2862. EBB to Arabella Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 148–151.
Florence.
24 June [1850] [1]
You will be prepared for bad news, my own beloved Arabel, and yet it goes to my heart to have to put the final blow to our happy hopes for the summer. No England for us, dearest Arabel! I thought the delay must mean no good, and I suppose they have been putting the ship into dock or something as expensive, .. for instead of a hundred & seventy pounds we get seventy, .. which not only forbids England as a matter of course, but will throw us into convulsions of œconomy for the rest of the year. Robert said on saturday, when he had the letter, that we should’nt be able indeed to leave Florence at all—only he spoke then in a moment of desperation, and we shall certainly be able to get away for a month or two to some near place. If it should be possible it will be right, for all our sakes, .. especially Baby’s: I should not like to expose him to the heat here, .. whenever the heat comes .. for so far, the temperature has not exceeded seventy two, & generally the thermometer has stood lower. There is something in the comet I fancy, to keep the weather so unItalian. Well! this is grievous,—is it not? Still you see how impossible going to England wd be! Our income during the present year falls far short of Henrietta’s & Surtees’s,—& we must keep the balia till October, .. a considerable expense. [2] Six of us, there are—and little more than a hundred pounds, to go to the end of the year with!! Oh Arabel, I am not vexed about that .. we shall do perfectly: I am only bent on making clear to you that it is not our fault, not our breach of promise, not our change of mind, if we don’t go to you as we intended, and that rather you shd pity than be vexed with us. Robert had even made the sacrifice of his feelings & consented to visit New Cross—which was an effort on his part very favorable to the arrangement. But it was not to be this year. One comfort is that we have lost two months of the summer & shd have had an abbreviated time– Others will come upon consideration & in time, I dare say. Look at it all brightly, my darling Arabel, as a part of God’s will, .. which shd always come to us with a sense of brightness– It is the fault of our eyes, you know, if we do not see it bright always. For the rest, you must have been prepared for this decision—when we go to England it shd be early in May, and here’s the end of June! I was prepared! I was certain there was some great diminution from the delay. In spite of which, we are all disappointed—everybody in bad spirits, and poor Wilson especially so, I think, although she insists that she “had been giving it up lately”––everybody in bad spirits except Wiedeman, .. who has his little body overflowing with such ineffable joy, that he may well be thought merry enough for all the rest of the house. Robert & I look at one another sometimes & say, “But that child’s going mad! Did you ever see anything like that”. A few evenings ago, we sent him to a toyshop, where he bought a cart and two dolls, & came home in a sort of ecstasy which you wd scarcely believe perhaps from my description– Half an hour afterwards he was running about the rooms, clasping his hands, covering & squeezing up his face with them, & at intervals, siezing his own head & holding it, as if he expected it to burst with joy—it was almost frightful to see the child. Wilson says sometimes that he has had too much excitement, & that it might have been better if we had kept him in his nursery like other babies of his age.– I dont know I am sure—we meant to make him happy & joyous: and certainly he is happy & joyous—and healthy besides—he never has anything the matter with him, little darling. Under no circumstances, perhaps, wd he have been otherwise than an excitable child– The more reason, you will suggest, for not over-exciting him. Still there is a good deal to be said on our side of the question– All his pleasures have been out of door pleasures, & within the reach of his simple senses—air & sunshine & music & the processions of the country—we have not pulled at his brain or tried to teach him the least thing in the world. We mean to neglect his education in the most praise-worthy way– Meantime, he is very funny—you wd open your eyes at him. At the least sound of music (even at the canary bird’s singing in the apartment above us) he begins to dance—& dances generally, till he tumbles down. That canary bird is the joy of his life. Twenty times in half an hour he will run out on the terrace to see if the cage is in its place. Two days ago he was in the courtyard & found an empty cage belonging to the porter, .. which he was enchanted with, & stood by ever so long, with his arms thrown up, calling to the swallows to come down from the sky & live in it. He is very fond of pulling the pins out of my pin-cushion when he comes in to me while I dress. I lectured him about this, & to prove to him how these pins might hurt him, I pricked his hand with one of them– At which he only laughed loud,—& now his great joke is to prick himself with a pin or a needle & pretend to be in dreadful pain. I assure you he is a curious child. When I told Wilson that Mrs Bevan did not believe a word of my account of him, she said, “Of course, nobody could, without seeing with their own eyes–” She seriously is of opinion that there is not, nor ever has been, a child like him. I quote Wilson—because what Robert & I say, must naturally go for nothing. Did I tell you that when he was six months old, he used to pretend to be asleep—& then jump up suddenly to frighten us. It is still a standing joke, and he has not advanced to shutting his eyes (which he does’nt consider a characteristic of sleep)—he only lies quite still & grave. All this I have written of Baby, as being the most cheerful news within reach. If the money had been too little for England, yet enough for Naples, we had had a plan of going to Capri for the summer—but the expense will be too great– We talk now of Elba, which is two hours from Leghorn & a cheap place– After all the probability is that we shall have to be satisfied with the neighbourhood of Leghorn itself, where the sea-breezes may be worth paying a little for, on Baby’s account. Next year we shall remove bodily to Paris, after selling our most unwieldy furniture, & taking the rest with us by water-carriage—and then, Arabel, we shall be at home, to all the intents & purposes for which I care. We may be in England at any moment, & shall see you constantly. It is not right, I feel, this living away from you for years—& Robert has duties to his father. Paris combines the cheapness & continental liberty of life, with the nearness to the dearest—and we have quite decided upon trying Paris. If the climate shd not agree with me, it will be a thing tried at least, & we shall have the satisfaction of a completed experiment. Mr Browning does not come to us this autumn:—they could have only stayed a week or ten days, and Sarianna says that she is not strong enough for such an undertaking, though her father wished it for himself. Oh—such a plan wd have been absurd! Too kind it was of Mr Browning to think of it—and by this earnestness we are naturally the more anxious to make an effort on our own side.
My dearest darling Arabel, I write in the greatest haste as you see– Do write to me– I want to hear about you. I want to hear about Trippy. I want to hear about Alfred.– And I want to hear how Henrietta goes on– Besides .. how much, besides? Do write to me a little oftener, to make up for this prolonged absence. You shall be rained upon by letters from me. Are they not shamefully long about my new edition? It might have done good, if brought out now. [3] I hope you will like it. I had to leave heaps of poems out of the Seraphim volume, they were so weak & inferior—and among them, I am vexed to say, were those hymns, one of which had an inscription from Mr Hunter’s sermon. [4] I tried to find a place for the inscription elsewhere but could’nt, and the verses were too weak to leave. The more vexed I was, that for the same reason, I had to omit the stanzas to “The little friend.” [5] What could I do? I came to the conclusion of omitting them myself, & when I appealed to Robert afterwards, he could’nt help saying that I had done wisely. To make some amends, I inscribed the ‘Sea Mew’ “affectionately to MEH”—lest they sh<d> fancy that I meditated any unkindness. Was this enough, do you think? Though Mr Hunter has acted strangely to me, it would pain me to seem to show my sense of it by such means. There are three sonnets on the subject of dear Mr Boyd [6] —you will see. Did you have sight of the Martins as they passed through London, & did Mrs Martin get my letter? Where are the Peytons?– And what was concluded about Reynolds? You know you may tell me & be certain of the secret being well kept. Most anxious I am about dearest Trippy’s affairs—so let me hear everything.
Robert comes in to say that the letters must go this moment. God bless you, my own Arabel. Speak of yourself—& write, write,
to your ever & ever fondly attached
Ba–
Love, where it is acceptable– I am in such a hurry.
Address, on integral page: Care of Miss Tripsack / (Miss Barrett) / 12. Beaumont Street / Devonshire Place / New Road / London.
Publication: EBB-AB, I, 327–331.
Manuscript: Gordon E. Moulton-Barrett.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. There is no record of how much the Brownings paid the wet nurse, but the “monthly nurse”—as EBB called Madame Biondi—was paid nine pounds per month.
3. i.e., in association with “the Laureateship business”; see letter 2864.
4. There were four poems in The Seraphim, and Other Poems (1838) with the subtitle “Hymn”: “A Supplication for Love. Hymn I,” “The Mediator. Hymn II,” “The Weeping Saviour. Hymn III,” and “The Measure. Hymn IV.” “A Supplication for Love” begins with an epigraph and the following citation: “Recalled words of an extempore Discourse, preached at Sidmouth, 1833,” though George Barrett Hunter is not specifically mentioned. In addition to the “Hymns,” six other poems from The Seraphim were not included in Poems (1850): “The Little Friend,” “The Student,” “Stanzas,” “The Young Queen,” “Victoria’s Tears,” and “Vanities.”
5. Written for George Barrett Hunter’s daughter, Mary Elizabeth Hunter, it is entitled “To Mary” in two early versions of the poem (see Reconstruction, D477 and 478).
6. The three sonnets to Hugh Stuart Boyd are subtitled “His Blindness,” “His Death, 1848” and “Legacies.”
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