3179. EBB to Anna Brownell Jameson
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 15–17.
Casa Guidi– Florence.
March 17– [1853] [1]
Thank you .. how to thank you enough! .. for the too kind present of the Madonna, [2] dearest Moña Nina! I will not wait to read it through .. we have only looked through it, which is different—but there is enough seen so beautiful as to deserve the world’s thanks, to say nothing of ours—& there are personal reasons besides why we should thank you. Have you not quoted us? [3] have you not sent us the book? Surely, good reasons.
But now, be still better to me & write & say how you are. I want to know that you are quite well:—if you can tell me so, do. You have told me of a new book, which is excellent news, & I hear from another quarter that it will consist of your “Readings” & ‘Remarks’ .. a sort of book most likely to penetrate widely & be popular in a good sense. Would it not be well to bring out such a work volume by volume at intervals? Is it this you are contemplating? [4]
Ah, dear Gerardine: how sorry I have been for her! Yes, from the depths of my heart. The comfort is (.. she will at least receive it as comfort presently ..) that the prospect of another child is near. [5] Whether such a prospect would be comfort to myself under such circumstances, I dont know––“I speak after the manner of men”. [6] I think it would be dreadful to me to have to call another child “my child” after I had lost my Wiedeman—but God arranges such things for us more gently, & differently, perhaps, from the way of our imaginations. May God comfort her. I had a letter from Rome, from Miss Blagden, a few days since—and Mr Macpherson had been with her, talking of the poor baby & the manner of its death, with a sensibility which made her like him better, she says, than she ever did before. Miss Bates, [7] she tells me, continues to be the reigning beauty at Rome. How happy it would be for Gerardine if she married & settled there. What do you say?
Robert & I have had a very happy winter in Florence—let me, any way, answer for myself. I have been well—and we have been quiet & occupied,—reading books, doing work, [8] playing with Wiedeman,—& with nothing from without to vex us much. At the end of it all, we go to Rome certainly,—but we have taken on this apartment for another year .. which Robert decided on to please me & because it was reasonable on the whole. We have been meditating socialism & mysticism of very various kinds .. deep in Louis Blanc & Proudhon .. deeper in the German spiritualists:—added to which, I have by no means given up my French novels & my rapping spirits, of whom our American guests bring us relays of witnesses. So we dont absolutely moulder here in the intellect—only Robert (& indeed I have too) has tender recollections of “that blaze of life in Paris” & we both mean to go back to it presently. No place like Paris for living in! Here, one sleeps, “perchance to dream,” [9] & praises the pillow.
We had a letter from our friend M. Milsand yesterday,—you see he does not forget us—no, indeed. In speaking of the state of things in France which I had asked him to do, .. he says, he is not sanguine .. (he never is sanguine I must tell you about anything) though entirely dissentient from “la presse Anglaise.” He considers on the whole that the status is as good as can be desired, as a stable foundation for the development of future institutions. It is in that point of view that he regards the situation. So do I. As to the English press, I, who am not ‘anglomane’ like our friend, I call it plainly either maniacal or immoral .. let it choose the epithet. The invasion cry, for instance,—I really cant qualify it– I cant comprehend it with motives all good & fair. I throw it over to you to analyze.
With regard to the sudden death of French literature you all exaggerate that like the rest. If you look into even the Revue des deux mondes for the year 1852, you will see that a few books are still published. Pazienza. Things will turn up better than you suppose. Newspapers breathe heavily just now .. that’s undeniable .. but for book-literature the government never has touched it with a finger. I ascertained that as a fact when I was in Paris.
None of you in England understand what the crisis has been in France & how critical measures have been necessary. Lamartine’s work on the revolution of ’48 is one of the best apologies for Louis Napoleon—&, if you want another, take Louis Blanc’s work on the same. [10]
Is’nt it a shame that nobody comes from the north to the south, after a hundred oaths? I hear nothing of dear Mr Kenyon. I hear nothing from you of your coming. You wont come, any of you.
We meanwhile have been in hard temptation about going to Constantinople after Rome & Naples this summer. The American minister at the court of the sultan has been staying in Florence, & he & his wife have spent several evenings with us .. she lying on the sofa,—(she is a pretty, interesting woman, but a great invalid—) & they invited us most warmly to spend a few weeks with them in Constantinople. Wiedeman was promised a ‘caïque’ to himself, with six rowers in white turbans. But we shant go—it wont be within the possibilities.
I am much relieved by hearing that Mazzini is gone from Italy, whatever Lord Malmsbury may say of it. [11] Everyday I expected to be told that he was taken at Milan & shot. A noble man, though incompetent, I think, to his own aspiration—but a man who personally has my sympathies always. The state of things here is cruel—the people are one groan. God deliver us all, I must pray, & by almost any means.
As to your ministry, I dont expect very much from it. Lord Aberdeen “put on” to Lord John, is using the drag uphill. [12] They will do just as little as they can, be certain.
Robert’s very best & thankful love to you. Dearest Moña Nina be good to us in your thoughts—& always have a true thought that we love you. We shall be soon in Rome, I hope, but you may write to us here. Do write.
Your ever affectionate
Ba–
Our love to the Procters when you see them.
Address: Mrs Jameson / Ealing.
Publication: LEBB, II, 107–109 (in part).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Legends of the Madonna, published in December 1852.
3. In her introduction to Legends of the Madonna (p. xlvi), Anna Jameson quotes lines 263–268 from Act II in RB’s Colombe’s Birthday (Poems, 1849) as summing up “the moral ideal” of the Virgin. Later, in discussing artistic depictions of the Virgin with “the infant Saviour of the world asleep,” Mrs. Jameson includes a lengthy passage, lines 12–32, from EBB’s “The Virgin Mary to the Child Jesus” (pp. 272–273).
4. From EBB’s description, we take this to refer to A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies, Original and Selected (1854). It contains appreciative comments on RB’s Paracelsus (pp. 81–83).
5. William Hamilton Macpherson was born on 6 May 1853 at Rome.
6. Romans 6:19.
7. Camilla Ottilie Bate (b. 1835), daughter of Henry Bate (1789–1854) and his wife Louisa (née Murphy, d. 1871, aged 74), was Gerardine’s younger sister.
8. EBB was prepairing a third edition of her Poems and composing Aurora Leigh. RB was writing poems that would be published in Men and Women.
9. Hamlet, III, 1, 64. In this and subsequent quotations from Shakespeare’s works, the line numbers correspond to those used in The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston, 1974).
10. Pages d’histoire de la Révolution de février 1848 (1850). “Lamartine’s work” is Histoire de la Révolution de 1848 (1849).
11. According to a report in The Times of 8 March 1853 (p. 2), it was believed that Mazzini had gone from Milan to Genoa and from there to Malta aboard a British frigate, which the Earl of Malmesbury had questioned in the House of Lords on 7 March 1853. But see letter 3172, note 10.
12. EBB refers to the coalition ministry of Lord Aberdeen (see letter 3074, note 2), in which Lord John Russell had been appointed foreign secretary. He withdrew from that post in February 1853 in favor of the Earl of Clarendon, but remained a member of the cabinet without portfolio.
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