2900. EBB to Julia Martin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 266–269.
Florence.
Jany 30– [1851] [1]
Here I am at last, dearest friend. But you forget how you told me, when you wrote your “long letter,” that you were going away into chaos somewhere & that your address could’nt be known yet. It was this which made me delay the answer to that welcome letter—and to begin to “put off” is fatal, as perhaps you know– Now forgive me, and I will behave better in future indeed. Henrietta being close to you I heard a great deal of you both, and do let me say that she warmly recognized your kindness to her, & that I myself have not been as slow in gratitude to you on that subject, as I have been in letter-writing. Thank you from my heart, my dear friends. I am anxiously expecting news of her, day by day, but the physician says the event is not likely to occur till the end of the month. Meantime she is well;—I wish she walked more .. that is all. She seems very comfortable in London, & is not spending much more, she says, than they did in Herefordshire—but a child will bring cost with it, as every blessing in the world does, whether one pays out of gold coins or cares. Not that I am grumbling, or pretending to grumble for the cost of my blessings. God forbid! To me they are precious yet cheap. Wiedeman has had none of the ordinary indispositions of childhood, though we had one great fright with him last autumn through an accidental exposure to the sun during my illness, & that was the single occasion on which he has taken medecine since he was vaccinated at six weeks old. Never was a healthier child in body & soul—sweet & fragrant he is, in all his little thoughts & ways! so tenderhearted & loving, & full of life & brightness, seeming to me like an emanation of the sun itself, he is so bright. He does’nt talk yet, except a very few words, and that is being late, at twenty two months, for so forward a child in other respects. He understands everything in Italian, and gesticulates like an Italian till he makes himself perfectly understood in turn—and I suppose this may be a hindrance to the vocal form of expression. I was half afraid at one time that he was morbidly excitable & likely to suffer in strength by it, but now he eats with better appetite, & though a small child & delicately made, he has cheeks as red & hard as apples,—& children three years old are outrun & outclimbed by him. It is great pleasure to look back & think that he has had a most happy infancy– We have given him every sort of amusement, .. sent him to the festas & processions & fairs .. so that, with regard to all Florentine gaieties, it is a saying among our friends, “Oh, of course your baby was there”—and now he has a very decided taste for these things, & objects vociferously to the Boboli gardens as being too dull. “We are spoiling him in short,” cries Henrietta—we “ought to whip him sometimes,” observes Mr Powers (of the Greek Slave)—but we take on our own way & give him his, and there never was a better child in the world after all, to do justice to our system. He loves the little flies in the window, cries in the street if anyone strikes a horse or ox, gives Flush the best of his cakes, & when Robert says “questo è il libro di Mamma” [2] he takes up the book and kisses it. There’s a history! You bade me tell you about Wiedeman, & the obedience is excessive. The truth is, this child is the only thing in the world I am vain of. My husband I am not exactly vain about, because, you see, I am always feeling that he is too good for me, which is a wholesome & moderating consideration. But as Uriah Heap does’nt say, I am not “umble” [3] about my baby—there’s the truth!—— Of course you have read David Copperfield. It is the most beautiful of Dickens’s books.
I am quite well, & looking well, they say—but the frightful illness of the autumn left me paler & thinner long after the perfect recovery. The physician told Robert afterwards that few women would have recovered at all; and when I left Siena I was as able to walk, & as well in every respect as ever, notwithstanding everything:—think, for instance, of my walking to St Miniato—here in Florence! you remember perhaps what that pull is. I dare say you heard from Henrietta how we enjoyed our rustication at Siena. It is pleasant even to look back on it. We were obliged to look narrowly to the œconomies, more narrowly than usual; but the cheapness of the place suited the occasion, and the little villa, like a mere tent among the vines, charmed us, though the doors did’nt shut, & though (on account of the smallness) Robert & I had to whisper all our talk whenever Wiedeman was asleep. Oh, I wish you were in Italy!– I wish you had come here this winter which has been so mild, & which with ordinary prudence, would certainly have suited dear Mr Martin. Florence suits many persons with delicate chests, in a way scarcely reconcileable with the fact of the occasional sharp winds. A friend of ours [4] who came here in an advanced stage of decided pulmonary disease, is quite well, & attributes the whole benefit to Florence which has done more for him, he says, than Malta, Naples, Rome or Nice. I myself cant bear to go out during the cold part of the winter, and I tried to dissuade the Peytons from making the experiment, through the fear of its not answering—because Reynolds wont stay in the house for the wind’s sake—he will brave everything. Now, there is no denying that he looks a different creature already—there’s a “wonderful” difference .. (your favorite word!) & he told us the other day that the climate perfectly agreed with him. I was glad to find that they were going to take lessons, some of them, in music and drawing and Italian, for, between you & me, I doubt much whether they enjoy or are likely to enjoy our Italy. There is something uncongenial in the element—and they look to me over-grave, & seem to talk sadly about Herefordshire, as if they felt it to be so themselves. Well, I hope this is a mistake. Perhaps when they have made some friends here, the atmosphere may grow brighter. We cant get them into society, you see, because we are out of it, having struggled to keep out of it with hands & feet, & partially having succeeded,—knowing scarcely anybody except bringers of letters of introduction, & those chiefly Americans & not residents in Florence. The other day, however, Mrs Trollope & her daughter in law called on us, and it is settled that we are to know them, though Robert has made a sort of vow never to sit in the same room with the author of certain books directed against liberal institutions & Victor Hugo’s poetry. [5] I had a longer battle to fight (on the matter of this vow) than any since my marriage, & had some scruples at last of taking advantage of the pure goodness which induced him to yield to my wishes:—but I did,—because I hate to seem ungracious & unkind to people,—and human beings, besides, are better than their books, than their principles, & even than their everyday actions, sometimes: I am always crying out “Blessed be the inconsistency of men”. Then, I thought it probable that the first shock of the cold water being over, he would like the proposed new acquaintances very much—& so it turns out– She was very agreeable, & kind & goodnatured, & talked much about you, which was a charm of itself,—& we mean to be quite friends, & to lend each other books, & to forget one another’s offences, in print or otherwise. Also, she admits us on her private days. For she has public days (dreadful to relate!) & is in the full flood & flow of Florentine society.
Do write to me—will you? Or else I shall set you down as vexed with me. The state of politics here is dismal. Newspapers put down—protestant places of worship shut up. It is so bad that it must soon be better. What are you both thinking of the “Papal aggression”. Are you frightened? Are you phrenzied?– For my part I cant get up much steam about it. The “Great Insult” [6] was simply a great mistake, the consequence (natural enough) of the Tractarian idiocies as enacted in Italy.
God bless both of you, dearest & always remembered friends! Robert’s best regards, he says.
Your affectionate
Ba.
Tell me your thoughts about France– I am so anxious about the crisis there. [7] We have had a very interesting visit lately from the grandson of Goethe–
Address: A Madame / Madme Martin / Poste Restante / Pau / Basses Pyreneès / France.
Publication: LEBB, I, 475–477 (in part).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. “This is Mama’s book.”
3. In David Copperfield, the word often employed by Uriah Heep to describe himself.
4. Robert Maxwell Hanna, as mentioned in the preceding letter.
5. In Paris and the Parisians in 1835 (1835), Frances Trollope dismisses Hugo’s poetry in a comparison with Racine: “If the language of Racine be poetry, that of M. Hugo is not; and wherever the one is admired, the other must of necessity be valueless” (I, 166). Mrs. Trollope was also the author of Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832) and Vienna and the Austrians (1838), both of which fit the description of “books directed against liberal institutions.”
6. Many of the outcries against the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy included the sentiment that the action represented an insult to the Queen’s supremacy.
7. Louis Napoleon’s dismissal of top military leaders had angered members of the National Assembly and led to a vote of censure against the government in early January.
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