2662. Joseph Arnould to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 14, 151–154.
18. Victoria Square, Pimlico
March 24th [1847] [1]
Your letter, my dear Browning, was a great delight to us filled as it was with so many evidences of your continuing happiness & Mrs Browning’s increasing health & strength: no one can pay so graceful a compliment as yourself but I take what you say of my wedded happiness to be more than a compliment, first because I feel it in my inmost heart to be a truth in itself, & next because I know that in such a matter you would only speak in a language deeper & truer than that of mere compliment: yes for 6 years past I have been becoming more & more convinced day after day that for man’s true happiness there is nothing equal to the loving companionship of one who halves all sorrows with you & doubles all joys: if I were to rack my brain for good wishes I could find none better than that you might be as happy in married life as I am & have been: need I say that this wish is one of that fortunate class in which the wisher feels sure of it’s accomplishment. The only part of your letter which sounded at all like bad news, was that in which you talk of staying longer in Italy than you at one time contemplated: I think you will find all your English friends joining in a protest against this: but you know best, & above all I am sure need not be told how many true & sincere well-wishers you have here waiting & eager to welcome you. Would that I could indulge the hope of being able this long vacation to have a glimpse of you at Venice or Verona: but I must, for this year, give up all notion of the kind & content myself with making Pump Court, & Brick Court & Fig Tree Court additionally cheerful by the thought that while I am engrossing you are “swimming in a Gondola”. [2] If any thing could make the prospect of such a trip additionally alluring it would be the knowledge that Mr Kenyon may probably be there with you: what ‘a piece of virtue’ [3] is that excellent man: was ever so clear an understanding joined to so good a heart, such a thorough knowledge of men & their ways, with such a fresh, unworn sympathy for all that is good & noble in human nature: all the instinctive impulses in their first blossom & all the acquired powers in their full maturity: among the very, very many things I have to thank you for[,] the pleasure of his acquaintance stands among the foremost: there is only one still higher claim on our gratitude that we are looking for at your hands and that is on some future day to be made personally known to Mrs Browning:—there is nothing of which we talk more frequently—Maria, I must tell you privately being very nervous on the subject until reassurëd by my constant repetition of my old creed, in which I have never yet found reason to disbelieve, that there is nothing so tolerant as genius, nor any people more indulgent to the shortcomings of others than those who are themselves highly gifted: so in this faith we both trust that Mrs Browning will one day admit us into the number of her friends.
To come to me for news, my dear Browning, would be something like going to Pisa in quest of gaiety, or to Mayfair, in the season for solitude: this letter too is enclosed in one from Chorley, who is perpetually in the side scenes of the great Theatre: & can tell you all about all the performers both before & behind the curtain, from the call-boy—to the prima donna—from the critic in the pit, to Her Grace in the private Box—few people I suppose know better the dress circle of this great London: I suspect you who read the English & French papers at Pisa, know more about all these matters than I can tell you, so I wont send you stale news in this cramped hand.
Domett, did I tell you?—has been nominated by the New Governor Captain Grey—to a place in the legislative council of New Zealand [4] —with a salary more than adequate to all his wants at present & with a prospect of course of rising, which I think now he will improve: such is the excellent arrangement of the Post in the Antipodes that I have no letter from him of later date than August last, when the appointment was only in prospect, but it is now fixed & he had been reported as having already taken his seat, & some part in the public discussion.
Dowson, I have not seen for some time, he is unluckily 7 miles on the other side of London [5] —which with all London to drag through & no Railway, makes him further from one in point of time than though he lived 60 miles away: we always talk a great deal about you when we meet. The day before yesterday I happened upon Captain Pritchett [6] in a coffee house hard by the Temple & I was very glad to see him looking so well: my wife & myself have been sometime meditating a trip to Hatcham, on my first open day, for we have not been there since your sister was staying with us, which to our very great delight she was kind enough to do in the winter: the fact is that here, as with you, the inclemency of the season has been almost unparalleled, & Maria had been a good deal an inmate of the house: now however there is a promise of something more like spring & her first excursion will be to see Mrs Browning:– Today London is in mourning—shops shut—no omnibus’s to be seen .. streets noiseless as churchyard walks—it is a general fast for the good of Irish Famine. [7] Fortunately, as the Papers will have told you—the English nation has taken more direct measures of relief, with a magnificence which has not often been surpassed: nevertheless, bating altogether the religious question, this solemn fast is a far more solemn thing than I could have fancied it would be, in this great, noisy Protestant city: by the bye ’spite of our Protestantism it is rumoured & I hope truly that we are to send an ambassador to the Pope; a man who seems to have the simple heroic greatness of another age; I am glad also to see, as you will if you look for it in the Times of yesterday (March 23d) a recognition of the Pope & the King of Sardinia as the heads of Italian nationality; [8] and the expression of a strong disposition, I suppose on the part of Lord Palmerston, to lend the force of England both moral & if need be physical, to the noble work of Italian regeneration: with prudence & one master mind one fancies that the dream of the last 50 years [9] might at length be accomplished: meanwhile here in England Jesuitry or Priestcraft creeps on stealthily, but apace: doctrines of Church absolutism &c which would have made dinner tables “stare & gasp” [10] ten years back, are now admitted as fixed points in the religious world: & no one can help being struck with the change produced in this respect in the higher & middling classes; but after all the thing has no life in it: Wesley had not returned from his chaplaincy in Georgia 10 years before he numbered some 80,000 disciples: [11] Newman has been working either under, or above ground for double the time & his followers at most count by hundreds: to be sure there is this wide difference: Wesley acted on the masses: the other people have let alone the masses (except indeed in the Roman sense) and gained a hold upon the gentry, professional & trades’-men– Do you make out at all what notion the well informed Italians have of Puseyism?—— I only meant, my dear Browning, that should you chance to be making a long stay in Florence & happened some day to be taking a walk out of the city you could look in upon my sister en passant. [12] They live at Villa Cresci, on the Bologna road, about a mile & a half out of Florence—very near the Villa Catalani– He is a Pole turned artist– I don’t think you will much like him—& pray don’t think of going unless the whim happens to take you– I have merely mentioned to them quite casually that you would probably be passing through Florence & if so—might possibly call—— I have left no room except to desire the very kind regards of both Maria & myself to Mrs Browning: your affectionate Friend
J Arnould
Address, on integral page: Robert Browning Esqre.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Alexander Turnbull Library.
1. Year determined by the reference to the Brownings’ residence in Pisa and their plans to travel to Florence.
2. Cf. As You Like It, IV, 1, 37–38. The courts mentioned here were near Middle Temple Lane; only Fig Tree Court has not survived.
3. The Tempest, I, 2, 56.
4. According to E.A. Horsman, in his introduction to The Diary of Alfred Domett: 1872–1885 (1953), George Grey “visited Nelson in 1846 and offered Domett a seat in the Legislative Council. This he now felt able to accept. He took his seat at the opening of the next session on 5 October, though the copy of the minutes in the Public Records Office … shows he did not attend the meetings of 1847” (pp. 21–22).
5. Apparently by this time Dowson had moved to Blackheath Terrace, Greenwich, where he died in September 1848. His previous address at 3 Albion Terrace, Commercial Road, Limehouse, is recorded in RB’s address book (see vol. 9, p. 390).
6. RB’s friend Captain James Pritchard.
7. By order of a royal proclamation a general fast was appointed for the 24th of March 1847. The Times for 20 March explained that “by an order in council all the government offices … will be closed to business,” and The Times for the 24th noted that “this day has been set apart for solemn humiliation and prayer on account of the unparalleled calamity with which a portion of the empire has been visited.”
8. The report in The Times for 23 March 1847 noted the tribute by Sir Robert Peel “on the character and policies of Pope Pius IX,” and it included the following comment: “We trust that England will not allow an obsolete prejudice, shared by no other Protestant Power, to leave her without a representative at the Court of a Pontiff whose personal character she respects, and whose political independence she ought to uphold.”
9. An allusion to the treaty of Campo Formio in 1797, which resulted in the formation of the Cisalpine Republic, afterwards named the Italian republic with Napoleon as president, and which abolished feudalism and offered the hope for universal suffrage.
10. Milton, “Sonnet XI,” “On the Detraction Which Followed Upon my Writing Certain Treatises,” (1645), line 11.
11. Arnould’s statistic is somewhat exaggerated; at the Methodist Conference of 1769, some thirty years after John Wesley’s return from America, the total number of Methodists in England, Scotland and Wales was just over 28,000.
12. We are unable to provide further details concerning Arnould’s sister and her husband.
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