2713. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 14, 339–343.
Florence.
Dec. 8. [1847] [1]
Have you thought me long, my dearest Miss Mitford, in writing? When your letter came we were distracted by various uncertainties, torn by wild horses of sundry speculations,—& then, when one begins by delay in answering a letter, you are aware how a silence grows & grows. Also I heard of you, through my sisters & Mrs Dupuy, [2] & that made me lazier still. Now dont treat me according to the Jewish law– An eye for an eye [3] .. no! but a heart for a heart, if you please: and you never can have reason to reproach mine for not loving you. Think what we have done since I wrote last to you. Taken two houses, that is, two apartments, each for six months, presigning the contract. You will set it down as excellent poets’ work in the way of domestic economy: but the fault was altogether mine as usual—and my husband, to please me, took rooms which I could not be pleased by three days, through the absence of sunshine & warmth. [4] The consequence was that we had to pay heaps of guineas away, for leave to go away ourselves—any alternative being preferable to a return of illness .. and I am sure I should have been ill if we had persisted in staying there– You can scarcely fancy the wonderful difference which the sun makes in Italy. Oh .. he is’nt a mere “round O” [5] in the air, in this Italy, I assure you! He makes us feel that he rules the day [6] to all intents & purposes. So away we came into the blaze of him here in this piazza Pitti, precisely opposite the Grand Duke’s palace, I with my remorse, & poor Robert without a single reproach– Any other man, a little lower than the angels, [7] would have stamped & sworn a little, for the mere relief of the thing—but as to his being angry with me for any cause except not eating enough dinner, the said sun would turn the wrong way first. So here we are on the Pitti, till April, .. in small rooms yellow with sunshine from morning to evening; and most days I am able to get out into the piazza & walk up & down for some twenty minutes, without feeling a shadow or breath from the actual winter. Also it is pleasant to be close to the Raffaels .. to say nothing of the immense advantage of the festa-days, when (day after day) the civic guard comes to show the whole population of Florence, their Grand Duke inclusive, the new helmets & epaulettes & the glory thereof– They have swords too, I believe, somewhere. The crowds come & come, like children to see rows of dolls: only the children would tire sooner than the Tuscans. Robert said musingly the other morning as we stood at the window—“Surely, after all this, they would use those muskets”. It’s a problem—a “grand peutêtre”. [8] I was rather amused by hearing lately that our civic heroes had the gallantry to propose to the ancient military, that these last should do the night-work i.e., when nobody was looking on & there was no credit .. as they found it dull & fatiguing. Ah—one laughs, you see—one cant help it now & then. But at the real & rising feeling of the people, by night & day, one does’nt laugh indeed– I hear & see with the deepest sympathy of soul, on the contrary. I love the Italians too, & none the less, that something of the triviality & innocent vanity of children, abounds in them.
A delightful & most welcome letter was the last you sent me, my dearest friend. Your bridal visit must have charmed you, & I am glad that you had the gladness of witnessing some of the happiness of your friend Mrs Acton Tindal, .. you who have such quick sympathies, & to whom the happiness of a friend is a gain counted in your own. The swan’s shadow is something in a clear water– [9] For poor Mrs Partridge if she is really, as you say Mrs Tindal thinks, pining in an access of literary despondency, why that only proves to me that she is not happy otherwise, .. that her life & soul are not sufficiently filled for her woman’s need. I cannot believe of any woman, that she can think of fame first. A woman of genius may be absorbed indeed in the exercise of an active power, .. engrossed in the charges of the course & the combat: but this is altogether different to a vain & bitter longing for prizes .. and what prizes, .. oh gracious Heavens? The empty cup of cold metal! so cold, so empty, to a woman with a heart. So if your friend’s belief is true, still more deeply do I pity that other friend, who is supposed to be unhappy from such a cause. A few days ago, I saw a bride of my own family, Mrs Reynolds, Arlette Butler who married Capt Reynolds some five months since– I think I told you of that marriage, & I had a week or two of intercourse with her as she & her husband passed through Florence to Rome on their bridal tour. She seems happy & looks well, and it was very pleasant to be able to talk over & over the dear dear people in England whom she had parted from so lately. The warmth of my sisters[’] lips & hands seemed to be on her’s, & so it was natural that I should never have loved her so much before. Many were her exclamations at seeing me! She declared that such a change was never seen, I was so transfigured with my betterness! “Oh Ba, it is quite wonderful indeed.” We had been calculated on, during her three months at Rome, as a “piece de resistance” .. and it was a disappointment to find us here, in a corner, with the salt. Just as I was praised, was poor Flush criticised. Flush has not recovered from the effects yet of the summer plague of fleas, and his curls, though growing, are not grown. I never saw him in such spirits nor so ugly! and though Robert & I flatter ourselves upon “the sensible improvement,” Arlette could only see him with reference to the past when in his Wimpole Street days, he was sleek <and f>at & she cried aloud at the loss of his beauty. Then we have had <another> visitor, Mr Hillard, [10] an American critic, who reviewed me in the <old w>orld & so came to view me in the new:—a very intelligent man, of a good, noble spirit. And Miss Boyle, ever & anon, comes at night, at nine oclock, to catch us at our hot chesnuts & mulled wine, & warm her feet at our fire—and a kinder, more cordial little creature, full of talent & accomplishment, never had the world’s polish on it. Very amusing too, she is, & original, & a good deal of laughing she & Robert make between them. Did I tell you of her before, & how she is the niece of Lord Cork, & poetess by grace of certain Irish Muses? [11] Neither of us know her writings in any way, but we like her & for the best reasons—— And this is nearly all, I think, we see of the “Face divine” [12] masculine or feminine .. & I cant make Robert go out a single evening, not even to a concert, nor to hear a play of Alfieri’s:—yet we fill up our days with books & music, (& a little writing has its share) [13] & wonder at the clock for gallopping. It’s twenty four oclock with us, almost as soon as we begin to count. Do tell me of Tennyson’s book—& of Miss Martineau’s. I was grieved to hear a distant murmur of a rumour of an apprehension of a return of her complaint: somebody said that she could not bear the pressure of dress, & that the exhaustion resulting from her fits of absorption in work & enthusiasm on the new subject of Ægypt, was painfully great,—& that her friends feared for her. [14] I should think that the bodily excitement & fatigue of her late travels must have been highly hazardous—& that indeed throughout her convalescence, she should have more spared herself in climbing hills, & walking & riding distances. A strain, obviously, might undo everything. Still, I do hope that the bitter cup may not be filled for her again. What a wonderful discovery this substitute for æther-inhalations, [15] seems to be. Do you hear anything of it’s operation in your neighbourhood? We have had a letter from Mr Horne who appears happy & speaks of his success in lecturing on Ireland, & of a new novel which he is about to publish in a separate form after having printed it in a magazine. [16] We have not set up the types, even of our plans about a book, very distinctly—but we shall do something some day, & you shall hear of it the evening before. Being too happy does’nt agree with literary activity quite as well as I shd have thought; & then dear Mr Kenyon cant persuade us that we are not rich enough, .. so as to bring into force a lower order of motives. He talks of Rome still—— Now write, dear dearest Miss Mitford, & tell me of yourself & your health, & how K. gets on, & how the child is—& do, do love me as you used to do. Tell me of every little thing, that I may fancy I hear you talk. As to French books, one may swear, .. but you cant get a new publication, except by accident, at this excellent celebrated library of Vieusseux’s, [17] & I am reduced to read some of my favorites over again, I and Robert together– You ought to hear how we go to single combat, ever & anon, with shield & lance. The greatest quarrel we have had since our marriage by the way, (always excepting my crying conjugal wrong of not eating enough!) was brought up by Masson’s pamphlet on the Iron Mask & Fouquet. I would’nt be persuaded that Fouquet was “in it,” and so “the anger of my lord waxed hot.” [18] To this day he says sometimes .. “Dont be cross, Ba! Fouquet was’nt the Iron Mask after all.”
God bless you, Dearest Miss Mitford,
your ever affecte
EBB.
We are here till April.
Address, on integral page: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 224–228.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Miss Mitford’s friend, Mrs. J.P. (Sophia) Dupuy, lived near the Barretts at 31 Welbeck Street. In 1849 she moved to 37 Wimpole Street, just opposite the Barretts.
3. Cf. Exodus 21:24.
5. Unidentified.
6. Cf. Genesis 1:16.
7. Cf. Psalm 8:5.
8. “Great perhaps” (see letter 2698, note 4). EBB’s description of the civic guard is echoed in Casa Guidi Windows, I, 744–758.
9. In a letter to Charles Boner, dated 11 October 1847, Miss Mitford wrote that the newly-married couple “spent four days at the ‘Bear’ in Reading … I never saw a happier couple—both elegant, gracious and full of gaiety and sensibility; he is a fine athletic dark man of thirty-one or thirty-two, she a most sweet and lovely blonde of twenty-three or twenty-four. … I have never seen two people so happy and so deserving of happiness” (Mary Russell Mitford: Correspondence with Charles Boner and John Ruskin, ed. Elizabeth Lee, 1914, p. 80).
10. George Stillman Hillard (1808–79), American lawyer, editor, and critic, was travelling in Italy at this time, and recorded: “I entered Florence on the twenty-second of November, and left on the thirteenth of December” (Six Months in Italy, Boston, 1853, I, 181). The review EBB refers to appeared in The North American Review of July 1842 (pp. 201–245); for that portion relating to EBB, see our vol. 6, pp. 373–379. Hillard’s account of his travels includes his recollections of the Brownings; for the text, see pp. 408–409.
11. EBB mentioned her to Miss Mitford in letter 2703.
12. Paradise Lost, III, 44.
13. EBB was probably working on a poem she called “A Meditation in Tuscany,” which she submitted to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in 1848, and which they returned asking her to supply notes. It was never printed in Blackwood’s, but eventually it formed the first part of Casa Guidi Windows. RB was revising his earlier works for what would be the 1849 collected edition (see letter 2637, note 1).
14. EBB’s sources were evidently mistaken since Harriet Martineau seems to have been enjoying relatively good health at this time. She wrote an account of her travels in 1846–47, which was published as Eastern Life, Present and Past in the spring of 1848.
15. A reference to the use of chloroform instead of æther as an anæsthetic (see letter 2654, note 15). In March 1847 James Young Simpson, a Scottish physician, “read a paper on chloroform to the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh” (EB), and despite the initial controversy caused by his advocacy for the use of chloroform particularly in obstetrics, its use became wide-spread. EBB refers to both æther and chloroform in Casa Guidi Windows, I, 695.
16. Horne’s novel The Dreamer and the Worker had appeared as a monthly serial throughout 1847 in Douglas Jerrold’s Shilling Magazine, thanks to Jerrold’s generosity; however, the book was not published as a single title until 1851.
17. According to Murray’s Hand-Book for Travellers in Northern Italy (1847), “Vieusseux’s, in the Palazzo Buondelmonti, Piazza S. Trinita, is excellent, but the subscription, about 10s. a month, is high. The collection of journals and newspapers of every country is very extensive and well chosen” (p. 474).
18. Exodus 32:22. The editors of EBB-MRM suggest that this is a reference to the novelist Michel Masson; however, we have been unable to trace any work by him on the man in the iron mask. Nevertheless, one of his contemporaries, the novelist Jacob Paul La Croix, whom EBB mentioned in conjunction with Masson in letter 1774, was the author of L’Homme au Masque de Fer (1837), in which he argues that the masked prisoner was Nicolas Fouquet (1615–80), Finance Minister under Cardinal Mazarin from 1653 to 1661. Other investigators have identified the unknown prisoner as Count Matthioli, secretary to the Duke of Mantua, who had been arrested for treason. Despite claims for either, no one has ever proved with certainty who the man was. Evidently, RB remained curious about the subject. In a letter to Mrs. FitzGerald, dated 8 November 1883, he explained that he had enquired of Don Carlos, the Bourbons claimant to the throne of Spain, if he knew the identity since it was supposed to be “transmitted from sire to son by the Royal family of France: he said he did not—neither did his uncle Chambord: the secret died with the little Dauphin in the Temple” (Learned Lady: Letters from Robert Browning to Mrs. Thomas Fitzgerald, 1876–1889, ed. Edward C. McAleer, Cambridge, Mass., 1966, p. 173).
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