3182. EBB to Euphrasia Fanny Haworth
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 30–32.
Florence–
April 4– [1853] [1]
I should have answered your welcome letter, dearest Fanny, long ago. May you not have been reading me backward all this time (as you are a little apt to do, you know) & pushing on to some wrong conclusion, such as that I dont care a straw for you. So wrong that conclusion would be, & so wrong you! It would amount to the same sort of reading backward which raises the Devil [2] —and he is called the “father of lies.” [3]
What can have made me long in writing to you—I ask of myself. We have been in a state of suspence (for one thing) about Rome, & I have always seemed to be on the verge of being able to give my friends a new address– Then I have had a great deal of business to do .. mending, making in the matter of books [4] —dreaming beyond them—it has been a very busy happy winter with me, & I dont know how the time has past. I am well too, another person from what I was in London—which makes me wicked & lazy by fits .. as blessings are apt to act upon ungrateful natures.
Now believe of me, will you, that silent or unsilent, absent or present, I affectionately regard you, and wish with all my strength for you whatever happiness you yourself would choose. It is with true deep interest that I am eager to hear everything about you which you will have the kindness to tell me. And you will write, wont you? .. & tell me at least something. I can hear nothing of you except from yourself—so throwing the petition into your carriage I hope your police will be more gracious to me than Louis Napoleon’s is used to be to his petitioners. [5]
Yes, the case you tell me is a very sad one. But does it differ much from the case of most marriages where illusion is lost on both sides? Oh, what a ghastly rubbing off of paint, of pink cheeks & black eyebrows, in many a marriage! Is that you? Can this be you?– Tell me if your friend [6] recovers her dream again? I can conceive of a strong attachment recovering from the shock of unexpected points of difference, & of two souls growing together after all. Mind you tell me.
I have much interest in Miss Mulock for good reasons of my own, besides those which must occur to everybody who knows her at all. There is a simplicity & directness too in her, which are striking. Have you met often since you wrote? I have been trying to get her last novel “Agatha’s Husband,” [7] here in Italy, but have failed hitherto– Mention her when you write next, do–
Of course Dickens has been ‘showing up’ the ‘rapping spirits’. [8] What else could one expect? Nevertheless no wit of the Household Words could affect any opinion of mine on the subject—nor would a “Knock-down-blow” from Mr Lewes of the Leader, who expounded Comte’s atheistical philosophy to the British public last year, be by any manner of means final with me– From relays of Americans passing through Florence we hear a great deal of what is occurring in the United States, and it certainly is not resolvable into the ‘crackling of thorns’ [9] or the cracking of toe-joints. [10] Tell me if you have seen the manifestations in London– Whether they be false or genuine, does not affect the general question I think– I have spoken here with an intelligent, apparently conscientious man, who told us that he himself had been made a ‘medium’ on one occasion. [11] What is this book of Mr Spicer’s reviewed in Tait? By the way have you read the article in Tait, written by somebody who is evidently staggered, but not courageous enough to say so.
We have been living a most quiet happy life this winter, never stirring from our own fireside at nights, & keeping the olive-wood in a blaze. You are right. There is poetry in my life—the ideal overflowed into life when I least hoped for it. But there is always poetry in life, .. is there not? .. when there is love.
We are not quite without society. People come to us in the evening for tea & talk, .. & the most welcome of our friends is Frederick Tennyson, the Laureate’s brother– Then, there is Mr Lytton .. Sir Edward’s son—& Mr Powers, the sculptor–
Perhaps you may see Robert’s play acted at the Haymarket. Helen Faucit (Mrs Martin) wrote to ask his permission, [12] which could not be refused of course. You know the play .. “Colombe’s Birthday.” I am beginning to be anxious about it.
Do you see Mr Chorley .. the Procters .. Mr Kenyon? God bless you! Robert’s love with mine. Do write to your ever affectionate
EBB–
May I be remembered to Mrs Haworth?
Our child is a heap of roses, & improved in everyway– Really a darling!–
Address: Miss Haworth / 45. Onslow Square / Brompton.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. In Christian legend, reading “The Lord’s Prayer” backwards was said to be a way to summon the Devil.
3. Cf. John 8:44.
4. i.e., her correcting and revising for her third edition of Poems (1853), as well as her composing of Aurora Leigh.
5. We have been unable to confirm a lack of “gracious” behavior on the part of Napoleon III’s police towards petitioners, who, traditionally, would throw their petitions into their sovereign’s carriage. However, an item on the subject appeared the following month in The Daily News: “‘Notwithstanding repeated notices,’ says the Moniteur, ‘a certain number of petitioners persist in presenting applications direct to the Emperor in his promenades. Painful accidents may arise therefrom. To prevent them, no petition will for the future be received either by the Emperor or the persons of his suite. Petitions addressed to the Emperor or Empress must be put into the post, or deposited at the palace in the hands of the concierges’” (25 May 1853, p. 2).
6. Unidentified.
7. Published in December 1852 with an 1853 imprint.
8. In “The Ghost of the Cock Lane Ghost” in the 20 November 1852 issue of Household Words (see letter 3159, note 5), Dickens’s weekly.
9. Ecclesiastes 7:6.
10. In the Household Words article, reported to be the means by which the “raps” are produced (see letter 3167, note 20).
11. Possibly a reference to James Freeman Clarke, who told the Brownings that his automatic writing had been the means of communicating with his dead son; see letter 3159.
___________________
