2768. EBB to Arabella Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 15, 204–214.
[Florence]
Jany 19– 20– 22 [1849] [1]
Ever beloved Arabel you will all think us the most ungrateful people in the world, inclusive of His Holinesse’s tender-hearted subjects. If a benefit makes nine malcontents & one ‘ingrat’, [2] as is said, what is to be expected (you will have observed) from two pairs of slippers, a beautiful purse, an unparagoned pillow, an artistic inkstand & penholder, a miniature which is the very image of a precious person, & ever so much else in the form of benefitting kindnesses? Still, forgive me– I wrote to Sette almost as soon as we received these things—& since, I have waited morning after morning thinking of you & loving you & meaning to write directly. Save that stone from the tessalated pavement of the Infernal regions, [3] & spare me. For the first word spoken, let it be most grateful– I do thank you for all your care, all your goodness, all your gifts. Henrietta’s picture is the delight of my eyes—oh, so like! “There cant be a prettier person” says Robert. “It does’nt do her justice” says Sophia Cottrell. “The mouth is a little drawn aside” say I. The eyes too, like your eyes, (I mean the eyes in your Daguer[r]eotype, Arabel) are too small—but all the rest is excellent—better than your Daguer[r]eotype, though that is very, very dear, & looked at, oh, so often! .. the contour is more softly conveyed, the colours more vivid, & the dress better arranged .. it is by far the best Daguer[r]eotype I ever saw. Women are generally thrown into despair by the dark lines which furrow their pictures—and Wilson who had hers done for Mr Righi the other day, though she escaped the infliction suffered by some of her friends, declares that she looks “exactly like a negress”. With men it is much better—& Mr Righi’s own mustachios show gallantly, & might make Radetsky wink. Well—but to go back to my thanks– Why, Arabel, what made you think of sending me this splendid cushion? What it must have cost, in time, worsted & satin! Though it agrees so well with our room & looks so beautiful on the carved wood throne-sofa, still I can hardly keep from scolding you my darling Arabel for going to such expence & trouble. Yet thank you, thank you. I value it very, very much—so does Robert. His slippers he shall thank you for himself. By the way, did you not say something dishonorable of those slippers? Arabel, they are on the contrary, most worthy of admiration—& I particularly admire the black velvet stripe, which is quite a stroke of original genius on your part. We have sent them to be made up at the shoe makers. As to my slippers, dearest Trippy’s gift, (& didnt Henrietta leave the trace of her fingers on them?) my feet went into them of their own accord & have never been out since. The old slippers, I keep now for my bedroom, because their souls are fast exhaling or being exhaled, whatever the right grammer should be. Henrietta’s pretty inkstand is just the thing wanted for the table– Kind, kind, you both are! And Trippy’s butter-stand .. so pretty & useful. Dear kind Trippy. Robert will write himself to Trippy, & so will I write. And George’s books .. which he would’nt write one word upon .. when George comes to see me, he shall sit only on the throne-sofa—that shall be my revenge. And what trouble, Arabel, you have had altogether, & how am I to thank you. Everything came safely & uninjured, except Mr Kenyon’s table [4] .. & the clock, I grieve to say. The last, I have not seen yet—the great box Robert unpacked himself in his dressingroom, & he tells me (for I have not had courage yet to look at it—nor at dearest Papa’s picture [5] ) he tells me that the picture-part of the clock is a good deal hurt .. holes made in it– Not that the works are injured, for directly the unpacking took place, the chimes broke out—which I am glad I was not near enough to listen to. We shall have it repaired & hang [it] in the dining room eventually. For Papa’s picture, that is to go to my bedroom without delay, as soon as the upholsterer comes .. though a little I tremble to look at the dear face again. Mr Kenyon’s table is injured in the rail-work .. you remember .. & it is gone already to be repaired. Your’s is intact & has been close to my elbow ever since, [6] with the customary desk .. not to speak of loads of tapes & flannel & cambric, & cotton balls which are always rolling about the room for poor Robert to run after. He gently remonstrated the other evening— “Something else tumbled down! Now you know, dear, that I dont mind the trouble—i<t’s> nothing for me! But if I happened to be out of the room, just think how you would have to stoop, yourself, & it wd not be good for you ..” Oh, Arabel,
<…> [7]
dearest Minny may laugh (tell her) abo<ut> Wilson & I have regretted ever since we <…> O Annie
<…>
days, which means very quiet indeed, <…>—ah Arabel, how vexed I am with you for sitting up, even to write to me! Why not have your fire lighted earlier? what can be the use of sitting up? Think how bad it is for you, with your headaches & swelled ankles! Tell me, darling Arabel, how they both are—& dont sit up I beseech you. If you were with us you wd open your eyes at being forced to shut them so soon. We are in bed when the clock strikes ten—imagine such a barbarous state of things!– Yet it is civilized dissipation in comparison to what it was in the Pisan days, for you remember what my habits were of getting tired at night, & none of them were broken till I grew stronger. Did I tell you of our new acquaintances .. two American artists & their wives? Mr Story, only son of the judge—& Mr Cranch? quite young men & full of talent & refinement, & their wives the prettiest & most refined American women I ever had sight of. Mrs Story has great sweetness both of face & manner, & we like them altogether, & they come to us in the evening occasionally. Lovely children too, the eldest only four years old. [8] Oh—but, Arabel, Mrs Ogilvy has been here, & Madme Petri, it appears, thinks herself highly aggrieved by the decision against her– She is a gossipping woman, this Madme Petri, & I am very vexed– First I was vexed for her, but now I am vexed for myself, .. Wilson observing that she is just the person to tell all sorts of stories of a pretended engagement. Yet I said to her distinctly .. “Remember, this is no engagement”—I was resolved to make none under the circumstances. Altogether, how could I possibly help it? It is very, very vexatious! On the other hand, the Biondi has been here again, & I am getting used to her & like her much better—she has a gentle voice & cheerful manner, & Wilson thinks that she will be a pleasanter person in a house than our countrywomen, prejudices apart. Then, although so much older, & so fat, she is apparently active, quicksighted, quick-hearing & light-hearted, inclined to look on the bright side of things—& I dare say I shant be overawed or horror-struck after all—that was all nonsense. We shall be ruined in absolute prosperity. Also, we have succeeded, partly, about the insertion work I mentioned on the other page. Darling Arabel, thank you a thousand times for what your kindness says about help .. your kind regret about not having sent contributions by the boxes. My darling Arabel, what did not you & Henrietta send last winter, I wonder? Besides, there is no need—besides the result is too uncertain yet. If God should bless us enough, .. presently, that is, when you see us in England, you shall show your nepotism by knitting a pair of shoes or something of the sort. Meanwhile, we shall do rather better than our betters, it appears .. & the Biondi has much admired sundry of our performances, Wilson says.– No, the thing you ought to have sent & have not, is simply my ‘Seraphim’ [9] .. the copy in my room with ink-corrections .. & I am in distress about it, being stopped in the new edition .. thrown back wholly as we cant get the book here anywise. Now, Arabel, listen to me, & “make a note on’t,” as is said in Dombey. [10] Look out, ask out, put out feelers, for an opportunity .. some private hand, .. & try hard to send me that book together with Robert’s two new volumes, about sending which we have written to Sarianna Browning. If she finds an opportunity before you can, I have begged her to apply to you for a book you have to send; and if you find it first, write to let her know, that she may forward to you the new volumes in question. Also, supposing the opportunity to admit of it & to occur not too late, you might perhaps fold my Seraphim up in whatever fragments of old linen Minny can conveniently let me have—only it will be too late, I fear, I fear– Remember the Seraphim in any case.– There—that’s all my business-side of the letter. Arabel, Robert & I insist on your not buying his new edition– Wait to have it from the “author’s” own hands—we shall give it to you face to face. We would bid Chapman & Hall provide you with it instantly indeed, but have a certain delicacy .. considering that the speculation is wholly their own, & that they have not offered us copies. Of course they must mean to give us copies—a few copies—but Robert has had no sort of intercourse with them or communication from them up to the present time.–
Dearest Arabel, on the subject you wrote of, it seems to me that “temperament” is not after all to be the final point of appeal on similar occasions. We are all fond of referring to those tears by the grave of Lazarus [11] —yet certainly they proved only profound tenderness & embracing sympathy, & not grief for him who lay there, whatever “the Jews” might have judged blindly. They could not reasonably be tears for the loss of one, whom He was about with the next breath on his lips, to “awaken out of sleep” [12] —they were not tears of the sort we speak of. Therefore we come back to the old question—and if temperament is to triumph, why doctrine & faith do not triumph, .. that is all—and the human weakness is proved, which, as God knows, it is, in the case of some of us. To sorrow as those who have no hope, is to sorrow just humanly, .. keeping the fact of separation nearer to the thoughts, than the fact of re-union. Also, if I had thought the temperament merely concerned, I shd not have wondered at all at the singular, at what struck me & still strikes me, as the very singular bearing of these disciples of Swedenborg, .. for there are men & women, ....…
What in the world I was going to say about “men & women” yesterday, when Miss Tulk [13] came in & interrupted me, I cant anyhow remember today. I did mean however to go on to tell you that I fancied the Swedenborgian reception of certain visions of the world of spirits, reconciled their human feelings, to the idea of Death, by rendering more definite, distinct, & proximate to our habits of life, so-called, the things of the unseen habitation. There may be something in this, & I for my own part, believe there is much. It reduces the separation between loving friends, to one simply tantamount to a separation between bodies .. to a going into the next room simply, I mean– The dreadful unlikeness between the Dead & the Living, which strikes into every thought of love, like a knife, even when we consider These as blessed & ourselves as desolate, .. is no idea at all for persons who with visionary eyes have had insight into the place of souls—and the absurdity of some of Swedenborg’s visions is nothing to the purpose, observe—he & his disciples believe these things, and the illusion operates like a reality, exactly. Mr Tulk’s most singular letter on his daughter’s death, which his sister read to me at the time, was worth hearing read. With great tenderness for his ‘dear blessed Louisa’ (Arabel, be certain of it that that man’s nature is deeply tender & loving!) he expressed the most absolute satisfaction in the event, free from a single drawback– “It was altogether impossible for him even for the sake of what was called decency by the world, to pretend to feel regret on account of the consummated happiness of his child– He had not felt so well for years! He seemed to be running over in his heart with thoughts of felicity. In his own recent illness, he had tasted something of the exquisite bliss of death; & the foretaste of the rapture of it, was still in his soul– But this happy subject must not make him forget” &c &c .. & then the letter went on to some points merely terrestrial. As to Sophia, why poor Sophia was a good deal shaken for the first hour or two, but seems to have recovered her serenity & cheerfulness almost immediately, .. & thought it “quite ridiculous to put on mourning”, said Miss Tulk. Also, I have seen her two or three times since the event (she is in mourning now, though Robert had sight of her in bright silk a fortnight afterward) & the way in which she talks continually of “her dearest Luti,” quoting her opinions, her fancies, & even her jests, is a continued wonder to me who knew that she loved her sister, .. though she is probably of rather a soft than a deep & passionate “temperament.” “You see,” said she to me, “dear Luti was really wanted, in the spiritual world, to attend to her baby, & to Caroline’s which was taken at the same time, or a little before”. Swedenborg says that motherless babies are given to a particular department of spirits to nurture & educate [14] —but poor Louisa has the privelege, it appears, of attending to her own. She died quite without shadows round her– Nobody thought of danger on saturday—on sunday she had a fit of coughing, & sank backward on the pillow, saying (with her husband by her) .. “O my God, how happy I am! O Jamie, how I love you”. Not a word more! So, she was silent, slept & passed away, while they thought she slept still. It is supposed that a vessel had broken either in the head or heart.— Robert makes me smile sometimes by maintaining, “that they all have a certain satisfaction in speaking of that poor unhappy Mr Ley” as “heartbroken” & in “deep affliction[”], & that if he took his deprivation with quite the satisfaction of the rest of the family, it might not be altogether acceptable, though he’s a Swedenborgian too & has every right—for, as Mr Tulk observed, “If she is as useful & tender a ministering spirit to her husband, as my wife has been to me, it will be the greatest advantage to him”. I cant help telling you these things .. I have watched them so curiously, & they strike me as so strange. In a second letter, Mr Tulk has said that he “never had so clear an insight into the spiritual world as now”. “Which I am rather sorry for” remarked Miss Tulk quietly. “Sorry!” cried Robert– “Will you tell me why you are sorry?” “Because in proportion to his insight into the other world, he becomes dim-sighted to this—and his affairs go to ruin, & his selfish sons make him their prey”. Dont you call that curious? Oh—his memory is only impaired in a temporary manner, after these attacks, & upon indifferent subjects—his faculties are as strong as ever,—& I must say it is a radiant, elevated nature, & one impossible to consider without interest & regard. And in respect to Swedenborgianism as a system, full as it seems to me of puerile absurdities, & though the doctrines, as doctrines, are farther in some points from many which I take to be Scriptural, than those of what are called the orthodox Denominations, yet I tell you, Arabel, that these men & women do seem nearer to my soul & my sympathies (oh, infinitely!) than that bishop of Exeter & his cruel unChristlike bigotries. Oh, that letter, so insulting to a great body of his fellow-christians, which implies (in the grossest of insults) that “incestuous marriages” can scarcely make a dissenter’s case any worse. [15] Do you know, Robert came back from the reading-room in an absolute fury about that letter, & only wished he was near enough, to kick the bishop!– “My dearest,” I began .. “now, is that language—”?– “Hear & judge, yourself, Ba– I am talking not of theological errors, but of natural insults– Hear, yourself, & tell me if such a man would’nt be worthily kicked? When I think of my dear, pure father & mother ....”– Dearest Henrietta must forgive me– I can allow easily for wide & startling differences of belief among believers, but more & more do I recoil from the bigoted straightnesses which form the first principles of certain sects, such as this sect of the Puseyites for instance,—who, just as the Roman Catholics begin to widen their garments, take up the shoes & coats & badges which have grown too small & narrow, for the elder branch, & adapt them to their own feet & bodies. Let me see a Puseyite, ready with the kiss of peace, for every fellow-christian who will not serve at his “altars”, and I will love that Puseyite as my fellow-christian. But Love is the sign of the christian– Truth is the opener of the sympathies—the Sun does not shut up the flower. The bigot, whether the bigotry is shown in a little or great thing, is in a dangerous position so far—just so far, he is farther from Christ. Now she wont call me a bigot because I cry out against bigotry, because that wd be unreasonable, quite. I dont speak of articles of belief, but of a spirit which belongs to unbelief: & I wish for nothing more than for the Puseyites, both as a party & as individuals to justify themselves gloriously. So be it!——
The state of things here is very remarkable. I did not adore the pope a year ago, & therefore could afford to feel deeply for him, for the kind, benevolent, tender-hearted man he is, when his people pointed the cannon against his palace & assassinated two of his dearest friends. I, for one, applauded him for leaving Rome [16] .. I wd have done so myself under the circumstances .. he did not sit in that chair to be a puppet-pope, nor was he made of stuff to be a Hildebrand-pope. [17] So there was nothing for him but flight & absence. But going to Naples was a heinous mistake: & this “excommunication” & threat of “interdict”, [18] though perfectly natural actions in a man who cd be a pope at all—(and the truth is, as I have said in my poem, the man is a pope, &, his head must fit his tiara ..) [19] though natural actions on his part, they are too late in the world’s day to do any good or harm except just to undo himself. Which they have done essentially, we think. Talk of ghosts at mid-day, & most people laugh: & the pope’s ghost is made a mere jest of everywhere in Italy. Fancy papers advertising “confutations of the papacy—by the gospel” stuck up on the very cathedral-walls of this Florence! Robert has seen them himself! Fancy pamphlets, written, printed & eagerly read by the people, addressed to the arch-bishop of Florence [20] upon the corruptions of the church! (Alessandro who swears devoutly every half hour by the Blessed virgin, with an occasional interpolation of Per Baccho, [21] thinks it a very sensible pamphlet). Fancy the archbishop replying in a pamphlet … which is by no means considered so sensible! Fancy people saying, “Well, we have’nt a pope any more—so much the better! we will have Christ instead”. Fancy the Bolognese newspapers crying out, that the “popish lies had lasted long enough”!!– Fancy these things in Italy, where no one spoke of religion but with the sign of the cross, & where the ecclesiastical power was supreme, & where the body of the people could’nt be made to understand how any protestant could be a christian. “Non siete christiani, voi,” [22] was the simplest phrase in the world. Now, they say .. “It has for years been different in England—so why not in Italy? Why should’nt we do without popes & cardinals too?” Is’nt this most surprising? Yet it is not of course all good– A change which proceeds from indignation rather than dispassionate conviction, cannot be all good. The people want education, want knowledge, want a right reverence for truth as truth, .. & if they talk protestantism, they also talk blasphemy .. many of them .. & we hear terrible things of the words spoken in the caffès against God & Christianity. Always it must be so– The recoil from one extreme dashes you against the other .. unless you have a hold, which this populace has not. The great body of infidels throughout the continent is composed of renegades from the Catholic church .. Remains the conclusion .. that even if the pope shd be restored as a temporal prince his authority as Head of a church has perished at the root. All the dews of the earth may fall upon it vainly. So Robert & I are sorry for the pope, & glad for the world!——
And now guess what Miss Tulk came to tell me yesterday, when she broke off my sentence about “men & women” & musings on Swedenborgian spiritualism– It’s a secret, .. so you must’nt mention it to anyone, mind!, out of Wimpole Street, nor to anyone there who cant keep a secret. Count Cottrell is going off to California to pick up gold!– Yes, & Sophia stays behind with her aunts in Florence, & if he remains away as long as a year & a half or two years, she is to follow .. give him the meeting in Jamaica … & they are to dust themselves well with gold. Robert & I are in a paroxysm of astonishment. So end spiritual visions in this dusty world of ours! I could’nt help exclaiming to Miss Tulk .. “Well, if my husband were sure to bring me home chests on chests of gold, he should’nt leave me for that.” Twenty thousand miles removed from civilized territory! If he went for duty or honour .. well! but for gold-dust! Only, “Sophia is such an heroic little creature,” say her aunts! No room to expatiate farther.– Since beginning this letter I have your note– Robert found it where I had dropped it out of dear Mr Kenyon’s—oh, so glad I was! I assure you he was kissed for his pains. Thank you my darling Arabel. Delightful news of Papa .. it made my heart leap to think of his dancing & being merry! Dearest, dearest Papa! Now let me answer your question. At the end of February, quite the end—& if it’s the middle of March, nobody is to be uneasy. You will hear directly of course. Dont be afraid for me—my only reason of apprehension is the excessive happiness which has been granted to me already as far as relates to my new position .. Did I tell you that Dr H said the event wd ‘quite reinstate my health’? Dont be afraid. I am in capital spirits, & without a single bad symptom– <…> [23] When I was afraid before, it was not for myself, observe. Tell me what makes Arlette nervous—
<…> [24]
Give her my love, & bid her not be low, because that is said to be likely to influence the child’s spirits in after life; the animal spirits of the child. Bid her confess too that I had in my medical adviser soon enough .. seeing that he has been here three times & never advised one thing, except about the Biondi, the baby clothes, & the wisdom of not nursing, myself—not one thing, literally. So I am not headstrong & foolish, as she sets it down! I will write to Mrs Smith, since I must, .. but there’s no room to write of her. Is dear Minny better? You dont say. My best love to her. Never a word of Crow? I will write next time to Storm. Think of Set fancying that Robert was scorning them all this time! Ah, if he knew Robert!—— Tell Mary Minto that I thank her for her very pretty pincushion, & send her my love. And I have not thanked you for the m∙s. books– What wickedness, Arabel, to spend so much money on me—— I love you all & pray God to bless you. Your own attached & grateful Ba.—— Arabel, I wish you cd have asked Mary Hunter to s<tay> in W. St– Why not, I wonder? Here’s my note to her. For once, I send my letter straight to you .. t<ry to write> oftener. I shd be reproached so.
Robert has on your slippers, & they look surpassingly well—. My love & Robert’s go to you together—& to Henry & Sette & whomever will have either. We have had very cold weather, though now it is mild—& I have borne it wonderfully .. very probably from the effects & influence of my present position. The last morphine ends with the fortieth day. And at Ancona I used it in twelve days.
Affecte regards to Mr & Mrs Stratten.
Address, on integral page: Angleterre viâ France / To the Care of Miss Tripsack / (Miss Arabel Barrett) / 12. Upper Gloucester Street / Dorset Square / New Road / London.
Publication: EBB-AB, I, 217–226.
Manuscript: Gordon E. Moulton-Barrett.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Cf. Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV (1752), ch. 26.
3. A reference to Dr. Johnson’s “Hell is paved with good intentions” (James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 1791, I, 484).
4. A present from Mr. Kenyon in the autumn of 1844; see letter 1731.
6. Arabella’s table, the maple work table pictured in the Mignaty painting of the drawing room at Casa Guidi, sold as lot 1311 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, H398).
7. The original manuscript consisted of twelve pages. Four pages (3–6, except for a small fragment) were excised after receipt. Presumably they contained details about EBB’s pregnancy.
8. Edith Marion Story (afterwards Peruzzi, 1844–1917) and her brother Joseph Story (1847–53). The Cranches’ children were George William Cranch (1847–67) and Leonora Cranch (afterwards Scott, b. 1848).
10. Charles Dickens’s Dombey and Son (1848) was published in parts between 1846 and 1848. One of the book’s characters, Captain Cuttle, often says: “when found, make a note of.”
11. Cf. John 11:35.
12. Cf. John 11:11.
13. Presumably Caroline Tulk.
14. In The Delights of Wisdom on the subject of Conjugial Love, trans. John Chadwick (1996), Swedenborg states: “As soon as small children are revived, which happens immediately after death, they are taken up into heaven and handed over to angels of the female sex, who in their bodily lives in the world had loved children and at the same time feared God. Since their maternal tenderness had made them love all small children, they accept them as their own, and the children there, as if by instinct, love them as if they were their mothers” (p. 384).
15. Henry Phillpotts (1778–1869), Bishop of Exeter since 1830 and a high churchman in the old tradition, opposed the Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Bill currently before Parliament. RB had apparently seen the letter that Phillpotts had written to his clergy, as reported in The Globe and Traveller of 6 January 1849, “stating his opinion that ‘the judgment of the Church Catholic in all ages, and of our own Church in the Ninety-ninth Canon, has pronounced those marriages which it is now sought to legalize to be prohibited by the law of God, to be incestuous and unlawful.’ He rejoices to think that it is also ‘the declared fundamental, constitutional law of England.’ His Lordship adds, ‘While, however, we assert this great principle, we shall always be ready to acknowledge the full right of the Temporal Legislature to release those subjects of Her Majesty who are not members of the Church from all obedience to its decision. For such parties the State has already provided a mode of contracting marriages without any of the sanctions of the Church. If it shall be further thought proper to release them from any or all of the existing restraints of affinity or consanguinity, Churchmen, as such, will have no right to consider themselves as at all aggrieved’” (p. 1). Apparently, RB interpreted Phillpotts’s letter as aimed at Dissenters who, since the Marriage Act of 1836, had been allowed to marry outside the restraints of the Anglican rite.
16. See letter 2751, note 22, and letter 2760, note 5.
17. Like Pius IX, Hildebrand, who ruled as Pope Gregory VII from 1073 to 1085, occasionally found himself in conflict with temporal rulers and was forced more than once to defend his papacy.
18. After the Pope’s flight to Gaeta, he issued various decrees—one of which, dated 1 January 1849, forbade any participation in the forthcoming elections for a national assembly, threatening the disobedient with excommunication. A translation of this decree was printed in full in The Globe and Traveller of 18 January 1849.
19. EBB refers to “A Meditation in Tuscany” (see letter 2734, note 3); see also Casa Guidi Windows, I, 830–1052.
20. Ferdinando Minucci (1782–1856), consecrated Archbishop of Florence in 1828.
21. “By Bacchus.”
22. “You are not Christians.”
23. Three or four words have been obliterated after receipt, probably by Arabella.
24. A line has been obliterated after receipt, probably by Arabella.
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