2812. EBB to Arabella Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 15, 340–343.
Bagni di Lucca.
August 31. [1849] [1]
I dont think I shall be able to fill this page though I take it up. My darling Arabel, I write only to tell you something of dearest Trippy’s affairs. Walking yesterday down at the Ponte (the village below) Count Cottrell drove past us, with Mrs Gordon—stopped the carriage—Mrs Gordon got out & walked with me. Count Cottrell siezed on Robert. There was but a short time .. we were in the road & in public. He said that his sister in law had written to her lawyer (“I may tell you, at my dictation”) to offer fifty pounds a year to Trippy, in consequence of the other creditors including his wife & Annie Roberts, [2] withdrawing their claims & consenting to “wait”. “She has only four hundred a year,” continued Count Cottrell, (who told Robert at their last conversation on the subject that she had five) “and what’s four hundred a year? Bread and cheese! It’s impossible that she can give more than fifty pounds a year, quite impossible.” (He said, you remember, before, that it was “impossible she cd give more than a hundred”.) Robert confined himself to observing that it was a very, very sad case. He is furious with Count Cottrell about the whole transaction, which indeed is by no means creditable. George will insist as he ought, I am certain, and it seems to me right to put him in possession of the “stage asides,” that he may see as much as possible of the character of the plot. Whatever I tell you is strictly private of course—or Robert & I shall get into a great scrape. His impression is, that very probably Mrs Gordon has, like her sisters, a prospective claim on Mr Tulk’s will (for certain sums of money bound up in mortgages) in which case, Mr Gordon’s creditors might claim for their parts .. might they not? If such a claim were capable of proof, persons might be found (learned in law) who would accept that contingent claim, &, instead of it, give Trippy a very sufficient annuity– George shd examine into this. At any rate he shd be careful not to let Trippy accept a miserable fifty pounds a year “for her life” as Count Cottrell repeated again & again emphatically, with such a contingency among the possibilities. What are the “other creditors” “waiting” for, I wonder? Count Cottrell spoke rather cavalierly of the affair yesterday—treated it as if, after all, Trippy had bought an annuity with her four thousand pounds. Cool!—to imagine that anyone would accept five per cent as an annuity & sink the principal, .. even if such a percentage were paid faithfully. Mrs Ogilvy was complaining to me three days ago that she & her husband had only four instead of eight per cent from the French rail roads last year (—“Of course they should do better this year! but it was very inconvenient.”) “After all,[”] said Count Cottrell, “she has received back so much of her four thousand ..” counting the annual payments. “And after all,” continued he, “it is her fault, because she refused to pay up the insurance & preferred having the money to spend”. Now all this is very pitiful– Not straightforward, not frank, least of all generous & gentlemanly. I shd be the last not to commiserate poor Mrs Gordon; but “four hundred a year” I do know to be more than “bread & cheese” in Italy: and even if it were only bread & cheese, she shd give up the cheese & be honest & noble. I do hope that George will be very wary & energetic, & not yield upon light grounds,—because it is my full impression & Robert’s, that something is to be done in this case by determination– She probably has five hundred a year (or why did Count Cottrell say so before?) and possibly prospective claims on the will. I have not the least doubt of her ability to concede more than is proposed. Write & tell me for I am very anxious about Trippy.
This, if it were a letter, should have gone to Henrietta; but it’s only a note, & so you must take it. I have received the books [3] —thank you!– but the frock & the lace have, I rather fancy, gone to Florence, & we shant see them for these two months—more’s the vexation. At least, Mrs Gordon has’nt sent them yet, & Sophia Cottrell said something to Robert which made him think so. Mrs Gordon appeared to me quite unchanged .. perhaps a very little stouter & more unwieldly– She said that she was thunderstruck at me .. I was so wonderfully improved in my looks!!! Very kind her manner was to me—quite smiling & serene: but do you know her first word, when we began to walk together, fell on me like a blow– If I lived a hundred years I could not get used to some sounds. I staggered & was nearly flat on the ground .. the sky seemed under my feet—it was only the thought of how Robert wd be frightened at having to pick me up, that kept me standing. She asked me to forgive her .. & began to talk of her own griefs .. of the child, husband, father, sister, she had lost .. & of the happy memories which were present to her always, till I felt ashamed of myself & told her so. She said that the tenderest consolations were lavished on her from without & from within—she felt Love everywhere. I confess I envy the attainment of this high, serene atmosphere. She asked me quite smilingly if her second boy was not like her husband. “His name is John, [4] too,” she said. Well, now I must write of something else.
It is not likely that Sarianna shd come to us this autumn– We had a disappointing letter yesterday. The Arno[u]lds dont come—and then Robert is rather <u>neasy at the thought of his father being left alone at this cholera season—he who is like a child, and, if he felt unwell, would as soon, in a fit of abstraction, take a glass of lemonade as the prescribed chalk-mixture. The cholera is raging about New Cross—. So, he writes to promise that, in any case, we shall be in England in the spring, & carry her back with us, if she cant come before. But in any case, Arabel, if we are kept alive & at liberty, we shall be in England in the spring. I was afraid to think of England—. Robert has said over & over, “Oh, I hope I never again shall see England”—and although I answered that he wd certainly have to go with me, seeing that I was’nt going to give up England, not a pebble of her, .. yet I have thought sighingly in myself “When shall I have courage to insist on what is so painful to him?” So that I did not dare name the subject to you. But now it is his own proposition & resolution to go– He considers it “a duty”, he says, to go to England, at whatever cost– Now you will have us, you see. Meanwhile I am very, very uneasy about the cholera– Increasing it is, instead of diminishing; and if you, Arabel, persist in attending those schools under such circumstances, my conviction is that you deceive yourself & are anything but fulfilling a duty in doing so. You expose your family to great risks of danger & sorrow, .. and in order to what? The meeting of these schools at such a moment is an evil both to the teachers and the taught. Forgive me, darling Arabel! I love & admire you: but you have good sense enough to avoid the pedantry of a virtue, when it is pointed out to you. If you love me, mind what I say—for my sake my own precious Arabel.—
Great & glorious news in our house! Baby has a tooth. The balia rushed in to us while we were at dinner, Wilson after her, .. Alessandro in the rear .. “Listen to the rattling of the glass against his tooth! he has a tooth”. If I had been Duchess of Tuscany, I should have fired the cannons. Oh—if you knew how frightened we have been about the tooth cutting. People frightened us to death with dreadful instances of perils by the teeth. One said “Dont be alarmed, but he is sure to grow thin”,—and another said, “You must think nothing of it, but he will lose all these roses”! .. and another said “Ah, poor child! A beautiful child now, .. & we must hope that he will get through his teething”, … and another said “The only way is to have his gums lanced at the first symptom—” and another said, “Mind you dont delay calling in a doctor when the tooth-fever comes”— .. so that Robert & I have been as frightened .. as frightened!– Think of our joy. He never felt the tooth come—and a second is just through, and two more at hand. He laughs more than ever, he is growing out of Raffael into Michal Angelo, .. out of the delicacy into the robustness. Nobody says now he is like a little girl. Think of that child’s riding six miles on horseback the other day, to a village three miles off in the mountains. He rode on Wilson’s knee. The balia had a donkey & Wilson a horse—and his e[c]stasies were something indescribable, Wilson says! He was laughing & screaming for joy the whole way, & putting out his arms to catch the horse’s ears. The guides said they never saw such a child. This is the second time he has been out on a riding party. May God bless you. My much loved Henrietta shall hear from me soon. Do out of pity write. Love to dearest Trippy & all.
Your Ba.
You dont mention dear Minny. My love to her always. Write oftener, Arabel. Finished my paper after all. Robert’s love. He is much better.
Address, on integral page: Care of Miss Tripsack / (Miss Arabel Barrett) / 12. Beaumont Street / Devonshire Place / New Road / London.
Publication: EBB-AB, I, 274–278.
Manuscript: Gordon E. Moulton-Barrett.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Anne Elizabeth Roberts (née Gordon, formerly Moulton-Barrett), John Gordon’s sister, had married EBB’s uncle Samuel in 1833. Three years after his death in 1837 she married Martyn John Roberts (b. 1806?).
3. i.e., The Seraphim and RB’s Poems (1849) which were to be sent via Mrs. Gordon.
4. John Hart Gordon (b. 1842) was the fifth child and second son of John and Caroline Gordon.
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