3138. EBB to Arabella Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 249–251.
[Paris]
[Postmark: 17 October 1852]
My very dearest Arabel, Have you had a letter of mine & why dont you answer it? These three days I have anxiously expected to hear from you & you make no sign! What a shame! Robert desires me to repeat (lest my letter did not reach you, which the silence suggests as a possibility) that he left his desk (yours) with everything valuable in it, & to beg you to send it to Mr Reuben Browning, Messrs M M Rothschilds & sons, New Court, St Swithin’s Lane, so as to have it forwarded to us with as little delay as possible. Write a note to Mr Reuben Browning explaining the case. We cant stir a step till we have the desk, though our business in Paris is at an end, Mr Browning & Sarianna being settled most comfortably in the Rue des Ecuries d’Artois, a street off the Champs Elysées, on a first floor .. sitting room, dining room, two best bedrooms, & one for servant, kitchen &c, furnished, at one pound a week. Sarianna is quite pleased, & I do hope they may both be perfectly happy there. Our old friends the Corkrans have, out of love to us, quite adopted Mr Browning as the grandfather of their children, [1] & Mrs Corkran professed to have quite fallen in love with his simplicity & other qualities. Really I cant express to you how touched I have been by the kindness of the people in Paris. You would think we were ninth cousins to the president to see the fuss they make about us—it really humiliates me & turns me all sorts of colours. Do you know it is a wrench to get away from Paris, altogether– The exquisite, bright sky will deepen & brighten as we go on, but the prodigality of life & kindness & appreciation here, the interest on all sides, the picturesque manifestations of the intellect .. we must leave these far behind in our passage to Italy. The charm of Paris has begun to work, you observe. Both Robert & I have cried out more than once, “Oh, I wish we were going to stay.” And yet, if I stayed I should be shut up almost immediately, & not have a chance of losing my cough during the winter. Also, Italy is Italy, & will draw presently in its turn. Pazienza!
Yesterday was a grand day with us. The Corkrans who live on the Boulevard made room for us on their balcony, & we saw the great spectacle of Louis Napoleon passing on after his entrance into Paris– [2] Nothing so magnificent was ever seen before. All the military & civil pomp of France had gone out to meet him, & from end to end of the broad beautiful boulevard, as far as our eyes could go, and miles beyond, floated down under that limpid sky & cloudless sun the multitudes of the people—it was wonderful. He rode on horseback quite alone—that is, with a considerable space between those who preceded & those who followed, & with no one at his side. As the people shouted he bowed to right & left, & those who were cursing him stopped suddenly to call him at least a brave man. It was admirable tact to show that boldness & confidence .. but tact he has always had—he can adapt himself to the fantasies of France.
Arabel, I am in great perplexity about Miss Blagden. All the addresses are in the book which is in the desk, and I have not the least recollection of hers except that it seems to me to be, Westbourne Park Villas, (Mrs Mill’s) .. is the number, 3? Bayswater. [3] Could you try to make it out for me anyhow. Because I want this little note sent, to enquire about Miss Agassiz who if she means to go with us, should come to Paris at once. We spent one evening with aunt Jane, and Ibbit was very affectionate & I liked her better than ever I liked her before. Arabel, you are all wrong about the mourning, [4] & I am right. You should wear no crape. Arlette does not, nor does Ibbit .. nothing but black silk & bugles. Aunt Jane being nearer in relationship, wears the slightest hem of crape on her silk flounces,—white sleeves & collar. She told me that I ought’nt to wear crape. There’s information for you!
I have no paper, nor pens—& Robert cries out that I have no time—which is worst of all. The cough is decidedly better, & I have been out every day since I came, the sunshine being brilliant. Yesterday as I stood in Mrs Corkrane’s balcony, though an awning was over my head I was exhausted with the heat really. Yet the air is sharp in the morning, & our hotel is cold from the exposition, having no sun. Wiedeman shouted ‘Vive Napoleon’ when the president rode under the windows, in a most ecstatical state. Wilson & I were considering which frock he should put on on that great occasion, the velvet or the green merino. He thought it better to decide against the merino,—“because,” said he, “.. if the soldiers saw the buttons, they might want to take them away”.! He has written a letter to you .. to “Alibel” .. He remembers you always, and Lorge [George] as well as the rest, in his prayers. Pray for him, dearest, and for Robert & me. God bless you & love you!– Tell me how you are.
Robert left on the chimney piece of the back dressingroom a prescription for my medecine in an envelope with Twinberrow’s [5] name on it. Take it out & send it in the answer to this—& do write directly, Hotel de la Ville l’eveque, Rue Ville l’eveque[.] So much I have to say & cant. I love you dearly, dearly– How is Minny? Love to all—your for ever
ever attached Ba
Love to dearest Trippy–
Address: Angleterre / Miss Barrett / 50. Wimpole Street / London.
Publication: EBB-AB, I, 503–505.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. The Corkrans had five children: Henriette Louisa Augusta (1841–1911), Alice Abigail (1843–1916), Sutton Frazer (1844–1915), William (1846–98), and Mary Harley Nannie (1848–1911).
2. Louis Napoleon had spent the previous thirty days travelling through France and stirring up the populace with thoughts of re-establishing the empire. On 16 October 1852, not coincidentally the anniversary of Napoleon I’s landing at St. Helena in 1815, he returned to Paris. The Times of 18 October 1852 (p. 5) carried an extended report of his grand entrance: “The Prince President arrived at 2 o’clock at the Orleans terminus. … Thence on horseback he crossed the Pont d’Austerlitz, and passed along the line of Boulevards, the Rue Royale, and the Place de la Concorde, and entered the Tuileries by the garden about 4 o’clock. The troops, and an immense crowd, followed his passage, and saluted him with enthusiastic cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ ‘Vive Napoleon III.!’” Along the president’s route there had been constructed several decorative arches that proclaimed him emperor in one form or another. EBB would have seen one of these from the Corkrans’ apartment at 52 Rue Basse du Rempart, a street running closely parallel to the Boulevards des Capucines and des Italiens: “The arch erected at the entrance of the Rue Basse de [sic] Rempart … had the inscription:—‘A son Altesse Imperiale Napoleon III., Empereur des Français!’” (“To his Imperial Highness Napoleon III., Emperor of the French!”).
3. The address was 37 Westbourne Park Villas, Harrow Road, as indicated in the Brownings’ address book of this period (AB-3). In both the 1851 and 1861 British censuses, it is listed as the residence of Miss Maria Willis and her brother Richard.
4. i.e., for their aunt, Mary Elizabeth Graham-Clarke, wife of EBB’s uncle John Altham Graham-Clarke; see letter 3134, note 2.
5. William Twinberrow, a chemist, at 2 Edward Street, Portman Square, as listed in The Post Office London Directory for 1851. Presumably, the “medecine” was a morphine compound.
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