2917. EBB to Arabella Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 34–37.
Venice.
May 16– [1851] [1]
I send you a note this time, my beloved Arabel, to keep you up on information about us. We are all well, you see, and at Venice! The place is exquisite—& though my fancy had of course been brim-full of floating sea-pavements, marble palaces with sea-weed on their marble steps, & black gondolas sweeping through sunlit & moonlit silence, .. though I had fancied these things all my life, (my “eyes making pictures while they were shut.”) [2] the real sight exceeded the imagination .. oh, by far & far! I have been in a sort of rapture ever since we arrived. It is wonderful, enchanting .. nothing seems to me equal to it in the world. For the sake of it, I would give up Florence, & twenty Parises besides—only I cant quite give up you. Do you know what Wiedeman did? He is very sensible to beauty at all times. When he saw for the first time the church of St Mark, (as he was carried out of the gondola in Wilson’s arms across the great piazza) he threw up his little hands with a shriek of joy, & then turning round suddenly, he kissed her, to show how delighted he was. This after a long, tiring journey from Mantua, when most other children would have been cross & perfectly indifferent to architecture, to say the least. Again, at the sight of the Dogana del Mare, [3] with the great golden ball at the summit, he threw his hands out east & west & clasped them together, crying “Oh, mamma,—oh, papa.” He generally invokes us when he is in any particular ecstasy. The child has enjoyed everything in the journey as much as anybody, & instead of suffering, as I feared he might, from fatigue & change of diet & hours, has visibly grown & improved—his cheeks are redder & fatter than when we set out. I should not be nervous now to take him a voyage round the world. Mrs Ogilvy says that her children would have been laid up, all three of them, with the same amount of fatigue—she laughs at me when I call him “delicate.” But he has a delicate organization, notwithstanding, & we must be careful of him in certain ways. I have made a great fuss, for instance, about the apartment we took here, & insisted on airy rooms at a somewhat higher price, to avoid the risk of close ones. I think Mrs Ogilvy thought me fanciful .. but Robert let me have my way, & we have only paid eight pence a day more for very evident advantages. To stay at the hotel, you see, was impossible—we had to find private rooms. We have taken four .. two bedrooms, a large dressingroom for Robert, and a delightful sitting room with four windows & balconies upon the Canal Grande, the best situation in Venice, & in a noble palazzo, at the rate of thirty shillings a week. We call this immensely dear .. because Florence spoils us for prices .. but considering that Venice is not Florence, & that we have taken the apartment only for a short time, I have begun to incline to think that our outcry is rather unreasonable. Mr & Mrs Ogilvy have a bedroom down stairs .. & she comes up to join us at breakfast. She, .. not he, I am sorry to say .. we have all been in trouble about him. Probably he caught cold, somehow, .. in the railway .. in the gondola .. one does’nt know how—but on the night of our arrival in Venice he was siezed with fever & affection of the throat, & has been in bed ever since. The day before yesterday a physician was called in, & yesterday (the fever not yielding) he was bled. You may suppose how anxious & pained his poor wife has been, & that indeed it was painful in different degrees to every one of us. At one time I felt quite frightened—for he seemed stupified, Robert said. Today however he is better, & he will probably be up in a day or two. There is nothing infectious—it is just fever from cold, he being what is called a “highly inflammatory subject.” The physician never apprehended anything bad, but thought it should be “taken in time.” This illness may make some difference in their plans, as they intended to remain here only ten days & then hasten on to England by Munich. Most agreeable fellow-travellers they have been to us—full of intelligence & good humour .. really clever in their knowledge & apprehension of pictures & churches .. and yet, and yet, .. Robert & I agree sometimes that being alone is a good thing. The whole day, for instance, he was outside & I inside, travelling .. and I had to talk .. talk– Now I like to receive impressions quietly & deeply, without so much talk of this & that. Still, it seems ungrateful to write down any drawback to a delightful journey,—& to really delightful persons. She is both good & charming .. only a little wanting in repose & concentration of character .. too sensitive to all manner of impressions .. omni-sensitive, rather than intense. We have taken our apartment for a fortnight certain, & mean to stay a month at least. If it were not for you, I could stay here all my life. The aspectable reason, however, is our wish to wait & hear something of the ship-money, as travelling is very expensive. We left poor dear Florence in the rain– I am glad it rained .. I was very sorrowful. The poor balia we took leave of the evening before, that Wiedeman might not be distressed by leaving her behind. She cried dreadfully– I promised to write to her, & not to let Wiedeman forget her, & that when we came back, he should bring her a ‘regalo’ [4] from Paris. It was a heartbreaking business. For Alessandro, he almost squeezed my hand off as he helped me into the carriage—he cried too: but as himself & the balia hate one another intensely, there is some hope that the pleasure of separating may console them by degrees. We escaped the banditti on the mountains, .. Mrs Ogilvy holding the probability of them in great dread, .. & slept at Pietra Mala a mountain station between Florence & Bologna, where it was so cold that I lighted a great heap of faggots in Wiedeman’s room & mine with my own hand. When we travel, I generally get a double bedded room & sleep with Wilson & the baby .. sending Robert away by himself .. because it is so convenient to have Wilson at dressing time, & to have our night things in one carpet bag. On the second day we were at Bologna, .. spent two days there among the pictures—then to Modena .. spent half a day there—then to Parma, to which we gave a whole day. Correggio, [5] Arabel, is divine—he is the Venice of painters. From Mantua we took the railroad, & swept through Verona, past Vicenza, past Padua, along the glittering snow Alps, as in a vision—then shot into the heart of Venice. The air is not too hot—indeed it is cool & fresh & most enjoyable. I cant describe what the scene is—the mixture of intricate beauty & open glory, .. the mystery of the rippling streets & soundless gondolas. I could be content to live out my life here. I never saw a place which I could be so glad to live a life in. It fitted my desires in a moment. If Paris turned out ill, & Florence failed us, here would be Venice, ready!– Robert & I were sitting outside the caffè in the piazza of St Mark last night at nearly ten, taking our coffee & listening to music, & watching the soundless crowd drift backwards & forwards through that grand square, as if swept by the airs they were listening to. I say ‘soundless’—for the absence of carriage or horse removed all ordinary noises. You heard nothing but the music. It was a phantom-sight altogether.
We go to the traiteur to dine—even Wiedeman does. By which you may judge what a good adaptable child he really is. He has made friends with the “holy pigeons,” & they were surrounding him like a cloud today for the sake of his piece of bread, .. he stamping & crying out for rapture in the grand piazza. You have read perhaps about these pigeons, & remember how the whole people of Venice protect them, & how to kill one of them is a crime against the nation. In consequence of which, they are so tame that they mix with the crowd, having no fear of man. You may fancy that Wiedeman is enchanted with the holy pigeons. Also, he has gone with Wilson, to see all the churches on our route. He shook his head at those of Parma, when I asked him if he thought them beautiful, & said “No, no”– But nothing has pleased him so much as Venice, & St Mark’s—& the gondolas. Only he always wants to get into the water, “per fare bagno.” [6] We enquired of him how long he would stay here, and he answered “Due” [7] —by which he meant “a long while,” ‘Due’ being his idea of more than one .. in fact of the infinite–
Here I must end, Robert says. Oh Arabel—do let me have a letter directly. God bless you my beloved. I dont wait to read this over—& it has been written in course of conversation.
Your own Ba——
Best love to dearest Trippy & everyone.
Address, on integral page: Care of Miss Tripsack / (Miss Barrett) / 26 Welbeck Street / Cavendish Square / London.
Publication: EBB-AB, I, 374–377.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Cf. Coleridge, “A Day-Dream” (1828), line 1.
3. “On entering the Grand Canal, the Dogana del Mare [i.e., the Maritime Customs House], built in 1682, is on the left hand, on the point of land dividing the Grand Canal from that of the Giudecca” (Murray’s Hand-Book for Travellers in Northern Italy, 1847, p. 338).
4. “Present,” or “gift.”
5. Antonio Allegri da Correggio (ca. 1489–1534) completed two ceiling paintings in Parma: “Christ Ascending” (1520) in the church of San Giovanni and the “Assumption of the Virgin” (1530) in the cathedral.
6. “To take a bath.”
7. “Two.”
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