2899. EBB to Arabella Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 260–265.
[Florence]
Jany 12. [1851] [1]
While your letter is coming, mine must be going, my beloved Arabel, for I cant wait any longer. I ought to write to Henrietta—but I wont: because a letter will be due to her on certain accounts, within a few days perhaps—may God grant it. How much happier we shall all be when all is happily over– Not that I am uneasy—only anxious. And it would have pleased me better, if she had kept up her walking—she ought to have done it, & will probably suffer more through not doing it. Sophia Cottrell, who is delicate, as we all know, was yet made to walk four miles a day before her last confinement, & had an excellent time in consequence– When there is tendency to premature illness it is different of course, but Henrietta has given proof of none such, & I am sorry that, instead of the carriage exercise, she did not keep more to her feet– Through not taking exercise, I suffered longer than I shd otherwise have done—but I [2] had only the choice of evils, you see. May God grant as happy an escape to her as to myself. You never told me if she wished for a boy or a girl—mind to tell me what was wished for. One thing I am really angry about,—having found out only now that she had meditated having a sage femme [3] instead of an accoucheur. It was pure wickedness of her, tell her from me, and I do thank Surtees from my heart for having decidedly put an end to that imagination of her’s. In Italy women receive a scientific education & take regular degrees as levatrici, [4] & are always employed, except by the richest classes; yet with every advantage of instruction & experience, they are apt to fail terribly & tragically when the least difficulty occurs:—how then, in England without the said advantages? Mrs Greenhough nearly lost her life & her child’s life, [5] she told me herself, just because she ventured so .. Mrs Greenhough, the wife of the sculptor. I draw a deep breath of thankfulness for Surtees’s goodsense & right feeling.– I suppose they will have some woman’s attendance besides the monthly nurse’s. Will it not be necessary? Yes, a child will raise their expenses a little—but one must pay for cloth of gold. Tell Henrietta that I am always talking to Wiedeman about his cousin, though I dont know yet whether to say ‘cugino’ or ‘cugina’. [6]
Dearest darling Arabel, Mrs Martin tells me that you are thin, & I cant bear to hear it. Why are you thin, pray? Are you overdoing yourself at the schools, or what? I entreat you to tell me why this is, & whether your headaches are bad, & your homœpathy worth nothing? She did not send me a bad account of you, mind, but she said you were ‘thin’ & that was not good .. & you are not good (but very bad) if you overdo yourself .. as I much suspect. Now mind you do not forget to speak to me of this, Arabel.
Do you know I have had a fit of remorse about what I said, in respect to some very kind friends. [7] Only you asked me & I confessed the hidden sin in the deep pit of my soul. It was sin though, and I am aware of it. You, on your side, are aware of my besetting sins, & that in a moment of impatience one is apt to give too much way to them. We had been suffering, besides, from an unusual succession of evening visitors, when I wrote– For a week, only one evening was free, & Robert & I had been groaning one to another, though we really liked the people who came. The consequence was that I being cross, answered your question crossly. But you must do me justice & admit that I am not usually insensible to affectionateness, much less when it comes associated with yourself, my own darling sister—& these are your friends .. and mine too .. and welcome for every reason–
Lately we have been quieter– You know how visits are apt to come as the rooks do, a multitude together. Not that I put myself the least out of the way on the occasion of visitors. I never dress in the evening,— indeed it is not done in Florence: nobody, even to go to the opera, appears in a low gown: with the exception of ball-occasions, nobody ever does. So there is’nt any fuss. We order coffee—& there’s an end. But it’s a spoilt evening after all when people come in—except now & then,—& Robert has to take off his slippers which are one of his luxuries.
The Peytons are quite well, & apparently contented with Florence—but they dont strike me as being in a state of enthusiasm about it. They are disappointed in the climate though we have had a beautiful season hitherto—but people always come to Italy with the idea of never feeling a cold wind. Tom told me he considered it “a most trying climate, & how Reynolds could have chosen it for a residence, was incomprehensible to him—you are broiled in the sun, & frozen out of it.” Reynolds on the other hand maintains that there are cold winds even in Rome, & is perfectly satisfied with the climate. Certainly he is looking another person already– I have seldom seen a greater & more sudden difference: and yesterday, he walked up the mountain to Fiesole which is a five miles pull. It may agree with him after all. It has done more for Mr Hanna (who has lost the use of one lung) than Naples or Nice could—he calls himself quite well, & really looks & speaks as if he were,—and the gossip is that he is going to be married. Also, there’s a great difference of opinion about temperature. The Ogilvies are in one of the colder situations, & they only have a fire in the evening,—“the heat is so extreme,” they think. For my own part, if I went out, I should be done for .. that’s certain; but, with my precautions, I do (instead) perfectly well. Yet, more or less, the winter always affects me. When the cold wind gets up I feel it in my throat & chest, & am apt to have the cough the Peytons told you of, .. & I don’t look as well as in the summer. Still, that’s all transient, and I am perfectly well just now. I assure you Wiedeman keeps me in exercise. His favorite game just now is “giving me a fright.” He is a soldier with a gun .. which every now & then he fires, & then I am to run about the room in a distracted state. Oh, if I dont rush & shake my petticoats, he is quite discontented—& after a time, it is really exhausting work. When I am too soon tired, he falls out of fits of laughter into agonies of despair .. because you see he does’nt understand the possibility of people being tired & sets it down as pure wicked malice on my part—“Ah di!” he cries & throws himself on the floor. In every paroxysm of mental anguish he says “ah di”! Wilson says he means “Ah Dio” [8] —but I have some hope that it may be merely inarticulate agony. His passions are over directly, & do you know, Arabel, he never thinks now of slapping anybody or pulling their hair as he did mine once, let him be ever in such a passion. Also, he has grown good & sweet, more & more,—Wilson is never tired of praising his goodness & sweetness. The lovingness of that little child, is a quite lovely thing to see– He seems to be full of love to everything in heaven & earth—to the flowers & the flies, & the birds in the picture books. The shoemaker brought home a pair of new shoes the other day .. “Mama’s shoes” Wilson told him they were—& directly he kissed them of his own accord. Darling things of that kind, he is always doing– And the beggars in the street, he must give halfpence to—he shakes his head & sighs & thinks it a pitiful case altogether. He is very fond of playing at being an old woman—he comes limping along with a stick, & holds out his hand for a crazia [9] —& you must pretend to give it or he is’nt pleased. Always he gave proof of a sweet disposition, but lately it is turned to roses .. & I catch myself thinking of the little Samuels & Timothys who had God’s Spirit full of them from the beginning. He is not as absorbed as he used to be in his mystical services: he cares more for the soldiering just now. Still, there is praying everyday—and … oh Arabel!—I scarcely know whether to tell you or not .. certainly you will be shocked .. & certainly I did’nt like it myself much .. but he is a baby, & means no harm, as God knows—he took the little glass I use for my medecine, carried it off to his chair .. knelt down & pretended to take the sacrament, .. turning round afterwards with a most ineffable face & hands lifted up to give Robert & me the benediction– We rushed away—we couldn’t imagine at first what the child meant—but the meaning was too clear. Are you horrified? very much? Remember what a baby he is. We dont encourage any of these things. We take no notice of them—its the best way, I think. The only danger which I discern is, that of treating sacred things lightly .. which wd be the case if we played with him at them—as we do at his soldiering for instance. As for his being a Roman catholic, you will see, Arabel– I would guard against such a possibility quite as zealously as you do, when the hour of possible peril comes.
Now I am going to speak to you about those sonnets. I have had a letter from dear Mr Kenyon, & he & Mr Forster detected them as well as you—and a letter from America speaks of “the Portuguese sonnets so called.”—and a letter from Mrs Payne [10] disapproves of the “blind” & tells me that the open truth wd have been “worthier of me” .. by which, I am a little, just a little, vexed. The truth is that though they were written several years ago, I never showed them to Robert till last spring [11] .. I felt shy about them altogether .. even to him. I had heard him express himself strongly against ‘personal’ poetry & I shrank back.– As to publishing them, it did not enter my head. But when Robert saw them, he was much touched & pleased—&, thinking highly of the poetry, he did not like, .. could not consent, he said, that they should be lost to my volumes: so we agreed to slip them in under some sort of veil, & after much consideration chose the “Portuguese.” Observe—the poem which precedes them, is “Catarina to Camoens”. In a loving fancy, he had always associated me with Catarina, and the poem had affected him to tears, he said, again & again. So, Catarina being a Portuguese, we put “Sonnets from the Portuguese”—which did not mean (as we understood the double-meaning) “from the Portuguese language” .. though the public (who are very little versed in Portuguese literature) might take it as they pleased. To judge by the opinions which have reached me, the sonnets are likely to be great favorites– Mr Forster is said to think highly of them. The Boston publishers would have reprinted the two volumes, giving me certain pecuniary advantages, .. when behold!—a new edition comes out at New York, [12] just preceding the London one, & of course, without the alterations & additions! I dont know when I have been so provoked. It is a point of honour with the American publishers (honour among thieves) that what is printed at one city, shall not be interfered with at another .. so I lose everything—both money & reputation. Observe how ill that Harper [13] (sharper) of New York has behaved to me. You know we had a regular agreement, a signed paper, to the effect of my having the half profits of the first large edition of fifteen hundred copies, which I gave him the facility of publishing. He sent me fourteen pounds, the first few months—& not a sous since—though he must have sold every copy to justify him in proceeding to another edition. But what I most care for, is not the pecuniary part of the transaction, certainly. We have heard nothing from Chapman & Hall this Christmas– Perhaps we shall, & I am sure I hope so–
No, no, no, my dearest Arabel .. we dont go to Rome– It is impossible. The Brauns urged it .. and, not knowing what might happen, we answered vaguely—but I assure you we are forced to take heed to our steps in œconomy even here, or we could’nt pay our way. As to going to Rome, when the very possibility of going to England depends on ship money &c &c, we should not be so false to you as to think of it.
I am happy in your having good accounts of dearest Storm. Has George written to Mrs Gordon? Do urge him to it. It is a right & straightforward thing to do. Excellently Alfred must be getting on—congratulate him affectionately from me: but Sette & Occy you dont mention? Mrs Peyton wished to see dear Henry here the other day in an Austrian uniform—but I should’nt like (I who love him dearly) to have him an aim for the curses of this aggrieved people. The Austrians are loathed, of course– Arabel!—I shall write you another letter very, very soon, to make amends for the haste of this—but it appears that Robert’s must go today, and the Fletchers have come in & interrupted my writing. What a vexation! I hate to send a letter to you in a hurry—half written in fact. Is Minny’s lameness better? You did not speak of her when you wrote.
On Christmas day, we were as quiet as you could be, & thought of you, as you did of us. Wiedeman had a heap of presents—a box of nine pins .. (no, he had those two or three days before) from Mrs Ogilvy:—a box of houses & trees, from little Alice Tassinari—a box of soldiers & cannons, from Miss Agassiz .. (a friend of Miss Blagden’s) a cart drawn by two oxen from Miss Blagden herself—a cart & horse, from Wilson, .. and a pigeon and a boar carved after the antique in marble, from the balia. He was in an ecstatical state accordingly,—& was wishing everybody a happy new year (buon capo d’anno!) in an unknown tongue & with bursts of laughter. I suppose he will speak sometime before he is one & twenty. In the meanwhile he makes beautiful O’s, & is beginning the M’s. And he is advanced in his education in the Italian “dreambook”, wherein he points out among the pictures, the sun, moon & stars, a ‘mill,’ a ‘royal palace’, & various sorts of animals, when you bid him find them for you. A most clever child he certainly is—never forgetting a thing he has heard once. Also, what pleases me better,—he looks stronger, & has a much improved appetite. The Peytons dont see him to advantage, because he has taken it into his head to be particularly shy to them.
Oh—Arabel Arabel—what a stupid, stupid letter to send you!– Half covered the paper is– I have scrambled, rather than written. God bless you my beloved– Tell my dearest dearest Henrietta, that I love her & pray for her. How strange, about Lizzie! I am glad she was let come after all.
So Mr Dodsworth [14] has gone over to Rome. Better so–
Did Mrs Orme dine with you on Christmas day? & how is she?
Give my tender love to dearest Trippy—mind you do. Robert’s best love–
I am your own, own Ba.
When you ask Wiedeman “what oclock it is”—“che ore sono”? He pretends to pull his watch out of his frock (as Wilson does by hers) and then holding up something imaginary, he says with the gravest face .. “Bue”—meaning ‘Due’ [15] of course.
Address, on integral page: Care of / Miss Tripsack / (Miss Barrett) / 12. Beaumont Street / Devonshire Place / New Road / London.
Publication: EBB-AB, I, 365–371.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Underscored twice.
3. Literally, “wise woman,” but here the meaning is “midwife.”
4. “Midwives.”
5. Probably Mary Louise Greenough (1848–54), who was born in Florence on 25 July 1848. She was the second child of Horatio Greenough and his wife Louisa.
6. “Male cousin or female cousin.”
7. i.e., the Peytons; see the 18 December segment of letter 2896.
8. “Oh God.”
9. The smallest coin in Tuscan currency, equivalent to 1½ pence in English money.
10. Caroline Paine (née Newnham, 1822–1904).
11. EBB may be thinking she is still in the year 1850 and confusing spring with summer. Evidence indicates that the sonnets, dated September 1846 (see Reconstruction, D875), were shown to RB near the time of the Brownings’ third wedding anniversary (12 September 1849). In a letter to Leigh Hunt, written jointly with EBB from Bagni di Lucca on 6 October 1857, RB explained: “I never suspected the existence of those ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ till three years after they were written: they were shown to me at this very place eight years ago, in consequence of some word of mine, just as they had been suppressed thro’ some mistaken word” (ms at BL).
12. The Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (2 vols., New York, C.S. Francis & Co.; Boston, J.H. Francis, 1850) was a reprint of The Seraphim, and Other Poems (1838) and the American edition of Poems (1844). In a review of this “new edition,” The Literary World (New York) for 14 September 1850 (p. 210) declared that EBB had been “mispresented and misrepresented” and rhetorically asked: “Who appointed Messrs. Francis & Co. or their compiler, to put in or leave out of the writings of Miss Barrett, according to their caprice, judgment or no judgment?” For the full text of this review, see p. 312. Francis responded to the negative comments with a letter to the editors of The Literary World that was published on 28 September 1850 (see SD1452). The “Boston publishers” refers to the firm of Ticknor, Reed, and Fields (see SD1468).
13. EBB is confusing the publishing firm of Harper and Brothers with Henry G. Langley (see letter 1640) and an earlier arrangement to publish Poems (1844) in The Home Library (see letter 1577) with her agreement with Langley.
14. William Dodsworth (1798–1861), theological writer, had been the minister of Margaret Street Chapel, Cavendish Square. But “his faith in the church of England was so rudely shaken by the judgment in the Gorham case, that he resigned his preferment and joined the Roman catholic church in January 1851” (DNB).
15. “Two.”
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