2854. EBB to Henrietta Cook
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 122–127.
Florence.
May 25. [1850] [1]
My ever dearest Henrietta’s letter has been read, re-read, re-re-read! It was the most delightful of gifts to me. Yet I delayed writing in reply, because of our uncertainty about England .. whether we could go or not .. everything being dependant on accounts which we have not yet received. But let me speak of the good which is settled, the blessing which is given .. of your marriage, my dear dearest Henrietta. May God be thanked that the trial is over, the agitation at an end– I think of you with deep thankfulness, with faith & hope & joy—you will be very happy, Henrietta, and all fear is stilled when I think of you. Oh Henrietta, it was dreadful to look forward– I know what such scenes can be .. I feared for our beloved Arabel .. I feared for poor dearest Papa himself .. I feared so, that I did’nt dare speak my anxiety at your suspense continuing too long. Now, all is over! Thank God. It seems to have been much better than in my own case, and I do not doubt Arabel’s being relieved by the settlement of the question. She is one of the purest, most disinterested of human beings, & looks off from herself in an attitude of such genuine nobleness, that I admire her rather than fear for her. For the rest, .. ‘God will provide’—her turn will come. You are to please to remember, Henrietta, that Arabel belongs to me if any cause should ever dislodge her from her present home without providing her with another of her own choice—that is a fixed thing. I speak in time. And now, about Taunton. Do write & tell me all the details, & spare nothing, for I want to hear everything. You delighted me by your account of the housekeeping, the incipient housekeeping, at Weston supermare, [2] and edified me too, seeing that Robert & I exclaimed with immense approbation, upon your good sense & prudence in all those arrangements. Very wise of you to take no maid for the present! It is an expense & an incumbrance in many ways. A guinea covered your housekeeping of the first week. Two guineas cover ours—but then we are five—six, including baby, who has soup twice a day and pap once– Besides, our two guineas cover the whole expense .. and, from your account, you had groceries & wine in a separate bill. You brought them with you from London, did’nt you? That makes a difference. Tell me what you pay for your rooms at Taunton. If I were you I should be very slow about taking a house in Somersetshire or elsewhere, till my prospects widened a little. Supposing that another appointment does’nt immediately fall into Surtees’s hands, you will find it very desireable to take the cheapest means of living,—and be certain of this, both of you, that the social exigencies as well as the positive taxes of England make it just the dearest place in the world. Except, perhaps, California. I should cry aloud for you to come out to Florence, where everyone who understands (by whom I dont mean Arlette & her husband) lives for nothing & a half—only I dont understand exactly what dear Surtees’s engagements at Taunton may be; and the travelling from Italy is dreadfully expensive certainly. The sea is worse than the land. Four pounds from Leghorn to Marseilles, to begin with!– It is a great objection in my mind to Florence, and just on the ground of being nearer England, Robert and I have a strong inclination in favour of Paris—only that he is afraid for me of the Parisian climate. Still we talk bravely of making the trial—the winter there is much shorter than in England, & the atmosphere is not encumbered as we have it at home—and the truth is, that wherever I am, I am forced to be a prisoner for some three months of the year, to the house. As to cheapness, we were told the other day by a frenchman, that if we knew how to set about it, we might live as cheaply in Paris as in Florence—which I believe: & otherwise, it is a delightful place of residence, combining every possible resource, & every extreme of quiet & animation. The public gardens and Boulevards are delightful for children—you have the country tossed into the city. This is for the present, all talk, with us, observe: our Florentine apartment belongs to us till next May, & perhaps then, we shall scarcely tear ourselves away. Only I have a strong inclination towards making a trial of Paris—and if I were you & Surtees, I should be drawn towards some such trial. The north of France is within reach as Wales is– It would virtually double your income, & give you more freedom in every way– On the continent you escape a quantity of Mrs Grundyism [3] & can live as you like, nobody making you afraid. As to ‘cottages’ and so on, they sound romantic, but are dreadfully prosaic, it strikes me, in reality, translating themselves into the dullest & baldest things in the world—so do think a little before you get hampered so. Surtees, dont you agree with me, you who are wise? If it were July all the year, you wd have one more argument for a cottage—but when the honeysuckles die down & even the monthly roses slacken in the duty of blowing, what will the cottage be then? Arabel says something to me about Pau– Pau is a long journey off—nearly as far as Florence. Does Mrs Martin call it very cheap for France?– Now you will write to me about all these things. We shall go to England if we can, to talk of them, but in the meantime, make sure by writing.
You would laugh, Henrietta, for all your “modest trousseau”, if you could see how I have provided my wardrobe for the summer, considering that I was in mourning last year & had nothing to go out of it with. Two French washing ginghams, a brown one and a green one, and a Barege, lilac & green. Wilson says, “But really if you go to England you must have something handsomer”– Wilson is scandalized. ‘No’, I answer, ‘they must accept me as I am in England’! Besides, the silk gown I brought away (the double of yours, Henrietta, ..) is still new– I have not worn it since I was in Paris. Silks are too hot for our Italian summers, to my mind, and not hot enough for our winters. Then if I were to walk gorgeously all my days like Sophia Cottrell, we should have to live on maccaroni, besides leaving off Baby’s feathers, which you are so impertinent as to criticise, & which I think the prettiest of adornments for children, & would not miss for the world. They are very fashionable here—you see all the little princes decked with them, .. and my child is a little prince in his way too, I assure you. The feather does’nt stand up—it is long & drooping, & fastened round the hat like a wreath. The most œconomical of prettinesses too, you must be pleased to understand. But if they were not, I never grudge anything for Baby .. I dress him up in little silk polkas, & braid his frocks myself. He runs about, looking like a fairy born of a lily & rose—really of an unnatural size to be running. A friend of ours, very sincere & rather fanciful, frightened us out of our wits the other day, by suggesting that he was too precocious, too much “all soul” .. that his body did’nt develop in proportion .. that he was like a baby in a picture, .. a show-baby, and wanted more flesh & blood in him. All nonsense of course—we soon came to ourselves:—because he is the healthiest little creature, dimpled all over, .. & though not one of those heavy, lumpish, robust children, perhaps rather the better for that– He is tall for his proportions, & extraordinarily forward in everything, & strong. He carries about a drum as large as himself, round his waist, with drumsticks in each hand. So offended I was with Arabel for saying that Arlette’s child was forwarder than he– Perhaps in her teeth, but certainly not in the walking & understanding. The day he was eleven months old he stood alone—without touching. The day he was thirteen months, he began to walk alone—& wd have done it before he was a year old, if it had not been for his habit of crawling. At thirteen months he could sing the air of ‘Margery Daw’ as well as you could. Robert & I go to the toyshops & buy him toys, & Robert spent the whole of last sunday morning between breakfast & church-time, in learning to spin a top, I standing by and giving impotent counsel. He said he considered it a “religious duty”;—a doctrine which I hope you wont set down as heretical. Now I dont mean to write any more of Wiedeman today, because I have just sense enough to be half conscious of growing dull in the extreme, & because, with Surtees near you, that certainly wont be tolerable. I think I shall send the slip-slop about Wiedeman to Arabel for the future—and talk to you about love and housekeeping. Shall it be so?–
So you are going to Frocester to visit the John Clarkes in June. [4] Give my love to them if you do. It will be the first step to a series of visits, I suppose, to Martins, Biddulphs,—and to whom else? [5] Dear Mrs Martin was most kind, as always she is—& kindness to you is doubly kindness to me, so I love her more than ever. Have you heard from Bummy? I wish she could exonerate herself [6] —& I wish that some warm-hearted people had wider sympathies. It is too common to measure off one’s tender affections by the yard—very narrow stuff too! When you call Arlette the kindest of your cousins, do you mean than [sic, for that] anyone was unkind? Arabella Bevan, for instance, what do you say of her? Louisa Carmichael? As to Sir James’s refusing the office you suggested to him, [7] remember, Henrietta, that it wd have been an irrevocable offence to Papa & no real assistance to you. I do not blame him for receding before the position, I confess. It was a mere form with regard to you, while the unpleasantness was too practical to be denied, on his own part. You will find from my last letter to Arabel that the ground of Mr Kenyon’s silence was made of much the same motives. I understand them so perfectly that I avoided, as you know, in my own case, every application & communication of the kind. It is great comfort to me that our brothers should have acted kindly on this occasion. Did George write to Surtees? I think the better of them, and am so far the happier .. much. Indeed I may truly say, my dearest Henrietta, that I would rather, since one of us two was to suffer from a sense of unkindness, it should be myself and not yourself– There has been a fault in me somewhere, as I have felt with sufficient acuteness, & as there always is in those who have not succeeded in making themselves loved– Most sorry I am that you shd have written to Stormie—though your tenderness for me led you to do it. I beseech you never to repeat again what I say on these subjects. Robert was on the point of writing to Papa—but your marriage made us miss the opportunity. If Papa were to write back anything harsh, I never should emerge from a state of bitter repentance. Because Robert is very susceptible on his own side—and the breach would be deepened frightfully. He has devoted himself to me for above three years, not in the manner of husbands, .. and to receive an insult from my father at last, would be a cruel recompense for all that he has done for me. I wish I had let him write in my last letter now—it was my fault .. I begged him to wait to see how that letter wd be received. It is a great thing to me, to get my letters received at all, you see, Henrietta, and I tremble to run the risk of losing the last step gained.
Most anxious I am just now about my dearest Trippy– What is to be done, Henrietta? As to allowing Trippy to want, it is impossible to think of allowing it. I wd rather want myself .. oh, far. Arabel’s letter astonishes me, and fills me with indignation, yet I am not convinced that it is a final step of Mrs Gordon’s to submit to cover herself & her children with dishonor thus– Observe, the other creditors have relinquished their claims, in behalf of Trippy– Now if Mrs Gordon pays Trippy nothing, she makes herself liable to a renewal of these claims, & gains little except the shame. Rely on it, she must, in her own interest, take some step—her position, even as a worldly one, not being tenable. I have been hesitating whether or not to say plainly that I cannot associate with her under actual circumstances—but it seems wiser to let one’s actions speak for one, especially while she may yet pay– I have not set foot in her house, nor shall, of course—though two days ago, we were within a few yards of it, in going to enquire after Sophia Cottrell who is confined .. has a boy [8] .. very small & very plain– I never saw so plain a baby .. also it cries continually– Madme Biondi showed it to me, but I did not see Sophia– Madme B. thought the child would live– Its feet are a little awry too—but dont mention this. It wd be terrible if they lost this child besides. It is curious that persons, of so spacious a ‘presence’, as the Cottrells are, shd not have finer children—only she is certainly delicate. She suffered very little this time. We have been very cool to the Cottrells, & they are aware of it, I am certain, Count Cottrell not coming as usual to tell us of the birth of his baby. I dare say you wonder why we cant fix about England. Until this year we always have known the amount of ‘ways & means’ before May, & now we have to wait. Most vexatious it is, but not our fault certainly.
Write to me, Henrietta, & tell me all. I must write to thank Surtees for his welcome little note. May God bless you both, to one another, & to those who love you—among them to your
ever attached Ba–
Robert’s best love. Wiedeman has left off his caps—& his hair is beginning to curl all over.
Am I right to address Mrs Surtees C? It is prettier. Dont walk too far .. so as to tire yourself.
Address, on integral page: Mrs Surtees Cook / Post office / Taunton / Somersetshire.
Publication: Huxley, pp. 121–123 (in part).
Manuscript: British Library.
1. Year provided by EBB’s references to Henrietta’s honeymoon travels.
2. The Cooks spent a two-week honeymoon at 2 Oriel Terrace, Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, in “very comfortable apartments, with a capital lookout” (Surtees, 6 April 1850). See illustration facing p. 112.
3. i.e., strict propriety, as personified by the character of Mrs. Grundy in Thomas Morton’s play Speed the Plough (1798).
4. Frocester Manor House, Frocester, 10 miles S.W. of Gloucester, was the Gloucestershire seat of John Altham Graham-Clarke (1782–1862), EBB’s uncle. The Cooks stayed with his eldest son, John Altham Graham-Clarke (1813–97) and his wife Emma Jane (née Eagles). Surtees Cook describes Frocester as “a fine estate of 800 acres of good land … & an old house—all of which is settled on John” (Surtees, 1 June 1850).
5. On 15 June the Cooks left Frocester for Ledbury where they stayed with Mrs. Augusta Biddulph (née Roberts) and three of her daughters. A week later they visited James and Julia Martin at Old Colwall. From there they moved on to “a farm house called the Winnings (Mrs. Baylis). … about 2. miles from Great Malvern, beneath the hills on the Herefordshire side” (Surtees, 2 July 1850). The Cooks remained at the Winnings for several months, paying occasional visits to other acquaintances in the neighbourhood. They returned to London on 26 November. For an illustration of The Winnings, see facing p. 240.
6. Bummy had received a letter from Henrietta announcing her marriage to Surtees Cook and evidently containing some confidences. Without Henrietta’s knowledge, Bummy sent this letter to Edward Moulton-Barrett, who received it the night of the wedding day (6 April)—not long after a heated discussion with his children regarding the marriage. The following night he read Henrietta’s letter to the family and another confrontation ensued. See SD1420 in which Arabella describes Bummy’s conduct as “shameful & most treacherous.”
7. Perhaps to act as witness to Henrietta’s marriage. James Robert Carmichael (né Carmichael-Smyth, 1817–83), 2nd Baronet, married EBB’s cousin Louisa Charlotte (née Butler) in 1841.
8. Carlo Ludovico Cottrell, first son and second child of Sophia and Henry Cottrell, was born on 14 May 1850.
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