3154. EBB to Sarah Jane Cust
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 293–295.
Florence
Decr 27. [1852] [1]
Dearest Mrs Cust, as you wont write to me, I must write to you. In vain we looked to find a letter from you at the poste restante, arriving in Florence, & now, after all these weeks .. almost months .. we despair of you entirely, & yet cant do without hearing of you, & so pray write & set us at ease about you if possible. Now, that you are ‘out of office’, where are you going? [2] Robert says, dethroned royalties always make a point of going to Italy, & that now is the time for you to see Rome; the “mother of dead empires.” [3] Come—& let us see Rome together—for I assure you we mean to see Rome though we linger here month after month. It was such pleasantness to find the old dear nest still warm, the old chairs & sofas & tapestries looking just as they did, .. &, unconsciously almost, we settled back into the ancient life, as if Paris had never intervened. Robert has not been out a single evening since we came—yet people “go out” even here—for instance Robin Hedley & his wife are in a net of engagements, they tell us, & find Florence by no means without social attraction. By the way, we like her—she is pretty & natural, & intelligent & affectionate I dare say, .. while he is so frankly happy, that to look at him makes one think better of both of them. I never saw any human being so illuminated by marriage as he is. They are going to Rome towards the middle of January, & will be in Paris in April. For ourselves, we still consider Paris our place of ultimate settlement—that is, as far as we can ever settle anywhere, we who have a drop of the Arab blood in us & delight in living in tents. A terrible journey we had here. I was not well in England, & we had the imprudence .. I had the imprudence, I should say .. for it was my own choice & work .. to cross the Mount Cenis from Chambery far too late in the year, the consequence of which was that we had to stay at Genoa full ten days, through my being thoroughly “done up”. Out of the snow & bitter wind, we dropped into the June sunshine & shadow of orange-trees at Genoa, however, .. and I soon rallied & lost my cough, and now I am as particularly well as always I am in Italy. We have had such an exquisite season here that I cant help thinking the winter was over & done when we left England last October. Till the day before the first of December we had no need of a fire—think of that! and I was out in the toyshops buying my own Christmas gift for our little Wiedeman .. a prodigious action for me! Which reminds me of your Baba. Tell me if she is with you & if you found her grown, & if she begins to talk. Our darling has a great influx of power in respect to language, & is very amusing & characteristic, I must say–
Though we dont go out, we have visitors sometimes. Tennyson’s brother [4] resides here,—an interesting man of something of the poet’s type—reserved, & dreamy .. upright & noble, .. like his brother certainly. Then Mr Lytton (Bulwer’s son) is one of the attaches to the embassy, .. a very young man, whom we have both taken a fancy to, .. spiritual .. that is, rather visionary .. which pleases me, & with gifts to please Robert besides. And one or two other persons, who come to talk in the evenings. But the great silence, the stagnation in the air, after Paris, is something striking, I assure you, and I want Robert to have more amusement than he can have here under genial conditions.
I write this, sitting by a blaze of pinewood. How will you get it?– Do tell me of yourself—let us have full & happy news of you– We are especially anxious about you just now, as you may suppose, & would fain hear quietly whatever you will be kind enough to tell us– Say, if you can, that you are happy & well. As we passed through Paris we enquired about Lady Elgin & found she was at the seaside—but we had sight of your tender enemies, the Mohl & Fitton powers. The Shores were still in the country. How was Mrs Cuthbert when you last heard from her?– And had you better news from Germany? [5] We shall be in Rome about March, if not sooner, & at Naples afterwards. God bless you. Offer our kind regards to Mr Cust, & believe in the best love to yourself of both of us.
Your ever affectionate
E Barrett Browning.
Address: <Angleterre viâ France> [6] / Mrs Cust / The Private Secretary / Vice Regal Lodge / Dublin. [Endorsed in lower left corner with initials of Henry Lytton Bulwer].
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection.
1. Year provided by London postmark of 3 January 1853.
2. With the fall of the conservative Derby government on 17 December 1852, Lord Eglinton, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and Derby appointee, would be replaced, as would his private secretary, Henry Francis Cust. Aberdeen became the new prime minister on 19 December and began forming a government. He chose Edward Granville Eliot (1798–1877), 3rd Earl of St. Germans, as Eglinton’s replacement.
3. Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV, lxxviii, 3.
4. Frederick Tennyson (1807–98), elder brother of Alfred and a poet in his own right, settled in Italy in the late 1830’s. In 1839 he married Maria Carolina Giulotti (d. 1884, aged 68), the daughter of the chief magistrate of Siena (although EBB in later correspondence refers to her as an illiterate peasant). At the time of this letter, the Tennysons resided in Florence at the Villa Torrigiani.
5. Count Maximilian von Lerchenfeld (1815–52), husband of Mrs. Cust’s youngest sister Emily (née Cookson, 1825–95), died at Munich on 27 September. They had married at Meldon, Northumberland, on 4 August 1847.
6. Crossed through, by someone other than EBB, as this letter was sent via the British legation’s diplomatic pouch.
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