2756. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 15, 171–173.
[Florence]
[3 December 1848] [1]
We were reading your letter, my dear Mr Horne, together, on our little terrace, walking up & down & reading it .. I mean the letter to Robert—and then, at the end, suddenly turning, lo, just at the edge of the stones, just between the balustrades, & already fluttering in a breath of wind & about to fly away over San Felice’s church, we caught a glimpse of the feather of a note to EBB!– How near we were to the loss of it, to be sure! And it wd have been a great loss, & notwithstanding all that she seems to deserve ill of you, scarcely deserved by a friend of yours who holds you in unalterable regard. But could it indeed be true that we did not answer your letter before? Now surely we did answer it. I cant make up my mind to plead guilty to such a charge of negligence, & I seem to remember the very paper I wrote upon, my husband first & then I—think again whether you did not get such a letter! [2] Well—it does not much matter now—what I want now to speak of is the deep sympathy with which we both listen to all you tell us of yourself .. so characteristic & not the less admirable for that! may I not say so, my dear friend? If we were in England, perhaps we shd have to make out life with mustard & cress too [3] .. the only vegetable I was ever distinguished for the cultivation of! Cabbages & potatoes grew so much too slowly for me that they were always dug up to make place for something more active. Here, we live for nothing, or next to nothing, & have great rooms & tables & chairs thrown in,—& although hearing occasionally that Florence is to be sacked on such a day, & our Grand Duke deposed on such another, I have learnt to endure meekly all such expectations & to hold myself as safe as you in your garden, through them all. One thing is certain .. that the Italians wont spoil their best surtouts by venturing out in a shower of rain through whatever burst of revolutionary ardour, nor will they forget to take their ices through loading of their guns. So, I am as brave, as brave .. as the Pope is’nt. My husband bids me remember to tell you how we rushed away from Florence in June in order to be cooler, & went to Ancona, prudent people that we were, leaping right into the cauldron. The heat was past the fiercest fire of your imagination, & I seethe to think of it at this distance—but we saw the whole coast from Ravenna to Loretto, & had wonderful visions of beauty & glory in passing & repassing the Apennines– At Ravenna, we stood one morning at four, at Dante’s tomb, with its pathetic inscription, and seldom has any such sight so moved me. Ravenna is a dreary marshy place, with a deadweight of melancholy air fading the faces of its inhabitants—and its pineforest stands off too far to redeem it in any wise. That Lord Byron should have praised it, [4] is just a token of the spells of the Guiccioli .. who has revolutionized, you see, (like the rest of the world) into a Mdme de Boissy. Someone told us the other day that she was “still very beautiful”– How I long to see your ‘Judas’ with the appended poems. The subject was a daring one, & admissive of the finest things. All I complain of at Florence is the difficulty of getting sight of new books, which, I who have been used to a new “sea serpent” [5] every morning, in the shape of a French romance, care still more for than my husband does– Old books we can arrive at, &, besides, our own are coming over the sea—oh, but we have’nt given up England altogether .. we talk of spending summers there & have a scheme of seeing you all next year if circumstances shd permit of it. Thank you in the meantime for intending to write to us & tell us everything about books & men—for you do intend it .. dont you? I thank you beforehand, to make sure of it. In particular, I want you to tell us of yourself .. yourselves .. and you will let me send my love to your wife, till we all meet as friends. So used I am to be grateful to you, that it scarcely can be a strange thing for me to read those most kind words in which you promise a welcome to my husband’s poems,—only you will believe that kindness in that shape must touch me nearest– May God bless you, dear friend– I am as ever & most truly yours
EBB–
Dear Miss Mitford has been much less well than usual, I do fear, .. but it does not appear to be a dangerous indisposition. You who take courage always, will keep it. The day for thinkers & writers, & only for those, is breaking fast.
Address, on integral page: R H Horne Esqre / Fallow Lodge / Finchley / Middlesex.
Publication: EBB-RHH, II, 188–194 (as [4 December 1846]).
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. This letter was written on the cover sheet that enclosed the preceding letter.
2. Letter 2688, which is dated 1 August 1847.
3. A reference to Horne’s gardening; see the end of letter 2760.
4. “Lord Byron has said himself, that except Greece, he was never so attached to any place in his life as to Ravenna. … I found also at Ravenna much education and liberality of thinking among the higher classes. The climate is delightful. … Ravenna lies out of the way of travellers. I was never tired of my rides in the pine-forest: it breathes of the Decameron; it is poetical ground. Francesca lived and Dante was exiled and died at Ravenna. There is something inspiring in such an air” (John Galt, The Life of Lord Byron, 1830, p. 229).
5. There had been numerous reports in the press of the sighting of a sea serpent between the Cape of Good Hope and St. Helena in early August by H.M.S. Daedalus.
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