2448. EBB to Mary Minto
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 13, 99–100.
50 Wimpole Street
Tuesday. [30 June–1 July 1846] [1]
Dearest Mary,
You are very good & kind to me!—& I did not indeed expect that you would take up my dreams with such a quick, ready hand, & try to piece them in to the reality which seems made of such very different stuff. If you hear at last (and if you do you will be surprised, my prophecy is!) if you hear at last that I am really gone to Italy, why then you may think that you did something towards it—a charitable recollection for your conscience .. even should it not save you by as much as your right toe .. which, the tradition says, pushing a bone to a starving dog, did once (in purgatorial flame) for a mussulman’s! [2]
And now I shall venture to trouble you with another question or two—because I want to know whether La Cava, the ‘enchantingly beautiful place’ which has no English at all .. a description after my own heart .. is warm enough for a winter’s residence .. I mean for an unfortunate person with a chest, like me .. & what distance it is from Salerno .. & what distance from the sea, directly. I think Mrs Starke describes it as being like Bologna in its porticoed streets—which pleases me besides—but she says nothing of the warmth, & I am forced to think of that a good deal. Then I want to know a little about Salerno itself. I had thought of Salerno, which is a city half Italian half Greek, with Saracenic modifications—only Forsythe talks of bad air—only I do not choose absolutely to trust Forsythe, & should like to hear whether one could pass a winter there, between the mountains & the sea, without perishing in the body. Pisa & the poitrinaires sound melancholy as a knell. I should like La Cava better—oh, far better.
Your plan of going to Italy next year, is right, is wise—and certainly if you go next year & if I go this year, we shall have the chance of meeting there– If I go, it is not likely that I shall hastily come back. Ah, we shall see!– I have suffered so much & so uniformly in this world, that scarcely I can believe in any manner of happiness– Indeed the only gladness I have known, has been in the sense of beauty—which is enough perhaps for the intellect of a woman, but not enough for her heart—no– Yet now I am not complaining, nor inclined to complain—only the past has left with me a sort of unbelief. May it be quite different with you in most things, & the same in one or two .. dear Mary!
And for you, who can do what you please, to please to go to Italy, is right & righteous, it seems to me: for who would choose to go from the earth, with the revelation of it halfread? You would not choose to die without having read Shakespeare—&, for a stronger reason, you would not, .. without having seen Italy .. Naples .. Venice. When I thought I was dying, the regret came to me like a remorse.
I heard the other day that the Countess Hahn Hahn was almost too much a woman of the world .. carried the polish to an excess, & wanted spontaneity. Her Baron [3] is the most devoted of Barons—somebody said, “it must be a great advantage to have such a Baron.” Seriously speaking, however, he is described as a very agreeable man per se. The original husband is married again to a very beautiful woman, not too clever to be lived with.
Tomorrow Miss Mitford comes to spend a few hours with me, which is a pure goodness on her part: & in the evening comes our aunt .. Miss Clarke, .. & Arlette. The Hedleys are not to leave Paris before the fifteenth, when they come, I suppose, for the marriage. [4]
Take my thanks in change for your kind words, dear Mary,
& let me be yours in all affectionateness,
Ba.
My kind regards to Mrs Minto—if she remembers me—& if not, my kind remembrances. The isle of Wight must be lovely & green—but the soul of man cannot live, like a rabbit, upon green leaves.
Address: Miss Minto / Rose Mount / West Cowes—Isle of Wight.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: British Library.
1. This letter was completed the following day. The envelope bears a London postmark of 2 July 1846—the date of Miss Mitford’s visit.
2. We have been unable to verify EBB’s reference to this specific “tradition.”
3. Oberst Baron Adolph von Bystram.
4. i.e., the forthcoming marriage of their daughter Arabella (see letter 2405, note 6).
___________________
