had begun carrying daily “returns” of cholera cases in London. The issue of 21 September 1849 (p. 5) listed, by London district, “the Registrar-General’s Return of Deaths from Cholera and from Diarrhœa” that took place between 13 and 19 September. There were 1188 deaths from cholera in the city during this period; 33 in Marylebone (the district of 50 Wimpole Street). The report also gave the total number of deaths from cholera in London since the beginning of the outbreak in September 1848: 13,222, the majority of that number, 12,231, occurring between 17 June and 19 September 1849. As EBB states, however, the epidemic was “abating.” The Times of 28 September 1849 reported that cholera deaths for the period 20–26 September had fallen to 684 in London and 13 in Marylebone (p. 4).

3. Before the Pope returned from exile to Rome he sent a delegation of three cardinals to “suppress all traces of Liberalism there” (Jasper Ridley, Napoleon III and Eugénie, 1979, p. 259). Louis Napoleon was not pleased. On 18 August he sent a letter to his representative in Rome, Edgar Ney, urging “the Pope to grant a general amnesty, establish a civil service of laymen instead of clergy, introduce the Code Napoleon, and appoint a ‘Liberal government’. He wrote that he had been personally wounded by the failure of the three cardinals to refer to the achievements and sacrifices of the French army, … and declared: The French Republic did not send an army to Rome to smother Italian freedom. When our armies went all around Europe, they left everywhere, as evidence of their passage, the destruction of feudal abuses and the germs of liberty. It shall not be said that in 1849 a French army acted in a different way and with other results” (p. 260).

4. Maria Manning (née de Roux, 1821–49) and her husband Frederick George Manning were tried for the murder of Patrick O’Connor, a London Docks exciseman, in October 1849. Both were convicted and sentenced to death by hanging, the execution taking place on 13 November.

5. Burial clubs in England, which operated much like building societies or assurance companies, were often perceived as preying upon the poor.

6. Bracketed sentence interpolated above the line. EBB is referring to Lucien de Rubempré, whom Balzac describes as “femmelette” in Illusions perdues (1837) and Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes (1838).

7. “Give a kiss to this poor Flush.”

8. Dumas’s work at this time continued apace with Le Collier de la Reine for the Constitutionnel (1849), the serial publication of Vicomte de Bragelonne and Le Véloce, as well as the editing and publishing of a literary daily, La France Nouvelle.

9. Cf. Dryden, Aureng-Zebe, (1676), IV, 1, 42.

10. Before Louis Napoleon’s election as president, George Sand “acted as unpaid secretary for propaganda” for the provisional government and proved “a gift to the caricaturists, as Ledru-Rollin’s female éminence grise, in quest of the leading role” (Renee Winegarten, The Double Life of George Sand: Woman and Writer, New York, 1978, p. 261).

11. See letter 2811, note 9.

12. Les Confidences (1849). The “two women … in love with him” doubtless refers to Lucy (Book VI, vii–xvi) and Graziella (Books VII–X).

13. Since April 1849 Lamartine had been editing Le Conseiller du Peuple, through which he hoped to “continue to influence French politics, and to discredit in the popular mentality socialism, communism, and revolutionary violence” (William Fortescue, Alphonse de Lamartine: A Political Biography, 1983, p. 251). EBB is referring to an article in Galignani’s Messenger of 14 September 1849 that contained translated extracts from a piece by Lamartine in the latest issue of Le Conseiller. One of the extracts included the poet-statesman’s proposal for a system of “dissemination and multiplication of all kinds of personal and agricultural property.” Galignani’s summarized Lamartine’s plan for financing this and other schemes as “a national joint-stock company, of infinitesimal shares, in which every participator shall enjoy the twofold privilege of promoting the public happiness and making his private fortune” (p. 1).

14. Horrible influences.” Louis Napoleon’s letter to Edgar Ney was published, with the “misprint” EBB mentions, in the Monitore toscano of 3 September 1849. The Monitore’s correction ran on 14 September. The letter was published in Paris in Le Moniteur on 7 September.

15. In a letter to Charles Boner, dated 10 September 1849, Miss Mitford wrote: “A twelvemonth ago a friend of mine heard George Sand say of him [i.e., Pius IX], ‘Il est trop prêtre,’ which has turned out a most just criticism” (Memoirs and Letters of Charles Boner, ed. R.M. Kettle, 1871, I, 170–171).

16. i.e., “A Meditation in Tuscany,” which would form the first part of Casa Guidi Windows (1851).

17. A review of Ambarvalia (1849), a collection of short poems by Thomas Burbidge (1816–92) and Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–61), appeared in The Spectator of 20 January 1849.

18. EBB may have read “Sacred Gipsy Carol” in April 1842 (see the first postscript in letter 936) but certainly prior to a 25 March [1843] letter to her from John Kenyon, wherein he remarked: “You did not dislike the Spirit of a Gipsy Carol I once showed you” (ms ABL). The poem was included in A Day at Tivoli (1849), which Kenyon dedicated to the Brownings (see letter 2739, note 20).

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