3033. EBB to Anna Brownell Jameson
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 92–94.
138. Avenue des Ch. Elysées
Monday. April 12. [1852] [1]
Your letter was pleasant & not so pleasant, dearest Monna Nina, .. for it was not so pleasant indeed to hear how ill you had been—and yet to be lifted into the hope or rather certainty of seeing you next week pleased us extremely of course, & the more that your note through Lady Lyell [2] had thrown us backward into a Slough of Despond [3] & made me sceptical as to your coming here at all–
Now, about business. We have not taken the apartment of five rooms on the fourth floor, because an alternative is offered. There is a room on the third which I proposed to you once as bedroom & sitting room together, and which our “proprietaire” [4] now proposes to fit up as a sitting room, & to give you a bedroom on the fourth floor if you dont mind the separation of the rooms .. and I really dont think you need mind it, for the staircase is of the easiest possible construction. Will it not be on the whole more convenient to have your sittingroom on the third floor? It strikes me so. And then, for these two rooms, the charge is only seventy francs a month .. Mr Byrne said “at most, seventy”– I dont see what you want with more rooms than two .. if you are alone. Write at once, if but a word.
Mr Byrne proposed another arrangement– He said he would give you a salon & bedroom on the first floor, with board & attendance, including everything, for three hundred francs a month—which is an enormous overcharge, it seems to us both, & therefore we dismissed the proposition at once. If you are inclined to extravagance however & wish to be particularly comfortable there’s no knowing how you may decide. Only, as I think I told you, it exceeds the usual charge here for board & lodging.
The sittingroom on the third floor has two windows looking on the Champs Elysées—& the situation is really brilliant just now & makes one giddy with the life & movement. What a beautiful Paris it is! I walked out a little yesterday with Robert, & we both felt penetrated with the sentiment of southern life as we watched men, women, & children sitting out in the sun, taking wine & coffee & enjoying their fêteday [5] with good happy faces. The mixture of classes is to me one of the most delicious features of the south, and you have it here exactly as in Italy– The colouring too, the brightness, even the sun .. oh, come & enjoy it all with us. We have had a most splendid spring, beginning with February. Still I have been out very seldom, being afraid of treacherous winds combined with burning sunshine, but I have enjoyed the weather in the house & by opening the windows, & have been revived & strengthened much by it, & shall soon recover my summer-power of walking, I dare say. What do you think I did the other night, went to the vaudeville, to see the “Dame aux camelias” on above the fiftieth night of the representation– I disagree with the common outcry about its immorality– [6] According to my view, it is moral & human. But I never will go to see it again .. for it almost broke my heart & split my head .. I had a headache afterwards for twentyfour hours. Even Robert who gives himself out for ‘blasé’ on dramatic matters, could’nt keep the tears from rolling down his cheeks. The exquisite acting .. the too literal truth to nature everywhere was exasperating .. there was something prophane in such familiar handling of life & death. Art has no business with real graveclothes, when she wants tragic drapery—has she? It was too much altogether like a bullfight– There’s a caricature at the shop windows of the effect produced, .. the pit protecting itself with multitudinous umbrellas from the tears of the boxes. This play is by Alexandre Dumas fils—& is worthy, by its talent, of Alexandre Dumas pere.
Only that once, have I been in a Parisian theatre. I could’nt go even to see ‘Les Vacances de Pandolphe’ when George Sand had the goodness to send us tickets for the first night. She failed in it, I am sorry to say—it did not “draw”, as the phrase is– Now she has left Paris, but is likely to return.
I am sure it will do you great good to have change & liberty & distraction in various ways– The “anxiety” you speak of .. oh, I do hope it does not relate to Gerardine– I always think of her when you seem anxious.
I shall be very glad if, when you come, you should be inclined to give your attention, you with your honest & vigorous mind, to the facts of the political situation .. not the facts, as you hear them from the English .. or from our friend Madme Mohl .. who confessed to me one day that she liked exaggerations because she hated the president. She is a clever, shrewd woman, but most eminently, & on all subjects, a woman,—her passions having her thoughts inside them, instead of her thoughts, her passions. That’s the common distinction between women & men—is it not?
Robert, too, will tell you that he hates all Buonapartes, past present or to come .. but then he says that in his selfwilled, pettish way, as a manner of dismissing a subject he wont think about .. & knowing very well that he does’nt think about it .. not mistaking a feeling for a reason .. not for a moment. There’s the difference between women & men.
Well—but you wont come here to knit your dear brows about politics, but rather to forget all sorts of anxieties & distresses, & be well & happy, I do hope. You deserve a holiday after all that work– [7] God bless you, dear friend. Our united love goes to you & stays with you–
Your ever affectionate
Ba–
Would you like Robert to meet you at the station–? Only say at what hour—& he will most gladly do it. How delighted I shall be to have you here!–
Address: Angleterre. / Mrs Jameson / Ealing / near London.
Publication: LEBB, II, 65–67 (in part).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Mary Elizabeth Lyell (née Horner, 1808–73) married the geologist Charles Lyell in 1832. He was knighted in 1848. RB continued to have contact with Lady Lyell, as well as her husband, after returning to London in 1861.
3. One of the obstacles Christian must overcome in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress.
4. “Landlord.”
5. Sunday, 11 April 1852, was Easter day.
6. After having been at first rejected by the censors on the basis of immorality (Marguerite, the lady of the camelias, is a courtesan who for a time lives with her younger lover, Armand), La Dame aux camélias by Alexandre Dumas (fils) opened on 2 February 1852 at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in the Place de la Bourse.
7. On Legends of the Madonna (1852). Although an advertisement in The Examiner of 24 January had announced the book was “in the press,” it was not published until December.
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