2817. EBB to Thomas Westwood
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 15–16.
Bagni di Lucca.
October 2. [1849] [1]
I am afraid, dear Mr Westwood, to think what you must have been thinking of me all this time of silence, during which so many kings & popes have been dethroned & de-vaticaned! May it not be so with friends also!! I seem to feel your ‘cudgelling’ me with very ‘hard thoughts’ [2] over the Alps, and cant say but what I must seem to you to deserve it absolutely. Now for explanation & apology! What have I to say for myself? Why, in the first place, I never received your letter to Rome. We did not go to Rome, & I dont remember having told you that we were going, though I may well have done so in some one of our many days full of Roman plans. We stayed in Florence—took an apartment there & furnished it ourselves & call it our Florentine home to this day– When your last letter came, I was not well, & writing was not good for me. A few weeks afterwards our child was born—you have not heard perhaps that we have a little boy? .. and when I should otherwise have answered what you wrote to me, a great affliction had fallen on us in the sudden death of my husband’s mother, and witnessing his deep affliction, disheartened me from writing altogether. There had been no common love between him & his mother .. and she was snatched away in a moment, from an unsuspected disease of the heart– The shock was dreadful to him; &, dreadful to me also, was the feeling of being impotent of consolation to him! The poor baby, who had brought us such joy, seemed lost in a moment in the shadow of death: the new grave-stone seemed to hide him from us. Then, I feared a nervous fever for my husband, & had to drag him away from Florence for change of scene—to the Gulf of Spezzia & Carrara, .. and to these Baths of Lucca, .. where at last we settled down for the summer. The change, the silence, the sublime influences of nature in the mountains & chesnut-forests, have helped the workings of religion & time,—and I thank God that he is better & in healthier spirits; though his constitutional gaiety has scarcely yet come back,—will not, long, perhaps!– So this has been the history of my ungrateful-looking silence– Can you forgive me, and will you? My child was born under the “Florentine republic”; (save tha<t)> and a tree of liberty was planted with acclamation, besides drums, trumpets, & cannons, just before the window through which he saw the first light– He is the rosiest, fattest, laughingest of possible babies,—& by no means the least pretty .. as my maternal vanity whispers softly. I am much vainer of him, I do assure you, than I ever was yet of poem or review—— You, who are a man, may say .. “Indeed!!” But if a woman were near you, she would subjoin “Yes, indeed”, in another tone than Iago’s. [3]
Are you at Brussels still, I wonder? Thames Street strikes me as the more steady direction, so I shall direct there. Write to me, & tell me of yourself, & of the new book which is to be [4] & of Flossy, & all I may care to hear of. You do not know me if you fancy I am “changed”. I am not one of those who, like the moon, have their “soft fifty changes”. [5] No, indeed!– I am always glad to hear from you & very glad to hear of your prosperity– So write to me. If it had not been for our sorrow, we shd have been in England this summer for a few months, & we mean to go next spring. I am wonderfully well & able to walk, & ride even—have made excursions into the mountains with my husband five miles deep riding– No wheel could penetrate there. I have recovered strength & taken hold of life to a degree that is extraordinary. Flush is’nt quite so well. Yes, he is well—but the summer heats of Italy affect his coat, poor fellow, & he has lost much of his beauty. You must please to direct to Florence, as we shall return there in the course of this month, & perhaps early in it,—these mountain-places being apt to grow cold suddenly. We live here in a sort of eerie [sic] high up the mountain-side, on the skirt of the climbing chesnut forests. The scenery is exquisite. And now, dear Mr Westwood I shall offer you my husband’s regards, & ask you once more if you have forgiven your friend
Elizabeth Barrett Browning?
Direct, .. Firenze
Toscana.
Address, on integral page: T. Westwood Esqre / 67. Upper Thames Street.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: British Library.
1. Year provided by EBB’s references to the birth of Pen and the death of RB’s mother.
2. Cf. As You Like It, I, 2, 183–184. In this and subsequent quotations from Shakespeare’s works, the line numbers correspond to those used in The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston, 1974).
3. Cf. Othello, III, 3, 101.
4. The Burden of the Bell, and Other Lyrics (1850).
5. Pippa Passes, IV, 229.
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