2787. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 15, 262–265.
Florence.
April 30. [1849] [1]
I am writing to you .. at last, you will say, ever dearest Miss Mitford, .. but except once to Wimpole Street, this is the first packet of letters which goes from me since my confinement. You will have heard how our joy turned suddenly into deep sorrow by the death of my husband’s mother. An unsuspected disease, (ossification of the heart) terminated in a fatal way—and she lay in the insensibility precursive of the grave’s, when the letter written in such gladness by my poor husband & announcing the birth of his child, reached her address. “It would have made her heart bound”, said her daughter to us. Poor, tender heart—the last throb was too near. The medical men wd not allow the news to be communicated. The next joy she felt, was to be in Heaven itself. My husband has been in the deepest anguish, and indeed, except for the courageous consideration of his sister who wrote two letters of preparation, saying that “she was not well,” & she “was very ill” when in fact all was over, I am frightened to think what the result would have been to him. He has loved his mother as such passionate natures only can love, and I never saw a man so bowed down in an extremity of sorrow—never. Even now, the depression is great, and sometimes when I leave him alone a little & return to the room, I find him in tears– I do earnestly wish to change the scene & air—but where to go? England looks terrible now. He says it would break his heart to see his mother’s roses over the wall & the place where she used to lay her scissors & gloves. Which I understand so thoroughly that I cant say “Let us go to England”. We must wait & see what his father & sister will choose to do or choose us to do—for of course a duty plainly seen, would draw us anywhere. My own dearest sisters will be painfully disappointed by any change of plan—only they are too good & kind not to understand the difficulty, .. not to see the motive. So do you, I am certain. It has been very, very painful altogether, this drawing together of life and death—Robert was too enraptured at my safety & with his little son, .. and the sudden reaction was terrible. You see how natural that was. How kind of you to write that note to him so full of affectionate expressions towards me! Thank you, dearest friend. He had begged my sisters to let you know of my welfare, and I hope they did—and now it is my turn to know of you, and so I do entreat you not to delay but to let me hear exactly how you are & what your plans are for the summer. Do you think of Paris seriously?– Am I not a sceptic about your voyages round the world? It’s about the only thing that I dont thoroughly believe you can do. But, (not to be impertinent) I want to hear so much! I want first & chiefly to hear of your health,—& occupations next, and next your plans for the summer. Louis Napoleon is astonishing the world, you see, by his firmness & courage;—and though really I dont make out the aim & end of his French republicans, in going to Rome to extinguish the republic there, I wait before I swear at him for it till my information becomes fuller. [2] If they have at Rome such a republic as we have had in Florence, without a public—imposed by a few bawlers & brawlers on many mutes and cowards, .. why the sooner it goes to pieces, the better of course. Probably the French government acts upon information. In any case, if the Romans are in earnest they may resist eight thousand men. We shall see. My faith in every species of Italian is however nearly tired out. I dont believe they are men at all, much less heroes & patriots. Since I wrote last to you, I think we have had two revolutions here at Florence—Grand Duke out, Grand Duke in– The bells in the church opposite rang for both– They first planted a tree of liberty close to our door, and then they pulled it down. The same tune, sung under the windows, did for [‘]‘Viva la republica” and “Viva Leopoldo”. The genuine popular feeling is certainly for the Grand Duke .. (“O santissima madre di Dio,[”] [3] said our nurse, clasping her hands, “how the people do love him![”]) only nobody would run the risk of a pin’s-prick to save the Ducal throne.– If the Leghornese, who put up Guerazzi on its ruins, had not refused to pay at certain Florentine caffès, we should’nt have had revolution the second, & all this shooting in the streets. Dr Harding who was coming to see me, had time to get behind a stable-door, just before there was a fall against it of four shot corpses; and Robert barely managed to get home across the bridges– He had been out walking in the city, apprehending nothing, when the storm gathered & broke. Sad & humiliating it all has been, and the author of ‘Vanity Fair’ might turn it to bitter uses for a chapter. [4] By the way, we have just been reading ‘Vanity Fair’. Very clever, very effective, but cruel to human nature– A painful book, and not the pain that purifies & exalts. Partial truths after all, & those not wholesome. But I certainly had no idea that Mr Thackeray had intellectual force for such a book—the power is considerable. For Balzac, Balzac may have gone out of the world as far as we are concerned. Is’nt it hard on us?—exiles from Balzac! The bookseller here, [5] having despaired of the republic & the Grand Duchy both, I suppose, and taking for granted on the whole that the world must be coming shortly to an end, does’nt give us the sign of a new book—we ought to be done with such vanities. There!—and almost I have done my paper without a single word to you of the baby! Ah, you wont believe that I forgot him, even if I pretend—so I wont. He is a lovely, fat, strong child, with double chins and rosy cheeks, and a great wide chest—undeniable lungs, I can assure you. Dr Harding called him “a robust child”, the other day, and “a more beautiful child he never saw”!– I never saw a child half as beautiful, for my part. We have had him vaccinated to everybody’s satisfaction—and we are satisfied too with the wet nurse, who is immensely strong & rosy & stout, with no nerves at all, and a physique quite uninjured by intellectual cultivation—she does’nt know even the names of the months. I had to abdicate by force of public opinion, though my English medical adviser [6] wished me, for his part, to nurse—but after the rapture of hearing my child’s first cry, I thought of nothing but of what was best for him—and the farther from me the better surely!—— It was enough that I had not injured him so far! For myself I suffered only what was necessary– Everything was as right as could be, and I heard Dr Harding say to the nurse, “that in all his practice he had never seen the functions of nature more healthfully performed”. The time seemed long .. twenty one hours .. but it was less long than acquaintances of mine in Florence have had to suffer to my knowledge within the last year .. active, blooming women, .. Countess Cottrell, Mr Tulk’s daughter, suffered thirty six hours, & recovered str<eng>th afterwards much more slowly than I have done. I am very well & grow<ing> fatter,— & baby & I have been out twice in the carriage. Talking of the Tul<k>s, do you remember how I told you that several years ago the eldest daughter Mrs Gordon went out with her family to Sydney? [7] From thence they went to Calcutta, where her husband obtained a situation of two thousand a year– Now observe this frightful list of casualties. In this last winter, her baby, two months old, died. She got a letter to inform her that her sister in England & her sister’s baby were also dead. The shock made her ill, & she had to rise from that bed to attend her mother in law, who has lived with her since her marriage & been a second mother to the children, & who was struck down by Asiatic cholera & died under her eyes. Her husband had just time to attend his mother to the grave, .. came home to his wife & died in four & twenty hours. She, poor creature, gathers up a little strength out of her agonies, to write the story of them to her father & bid him expect her in England,—not knowing that he too was dead & the refuge shut to her. Count Cottrell goes to London soon to bring her back with him to Florence that she may live with her children near her surviving sister– See what miseries! Stripe after stripe!– Now write & tell me of yourself– I am anxious about Mr Lovejoy– I cant bear to think of your losing so tried a friend. Dear Mr Chorley has written the kindest letter to my husband. I much regard him indeed. May God bless you. Let me ever be (with Robert’s thanks & warm remembrance)
your most affectionate
Ba.
Flush’s jealousy of the baby wd amuse you. For a whole fortnight he fell into deep melancholy & was proof against all attentions lavished on him. Now he begins to be consoled a little & even condescends to patronize the cradle.
Address, on integral page: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 267–271.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. On 24 April a French force of between 8,000 and 10,000 troops, under the command of General Oudinot, had landed at Civitavecchia with the object of taking control of Rome, which had been declared a republic in February. Louis Napoleon had ordered the expedition in response to internal political pressure from republicans, who wanted to prevent an Austrian takeover of the city, and Catholics, who wished to see the Pope’s temporal power restored.
3. “O most holy mother of God.”
4. An allusion to Thackeray’s scenes of farcical and pathetic chaos surrounding the Battle of Waterloo, as depicted in Vanity Fair (1848).
5. Joseph Brecker’s bookshop, located at 1877 (now 15) Via Maggio, was a circulating library that offered its clients German and English books. In 1849 it was operated by Brecker’s widow Anna (née Zuisler, 1788?–1870) and their daughter Marianna (b. 1830).
6. Francis Robert Jago.
___________________
