2929. EBB to Henrietta Cook

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 78–81.

Paris–

Sunday–Monday [20–21 July 1851] [1]

My ever dearest Henrietta,

Perhaps you will have heard from Arabel by this time that we only await a letter from her to set out for England. Robert is much better, and now I am easy about his going, certain that if he could once safely go he would be infinitely happier afterwards. By the lodgings, you see, we escape the first shock– He had exaggerated to himself frightfully every possible incident of the arrival at New Cross .. how he was to stop with the train, walk up the little road, open the gate, & take his wife & child with him into his mother’s place–. Now, there’s a change altogether, you see. He will go to see his father & sister by himself & get it all over, & come back to me—& it will be broken—& if he finds he cant bear it, he need’nt go to stay there at all. (Monday) But after the first, it will grow better to him, I dare say—and I expect to be able, after a week at 4 George St, Portman Square, where Arabel has taken us rooms, to remove to New Cross for the rest of our English visit. Still, it’s all uncertain—& you had better say not a word of it when you write.

Arabel has taken a sittingroom & bedroom for us on a second floor, with another bedroom for Wilson & baby upstairs, at two pounds a week. It will do perfectly for us for a short time as we only want a sort of mouse-hole to hide in, in London—but how dear, England is, to be sure. For the same sum, we can have here a beautiful apartment au premier [2] in the most fashionable situation in Paris .. four best bedrooms, sittingroom, dining room, kitchen, & servant’s bedroom close by .. all most elegantly & luxuriously furnished .. every sort of spring sofa & chair, for instance–

You are very cheap at Taunton, I think—only Taunton is Taunton, you know .. & it would’nt be cheap for France in the provinces .. or even in the suburbs of Paris– I hear one can live for almost nothing, if one knows how to set about it, at St Germains & places of the sort. But we want to try Paris, & try it to advantage.

We approved of the circular & wish you success from our hearts. [3] Oh yes—you are right of course to use every effort to obtain so lucrative a situation– As to the gentlemanliness of it, it’s a mistake to suppose that I ever thought of doubting that– The only thing doubtful was the agreeableness of certain relations, & of the confinement to Taunton– I should not like it, I own to you– But you care less for the power of wings than I do, & you will be very happy with your child & Surtees & the country, & also the country neighbours. It must be an immense object, I should fancy, to have the Lord lieutenant’s [4] smile on you—he must have influence with the magistracy of course .. & your chances seem good. At the same time, dont hope too high, lest the hope fall–. Dont be too sanguine, either of you. If you fail, you must come to Paris, & we will settle you close to us this winter. So much the better for me! If you dont fail .. why so much the better for you—and for me, too .. my very dearest dear Henrietta! since your good must still be my good. Meanwhile, you must’nt of course think of London– Perhaps, we may contrive something .. who knows? I long to see the darling, .. not to say your own beloved face .. not to say, my new brother, Surtees … not to say, how comfortable you have both made your rooms– Only the “trunks”, you speak of, cant be very soft seats, Henrietta, .. can they?

Tennyson has been here to call on us .. he is in Paris for four days on his way to Florence! .. how vexatious! He asked us to go & have tea with him at his hotel close by [5] .. and I (though tired half to death with the Louvre) rose up from the sofa in a decided state of resuscitation, & acceded at once. We went .. & were gratified .. charmed, .. by the kindness of the reception from himself, his wife, & his sister & her husband. [6] Nothing could be warmer, nothing more pleasant– The day after, he & his wife called again, & we (not being at home) called on them– He had Robert’s poems with him, & had been reading them aloud the previous evening. We were all friends at once—& really he was more than a friend, for he pressed on us the use of his house [7] & two servants at Twickenham as long as we stayed in England, & even wrote a note (insisting that we should take it) to his servants, to the effect that they should give up possession to us forthwith. We took the note—it is an autograph at once of genius & kindness– How few ordinary men wd have acted so! For, observe, he had met Robert only twice or thrice in his life at London dinners & soirèes– There had been no previous friendship. We are, both, pleased & touched to the heart. Mrs Tennyson is a very sweet person—with a soft, winning manner, & the gentlest of smiles. She appears extremely delicate .. & there must have been some accident .. for she was to have been confined last April, I heard in the winter, & there is no child. [8] Such friends we are, that we kissed one another (she & I) at parting—yes, indeed. “Ah, but Ba is so fond of kissing”.– But it was’nt Ba who made the first movement towards kissing: it was Mrs Tennyson, observe. [9]

And, do you know, Robert made me go to that momentous tea-drinking, without anything on my head .. I mean, with only my hair– He has set himself, for ever so long, against my poor little caps,—& after a revolutionary scene at Florence (besides various emeutes) I promised to do as he liked when I got to Paris. So he claimed the promise accordingly, & I had to yield—& have caught only a small cold as a consequence.

It vexes me to hear of your hair coming out so—but my beloved Henrietta, it is’nt from the nursing, be sure, but simply from the confinement– A confinement operates upon the hair, not immediately, but three or four months afterwards—& the effects just linger with you—that’s all– Our balia’s black hair came out by handfulls three or four months after her’s—and mine did, both after my confinement, & after everyone of the four prematurities, to a still greater extent .. though not by handfulls certainly– It was worst of all last winter, after the autumn’s illness– But my hair grows again somehow—it’s indefatigable hair—& Wilson declares it’s as thick as ever still. Oh—and your hair will grow again—you need’nt be afraid. I dont believe the nursing has anything to do with the falling off, meanwhile, so you need’nt fancy that. A confinement does not usually affect the hair at first, understand; & at first mine was so untouched that I wdnt believe it was going to fall off (though people assured me it would,) until the fourth month came to loosen the roots.

Then I want to scold you, Henrietta, about letting Baby sit up in a chair .. tying him up, poor babe, at six months old. It’s very wrong of you, Henrietta! most dangerous, really. You shd never encourage a child to sit up till he can do it with his own strength & back bone– Lay him on the floor & let him roll– Now, pray dont tye him up any more. If Madme Biondi cd see you! As to the teeth, better late, perhaps. There’s more strength to meet the pain. He must be a fine, noble baby– Kiss him for me. My kind love to Surtees, & my heart to you–

Your ever attached

You are right to keep on nursing as long as you can. Liebig [10] says that the substance of the mother’s milk enters into the substance of the teeth .. is adapted to form the teeth—the more milk, the better for them & the child.

Write—& to 4 George Street, Portman Square– I am so sorry that Bummy’s in London still. [11] It’s great pain to me, Henrietta, this going—yes, indeed. We go tomorrow at half past one, & shall arrive on wednesday morning at 9 in London—travelling all night. But its the cheapest way—40 francs each person to go to England & return!– We take return tickets.

Address: Mrs Surtees Cook / Taunton / Somersetshire.

Publication: Huxley, pp. 135–137 (in part).

Manuscript: British Library.

1. This letter is postmarked 21 July 1851, a Monday.

2. “On the first floor.”

3. From the context we take this to refer to a letter that Surtees Cook had circulated in order to solicit support for his bid to become Keeper of Wilton Gaol. Apparently, one of the recipients was Augustus Bayford, Surtees’s and EBB’s second cousin, who responded in a letter of 15 September [1851]; see SD1507. Another possible recipient was John Kenyon, whose friend Andrew Crosse seconded Surtees’s nomination on the day of the election.

4. Edward Berkeley Portman (1799–1888), Lord Lieutenant of Somersetshire from 1839 to 1864. Among his family estates was Orchard Portman, 2 miles S.E. of Taunton.

5. The Hôtel de Douvres at the corner of Rue de la Paix and Boulevard des Capucines, two blocks from the Brownings’ hotel.

6. Edmund Lushington (1811–93), professor of Greek at the University of Glasgow, married Cecilia Tennyson (1817–1909), the poet’s youngest sister, on 14 October 1842. Lushington and his brother Henry had been friends with Tennyson at Cambridge. In a journal entry dated July-October 1851, Emily Tennyson described the Brownings: “Mr. Browning friendly then as he was to the end. She very fragile-looking with great spirit-eyes met [me] more as a sister than a stranger. … The Brownings came to say goodbye but [we] were out. Found on return two beautiful Paris nosegays exactly alike. The flowers of both arranged in a sort of Grecian pattern (in colours beautifully mixed)” (Lady Tennyson’s Journal, ed. James O. Hoge, Charlottesville, Virginia, 1981, p. 26).

7. Chapel House, which the Tennysons had leased in March 1851.

8. The Tennyson’s first child, a boy, died at birth on Easter Sunday, 20 April 1851. Tennyson told John Forster two days later that had the boy lived “the doctor said he would have been lusty and healthy; but somehow he got strangled” (The Letters of Alfred Lord Tennyson, ed. Cecil Y. Lang and Edgar F. Shannon, Jr., Cambridge, Mass., 1981–90, II, 14).

9. See, however, SD1488.

10. Justus von Liebig (1803–73), author of Organic Chemistry in Its Applications to Agriculture and Physiology (1840) and Familiar Letters on Chemistry (2nd. series, 1844).

11. Bummy was evidently continuing her stay with Arlette (see the third to last paragraph of letter 2915). EBB may have wished to avoid Bummy because of the latter’s interference in Henrietta’s marriage the year before. See letter 2854, note 6.

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