3193. EBB to Julia Martin

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 65–67.

Florence.

April 21. [1853] [1]

My dearest Mrs Martin

I am in consternation & vexation on receiving your letter. What you must have thought of me all this time! Of course I never saw the letters which went to Rome– Letters sent to poste restante, Rome, are generally lost, even if you are a Roman,—& we are no Romans .. alas! nor likely to become such, it seems to me. There’s a fatality about Rome to us. I waited for you to write—& then waited on foolishly for the settlement of our own plans, after I had ascertained that you were not in Devonshire but in France as usual. Now, I cant help writing, though I have written a letter already which must have crossed yours—a long letter—so that you will have more than enough of me this time.

It’s comfort & pleasure after all to have a good account of you both, my very dear friends, even though one knows by it that you have been sending one ‘al diavolo’ [2] for weeks or months. Forgive me, do. I feel guilty somehow to the extreme degree, that four letters should have been written to me, even though I received none of them—because I ought to have written at least one letter in that time.

Your politics would be my politics on most points—we should run together more than half way, if we could stand side by side, in spite of all your vindictiveness to N. III. My hero—say you? Well—I have more belief in him than you have. And what is curious, & would be unaccountable I suppose to English politicians in general, the Italian democrats of the lower classes, the popular clubs in Florence, are clinging to him as their one hope. Ah—here’s oppression! here’s a people trodden down! You should come here & see. It is enough to turn the depths of the heart bitter. The will of the people forced, their instinctive affections despised, their liberty of thought spied into, their national life ignored altogether. Robert keeps saying, “How long, o Lord, how long!” [3] Such things cannot last surely. Oh, this brutal Austria.

I myself expect help from Louis Napoleon, though scarcely in the way that the clubs are said to do. When I talk of a club, of course I mean a secret combination of men, young men who meet to read forbidden newspapers & talk forbidden subjects! He wont help the Mazzinians, but he will do something for Italy—you will see. The Cardinals feel it, & that’s why they wont let the Pope go to Paris. [4] We shall see. I seem to catch sight of the grey of dawn even in the French government papers, & am full of hope.

As to Mazzini he is a noble man, & an unwise man. Unfortunately the epithets are compatible. Kossuth is neither very noble nor very wise. I have heard & felt a great deal of harm of him. The truth is not in him. And when a patriot lies like a Jesuit, what are we to say?

For England .. do you approve of the fleet staying on at Malta? [5] We are prepared to do nothing which costs us a halfpenny, for a less gain than three farthings,——always excepting the glorious national defences—which have their end too, though not the one generally attributed.

You ask about our child—which drives me on to boast of him. Dearest Mrs Martin, he is such a darling! A lovely child, I must say, & should say if he were not mine, .. with his sweet, good radiant little face, and the long golden ringlets which make him look, Robert says, like a small ‘cavalier’!– Yet he was insulted the other day by a Frenchman .. (there’s an argument for the national defences!) who called him, Wilson reports, “une charmante petite fille.” [6] The fact is, he has a delicacy & grace which is rather more girlish than boyish. But it is too soon with him yet for sex .. it is as yet only the angel. So good too the child is—so made up of love & sweetness! the sort of child that cant be spoilt:—and we have tried him indeed. You never catch a bit of temper in him .. not a shade of sullenness, .. not an outburst of passion, notwithstanding his vivacity—& I cant understand that,—for he used to be passionate, we thought in his early babyhood. He is a clever child too .. which I care much the least for! May God bless him & make him good rather. We have a fear of the precocities, & discourage everything like learning. He knew his letters before he was two, and can write now, but he cant read, & Robert especially is glad of it. His drawings are quite remarkable for his age. Did I tell you that he presented some to Mr Ruskin, the Oxford student, & to M. Millais, the Pre-Raffaelite when we were in London? The child likes to be praised. Perhaps it is his sin .. a little vanity. He confided to me the other day that he wd like to have a pink frock braided with yellow!–

I have heard again from Arabel. All well. Alfred has a situation offered to him in some steam company of £500 a year. I always say he is most fortunate,—as far as fortune goes.

God bless you my dear dear friends! Care in your thoughts for us all!

your ever affectionate

Address: France. / Madame Martin / Poste Restante / Pau / Basses Pyrenées.

Publication: LEBB, II, 113–115 (in part).

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Year provided by postmark.

2. “To the devil.”

3. Cf. Habakkuk 1:2.

4. In The Times of 9 April 1853, following the item from Le Moniteur concerning civil marriages in France (see letter 3190, note 32), the Paris correspondent wrote: “The most obvious inference from this notice is, that the rupture in the negotiations for the Pope’s visit to Paris [in order to crown Napoleon III emperor] is, as I mentioned several days since, complete. The influence that has been at work in the College of Cardinals, whether it be Austrian or Russian, or, as is more probable, both combined, has prevailed, and Pius IX. will not be gratified by witnessing the ovation that awaited him in his journey over the length and breadth of France” (p. 6).

5. As opposed to proceeding into the eastern Mediterranean. In early March, the Russian minister had presented the Turkish government with two demands: one, that the Christian holy places throughout the Ottoman Empire, but particularly in the Holy Land, remain as they are, rather than come under the protectorate of France; and two, that Russia be allowed to serve as “the protectorate of all Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman dominions” (EB). Alarmed at the tone of the Russian minister and of rumours of Russian military manoeuvers on the coast of Bessarabia, the English chargé d’affairs in Constantinople sent off a request to Malta that the British fleet stationed there proceed at once to Besika Bay at the mouth of the Dardanelles. The request was not honored by the commander of the fleet, Admiral Dundas, which decision was confirmed by the British Admiralty. But a French fleet was dispatched to the Aegean. On 22 April the “French, Russian and British ministers came to an agreement on … the holy places,” but neither the French nor British would agree to the idea of a Russian protectorate (EB).

6. “A charming little girl.”

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