3186. EBB to Louisa Corkran
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 40–42.
Florence.
April 9– [1853] [1]
I was very glad to have your letter my dear Mrs Corkran, and I should say very thankful—only you bid me not thank you for love. That’s an extraordinary pretension of yours, do you know? Why, if we do not thank one another for love in this hating world, what in the world are we to be grateful for? For not being put to death with tortures, perhaps– For not being pricked with pins from a neighbour’s pincushion. For not being bastinadoed by a neighbour’s cane– No indeed. You must put up with me as I am. I take things into my head sometimes with an obstinacy which tries the patience of my more enlightened friends– I believe in various spiritualisms in which even you (O Brutus!) [2] go off with Dr Cumming [3] at last & leave me desolate– I believe too that Louis Napoleon has’nt hoofs & a tail .. & that in fact & at bottom he may even have more conscience than you all attribute to him– Finally I am wicked & lost enough to be positively grateful to people who love me, .. and to thank you in particular, dearest Mrs Corkran, for all the goodness you say to me and do to me & mine .. to thank you & your kind good husband, for whom on other accounts Robert & I have so much respect & regard–
Whenever Sarianna writes to us, she says speaking of you .. “they are most kind.” Thank you for her & for us– She is excellent & admirable, and her father as loveable as we all know & feel—& indeed they appreciate you & your goodness. She extols you & complains of nothing .. but I am half afraid sometimes in the depth of my instincts, that she is not taking root at Paris, & that if it were not for the sunshine which comes from you, the leaves would drop– You seem to have had a gloomy cold winter—but intensely cold it has been in England, & gloomy everywhere else—even here– As to Rome, the rain has rained without taking breath for months together. Robert & I constantly hold that, except for the climate which of course is less mild than the Italian, no place on earth combines so many advantages & attractions as your Paris– As for me, you know how I was taken by the charm! So you will have us back again– Only we are somehow entangled in our plans—we are at Florence still for instance, when we ought to be at Rome. It is not quite our fault. Meanwhile, I have had the happiest of winters here—have been well, & busy, & amused all together .. & seeing the best of me well besides, .. I mean my husband & my child– Little Wiedeman is looking radiant, with his round rosy cheeks & long golden ringlets, & the smile that seems to put the whole in motion. He is no trouble, nothing but a joy– When he was a baby he never required ‘bibs’ like other babies. We always had in him the poetical side of childhood– So gentle, so good, so loving, the small creature is––saying “Dood night mine darling flends,” when he goes to bed. You have a præternaturally gentle child too, I think– Ah, but that is frightful sometimes, is’nt it? Perhaps your frank, noble, noisy, boylike boys give you less anxiety after all. I heard with pain that you had illness among your dear children—but it is past. I hope, even to the vividness of the memory of it. Do when you write to me again, .. & do write to me again soon, .. mention them particularly.
I do’nt like your Dr Cumming very much—he is too narrow, & too material. Then, I believe he is a good deal praised for saying over again, what other people, who are not praised, have said before.
Has Mr Corkran found out how the Madiai were let out. [4] I was told the other day by somebody who was sworn to secresy, that England did not do it, & that Louis Napoleon did not do it, (it was attributed to him here) & that the archbishop of Lucca [5] did not do it– Who did it, was a mystery, & by no means to be divulged.
I was very anxious about poor Mazzini, who has escaped you see from Austrian hanging or shooting. [6] He is unwise, but a man of a clean soul nevertheless. To see what an oppressed people is, you should come here! The people hisses audibly under the heel of the Austrian oppressor, .. but there is no strength for stinging .. alas!–
God bless you all. Robert writes with me in love to you.
Think of me sometimes as what I am, your affectionate friend always,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
We have had delightful letters from M. Milsand who is faithful to us– The Clarkes have returned from Rome, & are here for a few days– [7] They are to come to us on monday evening, & were talking to us yesterday of you. She is improved in health from her winter in Italy in spite of the unfavorable season–
Publication: The Girl’s Realm: Annual for 1905, pp. 278–279 (in part).
Manuscript: University of Texas.
1. Year provided by EBB’s reference to the release of the Madiai (see note 4).
2. Cf. Julius Caesar, IV, 3, 118.
3. John Cumming (1807–81), Presbyterian minister whose church was at Crown Court, Covent Garden, was a prolific writer of tracts, pamphlets and books, most of which were drawn from his sermons. He was particularly interested in the Second Coming, going so far as to predict that the end of the world would take place in 1867.
4. Francesco and Rosa Madiai, imprisoned in Tuscany since the summer of 1851 (see letter 3146, note 7) were released by order of the Grand Duke on 15 March 1853. They were immediately escorted to Leghorn and put aboard a ship sailing for Marseille, as their sentence had been commuted to banishment. The Grand Duke and his government, under pressure from England and Prussia (both Protestant countries) to release the prisoners, were “anxious to discover some mode of extricating themselves from their embarrassed position, without seeming to yield to Protestant influences” (Edward Steane, The Madiai. Narrative of the Recent Persecutions in Tuscany, 1853, p. 86). Consequently, it was “suggested that France [a Roman Catholic country] should be solicited to make a request for the liberation of the prisoners; and that the concession immediately following … would be made neither to Britain, nor to Prussia … but to France. This accordingly was done” (p. 86).
5. Giulio Arrigoni (1806–75) was the Archbishop of Lucca from 1850 until his death.
6. In February Giuseppe Mazzini had participated in an unsuccessful revolt against Austrian rule at Milan and afterwards had gone into hiding in Switzerland (see letter 3172, note 10).
7. James Freeman Clarke and his wife Anna had visited the Brownings at the end of 1852 (see letter 3159). The Clarkes had been in Rome since 13 February, having spent the previous month in and around Naples. On 1 April they left Rome for Florence where they stayed until the 15th (see James Freeman Clarke: Autobiography, Diary and Correspondence, ed. Edward Everett Hale, Boston, 1891, p. 195).
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