2967. EBB to Eliza Anne Ogilvy
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 138–143.
138. Avenue des Champs Elysèes.
October 17. [1851] [1]
My dear friend, we were very glad to have your letter from Italy & the delightful news of your darling children. I fancy I see them with their ‘shining morning faces’ [2] & pretty curls, & enter deeply into your joy at being all together again. For ourselves we stayed in London more than a week after your departure, & at last there was a violent tug to break those sweet old new ties which had unconsciously knotted themselves fast again. But it was necessary. Setting aside certain bitternesses which were with me constantly, spoiling the savour of everything, the English climate really is not tenable. I coughed through the last night almost incessantly, and slept perfectly at Dieppe—perhaps simply the effect of change of air: but it cant be the effect of change alone, that, since I have been in Paris, this cough which more or less lasted through the whole of the two months we spent in England, has almost wholly vanished. The air here is very light & clear. Not a touch of fog! and the sun shines after the similitude of an Italian sun, really. We are established in a very pleasant apartment in the great avenue of the Champs Elysèes, in the full blaze of the sunshine, & have not yet had occasion to begin fires. A pretty sitting-room full of comfortable chairs & sofas .. a great luxury to such a Lollard as I! (my sisters laugh at me for caring so about spring seats & such vanities, & I declare that I scarcely ever sate down in a sympathetic chair all the time I was in England!—) & with two windows opening upon a large terrace, .. large enough to serve the purpose of a garden .. and all the brilliant life of Paris sweeping to & fro among the trees beyond. Then, there’s an adjoining sitting-room for Robert to write in, and a dining-room on the other side of that. Which three doors open on the antichamber & face the doors of two excellent bedrooms, our own, & Wiedeman’s, there being a third bedroom up stairs for the femme de service. A kitchen &c of course. For all which we pay two pounds a week—more than we intended! But Paris is overflowingly full, & our situation, you see, is first rate,—and for the sake of sun & air it was well worth while to pay, on this winter of trial. Wiedeman is in full bloom. Wilson never knew him to have such an appetite, she says, as since he has been here, & his spirits which are not apt to flag anywhere, have risen to the point of ecstacy through the immense resources on all sides. Why, there’s the balloon that fills & goes up within a stone’s throw—and there are four Punches in the immediate neighbourhood! There’s civilization for you! To say nothing of dancing dogs, turn-about horses, and the President at the head of the troops, who with trumpet & drum passes & repasses our windows for the review outside the barriêre.
Wiedeman makes progress in his talking .. using Italian & English words indiscriminately, but most of the former. He has now taken to call himself Peninni––by an extraordinary revolution of syllables: he means Wiedeman I assure you, though you may’nt think so– Peninni can do this, Peninni can do that, Peninni wants this & that, all day long. The personal pronouns are set aside, after my own fashion when I was a child. Certainly he would be puzzled to say “Come sta” [3] like Marcia; but “ti voglio bene” he articulates beautifully, translating it by “I love you” .. which sounds more like “I wash you.” Every now & then he kneels down at a chair & says “Dio, Mamma, Dio!” [4] Mama is to help him to say his prayers. But he does not make great progress after all, I fear, in theology,—for when we had talked some time the other morning about ‘Dio,’ (who, he told me, lived “among the birds ..” pointing upwards) I asked him “Chi è il piu buono di tutti”? [5] To which he answered, without hesitation, .. ‘Peninni’.– But again, it was pretty yesterday, when he knelt & said this prayer out of his head .. “Ate (grazia) Dio. Pane mamma, pane Papa, pane Peninni .. dinè, té uova—ate dio.” [6] He says “diné” already, unfortunate child, instead of the ‘dinner’ he learnt in England.
Our two last London evenings except the very packing-up last, we spent, one with Mr Fox & the other with Mr Rogers—& really I grudged both of them from my sister. Yet I am glad now to have seen Rogers,—for, apart from the irresistible kindness of the message that drew us, it is not likely that I should ever see him again in this world, and he is one of the links to the golden past, precious chiefly through what he touches. We passed a most interesting evening, Mr Leslie of the Royal academy, [7] the only other person present. The old poet (nearly ninety) sate in the armchair from which he can no longer move—for it was found impossible to remedy the fracture of the thighbone resulting from that accident a year ago, though he miraculously survived it. His features are colourless as marble, with a certain monumental majesty too, & the serenest benignity of expression. He looks as if he well remembered standing face to face with the great Dead, & was not unworthy of having done so. His speech is very slow & measured: he does not converse: the time is past for conversation: he speaks to you his last words and you are to listen. He talked a little about Italy—oh, and I told him of our vain search at Modena, & he smiled gravely, & observed he had given as much trouble to many persons & ought to be sorry for it,—the story was an invention altogether. [8] Then he talked about ‘God’s dumb creatures,’ and of the duty we owed them & did not pay—his voice deepened with reprehension as he spoke of the “men who called themselves sportsmen—sportsmen!” The celebrated bitterness of his repartees, I heard nothing of. All was gentle & genial. He promised us a copy of his works, which we should have liked from his hands, but it went out of his head of course, and no book came. His mind is a little shaken, rather than dimmed. He sometimes loses what he is about to say, and his favorite servant (who stood by while we were at tea) prompts the word—but whatever he does say is as elevated & refined as ever it could have been. This servant told us that he was recovering the coherency of his intellect fast; the effect of the accident, which had made him old on a sudden, gradually passing away– Still, he is very old, & I cannot believe that he will last long.
We travelled with Carlyle to Paris—we are fortunate you see, in our fellow-travellers! He was coming here to pay a visit to Lord Ashburton, & put off his journey for a day in order to travel with us, which was honour & pleasure at once. He is the most interesting companion in the world—highly characteristic & Carlylish .. and we enjoyed everything except the voyage to Dieppe which the society of the angel Gabriel could scarcely have made a pleasant thing. We crossed in the wrath of winds & waters, the stewardess telling me comfortingly (when I asked if there was danger) that “it was impossible to know how things might end in such a stormy sea.” Everybody was sick, even I (oh shame!) even Wiedeman, & Flush who was ordered off deck in consequence—while poor Robert & Wilson suffered horribly. Carlyle said with feeling, “Sea sickness is the most humiliating of the casualties which afflict human nature, except a cold in the head.” Wiedeman however took quite another view of it. He had resolved from the first that it was proper to be sick in a “vapore,” [9] & made a point of complaining of a pain in his stomach the moment we set foot in the vessel. Therefore it was with the utmost satisfaction that he sate up gravely to the great consummation, “like Papa Mamma & Lili”. There was a decided accession of social dignity in it. I said “Ti do consiglio di stare zitto, zitto”, [10] and down he lay again, as still as a dormouse, for seven hours together,—till I told him we had arrived, upon which he sprang to his feet & laughed loudly & long, & cried out “Latte e tè”! [11] You may suppose that the illness was not very severe .. but I wondered at his not being tired or frightened—for we had the dead-lights close against the beating of the sea, & the rattling & creaking on everyside was tremendous enough. He never cried once,—not he!—(he has the very genius of travelling) & was in a fervour of joy at being taken through the soldiers to the custom-house. We arrived at nine, in the dark: And (talking of the custom house) everything passed—even to the twentyfive cigars which Carlyle had the audacity to put at the top of his box. We slept at Dieppe, & went into Paris in a blaze of sunshine the next day–
Now I dont think I have much more of personal history to tell you. Yes, let me remember to tell you that all is right between us & my brother George– He came to London, as soon as Robert’s letter found him out, & the last few days had a good deal of love & consolation in them. Thank God for that. Other things are too painful to write about.
I shall direct this letter to the Baths of Lucca, though I do hope you may have left or be at the point of leaving it. I dont like what you say about not feeling well—& about fevers– Do let me have good news of you all. And give a kiss from me to each of the darling children & bid them not forget me.
Do you hear anything of the Tennysons? Father Prout declared to us that they were in Paris, but we hear nought of them at their hotel. [12]
I saw your ‘Poerio’ advertised .. I think in the Chronicle, with an extract from the Despatch praising the eloquence of the defence .. comparing it to “Curran & Grattan”– Well, I confess to you (and I may, since you are not Poerio) that I do not think as well of it. It seems to me weak—eminently Italian in many ways. [13] I must end, Robert cries out, or lose the post. God bless you– Robert’s love with mine to you both– Write soon & at length &
believe me your ever affectionate EBB
My regards to Miss Dick, if she shd be within hearing.
But ‘Poerio’ sells, I hope– I could not hear in London. You have done your part for Italy. [14]
We see the advertisement of an article in the Revue des deux mondes, 15th August .. on Robert—but we have not set eyes on it yet– [15]
Publication: EBB-EAHO, pp. 52–57.
Manuscript: Eton College Library.
1. Year provided by EBB’s reference to the notice in Revue des Deux Mondes (see note 15).
2. Cf. As You Like It, II, 7, 146.
3. “How are you.”
4. “God, Mamma, God.”
5. “Who is the best of all?”
6. “Thank you God. Bread mamma, bread Papa, bread Peninni .. dinner, tea eggs—thank you God.”
7. Charles Robert Leslie (1794–1859), artist of American parentage, entered the Royal Academy as a student in 1811 and was professor of painting there from 1847 to 1852.
8. In Italy (1822), Samuel Rogers describes a portrait by Zampieri (“Il Domenichino”) of a young woman named Ginevra, hanging above an oak chest in a palace at Modena. As Rogers tells it, on the day of Ginevra’s wedding, with her husband and father attending the marriage feast and wondering when the new bride would appear, she decides to play a prank and hides herself in the oak chest, only to have it lock upon her. Her skeleton is discovered fifty years later. Doubtless, the Brownings went looking for the palace and the portrait, as did Lady Blessington, who, in The Idler in Italy (3 vols., 1840), chides Rogers for misleading her: “Samuel Rogers! Samuel Rogers! never will I put faith in you again. In vain have I sought the Orsini Palace … to see the picture of ‘Ginevra’” (III, 349).
9. “Steamship.”
10. “I advise you to be quiet, quiet.”
11. “Milk and tea!”
12. After seeing the Brownings in Paris at the end of July 1851, the Tennysons travelled to Italy. On 24 September they began their return journey to England via land. There is no evidence that they saw the Brownings in Paris on their way back.
13. Carlo Poerio (1803–67), Neapolitan politician and minister of education in the short-lived constitutional government of Naples, was arrested in July 1849 for conspiracy against King Ferdinand II. He was later convicted and sentenced to “nineteen years in irons” (EB). At his trial in February 1850, Poerio delivered a speech in his own defence which was published that year in Naples. It was translated into English and appeared under the title, Speech of Carlo Poerio, late Minister of Public Instruction, in his Defence before the Grand Court Extraordinary at Naples. Publication was advertised in various newspapers, including The Morning Chronicle of 18 September 1851. However, we have been unable to trace the particular advertisement EBB mentions; nor have we been able to trace the article concerning Poerio’s speech in The Weekly Dispatch. Henry Grattan (1746–1820) and John Philpot Curran (1750–1817) were noted Irish orators.
14. Mrs. Ogilvy may have helped to arrange the publication of Poerio’s speech in England. It was issued by Thomas Bosworth who had recently published her Traditions of Tuscany, in Verse (1851).
15. A notice by Joseph Milsand of RB’s Poems (1849) and Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes of 15 August 1851 (pp. 661–689). For the full text of this review, see pp. 381–394.
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