3053. EBB to Julia Martin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 151–154.
138. Avenue des Champs Elysées
June 16. [1852] [1]
My first word must be to thank you, my dearest kind friend, for your affectionate words to me & mine, which always from you, sink deeply. It was, on my part, great gratification to see you and talk to you and hear you talk, and, above all, perhaps, to feel that you, loved me still a little– May God bless you both! And may we meet again & again in Paris & elsewhere .. in London this summer to begin with! As the Italians would say in relation to any like pleasure .. “Sarebbe una benedizione.” [2]
We are waiting for the English weather to be reported endurable, in order to set out. Mrs Streatfield, who has been in England these twelve days, writes to certify that it is past the force of a Parisian imagination to image the state of the skies & the atmosphere—yet, even in Paris, we have been moaning the last four days, because really, since then, we have gone back to April, and a rather cool April, with alternate showers & sunshine .. a crisis however which does not call for fires nor inflict much harm on me. It was the thunder, we think, that upset the summer.
You seem to have had a sort of inkling about my brittleness when you were here. It was the beginning of a bad attack of cough & pain in the side, the consequence of which was that I turned suddenly into the likeness of a ghost & frightened Robert from his design of going to England. About that I am by no means regretful—he was not wanted, as the event proved abundantly. The worst was, that he was annoyed by the number of judicious observers, & miserable comforters [3] who told him I was horribly changed & ought to be taken back to Italy forthwith. I knew it was nothing but an accidental attack, & that the results would pass away, as they did. I kept quiet, applied mustard poultices, & am now looking again (tell dear Mr Martin) “as if I had shammed” .. so all these misfortunes are strictly historical, you are to understand. Tonight we are going to Ary Scheffer’s to hear music & to see ever so many celebrities—oh, and let me remember to tell you that M. Thierry the blind historian, has sent us a message by his physician to ask us to go to see him, and as matter of course, we go. [4] Madame Viardot, [5] the prima donna, & Leonard [6] the first violin player at the conservatoire, are to be at M. Scheffer’s.
After all you are too right. The less amused I am, clearly the better for me– I should live ever so many years more, by being shut up in a hermitage, if it were warm & dry. More’s the pity, when one wants to see & hear as I do. The only sort of excitement & fatigue which does me no harm, but good, is travelling– The effect of the continual change of air is to pour in oil as the lamp burns– So, I explain the extraordinary manner in which I bear the fatigue of being four & twenty hours together in a diligence, for instance, which many strong women would find too much for them.
All this talking of myself when I want to talk of you, & to tell you how touched I was by the praises of your winning little Letitia! [7] Enclosed is a note to Chapman & Hall which will put her “bearer” (if she can find one in London) in possession of the two volumes in question– I shall like her to have them, & she must try to find my love, as the King of France did the poison, (a “most unsavoury simile” [8] certainly) between the leaves. [9] I send with them, in any case, my best love– Ah—so sorry I am that she has suffered from the weather you have had. She is a most interesting child, & of a nature which is rare.
I am glad you liked my friend Mrs Streatfield. Grace seems to me her peculiar characteristic– She is graceful in everything, .. in the body, & in the intelligence, & in the morale. You will be glad to hear that her betrothed is made first secretary to Lord Eglinton, [10] with nine hundred a year, which is a good opening (so considered) into public life. There wont be much sympathy between them in politics & many other questions I fear, and I scarcely like to think of the course of Dublin society she will have to endure, after the picturesque, incidental sort of life she has been living at Paris .. she, who is as wild as a bird, & wont sit upon everybody’s finger.
As to your friend, Madame Tourgineff, [11] we are, both of us, delighted with her, .. & we have seen her twice since we saw you. How wonderfully (to begin) she talks English!
George Hedley writes to his mother that “it is very hard to be sent to the colonies, because he has spent a little money,” & desires her good offices to prevail on his father to let him go into a cavalry Indian regiment– His father says he cant trust him– “It is very hard that he cant be trusted.” I fear they are not, even now, at the end of their troubles about him .. for the accounts from Wimpole Street convince me that he is hard, & unmoved by the past, & only waiting for an opportunity to begin it all again, .. “flattering himself” to my brothers, (who call him a ‘blackguard’) “that he has made his father a man of the world.”
As to the unfortunate person whom you properly call my ‘poor cousin,’ [12] I can only repeat that it is curious we should, neither of us, neither Robert nor myself, though visiting her at all hours, have seen the least symptom of the vice attributed to her. Certainly it cannot in any case be habitual. Who knows, if in moments of sudden disgust with life she may not rush out of it all by such means? and it is a recognized thing, I understand, that when her husband is at home, she sins most in this way. Anyhow I cannot sympathize with him. He married a woman he loathed, for her money. Having got the money, he has no reason to complain– In return, he should abstain from suggesting scandal & crossing the decencies of life. I have no kind of sympathy with him, & I do like to see how much she is liked & respected by her acquaintances in Paris, & how “ill used” everybody considers her. A more kind, goodnatured person cannot be, a person more habitually eager & more obviously happy in rendering services, .. nor does she want sense, I assure you. Think of a woman being told by her mother in law six weeks after marriage .. “Of course my son married you for your money. For what else, could he?”– Does’nt it make all one’s woman’s blood burn in one’s veins to hear the retort of such words? Was’nt it enough to throw the strongest & sanest of us all upon brandy .. or prussic acid?. I heard that fact from ‘uncle Richard’ .. Sir Thomas Butler’s brother .. not from her. She, poor thing, never breathed a breath to me on the subject.
Madame Mohl has gone to England for a month. You produced an impression quite as favorable, to say the least, as she did upon you.
Now I shall write no more. We shall probably be here till quite the end of the month, so, write to me. Oh—I do hope we shall spend many happy days together yet—say so, from us both, to dear Mr Martin as well as to yourself. Robert’s warm regards with those of your
ever affectionate & grateful
Ba.
Madame Viardot is George Sand’s heroine, Consuelo. [13] You know that beautiful book.
Publication: LEBB, II, 74–76 (in part).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by reference to the return address; 1852 was the only year the Brownings resided at 138 Avenue des Champs Élysées on 16 June.
2. “It would be a blessing.”
3. Job 16:2.
4. Jacques Thierry is listed in the Brownings’ address book of this period (AB-3), first at 4 Bis, then 28, Rue du Mont-Parnasse.
5. Pauline Viardot (née Garcia, 1821–1910), singer, composer, pianist, and teacher, came from a family of notable musicians and singers, which included older sister Maria Malibran. Mme. Viardot made her debut at a Brussels concert in 1837 and soon after began touring Europe. She married opera director and writer Louis Viardot (1800–83) in 1840.
6. Hubert Léonard (1819–90), Belgian virtuoso violinist, composer, and teacher, had studied at the music conservatories of Brussels and Paris. At this time he was touring Europe with his wife, the Spanish singer Antonia (née Sitchès, 1827–1914), a cousin of Mme. Viardot. He taught violin at the Brussels conservatory from 1853 to 1866, after which he settled permanently in Paris where he continued to teach and perform.
7. See letter 3034, note 2.
8. Cf. I Henry IV, 1, 2, 79.
9. EBB alludes to the “affaire des poisons” that occurred during the reign of Louis XIV. In 1679 a commission was created to examine allegations of poisoning and witchcraft in and around the royal court. It was revealed that two of the poisoners’ targets had been Louis himself and one of his mistresses. Thirty-five of the accused were sentenced to death, including the woman who had supplied the powders and potions, and twenty-five were exiled, including one of the King’s favorite mistresses, Mme. de Montespan (EB).
10. Archibald William Montgomerie (1812–61), 13th Earl of Eglinton and 1st Earl of Winton, was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in February 1852 by the new prime minister Lord Derby.
11. Probably Clara-Sophie-Adrienne-Camille Turgenev (née Viaris, 1814–91, wife of the émigré social historian Nikolay Ivanovich Turgenev (1789–1871).
12. Mary Butler (née Tulip).
13. In Sand’s novel Consuelo (1843), the title character is a young Spanish gypsy singer who marries the Comte de Rudolstadt, after which she begins a musical career.
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