2792. EBB to Fanny Dowglass
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 15, 273–277.
Florence–
May 16. [1849] [1]
“I think myself that I have behaved ill to her, but she must think I have behaved infamously to her”.
Just those words I was saying of you to Clara Lindsay, when my husband put into my hands your letter which he had brought from the post—so unreproaching, so affectionate a letter! I do thank and love you for it my beloved friend. And now, let me explain how I have really not ceased to think of you through this long silence. The last note I had of yours came to the piazza Pitti at the time we were in confusion & about to move and making all sorts of cross-stitch plans about the where & how. That note spoke of another which ought to have reached me and did not,—for I never heard of your plan of returning to England till you were actually travelling there,—and that last note containing your English address, I was careless enough to lose or mislay in moving from one house to another—so that although I behaved “ill” I did’nt behave “infamously”, as I was about to prove to Clara. Well—always I thought of you and loved you, and anxiously hoped you might not suffer from our dreadful climate which appears at a distance one mist, .. worse than it did when we were in it. The hope did not rise to the reality– I did not dare to hope for such an account of your health as you send me. It makes me very, very glad, and full of wonder, like other of God’s mercies, .. and yes, indeed! this face of my child is one of them. If you were to see it, you would never imagine that the child was my child, it is such a round, rosy face, .. with cheeks and chins in fat superfluity, .. a “robust child,” so called by the physician, .. and admired in various tongues as “a beautiful baby” and “un bel bambino” when carried to the Cascine for his daily airing. Not an hour’s illness has the child had, and now he has learnt to smile and to coo out his infantine recognition of whatever good he finds in the world. Thank you for your sympathy on this subject, so warm & welcome. Help me to thank God for this new blessing of mine for which I should be so thankful! If he had been a puny sickly infant, it would have been a matter of course in everybody’s [2] eyes,—and indeed the thought of him before he came was all in a cloud, & I had been made peculiarly anxious by the fears of one of the great London physicians who predicted evil from my habit of taking morphine, a medecine impossible to leave off at once without still a greater evil– When the child cried and the physician’s voice said all was right, only God knows the unspeakable rapture I rose into, .. only God, who gave the gift. For a fortnight, my poor husband & myself were too happy, .. the letter in his writing which announced the birth of his child arriving at his mother’s deathbed, & too late for her to break the seal. She, a saintly woman, whom he loved with the whole strength of his strong affections, passed away suddenly, after the partial unconsciousness of a few hours, from an unsuspected disease of the heart, .. murmuring as the spirit departed, “Come, come quickly .. quickly”. Then the Lord Jesus came and took her. [3] If my husband’s sister had not had the heroism of writing two letters to prepare him, .. speaking of illness when there was no longer any illness .. I fear to think what might have happened, for, as it was, I never saw any man so overcome; and up to this moment his spirits have not rallied. So you see how it is, my beloved friend!– The lock of silken hair which went to you from your cousin’s infant, with the violets from your dear sainted “mother’s grave” [4] was happier than ours—for we too sent a lock of silken hair,—but it went from the newborn head to the new made grave, & there had not been time for the violets to grow.——
Now, why should I write you so mournful a letter? I want to tell you rather that I am very well & getting stronger and even a little fatter everyday, and that neither I nor Baby can be said to flourish less for the revolutions and counter-revolutions, the putting up & pulling down of liberty trees, & the invasions of Austrian & French armies. We are like the church bells of San Felice opposite, which, with a sublime impartiality rang when the Grand Duke ran away & when he was invited back again, when the general assembly met & when it would’nt meet any more, when the republic was declared and when it was denied, altogether, one thing however I can not do, .. and that is .. admire the patriotism, heroism, & consistency of the Tuscan people. Poor Italy—poor Rome, poor Venice, poor Sicily!– “Italia fara da se” is too literally translated by “Italy will do for herself.” You cant think how melancholy everything seems to us who had been hopeful, & how the whole face of the country changes under our eyes. The Austrian army is to be quartered at Florence next, and I feel inclined sometimes to run away as the Grand Duke did before. The one good evolved from the late movement is the destruction of the prestige of Popery, which is probably for ever destroyed in the minds of the Italian peoples. They may replace the Pope bodily; but spiritually they never will. “All the King’s horses and all the King’s men” [5] will not attain to it. And now is the moment & here is the door open for protestant missionaries: my husband & I often exclaim over the immense opportunity which Exeter Hall [6] seems not to perceive of sending out intelligent cultivated men (because what is fit for New Zealand is not fit for Italy) with a fluency in the language and a certain power of adaptation and tact. Such men might by God’s help stand between the nation and that torrent of infidelity, which will be the alternative to Romanism & sweep souls before it, I much fear–
Oh, how kindly you write to me. And if you knew, if you could guess, what a different view I take of your kindness, .. of our respective relations! You were always so much above me in the highest things, and I saw what the very fact has prevented you from seeing,—how you had to stoop in your tender sympathy for me, .. you and one the most beloved by you. But I need not write of these things. Of poetry .. mine .. you speak like a friend, and I may tell you that I have not put away the hope of doing some better things in it. It is curious & the effect perhaps of long habit, but all my ideas of “work” turn to writing; and the new domestic “duties” come to me like pure pleasure and play, .. though I, who never could sew in my life, have bought a thimble of my own for the first time since I was a child, and “hem” and “stitch” and “whip over” to my husband’s admiration & my own. Everything had been fixed with us for paying a visit to England this summer, but the unexpected sorrow changing everything, now there are no plans fixed enough for speaking of. My sisters are longing to see me, and I, to see them, but the depression of my husband’s spirits & the impossibility of wishing him to go back to a home so changed, draw me back even from this. Thank you for telling me that you thought my dearest father looked well. I hear the same from others, and always it is great comfort. In time perhaps I shall have greater still. Dearest friend, why do you ask me whether my sisters would like to have intercourse with you? Of course they would like it for my sake & their own. I will mention it to them directly. Arabel is one of Mr Stratten’s congregation, & attends the Ragged schools sedulously– [7] Henrietta has never stirred from the Church of England. They both have been full of love to me, dear things, present or absent.–
Oh, but I quite understand your pleasures and independence of solitude—I perfectly understand. Society by flashes is the brightest way of having it. What will be more difficult to my understanding, is the continuance of your choice of England for a settled residence .. if the choice should continue:—because of the detestable climate (which my patriotism always falls into fits thinking of) and because also of the way of life, the ordering of dinners, the whole fuss of walking up & down stairs physically and morally. On the continent, life goes on so noiselessly, .. the wheels turn on the grass, .. and then, for persons of very small income like ourselves, England really is not a liveable place, on other grounds. So entirely, though, I sympathize in your joys of return, .. in the sense of love round you when you are at your brother’s house, [8] and also when you walk to the house of God in company. Will you stay on in England, I wonder to myself. Do tell me how you continue to like it, & whether your health bore up in face of the cold April we heard of. It strikes me that Dr & Mrs Pollock may give up Rome, Mazzini’s Rome, [9] more readily for the late events. We are not acquainted with Capt. Pakenham– [10] We live like hermits & know nobody in fact. I am very, very well—(did I forget to say that?) and did’nt suffer more than was necessary & ordinary, at the grand epoch, and recovered my strength with wonderful rapidity. The physicians say that the birth of the child will probably “reinstate my health completely”. May God bless you, dear, dear friend! Think of me & love me, & do write to me when you can. I am your ever affectionate Ba–
We have an apartment taken by the year & our own furniture, and shall always be able to let it, we flatter ourselves. Clara Lindsay you will have seen for yourself. How well she looks!
Address, on integral page: Miss Dowglass / Care of Thomas Dowglass Esqre / 20 Blandford Square.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: University of Texas.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Here EBB wrote and marked out “my,” inserting “everybody’s” above the line.
3. Cf. Revelation 22:20.
4. Frances Dowglass, daughter of Joseph Pollock of Co. Down, Ireland, died on 18 July 1843, aged 57, in Rome; she was buried in the English Cemetery there. The “cousin’s infant,” son of James Edward Pollock and his wife Marianne, was christened James Wilson Pollock on 8 November 1848 in Rome.
5. From the Mother Goose nursery rhyme, “Humpty Dumpty.”
7. The Ragged Schools movement developed out of the charitable efforts of individuals to educate impoverished children. The Ragged Schools Union was founded in 1844, and by the late 1840’s “eighty different schools … were affiliated” with it (Claire Seymour, Ragged Schools, Ragged Children, 1995, p. 6). Many of these schools began as Sunday schools, and this was probably where Arabella’s involvement began as she herself taught Sunday school at Paddington Chapel.
8. The house of Thomas Dowglass (1806–57); his address appears below and in AB-1.
9. At this time, the Roman republic was ruled by a triumvirate consisting of Aurelio Saffi, Carlo Armellini, and Mazzini, though the latter was its acknowledged head.
10. John Pakenham (1790–1876), who retired from the Royal Navy in 1854 with the rank of Admiral, was partner in the banking firm of Maquay and Pakenham in Florence, with “branches of their bank at the Baths of Lucca, Pisa, Siena, and Rome” (Murray’s Hand-Book for Travellers in Northern Italy, 1847, p. 475).
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