3425. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 230–232.
Florence.
June 6th [1854] [1]
Yes, dearest friend, I had your few lines which Arabel sent to me– I had them on the very day I had posted my letter to you, and I need not say how deeply it moved me that you should have thought of giving me that pleasure of Mr Ruskin’s kind word [2] at the expense of what I know to be so much pain to yourself. This last letter of your’s brings me altogether a more pleasant emotion—there’s a little improvement, a little ease, thank God. Now as the summer sets in .. if the summer ever sets in, in England .. we may hope for something like general amelioration surely. Here is your friend Mrs Trollope who ebbs & flows like the sea—has attacks affecting vital organs, and recovers, and takes long walks again and writes half a dozen more romances– [3] I have an immense hankering after mesmerism in your case– I am obstinately given to think that you would recover entirely if you had recourse to such means. But I will be considerate enough not to teaze you to death about it, as people are apt to do their suffering friends about one thing or another, body or soul .. I wont tell you in a burst of sympathetical affection, that you’ll die & be damned if you dont take my advice. See what an exceptional Ba you have for a friend, dearest Miss Mitford! Stroke her head in the spirit, & make the most of her!—— I had been so cast down about you that your last letter set me on “mounting up like an eagle.” [4] May God give us a deeper gain in this way—may there be progress with every summer week. In the meanwhile I suppose I am going to England.
I left Rome with joy. If I had been thirsty I wd not have drunken of the fountain of Trevi. My darling Penini was more unwell there than I ever saw him—he had three separate fits of diarrhœa & feverishness, & his roses faded, & blue marks fixed themselves under his languid eyes, & his dimples dropped away– That climate is pestilential, I do hold– Scarcely had we left it when he began to revive, & a week at Florence has produced a great change for the better– Still, it is humiliating to me to hear the Florentines exclaiming, “Ma, Dio mio, come è cangiato questo bambino! come é divenuto magro e pallido!” [5] Too true it is– The child is changed. After all, however, nothing is really wrong—he is well—he has a voracious appetite, and a few weeks in a good air will probably change him back again. He is the light of my eyes, [6] that child .. the verriest angel of a child that a poet could guess at in a dream. And though he is’nt as pretty now, his soul shines out more than ever in his darling ways & smile. Oh Rome, Rome!—step-‘mother of orphans’– [7] That was well said.
We mean to stay at Florence a week or two longer & then go northward– I love Florence—the place looks exquisitely beautiful in its garden-ground of vineyards & olive-trees, sung round by the nightingales day & night, .. nay, sung into by the nightingales, for as you walk along the streets in the evening, the song trickles down into them till you stop to listen. Such nights we have between starlight & fire-fly-light, & the nightingales singing! I would willingly stay here, if it were not that we are constrained by duty & love to go—& at some day not distant, I dare say we shall come back ‘for good & all’ as people say,—seeing that, if you take one thing with another, there’s no place in the world like Florence I am persuaded, for a place to live in. Cheap, tranquil, cheerful, beautiful, within the limit of civilization yet out of the crush of it. I have not seen the Trollopes yet—but we have spent two delicious evenings at villas on the outside the gates .. one with young Lytton, Sir Edward’s son, of whom I have told you <I th>ink. I like him .. we both do .. from the bottom of our hearts. Then our friend Frederick Tennyson, the new poet, we are delighted to see again– Have you caught sight of his poems? [8] If you have, tell me your thought. Mrs Howe’s [9] I have read since I wrote last. Some of them are good—many of the thoughts striking, & all of a certain elevation. Of poetry however, strictly speaking, there is not much; and there’s a large proportion of conventional stuff in the volume. She must be a clever woman. Of the ordinary impotencies & prettinesses of female poets she does not partake, but she cant take rank with poets in the good meaning of the word, I think, so as to stand without leaning– Also, there is some bad taste & affectation in the draping of her personality– I dare say Mr Fields will bring you her book. Talking of American literature, with the publishers on the back of it, we think of offering the proofs of our new works to any publisher over the water who will pay us properly for the advantage of bringing out a volume in America simultaneously with the publication in England– We have heard that such a proposal will be acceptable, & mean to try it. [10] The words you sent to me from Mr Ruskin gave me great pleasure indeed, as how should they not from such a man? I like him personally too, besides my admiration for him as a writer, & I was deeply gratified in every way to have his approbation. His ‘Seven Lamps’ I have not read yet– [11] Books come out slowly to Italy– It’s our disadvantage, as you know. Ruskin & Art go together– I must tell you how Rome made me some amends after all– Page the American artist, painted a picture of Robert, like a Titian, & then presented it to me like a prince. It is a wonderful picture, the colouring so absolutely Venetian that artists cant (for the most part) keep their temper when they look at it, and the truth of the likeness is literal. Mr Page has secrets in the art—certainly nobody else paints like him—& his nature, I must say, is equal to his genius & worthy of it. Dearest Miss Mitford, the Athenæum is always as frigid as Mont Blanc—it cant be expected to grow warmer for looking over your green vallies & still waters. [12] <It would’nt be Alpine if it did.> [13] They think it a point of duty, in that journal, to shake hands with one finger. I dare say when Mr Chorley sits down to write an article he puts his feet in cold water as a preliminary– [14] Still, I ought’nt to be impertinent– He has been very goodnatured to me, & it is’nt his fault if I’m not poet-Laureate at this writing, [15] & engaged in cursing the Czar in Pindarics very prettily. [16] Atherton, meanwhile wants nobody to praise it, I am sure– How glad I shall be to sieze & read it, & how I thank you for the gift! [17] May God bless & keep you. I may hear again if you write soon to Florence, but dont pain yourself for the world, I entreat you– I shall see you before long I think.
Your ever affectionate
EBB.
Robert’s love.
Address, on integral page: Miss Mitford / Swallowfield / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 411–414.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. In a letter dated 22 [–25] April 1854, Ruskin wrote to Miss Mitford of EBB’s poems: “I can’t tell you how wonderful I think them” (SD1730).
3. Aged seventy-five, Frances Trollope was still publishing at the rate of one novel a year. Her most recent works were: Uncle Walter (1852) and The Young Heiress (1853). The Life and Adventures of a Clever Woman appeared in July 1854.
4. Cf. Isaiah 40:31.
5. “But, my God, how this child has changed! how thin and pale he has become!”
6. Cf. Psalm 38:10.
7. Cf. Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1818), IV, lxxviii, 1–3.
8. Days and Hours; see letter 3338, note 17.
9. Passion-Flowers (Boston, 1853), issued by Ticknor, Reed, and Fields; see letter 3413, note 7.
10. See note 6 in the preceding letter.
11. The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849).
12. Cf. Psalm 23:2.
13. Passage in angle brackets is interpolated above the line.
14. EBB refers to the review of Atherton in The Athenæum, which was written by Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury, not Henry Chorley (see letter 3413, note 2).
15. EBB mistakenly thought that an article in The Athenæum of 1 June 1850 recommending her for the laureateship had been written by Chorley; see letter 2860, note 13.
16. Tennyson’s first public poem as poet laureate was Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington (1852), a Pindaric ode.
17. The next month, Miss Mitford sent the book to Arabella (see letter 3452, note 2).
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