2633. RB to Anna Brownell Jameson
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 14, 58–60.
Pisa,
November 30, 1846.
Dear good Aunt Nina, your note properly ushered in the sunny day, this morning. I fully meant to have written to you, but this is better fortune, to get an answer first (Hibernicè [1] ); so on the strength of the continued gladnesses of the weather and the letter, we have just been driving for due orette [2] round the city and suburbs, and Ba comes in with an appetite for dinner—she says, and I am not so inclined to doubt as usually. Did she tell you that I discovered the famous walk “on the dyke,” and that it really is worth its fame, being very pretty and characteristic, and extending quite to the foot of the mountain? We got out of our carriage just now, and climbed on to it—but were too far from a curious old church and tower I wanted to reach. Well, you seem to be enjoying Florence, which is quite right—we and everybody shall have our share of whatever you get there; but if we are the more happy that you remember us in the midst of your especial good, we are not at all surprised, I beg you to know, for we have long since made up our minds about the nature of your attachment to us, and having taken up Ba and me on account of so little (I go with her, observe, as a serious make-weight) we feel sure you will not let us go, now, after these travels and trials—no, not for ever so much; but even if you tried to do so, you would find it a hard job, so tightly we will cling! [3]
The day before yesterday we got the kindest of notes from Mr. Kenyon, in which he speaks with great satisfaction and delight of the letter he received from you. He was, at the time of writing, engaged in all sorts of good offices on our account. I also was favored with a letter from Procter. We have been found out here by one or two people, but by Providence’s help they don’t much disturb us; one of them informed us that Pisa had never been so void of strangers as at the present time, at least within his recollection, while the two last seasons were “prosperous of English” beyond example; hence the additional numbers of apartments to let, and the increased price of them. It is very soothing on a rainy day, when one happens to suffer from bile, to see every blessed board about appigionarsi, [4] etc., etc., still dangling in the wind. Here we go on very well, certainly very quietly, although Wilson makes from time to time a discovery that sets one’s hair on end—about ways of living and sleeping, e sopra tutto [5] cooking; all very new and dreadful. M. Verrucci [6] called once and means to call again. These are our events! or no! for another event is the opening of the completed railway to Lucca from this place, so that one may go without any trouble whatever, and had the weather been less outrageous on Monday or Saturday, now I think of it, we meant to go and assist at the exposition of the “volto santo.” [7] Next week perhaps we may manage a trip there. Meantime, we shall wait your letters with a modified impatience (don’t you know that a professor in the quadrant issued prospectuses engaging to teach people, at so much per head, “dancing, deportment, and a modified gallantry to the fair sex”?). Seemingly the list you promise will be of the greatest service to us, and pray let me know when you mean to leave Florence for Rome, as you must do, must! I spoke at the post-office about your letters (one was forwarded to you a week ago or a little more), and shall continue to speak.
Dear Geddie is the best, most affectionate girl in the world. Ba tells me to say she thanks and loves her heartily, and I put my love into the parcel whether she notices or no. Have I told you in all these words, directly and not by implication, that Ba is admirably well, and more and more inclined to sleep after dinner? She desires me to give, first, her whole love, and, next, the good news that your strap is found in Wilson’s baggage. I am sure I shall not object to such an article being got quietly out of the house, for there are certain uses to which Ba might turn a strap; but I need not tell you she shall not see this letter. God bless you and your dear Geddie, on account of Ba and your ever affectionate
R.B.
Text: The Nation, 23 March 1899, pp. 220–221.
1. In an Irish manner.
2. “Two hours.”
3. Up to this point, the editors have collated the published text with printed extracts in Bertram Dobell’s Browning Memorials, London, 1913, item 598.
4. “To let” or “to hire.”
5. “And above all.”
6. A mistranscription of Ferrucci (see letter 2625, note 9).
7. The “Volto Santo di Lucca”is described in Murray’s Hand-Book for Travellers in Northern Italy (1847) as “an ancient crucifix carved in cedar wood, and supposed to have been made by Nicodemus. According to an ancient tradition it was miraculously brought to Lucca in 782. … It is only exposed three times in the year, when the head is adorned with a silver-gilt crown and the breast with a large trinket” (pp. 410–411).
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