2636. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 14, 61–63.
Pisa. Collegio Ferdinando–
[4] Dec. [1846] [1]
At last you see, my dear Mr Horne, I am writing to you .. and if I could but (while I write) with a breath ‘dispel’ all my misdeeds against you, I should be glad, believe me. But the truth has made itself apparent to you– I hope .. that my silence & backwardnesses of late, have been all parts of .. anything but an unkind feeling to you––of a difficult position of my own indeed, which it was scarcely possible to move in without the risk of falling from it. If I had seen you for instance, in the course of the last two years, you would have seen what I wished you not to see .. not through distrust, of you, as you may suppose– I have been tied & bound– I could not help myself– Then, in not answering your last Dublin note, I knew I should be away when you returned, & I could not say so—& I did not choose to leave our Chaucer & send you a “double” letter .. for another end than the postage. You had deserved better from me, & I had it in my head to write to you to another effect just before my marriage—which I did not do .. precisely because the head whirled & whirled– Our plans were made up at the last in the utmost haste & agitation—precipitated beyond all intention. Now you will forgive me, & try to think of me as I have never ceased to be .. as your friend in the truest sense. I have a good deal surprised you, I am certain, though you have written to my husband so very kind a note, for which we both gratefully thank you—& perhaps it has struck you that a woman might act more generously than to repay a generous attachment with such a questionable gift & possible burthen as that of uncertain health & broken spirits. To which I can only say that I have been overcome in generosity as in all else, though not without a long struggle in this specific case– Also there was the experience that all my maladies came from without, & the hope that if unprovoked by English winters, they would cease to come at all. The mildness of the last exceptional winter had left me a different creature, & the physicians helped me to hope everything from Italy. So you see how it all ended!– I have been gaining strength every week since we left England, & Mrs Jameson who met us in Paris & travelled to Pisa with us, called me at the end of six weeks notwithstanding all the emotion & fatigue, “rather transformed than improved”. She has now gone to Florence, & we are left to ourselves in a house built by Vasari, & within sight of the Leaning tower & the Duomo, to enjoy a most absolute seclusion & plan the work fit for it– I am very happy & very well. Pisa was recommended to me for its climate, & besides is a good beginning of Italy both for language & art. We have heard a mass, a musical mass for the Dead, in the Campo Santo—and achieved the due pilgrimage to the Lanfranchi Palace to walk in the footsteps of Byron .. & Shelley .. & also of Leigh Hunt. [2] He inhabited, I think, the ground-floor. Then, a statue of your Cosmo [3] looks down from one of the great piazzas we often pass through, on purpose to remind us of you– This city is very beautiful & full of repose—“asleep in the sun” [4] —as Dickens said for the best word of his Letters from Italy– What are you doing, & where going? Shall we hear? Whenever there shall be means of seeing you again, be sure that I shall not talk of hearing rather. Except the guitar should tempt!!–
Think of me, dear Mr Horne, as always
Most truly & gratefully your friend
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Address, in hand of Sarianna Browning: R.H. Horne Esq. / Miss Gillies, / Hill Side, / Fitzroy Park. / Highgate.
Publication: EBB-RHH, II, 183–188.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. Dated by RB’s reference to this letter in the preceding letter. Year provided by postmark.
2. The Brownings’ “pilgrimage” took place on 25 October (see Reconstruction, H587). Two days later, Mrs. Jameson wrote Lady Byron: “We went to see the Lanfranchi Palace which he inhabited when here—it is now the property of a rich & noble family, the Toscanelli & retains nothing to recall his memory except the Garden in which he walked & studied—as it is said– I had my own thoughts—more with you than there—it was all sad to me, tho’ you do your best to put that feeling out of my mind–” (SD1291). The task of finding a suitable residence in Pisa for Byron and his circle had been taken up by Shelley, and it was he who made the arrangements and signed the contract for the Casa Lanfranchi on Byron’s behalf in late 1821. Leigh Hunt and his family occupied “the ground-floor of his lordship’s house, the Casa Lanfranchi” (The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt, 1850, III, 12). Byron’s biographer, Peter Quennell, describes a less than congenial domestic arrangement: “Byron drank heavily and wrote late: Hunt retired early and rose irritable” (Byron, 1974, p. 421). By the time the Brownings were in Pisa, it was known as the Palazzo Toscanelli.
3. A work by Francavilla in the Piazza dei Cavalieri, which is described by Murray’s Hand-Book for Travellers in Northern Italy (1847), as a “fine statue of Cosimo I. as grand master of the order [i.e., of St. Stephen’s, of which he was the founder]” (p. 462).
4. In his description of Piacenza, Dickens wrote: “What a strange, half-sorrowful and half-delicious doze it is, to ramble through these places gone to sleep and basking in the sun” (Pictures from Italy, 1846, p. 89). As indicated in letter 2373, RB read this work, and evidently he shared it with EBB.
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