2909. EBB to Clotilda Elizabeth Stisted
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 16–18.
Florence.
April 11– [1851] [1]
My dear Mrs Stisted
In reply to your kindly expressed desire to have us at the Baths of Lucca this summer, I can only say that we are on the point of setting out for Paris, as our English friends wish us to be nearer them & fancy it may suit us as a residence. Therefore we are to make the experiment—but, having certain misgivings on the subject, we keep on our Florence apartment for another year, & mean to let it if we can. I am comforted by having even so much of a tie yet to Italy, where I have been so very happy, (so unpoetically happy, you say!) & the memory of which will always be pulling at my heart– When once settled at Paris, we shall go over to visit England, .. I assure you, for love’s sake purely, and not for the Exposition’s. Indeed we shall not be in London till quite the end of the summer,—&, by the time we arrive, the World’s Fair may be over, .. to our great loss in gilded gingerbread!
I did not answer your note before through some uncertainty in our plans, for we had thought of going to Rome & Naples before going north. Which turned out an impracticable scheme through the lateness of the season,—we were too late, it seemed, for the Pope’s festas, (coming the ‘day after the fair’ being in our destiny this year) and too much in time for the mal’aria, as May is hot in Rome. So we gave it all up, & console ourselves by a circular route to the north, through Venice– Venice must be full of consolations. You will agree in this. And then, there will be no risk in exposing our baby to extreme heat & bad air.
No—my husband has bought no more carved wood since you were here– Instead, he has been deep in old pictures, Margharitones, Pollaiollos, [2] & the like– If we stay in Paris & have to send for them, we shall have our northern rooms too like Florence for our peace, I think, and the saints & Madonnas will be waving us back to the south from the new walls. As to poetry he has not done much in it since last spring. I saw the verses in the Athenæum & they deeply touched me, & I wished in vain to be able to thank the writer. [3] They refer to some new poems of mine which are comprised in the edition lately published.
It is kind in Lady Knowles to remember me with some interest. I have pleasure in hearing of her & of her daughter, [4] & always shall. My aunt & uncle are still at Tours, I believe—they were there two or three months ago, at least: but it is likely that after the present summer they may change their place of residence, as their plans seemed most uncertain when I heard last. My aunt was in England last January for a few weeks, to be with Arabella Bevan in another confinement, [5] —but she went alone .. without my uncle even. A letter addressed Poste Restante, Tours, will be sure to find her.
I had not heard, before you told me, of the “temple” to the dog. Mrs Sunderland [6] never said a word of it. I believe in dogs, and that they deserve all honours architectural & otherwise. But we lose the sight of these things, of the frieze, relieved and all. We leave behind us your “happy valley” [7] like our prototypes, & shall repent equally, perhaps you may prophecy. Shall we?
I do hope that you may have as much enjoyment as you describe, for many a winter, .. and many a summer. Remember, when you pity us for going, that, after all, we carry with us a bit of the blue sky of Italy in the eyes of our child .. who begins to speak, be it understood, and is in high health & spirits altogether.
With our united regards to Col. Stisted & Miss Stisted, [8] believe me
ever faithfully yours,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning–
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Castle Howard.
1. Year provided by EBB’s reference to the Great Exhibition of 1851.
2. Antonio Pollaiuolo (ca. 1432–98), a Florentine painter; the Brownings owned his “Christ at the Column,” which sold as lot 65 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, H20).
3. Dinah Mulock (afterwards Craik, 1826–87), English novelist, whose poem “To Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Her Later Sonnets” was published in The Athenæum of 15 February 1851, no. 1216, p. 191. It was later collected in her Poems (1888).
4. Charlotte Laura Knowles (1804–93) and her mother Charlotte Knowles (née Johnstone, 1782–1867), wife of Charles Henry Knowles (1754–1831), 2nd Baronet, were acquaintances from Hope End days.
5. Reginald Johnstone Bevan (1851–1925) was born at Calverley Park on 10 January.
6. Mary Elizabeth Sunderland (1788–1871), daughter of John Morland, of Kendal, Westmorland, and his wife Mary (née Upton), was born at Killington, Westmorland. On 21 February 1827, at Moresby Cumberland, she married the Rev. John Sunderland (1769–1837), Vicar of St. Mary’s Ulverstone, Lancashire; she was his second wife. Mrs. Sunderland died at Leghorn on 9 August 1871.
7. In Samuel Johnson’s The History of Rasselas, the idyllic homeland to which the title character returns after extensive travels.
8. Charlotte Marianna Stisted (d. 1902, aged 92), niece of Colonel Henry Stisted.
___________________
