Correspondence

2750.  EBB & RB to William Ware

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 15, 144–147.

October 28– [1848] [1]

My dear Mr Ware, you will wonder perhaps to see my handwriting on this sheet instead of my husband’s, but as you had the goodness to care for a few lines from me, I intrude them in this foremost place just to tell you how it has happened that you have not heard from us sooner. See how the first grow to be last, & the last first, even in our world!– [2] I have been well since I saw you—and the “active step” & “enquiring eye” [3] have come to a pause through illness .. my poor companion having been attacked with fever & ulcerated sore-throat, which seemed harder for me to bear than for him after all, as I was naturally very uneasy, & this was perhaps the only possible way in which pain could come to me through him. Now, thank God, I may look back on it as on a past pain—he is well again, & does’nt mean any more to deal with imprudences .. such as overheating himself with walking, & then throwing off his coat at the window– And you, dear Mr Ware? We were delighted to have your letter, & shall be still gladder to have an improved account of your health, together with your recantation of that great wrong you did us in refusing on such an account to come to this house on your return to Florence. Is that your idea of “brotherliness”, or do you just cheat us with a pleasant word in using it? Indeed it is a wrong done to our feelings towards you, and we must beg of you to throw it aside at once & to believe that, apart from the pleasure of your society, the possibility of being useful to you under possible circumstances of suffering, would be welcomed as a priviledge, instead of shunned according to the wicked imagination of your heart. You must have seen what a quiet life we lead—and you might be always sure of a quietness within a quietness .. that is, of a room without even room for us in it .. a room strictly to your own uses. “And you yourself might your quietus make, with a bare” [4] turn of the key. As for me, do let me say at once (while I am teazing you!) that you never did tire me, & that you dont in the least belong to that agreeable class of persons, who, very clever, very amiable, very goodnatured, yet have it undeniably in their stars to talk the weaker spirits into a state of utter exhaustion——do I not know it, I who speak, as well as Mrs Ware? [5] But you leave people gladder as well as better .. just as you left us after all your visits. Which made us wish to one another again & again that you had paid them oftener, & confess to a great gap when you went to Rome & there was no Mr Ware at coffee-time, & even Zenobia would’nt quite do instead of him. So will he be fully aware from henceforward that we are in earnest in wishing to see the most possible of him & that we wont be put off with vain excuses? Also, may I say one word, on the subject of your health? You are not discouraged, I do trust, & do not suffer your nerves to be broken down by an absence of hope. An uncle of mine was affected by the worst kind of the attacks you speak of, coming on him as quickly as every fortnight, & of an hereditary origin, so that the medical men in England shook their heads altogether & could do as little as usual– In this straight, he had recourse to a Baron Sloët of the Hague, in whose family is a certain cure for the complaint— .. went to Holland with very little hope, & returned at the end of a few months in a perfect state of health in which he continues to this day. The Baron, I think, is dead—but his son holds the secret .. I could enquire for you—for it all happened many years ago when I was a child, & I know only the facts. They are not professional people, observe, but delighted to do good in the way open to them, the secrecy being made incumbent by some hereditary oath:—all sounding, you will say, very quackish & improbable, .. only that my family can certify the trustworthiness of the whole. One of my cousins [6] was baptized a Sloët, out of natural gratitude. The remedy consists in a preparation of herbs, & a diet not by any means too strict. Forgive me for teazing you, perhaps, by these details, but I could not recall them without mentioning them here, at whatever risk of being troublesome & intrusive … We read with much sympathy your delightful account of travel & first impressions of Rome, & hope you have changed the uncomfortable lodgings, .. which, I, (who have a soul a great deal too dependent on the body, for either philosophy or poetry,) should consider a particularly necessary preface to further enjoyment. Since you went away, we have been on the eve of several revolutions & supposed “sackings” of Florence, but a shower of rain has just come in time on every occasion, .. & now the Grand Duke has taken to himself a high radical ministry [7] which begins by talking about Michel Angelo, yet will not end, I imagine, by completing the “bust of Brutus.” [8] All men seem inadequate nowadays to the wants of mankind, .. & Lucien Buonaparte [9] will scarcely do for France. You see they choose the thing nearest to a king—the choice is very significant, if really a choice. We are having a good deal of intercourse at this time, with Mr Mahoney, the famous Jesuit & “Father Prout” of Fraser’s magazine—learned & witty, & kindhearted to boot. What a comfort your brother’s [10] society will be to you! Solitude is delightful on one side of a man, but, on both sides, it is too sad. For my part, I confess to being much the happier for losing it even in the one-sided sense, whatever may be said above– Dont lose sight of your two English friends, dear Mr Ware, & see them as your friends always, & face to face when possible. I shall leave a space for Robert, remaining

yours very truly

Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

[Continued by RB]

What has my wife written here, dear Mr Ware?– How we love what we have known of you, and refuse to believe that so little is all we are ever to know—at least by a face-to-face knowledge? I bade her say one speech for us both,—(for you used to hear far too much of me,—the tougher-lunged one,—) but we both know each other’s mind on this point. I earnestly hope your health may have improved, and that Florence may lie naturally in your way homeward: in all cases, God bless you–

Ever yours,

RB.

Address, on integral page, in RB’s hand: Rev. William Ware, / fermo in posta, / Roma.

Publication: BN, 7 (Fall, 1971), 5–8.

Manuscript: Boston Public Library.

1. Year provided by postmark.

2. Cf. Matthew 19:30.

3. Cf. Landor, “To Robert Browning” (1845), lines 8–9.

4. Cf. Hamlet, III, 1, 74–75.

5. Mary Ware (née Waterhouse, 1799–1872), married William Ware in 1823. She did not accompany her husband on his European visit.

6. Antoine Sloet Butler (1823–1901) was the third son and eighth child of Sir Thomas Butler, 8th Baronet, and his wife Frances (née Graham-Clarke).

7. The day before this letter was written, Grand Duke Leopold II under political pressure had appointed Giuseppe Montanelli (1813–62) as Prime Minister. Montanelli maintained that in order for Italy to free itself from foreign control, it first had to be unified; his ministry lasted only a few months.

8. “The Brutus, commissioned by a Medici opponent as a symbol of Republican virtue, was acquired after Michelangelo’s death by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Francesco I. In the Medici collections it was exhibited accompanied by a Latin verse, which claimed: ‘As the sculptor carved the portrait of Brutus from the marble, he remembered his crime, and broke off.’ Celebration of the tyrant-slayer was thus subverted, and Michelangelo’s failure to complete the work was represented as a praiseworthy moral act” (The Dictionary of Art, 1996, 21, 440–441). Cf. Casa Guidi Windows, I, 587–597 and II, 557–565.

9. EBB is referring to Louis Lucien Bonaparte (1813–91), nephew of Napoleon I. Louis Lucien married Maria Anna Cecchi in Florence in 1833. Following the revolutionary events of early 1848 in France, “he was elected deputy for Corsica on the 28th November 1848; his election having been invalidated, he was returned as deputy for the Seine in June 1849. … Napoleon III named him senator and prince, but he took hardly any part in politics during the Second Empire, and after the proclamation of the Third Republic in 1870 he withdrew to England” (EB).

10. John Ware (1795–1864), physician, was the author of Remarks on the History and Treatment of Delirium Tremens (Boston, 1831).

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