3060. EBB to Anna Brownell Jameson
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 164–166.
58. Welbeck Street.
Wednesday– [7 July 1852] [1]
Dearest friend, I cant let today go without writing to you. We had a delightful passage on monday, of five hours & a half, & arrived in London at about four in the morning, .. slept & were refreshed.
Ah, dearest Monna Nina, it is almost a ‘misfortune’ after all! And yet I like to keep that word for sin & separation, & not to use it otherwise.
But it is a misfortune for my poor darling Robert, who has felt it to the heart of his heart, & could scarcely raise his head after the blow of that dreadful newspaper. [2]
Never did I apprehend a stroke of such heaviness .. never!– To the last the opinion of lawyers & friends was to the effect that the “bringing into court” was a mere threat,—they thought so to the last day—and as to damages, the least sanguine looked to merely nominal ones. Neither Robert nor I had apprehended the real character of the letters—but he has been to see his father with his own noble promptitude & generous tenderness, & held the grey head on his shoulder & loved & pitied him .. as indeed the poor old man deserves.
The case was infamously mismanaged—& to have the verdict reversed by another trial would be easy perhaps,—but I, for my part, recoil from it– I would rather that matters remained so, than that we should put our hands into all that mud– An intriguing woman, who married her second husband (by her own confession) while her first husband yet lived, [3] & led a light life in other ways. A childishly simple & upright nature taken in the net .. unable to comprehend or withstand! There, are the elements of the story. Break it off in the middle.
My poor precious Robert bears up quietly .. really better than I should have expected– He is not intemperate, .. except in his apprehension of the extent of the evil .. but all will pass & be forgotten, .. & the personal friends of Mr Browning have all come forward in the meantime, to express their esteem for him & their sense of the manner in which he has been victimised. It is as well perhaps that we should be here, & have it over– But trying it is, & distressing. God help us all–
I am writing I scarcely know what, in a stifling heat & preoccupation. The heat is intense—a heavy, hot air—scarcely a possibility of sleeping. You know what London heat is when it begins.
Miss Bonham Carter [4] has been here– Madame Mohl went yesterday to the country, but will pass a few days in London before she returns to Paris. I have seen Mr Kenyon who is radiantly well, & sympathetic as usual. Miss Mackenzie is gone to Rutland gate, Hyde Park, & her brother is dying there. [5] It is a question, I fear, of days or hours– My sisters I find quite well & very affectionate—& my brothers are affectionate too.
Write to me. If that trial did not appear in Galignani, tell us it did’nt—but if it appeared say nothing. [6] You understand. You always understand. I am more bound to you than ever, & so is Robert– Kindest, dearest friend!– God bless you
your gratefully attached Ba.
Address: France / Madame Jameson / 138. Avenue des Champs Elysées / Paris.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. This letter bears Calais and Paris receiving stamps of 8 July 1852, a Thursday.
2. Martha von Müller (née Hales, formerly Meredith, 1806–90) had brought a lawsuit against RB, Sr. for breach of promise of marriage and defamation of character. Mrs. von Müller had been twice widowed prior to becoming involved with RB, Sr. in early 1851. When the latter withdrew a proposal of marriage, which she had earlier accepted, she filed suit against him. The case was heard in the Court of Queen’s Bench on 1 July 1852. According to the account given in The Times (2 July 1852, p. 7), where Mrs. von Müller’s maiden name was mistakenly reported as “Haynes,” over fifty letters from RB, Sr. to the plaintiff were introduced as evidence; many of these “professed the most intense love of the writer for the lady.” Also submitted was a letter from RB, received by Mrs. von Müller on 1 November 1851, “stating that his father had informed him of the manner in which she had annoyed him, and of the persecution he had undergone for some time.” Witnesses later testified that RB, Sr. had done all the annoying. A last letter from RB, Sr., written in response to Mrs. von Müller’s reply to RB’s letter, charged her with marrying a second time while knowing her first husband was alive. Subsequent evidence proved this statement to be false. Counsel for the defendant, James Shaw Willes (1814–72), argued that his client “was a poor old dotard in love” and hoped that the jury would award the plaintiff “the smallest amount of damages.” The presiding judge, Lord Campbell, in summing up for the jury, stated that he “did not discover that this lady had held out any lure to this old gentleman; his folly was his own folly. He … asked her to marry him, which she had consented to do,” and in attempting to extricate himself from the situation had acted “in a most cowardly manner.” The jury found for the plaintiff and awarded damages of £800. A similar report with minor variances ran in The Morning Chronicle of 2 July 1852 (pp. 7–8).
3. Mrs. von Müller’s first marriage was to Thomas Richard Meredith (1797–1836) in September 1824. She married secondly Charles Augustus Adolphe Frederick von Müller on 19 May 1836, two months after the official announcement of her first husband’s death.
4. Joanna Hilary Bonham Carter (1821–65), cousin and close friend of Florence Nightingale, had studied art in Paris (1849–50) while staying with the Mohls (see Ever Yours, Florence Nightingale, ed. Martha Vicinus and Bea Nergaard, 1989, p. 443). She is listed in the Brownings’ address book of this period (AB-3) at 3 Waterloo Terrace, Gloucester Road.
6. An article entitled “Breach of Promise of Marriage” extracted from The Times was published in the 5 July 1852 issue of Galignani’s Messenger, though the name Browning appeared only once and was misspelled “Brownrig.”
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