2874. RB to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 178–179.
Florence
Aug. 16, ’50.
My dear Mr. Kenyon,
Ba sends a letter home to-day, written at easy stages, and I will take the opportunity of telling you that she continues to recover strength, though slowly, she cannot stand yet without help, but sits up for several hours every day. As soon as she can bear it, we shall take a few drives and then try to get into the country for a month or six weeks, as the doctor enjoins on us, promising that the change of air will repair all the mischief, though four of these mishaps, beside the advent of our babe, amount to a serious drain on such a constitution as hers. Our babe, too, has been very unwell, it is thought from exposure to the sun, and made us duly uneasy for the first time, but the feverishness ended in a simple cold and cough, and all is right now. The worst has been this dreadful loss of dear, brave, noble Margaret Fuller, with her husband and child; you must have heard of the calamitous wreck of the “Elizabeth” in which she embarked, “taking the name for a good omen,” she said, but it could have been the only one, so visible a presentiment of evil had she, or so we seem to see it now. We loved her, and she loved Ba, coming here oftener as the time for departure approached. She would too gladly have staid here, but was dependent for comfort on the arrangements with booksellers, newspapers, etc, which friends had engaged to make, and taken their time in making, which was not her time, unfortunately. When she had engaged a passage (and indeed gone on board the vessel, tho’ a delay in its sailing suffered her to return to Florence for a few days) [1] she received the letter she had been waiting for, bidding her set her mind at ease, as the requisite negotiations had been completed. “Had it arrived a fortnight ago!” she said; so she left us, giving our babe a little bible from her own, “in memory of him.” She wrote to us from Gibraltar, a sad strange letter, but most affectionate, telling us how disastrously the voyage had proceeded thus far, the captain had died of small-pox, they supposed, for at Gibraltar they were neither allowed the visit of a surgeon, nor the burial of the body, she had tended the dying man, whose sufferings had been horrible, and now they were about to continue their adventure uncertain if some fatal disease were not waiting to break out among them when once more out of help’s reach. The letter began, “Dear precious friends”—and ended by bidding us write what should be the first thing to meet her at home. You see what did meet her, and the more particular accounts that have reached us are simply heart-rending—for our best hope is that after she had lashed her child to the Italian woman, and launched them from the ship on the desperate chance of their reaching the shore alive, she fainted and felt no more, since she was drowned in the forecastle, easily by comparison, while her husband remained on the ship till it broke up, nearly eleven hours of that agony. All the sailors, mates included, seem to have saved themselves and left the passengers to their fate—those of the crew who perished were foreigners, too,—our English way is for the officers to quit the ship last, not first, as would appear to have been the case here. [2] Forgive me for all this pain I cause you by telling what will not [stay] out of my thoughts. Ba sends her truest love, with that of yours ever most affectionately,
R. Browning.
Poor Ossoli, the husband, was a quiet, kind, melancholy-looking creature—deeply attached to her and to his child, and believing in her superiority with a simple and affecting faith. The child looked lymphatic and short-lived to our apprehension; yet was doing well when she wrote, the better for the voyage indeed. She told us, in Ossoli’s presence, “that he had been warned never to make a voyage, as the sea would be fatal to him.” I remarked to him “that does not much discompose you?” and he smiled and shook his head. She said once, all things went ill with her, and would, yet she was always cheerful.
Text: LRB, pp. 30–32.
1. According to the Passport Register in the State Archives of Florence, the Marchese Ossoli obtained a travel permit to Leghorn, dated 4 May 1850, for himself and his family. They apparently left Florence on 6 May, the day after Margaret Fuller presented a bible to Pen (see letter 2861, note 10). Their departure from Leghorn was postponed, however, due to delays in the lading of the Elizabeth. The Ossolis returned to Florence, obtained another travel permit (dated 14 May), and finally sailed for America three days later. On 15 May they called on the Brownings at Casa Guidi, where, evidently, EBB gave Margaret Fuller “a ring with a carbuncle in it” (Moncure Daniel Conway, Emerson at Home and Abroad, London, 1883, p. 197).
2. For a full account of the wreck of the Elizabeth, which differs with some of the information RB had received, see Joan von Mehren, Minerva and the Muse (Amherst, Mass., 1994), pp. 333–339.
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