3034. EBB to Julia Martin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 95–97.
138 Avenue des Ch. E.
April 14. [1852] [1]
Thank you a great many times, my dearest Mrs Martin, for the beautiful Daguer[r]eotype of Pau. It brings the place to me .. & brings you .. which is far better. And I want you, because your little, little letter—not a letter but a letteret .. does very unsatisfactorily represent you. I want to know much about you all which I dont know—I say “you all,” seeing that the interesting charge [2] you have, suggests an anxious thought for you & for her.
We, for our part, have had a most splendid spring—from the first of March & before: too cold winds to admit of my enjoying out of doors, the brilliant sunshines .. but a sunshine penetrating & hot enough to exact the putting out of fires & the drawing down of blinds as in the summer. I have been very prudent, as usual, & have been out, notwithstanding, during several days driving & walking, so as to have considerably recovered the strength lost by imprisonment. The cough is in abeyance, & altogether I hold myself nearly “out of danger.” For the last week, we have sate here with the windows open & the persiennes closed to keep out the sun. Splendid weather certainly! The groans from England adding something to our complacency. For in England, say our letters, is neither leaf nor flower .. east winds sweeping the land, with a diversity of thick fogs in London. Now to hear of this, walking under “the shade” of the Tuilleries chesnuts, which are in full leaf, the blossoms whitening through the foliage, is what we, magnanimous human beings, are given to call “satisfactory.” You will not guess the thing I did the other day—I who am prudent .. yes, and moral, upon the whole, whatever may be said of me by distinguished sections of the English public. I went to the Vaudeville to see the “Dame aux camelias”—the first time I have ventured to a public place in Paris. The play, you know, (by Alexandre Dumas fils) is considered “very improper”—but I did not think it so—it seems to me human & good in its influences– The objectionable feature is, that it breaks your heart & cuts your head open– I cried myself blind, & was not quite recovered for four & twenty hours afterwards. It’s ghastly, with its literal closeness to the agonies of nature, and, so, it oversteps legitimate art, I think. You might just as well go to a bullfight—and, notwithstanding the exquisite acting, or rather in consequence of it, nothing should induce me to see the play again.
Did I tell you of George Sand? I am afraid of telling you things over again. We have seen too M. de To[c]queville—& we stayed at home a whole day a fortnight since, expecting a visit from Lamartine who had graciously proposed to come—and he never came after all—another day is to be fixed, it appears, because he is overpowered with engagements. I shall like to see him very much—but I have’nt the George Sand-frenzy on me, which led me rather deep into the mud through the yearning to look into her face. The sort of society she seems to live in .. rags of Red, & tags of theatrical people .. is scarcely describable—and she a noble, melancholy woman, so above them all, so sadly disdainful, yet patient & quiet! I longed to kiss her hands & her feet, & say “Come away from them” .. but she would not have come. She was very kind, and “liked us,” she told an intermediate acquaintance,—and there, it is likely to end .. or has ended perhaps—for she has now left Paris. We could not “make way” with her, though we both tried persistingly. Robert was most good & indulgent to me, I must say, for he by no means liked my going to her house, on account of the quantities of questionable men, and their acts of adoration perpetrated between the puffs of cigar-smoke & the ejections of saliva. I hear that her daughter says, .. “Je ne sais pas ou aller. Chez mon pere [3] il y a trop de femmes, et chez ma mere, trop d’hommes.” [4] The impression left upon me is most painful. And yet I feel more than ever that she is a noble woman, & a woman with great moral as well as intellectual capacities. She talked of politics with admirable sense & temper—seeing facts, & keeping herself upright in the face of all gales of party passion. She was George Sand & not a woman—not a friend of ours for instance (you guess the name) [5] who admits that she likes exaggerations because she hates Louis Napoleon. George Sand, who is deeply connected with the Socialist parties, said .. “Le peuple ne nous desire pas– On ne doit pas le nier– C’est la verité. [6] Perhaps in two hundred years!– We have begun with the roof & we fail.” Then, again, complaining of the manner in which the situation was misunderstood, .. “The French people,” she said, “was an heroic people,—and to imagine that any government could be imposed upon it, was a mistake. Why the very women & children would suffice to sweep away (balayer) an unacceptable government. The fact was, they accepted—they saw nothing better for them under the circumstances. C’est un peuple logique, trop logique[,] brutalement logique même, .. & they have come to their own conclusions. C’est tout ce qu’on peut dire.” [7]
Woe to me (and to you) if I have told you all this before. It is interesting as coming from such a thinker.
Henrietta leaves London on the 22d, I believe, for Essex, where they are to pay a visit to Surtees’s brother. [8] Yes, I hear that she looks thin—only less so than when she came to London first. There was a reason for the thinness, perhaps you may have heard. She nursed her baby too long. He is said to be colossal, and a nice intelligent child besides. I was in hopes that she might have returned to town for her confinement in September, but what with the finances & the militia, she will be forced back to Taunton for that contingency …
The young Hedleys, from Ibbit downwards, have the hooping cough, which is very vexatious at the turning up of poor Ibbit’s Easter gaieties. Otherwise the season is favorable of course.
I am very glad to be expecting our friend Mrs Jameson, who comes on tuesday for a month. We have taken rooms for her in this house. When shall you come? How picturesque Pau is! how I like those pointed roofs! how I thank you for so kindly thinking of me!
May God bless you, dearest friends, both of you!– I did not read Darien, but I should not have expected very much from it. The author was a most refined and amiable man—& the poor wife who was looking to the birth of her third child at the moment of that awful calamity, was nearly distracted, I believe, yet incredulous.
Robert’s warm regards. We long to have you here again– Think sometimes of your ever affectionate
Ba–
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by reference to the return address; the only April in which the Brownings resided at 138 Avenue des Champs Élysées occurred in 1852.
2. Letitia Brabazon (1839–56), daughter of Philip William Brabazon (1815–48), of Mornington, co. Meath, and his wife Maria (née Flood). Letitia was Julia Martin’s grandniece.
3. François Casimir Dudevant (1795–1871) had married Aurore Dupin (George Sand) in 1822. They had two children: Jean François Maurice and Solange. The Dudevants legally separated in the late 1830’s, but by then Mme. Sand had been living independently for several years.
4. “I do not know where to go. At my father’s there are too many women, and at my mother’s, too many men.”
5. Madame Mohl.
6. “The people do not want us– One ought not to deny it– It is the truth.”
7. “It is a logical people, too logical, even brutally so … . That is all one can say.”
8. John Aubone Cook, who was the rector of the parish of South Benfleet, Essex. In his journal, Surtees recorded that he and his family left London on 24 April and returned 3 July (see Surtees, 24 April 1852 and 3 July 1852).
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