Correspondence

2740.  EBB & RB to Anna Brownell Jameson

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 15, 111–114.

July 15– [1848] [1]

Now, at last, my very dear friend, I am writing to you; and the reproach you sent to me in your letter shall not be driven inwardly any more by my self-reproaches. Was’nt it your fault after all .. a little .. that we did not hear one another’s voice oftener? You are so long in writing. Then I have been putting off & putting off my letter to you, just because I wanted to make a full letter of it & Robert always says that it’s the bane of a correspondence, to make a full letter a condition of writing at all. But so much I had to tell you .. while the mere outline of facts, you had from others, I knew. Which is just said that you may forgive us both & believe that we think of you & love you, yes & talk of you, even when we dont write to you .. & that we shall write to you for the future more regularly indeed. Your letter notwithstanding its reproach, was very welcome & very kind—only you must be fagged with the book, [2] & saddened by Lady Byron’s state of health, & anxious about Gerardine perhaps. The best of all was the prospect you hold out to us of coming to Italy this year. Do, do come. Delighted we shall be to see you in Florence, and wise it will be in you to cast behind your back both the fear of Radetsky & as much English care as may be. Now, would it not do infinite good to Lady Byron if you could carry her with you into the sun? Surely it would do her great good .. the change, the calm, the atmosphere of beauty & brightness, which harmonizes so wonderfully with every shade of human feeling. Florence just now, & thanks to the panic, is tolerably clean of the English—you scarcely see an English face anywhere—& perhaps this was a circumstance that helped to give Robert courage to take our apartment here & “settle down.” You were surprised at so decided a step I dare say; and, I believe, though too considerate to say it in your letter, you have wondered in your thoughts at our fixing at Florence instead of Rome, & without seeing more of Italy before the finality of making a choice. But, observe .. Florence is wonderfully cheap—one lives here for just nothing; and the convenience in respect to England, letters, & the facility of letting our house in our absence, is incomparable altogether. At Rome, a house wd be habitable only half the year; & the distance & the expense are objections at the first sight of the subject. Our earliest scheme was a very humble one– We meant to take an apartment here for ten pounds a year, & put forty pounds of furniture into it .. just for a ‘pied de terre’—a post to fasten our tether to; enabling us to live cheaply in the interim of our necessary journeys to England & elsewhere; the difference being immense between living in furnished lodgings & our own rooms; on the ground of expence. By degrees however, we grew ambitious,—& for some twenty five guineas a year have really a delightful apartment .. only too large for us—which we have been furnishing with all manner of luxuries & glories .. spring-sofas & chairs & mirrors & carved wood & satin curtains. There’s a kind of witchcraft in it, I do think, .. how we should accomplish it all without being ruined in the least & on the contrary, we are going off to the fair of Sinigaglia on monday, & are to have saved money, Robert says, by the end of the year, as a consequence of spending so much. Next year, there will be an open door, therefore, for going to England: & on our return we may keep our own carriage & have the world our own way. Do you remember the church San Felice, a stone’s throw from the Pitti? We stand in the piazza Felice, our windows opening on the church, with a terrace behind & before, and the least tip of the Boboli trees visible against the sky when we go out on it & look sideways. Decidedly we hear the cicadas, which is something. Then we mean to have orange trees & myrtles of our very own—there’s room on the terrace. Altogether, if I could but get a supply of French books .. turning the cock easily .. it would be perfect: but as to anything new in the book-way, Vieusseux [3] seems to have made a vow against it, & poor Robert comes & goes in a state of desperation between me & the bookseller, (“But what can I do, Ba?”) & only brings news of some pitiful revolution or other which promises a full flash of republican virtues, & falls off into the fleur de lis as usual. Think of our not having read Lucresia yet?—George Sand’s. [4] And Balzac is six or seven works deep from us—but these are evils to be borne. We live on just in the same way, having very few visitors, & receiving them in the quietest of hospitalities. Mr Ware, the American, who wrote the ‘Letters from Palmyra’, & is a delightful[,] earnest, simple person, comes to have coffee with us once or twice a week .. & very much we like him. Mr Hillard, another cultivated American friend of ours, you have in London, & we should gladly have kept longer. Mr Powers does not spend himself much upon visiting, which is quite right—but we do hope to see a good deal of Mademoiselle de Fauveau. Robert exceedingly admires her– As to Italian society, one may as well take to longing for the evening star, for it seems quite as inaccessible: & indeed of society of any sort, we have not much, nor wish for it nor miss it. Dearest friend, if I could open my heart to you in all seriousness, you would see nothing there but a sort of enduring wonder of happiness .. yes, and some gratitude, I do hope, besides. Could everything be well in England, I should only have to melt out of the body at once, in the joy & the glow of it. Happier & happier I have been, month after month,—& when I hear him talk of being happy too, my very soul seems to swim round with feelings which cannot be spoken. But I tell you a little, because I owe the telling to you, & also that you may set down in your philosophy the possibility of book-making creatures living happily together. I admit, though, to begin, (or end) that my husband is an exceptional human being, & that it would’nt be just to measure another by him. We are planning a great deal of enjoyment in this “going to the fair” at Sinig<aglia>—meaning to go by Arezzo & San Sepolchro & Urbino, to Fano, where we shall pitch our tent for the benefit, as Robert says, of the sea-air & the oysters. Fano is very habitable,—& we may get to Pesaro & the footsteps of Castiglione’s ‘courtier’, to say nothing of Bernardo Tasso: [5] —and Ancona beckons from the other side of Sinigaglia, & Loretto beside .. only we shall have to restrain our flights a little. The passage of the Apenine is said to be magnificent—and, altogether, surely it must be delightful; & we take only two carpet bags, .. not to be weighed down by “impedimenta”, .. & have our own home, left in charge of the porter, to return to at last. I am very well & shall be better for the change, though Robert is dreadfully afraid as usual that I shall fall to pieces at the first motion. The last vexation at the Pitti made me positively cry .. which just shows how foolish & ungrateful people can be—but I recovered my strength very quickly, & received most satisfactory compliments from the physician about the “elasticity & energy of my constitution”. Not Sir Charles Herbert!—because Dr Harding had attended an aunt of mine [5.5] who besought me to have nobody else on any account .. oh, now, do for the future, dearest “Aunt Nina” let us have more regular news of you– Tell me of dear Gerardine, & give my love to her & most earnest wishes– Will this marriage indeed take place in the present year? And if so, shall we not be sure to see her as she passes Florence– Perhaps you will be the patron saint of the new menage—& everybody knows the worth of your benedictions– As to the book .. the great legendary book, .. I open my eyes wide whenever I see a newspaper, to try to see it rise on its wings in an advertisement. But no, .. there has only been a faint foreshadowing, once. Pray speak of the book particularly, & of your plans, & of Lady Byron. The Marquise de Boissy [6] was to have come to Florence as ambassadress .. but now it’s all changed, and the old minister (Louis Phillippe’s) is to hold on, they say– Poor France—how anxious I am about France– May God bless you!–

Ever I am your affectionate Ba–

Write to Florence as usual—poste restante. You will hear how we are in great hopes of dear Mr Kenyon.

[Continued by RB]

Dear Aunt Nina,—only a word in all the throes of setting off– We love you as you love us, and are pretty nearly as happy as you would have us. All love and prosperity to dear Geddie, too: what do you say of “Landor,” and my not sending it to Forster or somebody? Che ch’è, [7] (as the Tuscans exclaim) who was it promised to call at my people’s, [8] who would have tendered it forthwith? I will see about it, as it is. Goodbye, dearest Aunt, and let no revolution disturb your good will to Ba & RB–

Address, on integral page, in EBB’s hand: Mrs Jameson / Ealing.

Publication: LEBB, I, 376–379 (in part).

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Year provided by EBB’s references to the Brownings’ return to Casa Guidi, which occurred on 9 May 1848.

2. Sacred and Legendary Art (1848).

3. Jean Pierre Vieusseux (1779–1863), who had established in 1820 Vieusseux’s Scientific and Literary Reading Rooms in the Piazza Santa Trinita. Patrons were offered two levels of membership: one allowing access to the reading rooms, to which RB subscribed; the other permitting the use of the circulating library. Although Vieusseux offered an extensive range of books, he refused to provide novels or political works, claiming that they were ephemeral and useless. In 1827, he wrote that “nowadays, more than in the past, we are not only already satiated but also weary with a literature made up of words” (Laura Desideri, “La biblioteca del Gabinetto di Giovan Pietro Vieusseux,” Antologia Vieusseux, January–April 2002, p. 26).

4. Lucrezia Floriani (Brussels, 1846).

5. Bernardo Tasso (1493–1569), father of Torquato Tasso, wrote his long narrative poem, Amadigi (Venice, 1583), while living in Pesaro. Baldassare Castiglione (1478–1529), a native of Pesaro, was the author of Il Cortegiano (Venice, 1528).

5.5. Probably Jane Hedley, whose daugher Elizabeth Jane (“Ibbit”) was born in Florence on 14 September 1834.

6. Teresa Guiccioli (née Gamba, 1800–73), Byron’s last mistress, had married Octave Rouillé (1798–1866), Marquis de Boissy, in 1847. Boissy was a friend of Lamartine, who “offered Octave the embassy at Rome and then backed out of his promise” (Austin K. Gray, Teresa: The Story of Byron’s Last Mistress, 1948, pp. 324–325.

7. Sic, for “cheché; i.e., “whatever.” We have been unable to clarify the reference to “Landor.”

8. Evidently, Mrs. Jameson had promised to pay a visit to RB’s family at New Cross and had failed to do so. See letter 2774 in which EBB remarks that “Robert is very much vexed at this omission of her’s.”

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