2925. EBB to Arabella Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 60–66.
Paris.
June [sic, for July] 2–3–4. [1851] [1]
My ever dearest Arabel, here we are at home!—close to you—nearer than if we were in Wales for instance—nearer & more accessible. I wish you would send this letter to my dearest Henrietta that she may know it too. I have not written to her straight for ever so long, but she will understand, I am sure, how in travelling one finds it difficult to make out a corner of time to stand & write in, & how you being in London (and alone, my darling Arabel!) caught naturally the first spray of the letters .. only the wave was intended to go on to her always, & I am sure you kept back none of the news from her. Now that we are in Paris, she shall hear from me directly & henceforward as usual, but for this once will accept the reflection of a letter in this stream which goes to you– I want you to know as soon as possible that we are in Paris– Your letter from Lucerne, Arabel, I found here .. with all the advice that we should go to England first. My dearest Arabel, you & Bummy & everyone who think we have made “an expensive round” are mistaken altogether. We wished to go up the Rhine to Cologne, because on our arrival at Strasburg we found it all but impossible to escape a perilous shutting up in a diligence during four & twenty continuous hours if we pursued that road to Paris, & really I was frightened, chiefly for Wiedeman & a little for myself. You see there is a railroad unfinished that way .. with intermissions .. so that one has absolute need of a diligence. The diligence goes on the railroad, & then on the road—and if we had slept at Nancy as we wished, we should have run the risk, from the immense pressure of passengers, of losing all power of getting on, & of having to stay two or three or four days en route, which would have been intolerable. I cant explain it to you—but I went with Robert to the office at Strasburg & we turned it in every possible manner—and one of the manners was going up the Rhine to Cologne. Not that we ever meant to go to England– It was imperative on us to settle ourselves in Paris & see our road a little before we could think of London. But we should have preferred something of a circuit by Cologne to the fatigue of four & twenty hours in diligence– Well—to prove to you the expenses of the Rhine route, we found that to go from Strasburg to Cologne (that short distance!) cost exactly the same as from Strasburg to Paris. Now you may calculate whether from Cologne to London would not cost more than from Paris to London, & understand that (even with a mere reference to the cheapest way to London) it was not right to go through Paris. Indeed there was no sort of comparison, & we should have done just the same, if our object had been to go to you straight– Bummy forgets the Strasburg railroad. Then the Rhine is enormously dear. One must travel first class by water; & three first class places in those steamboats are not so easily paid for. Well—so we had to resign ourselves to the four & twenty hours travelling, & really I did it with fear & trembling—setting out at six in the evening, never to stop till six oclock the next evening in Paris, except for half an hour to dine, & a quarter of an hour for breakfast. This with a young child, looking as if made of wax!– How good God’s providence has been to us! How we ought to love Him for His mercies!– Wiedeman slept as if in his bed, & was in the highest spirits when awake, observing & enjoying everything, even to the last drive to the hotel in the fiacre, shrieking out with joy at Paris shops, & at the number of golden O’s and A’s set up in the shop-superscriptions. You would have thought that he had just come out to look about him, & was not in the least tired! Certainly a most spirited child he is. Wilson grows pathetic sometimes, & maintains that he does’nt show his fatigue on account of his good spirits, & that we should all the more beware of trying him too much. But there was no choice at Strasburgh, since we were not rich enough to go the Cologne way. We took the whole coupè of the diligence, & I lay down on the floor at night & had a good deal of sleep—really was not nearly as tired as during the nightwork once before in Lombardy, the French diligences being very comfortable & half the way ours went smoothly on the rail– Still, I was dreadfully tired & must have looked ghastly on my first appearance in Paris. And do you know, our journey was interesting, notwithstanding fatigue. The driver of the diligence drove six in hand, three abreast full gallop (and once or twice they were all white horses) with flowing tails & manes. It did look so wild, yes, & feel so wild! I cant wonder that Wiedeman liked it when his eyes were open, for I did myself. And then the railroad went through tunnels to a rather frightful degree, & it was all new & strange. So we came into Paris in good spirits (Wiedeman & Wilson & I did—for my poor darling Robert allows his imagination to distress him unreasonably about money matters, & he was not at ease) and we meant to go to our old hotêl de la ville de Paris. Instead of which they drove us to the hotêl Aux armes de la ville de Paris .. on the same boulevard de la Madelaine, but a shade or two less elegant in its arrangements, .. still, very comfortable & clean & quiet, & excellently situated. We did’nt find out our mistake till we had taken our rooms—more’s the pity!– We should have liked the old place & its associations. I cried out that the stairs were different, but Robert & Wilson insisted that we were on the other side of the hotel & had other stairs of course– Never mind– We have done as well as possible. Our apartment is au premier, [2] & consists of a very nice salon, a small diningroom & antichamber, a bedroom for ourselves, & another for Wilson & baby with two dressing-rooms attached. For the whole of which we pay six francs the four & twenty hours—five shillings! Do you call that dear, Henrietta? Think of Paris. It is cheaper than anything we have met with in Italian hotels; & upon the whole journey, indeed, for just two poor bedrooms (we never were so extravagant as to have a sitting room while we travelled) we paid six & seven francs. Robert & I dine at the restaurants’ every day, but they give us dinner here for Wilson & Wiedeman, as it wd not do to take him out in Paris. He gets admirable bread & butter, &, these two days that we have been here, has attained to such an appetite & looks so well that Wilson says she is “quite satisfied”. You see his weak point is his appetite. The way Wilson & I have had to tempt him first with one kind of cake & then another, to make him eat, would surprise you. Mrs Ogilvy used to say, “Well– If my children wont eat dry bread, I let them go without, & they always come round to the bread.” Because her children have great appetites & must have something to eat– But Wiedeman will go & play, & leave off eating altogether, if you suffer it. While we were travelling, once or twice he scarcely was prevailed on to touch anything all day .. seeming quite well, but making us most uneasy by his want of appetite. If eating is a necessary condition of life, it’s peculiarly so in childhood– One day we gave him bread & cheese in the carriage .. he took a fancy to that, .. & one day, bread & ham. He has such fancies. But just now we are delighted—he takes a whole egg every morning & manages the bread & butter to our heart’s content .. to say nothing of soup & mutton-cutlets– I think it likely that Paris may agree with him: his cheeks promise it by their increasing redness– As to his ecstasy at the shops, Wilson says that he draws people’s attention till she is uncomfortable—he stands before pictures of lions, clasping his hands & roaring. When he comes in from walking he has heaps of things to tell us in his way, gesticulating & talking in his pretty half words. He knows numbers of words now, & one English word .. yes .. pronounced less. It sounds to me sweeter than anything else he says .. except the Mama & Papa, which still, as at the beginning, thrill through me–
Wilson began to get better at Padua, two hours from Venice, & now is as well as ever, she says. She declares that another month at Venice would have quite killed her. Certainly she looked very ill & was falling away perceptibly, with continual pain in the left side, especially after eating– It did not swell, as at Pisa, but would have done so, I dare say, had she stayed. The liver, of course– She was out of spirits too, & imagined herself worse than she was—flattering friends from Florence meeting her in the street & pretending scarcely to know her!—flattering & considerate. Also, the first night at Padua, Robert slept well—the first time he had done so for a fortnight. Enchanting Venice has its drawbacks. Yet I was so unfeeling as to grow absolutely fatter in the midst of my suffering companions! It agreed with me as much as it disagreed with them, & for the same reason probably .. the relaxing softness of the air. I ate & slept comme quâtre– [3]
Do you know we have lived so long in Italy that we .. at least I am .. perfectly confounded with & from the French language– English I can still speak pretty well, but when I attempt to speak French, it is pitiable to hear how the Italian words come instead .. half a sentence in French, half in Italian– Robert says he wont let me know any French people till I behave better in speaking, for it’s disgraceful. He is apt to be severe on my Italian indeed, & I call him pedantic for his exactitude about this & that—but of course my Italian is fluent enough after all these years, even if it should be sometimes rather slip-slop– But to mix up the aforesaid Italian with French, is too Babylonish to be abided, & I dont wonder at him for scolding me– I only wonder at myself—yet it’s natural enough, I suppose, & in a week or two I shall get over it– As to poor Wilson, she is thrown out entirely—her Italian is useful now only to Wiedeman, & she declares that she cant read the phrasebook, “because the pronunciation is all different from the spelling”–
My dearest Arabel, I wrote you a rather disconsolate financial letter from Lucerne, but it’s right that you should see how things are & that we cant exactly do at a moment what we please. We have been forced to “sell out” a hundred pounds, out of the two hundred left in our power by the settlements & put by for emergencies, .. which has extremely & extravagantly as I say, annoyed Robert, as he cant bear doing anything of that kind– It was however necessary since even the doing it leaves us with restricted means for the next six months. Our seven weeks journey, including the residence at Venice & at various hotels, cost us exactly seventy seven pounds—so Robert finds on calculating the whole:—within Mr Kenyon’s hundred pounds you see. Still, if we got only fifty pounds from the ship, our year’s income (apart from his munificence) would not have allowed us to keep up our ordinary establishment at Florence,—&, with it, would only have sufficed. Therefore the extra expense of the journey & of the consequences of it, has necessarily thrown us into embarrassment. Do you see? It’s just for a few months, & we shall do extremely well in spite of it all, so dont be uneasy—only you must be considerate, my beloved, & not reproach us because we dont rush over to you directly as our hearts & thoughts do– Robert, I have had to scold & coax & reason with by turns, he has been so depressed—& the worst was that we had two rainy days to begin with, & the impression was disastrous– Yesterday & today we are better again .. & dear Sarianna Browning’s consolatory letter in which she said that we should find Paris as dear as London, is beginning to fail of its effect, while on all sides of us the testimony is to the exact contrary. I am sure of everything here except of the climate in the winter—but even of that, one may hope for the best– Now we are going out to look at apartments. The beauty & brilliancy of this city charm me as much as ever. If Venice is in the sea, Paris is in the country– Green trees everywhere. They are young trees though on the boulevards, for the revolution destroyed the others—only so brightly green—no stain of smoke anywhere. As to the shops, I am like Wiedeman– I drag Robert back every two minutes, till he says, “You are sure, Ba, to be tired, if you stand still in this way– We shall never get home”. Never was such an amusing place to walk in. Used I to like looking at shops in London? Yes, I think I used <to> like it even there. I hope I am not quite in a second childhood. And London shops are nothing to Paris shops– The brilliancy & beauty of arrangement are not to be rivalled anywhere, I should think. Oh, I quite sympathize with Wiedeman in standing still & roaring at the lions.
Just now, he is rushing about the room pretending to be a steam engine. First he blows a trumpet (as they do in France) & then squeaks out the whistle, and then puffs the smoke, & then rushes, rushes ....! Well done, steam engine. He gives me to understand that he is going to Venice to hear the clock strike at St Mark’s. It’s a favorite clock of his & a curious piece of mechanism, for, when it strikes, the three Magi come out at a door & bow to the Madonna & child seated in the niche. [4] He imitates that too, & does it admirably, with the very jerk of the mechanical figures in making his bow– Well done, clock!
Dearest Arabel, this letter has been waiting two days, to be written in day by day. I am so taken up from it with one thing & another that I cant get on. You see I go out with Robert– Yesterday we were driving more than half the day, to look for apartments, & he is in better spirits I am thankful to say—the prospect brightens. We looked at rooms on first floors (because he wd see the best first, & because he does’nt like me to have many stairs to walk up) and we both agreed (now you will open your eyes certainly!) that furnished apartments are cheaper in Paris than in Florence. From thirty shillings to two pounds a week you get on a first floor a complete apartment, furnished with every comfort & even elegance, drawing & dining room, three bedrooms, & generally another bedroom for the cook, kitchen &c—& trees everywhere & little gardens attached, into which we might send Baby without his hat– The situation excellent, the Champs Elysees & that neighbourhood. The rooms are small after our Florence rooms, but so pretty that it really makes amends– Such a pretty apartment I was taken with yesterday, looking to a garden full of trees .. you might fancy yourself in a wood there & window-doors opening to your own garden .. and the furniture quite luxurious with spring-sofas & armchairs .. thirty shillings a week. Only unfortunately it had no sun .. it looked eastward .. & the thought of the winter warned us off. In the same house, however, on the first floor was another, quite perfect, with a spare bedroom & every sort of luxury. They ask two pounds a week for that—but Robert is so charmed with it that he was near taking it on the spot—nay, we may take it after all—for the impression remains– It’s the house opposite Emile de Girardin’s [5] —he who persuaded Louis Philippe to abdicate—& if we take it we shall hear of all the revolutions there certainly– Only .. we must consider–
Everything indicates that we shall be able to live here, as far as pecuniary matters go– The climate is another thing– The thermometer has varied from sixty six to seventy—very good! but we miss our radiant depth of Italian sky, & what is to be hoped for the winter? Well, one must hope. People swear to us here that it is’nt cold—over-cold.
Tell me of the Peytons, & tell the Peytons of me. I had their letter from Spezzia, & answered it to Florence (because it was so long coming that I had no time to catch them at Spezzia) begging them to write to me at Milan to say how Reynolds was. There was no letter for me at Milan, & I want to know the reason. I hope Berry was too happy, & the rest too sympathetical in her happiness, for anybody to write. [6] Say this for me, Arabel– You dont mention dearest Trippy, & she had an attack of gout before– Do speak of her & give her my tender love. I hope to kiss her myself before long, say. The very thought of you all makes my heart beat into my throat.—— It delights me that you shd like my poem– I hear that the Literary Gazette also reviewed it most favorably immediately on its appearance. Alter the word rail in the last line to veil, [7] the allusion being to the Jewish temple, & the meaning railed out.
But Sarianna has corrected the press wonderfully well, & there is no other error of much consequence, I believe. Correct that with pen & ink, Arabel—do.
It was the ship people who made answer that the return wd be “only fifty pounds more or less”– Yet they have not paid us a fraction of even the fifty pounds. How could they possibly know anything about it if the ship does’nt come in till winter? How is Mrs Owen. Tell me. This is for my dearest Henrietta as well as for you. I want her to know particularly about Paris– God bless you forever & ever, my own. Robert’s Best love–
Address, on integral page: Angleterre / Care of Miss Tripsack / (Miss Barrett) / 26. Welbeck Street / Cavendish Square / London.
Publication: EBB-AB, I, 391–397.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. Month and year provided by postmark.
2. “On the first floor.”
3. “Excessively”; literally, “like four.”
4. The famous clock tower of St. Mark’s Square, built in the late fifteenth century, features, apart from the Madonna and Magi, a zodiacal face and two bronze “moors” who keep the hours by hammering a bell. The Magi made their hourly appearance only during the festival days surrounding Ascension Thursday, which in 1851 fell on 29 May.
5. Émile de Girardin (1806–81), newspaper and journal entrepreneur, established France’s first inexpensive daily in 1836, La Presse, to which Balzac, Sand, and Hugo contributed. Girardin served for many years as a Member of the Chamber of Deputies, from which body he resigned in 1847. A year later he issued a letter demanding the abdication of King Louis Phillipe.
6. A reference to Eliza Berry Peyton’s marriage to Jasper Henry Selwyn on 1 July 1851.
7. Sic, for “vail.” See note 15 in the preceding letter.
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