3156. EBB to Anna Brownell Jameson
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 298.
Florence
4th Jany. [1853] [1]
<***> The Corkranes gave us their balcony to see the triumphal entry of Louis Napoleon. … [2]
At Genoa, I was no longer flesh of Robert’s flesh, only bone of his bone. [3] Fever and cough every night had completely wasted me away. So there we remained, just because we could’nt go on,—remained ten days—I lying on the sofa by the open window, and wondering in a sort of dreamy muse—whether in the body or out of the body I scarcely could tell [4] —how we had dropt into the full heart of the summer—oh, such weather it was—Perfect Italy. After eight days I was able to creep about the city and sit in the shadow of orange trees with Robert and make him a little glad again. … I love Florence there’s the truth!—and though Robert is a little renegade and susceptible of the change from the boiling life of Paris to this stagnation, yet he bears it very well and has taken up his old hermit habit of never going out in the evening as if it were a natural thing—a few people come to see us for tea and talk—Mr. Tennyson for instance, the poet’s brother,—Mr. Lytton, Bulwer’s son. … I find congenial souls who believe in the American rapping spirits and other wholesome doctrine. … Then our little Peninni is growing fatter and sweeter every day—oh, such a darling. … He asked me the other morning if Dante had written his poems for Mama. ‘No,’ said I; ‘Dante was dead before Mama was alive!’ ‘Dead!’ he cried. ‘Yes.’ ‘Morto,’ he cried—to be sure of the fact in both languages. ‘Yes.’ ‘Oh,’ clasping his hands together, ‘what a pity!!’ … [5]
Think of my submitting at last to the conjugal will & cod’s liver oil—yes, & think of it’s doing me good! The cough was nearly if not quite gone because of the climate, before I took the oil, .. but it does me good by making me gain in flesh– I am much less thin, & very well, & Dearest Robert, triumphant.
Address: Mrs Jameson / Ealing.
Sources: Text (in part) Maggs, Catalogue 299, November 1912, item 3773. Manuscript (in part), Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by EBB’s reference to Louis Napoleon’s “triumphal entry” into Paris, which event occurred in October 1852; see letter 3138, note 2.
2. The catalogue source states that here EBB describes her journey from Paris.
3. Cf. Genesis 2:23.
4. Cf. II Corinthians 12:3.
5. The catalogue source ends at this point; the remainder of the letter is taken from the manuscript, written on the throat of the envelope.
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