3185. EBB to Sarah Jane Cust
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 37–39.
Florence–
April 6– [1853] [1]
I am ashamed of myself, & indeed I ought to be, for having left your welcome letter so long without an answer. Robert and I have talked it over enough to have made ten answers, if we had had a Devil by us “taking notes,” [2] & making letters of them!– Well! you began by behaving badly to me, & I in return never heaped coals of fire on your head. [3] Now write to me at once. And let us try virtue for a little while, for the change’s sake.
All you say of yourself is pleasant to hear of—and we are rather glad on the whole, like good human disinterested friends, that you have not been caught up in a rapture & so glorified at Dublin Castle as to forget, or think contemptuously of, the old days in Paris .. of which we were a part! Tell me, dearest Mrs Cust, are you pleased at the prospect of another child? [4] Do you want a girl or a boy? That’s my particular question. Oh—for the rest, .. it would have been absurd, dangerous, not desireable for even us, that under those circumstances, you should undertake a journey into Italy for three or four months. You would have enjoyed little or nothing, it seems to me. How could you? Art, politics, nature, ruins, .. it would have been all the same thing to you .. equally disgusting! What Lady Elgin thinks of first babycaps, you would be thinking of the Coliseum. Better to put it all off—far better!– We shall have “The Hour & the Woman” yet. [5] Very sorry I was to hear of Lady Charlotte Locker’s misfortune [6] —& perhaps a final one after such suffering–
You are going to Paris, you say, in April .. but we shall not be there to meet you, more’s the pity, [7] .. for our plans are in a knot & ravel just now, & we cant catch up the end of the silk. I want to go to Rome directly, & so does Robert, but it cant be contrived till another card is turned up—we must have patience. The only certain thing is that I have had a very happy winter & should be satisfied with that. Quiet we have been, past your imagination. Not once has Robert been out since we came here six months ago. A few straggling men come to us sometimes at coffee times, but otherwise we talk & dream over the olive-wood, & play with Penini, and write, & read from Proudhon to Paul de Kock inclusively .. from Alexandre Dumas fils, to Emanuel Swedenborg. By the way Robert cried out ‘c’est par trop fort,’ [8] when I threw down the one book to take up the other, last week. We get French books here with ease enough, but in English novels we are to seek. Your ‘Ruth’ does’nt come near us. We know nothing even of Esmond. Tell me if you have read ‘Villette’ by Currer Bell. [9] It seems to me highly appreciated in England from what we hear.
I think it was after I wrote last to you, that Robert had a letter from Helen Faucit, Mrs Martin, to ask him to permit his play of ‘Colombe’s Birthday’ to be acted at the Haymarket under the new management, as she wanted herself to act ‘Colombe.’ Of course he could only assent—& it will be played, I suppose, soon. Only, if there is any “adaptation to the stage” [10] which we heard today a frightful rumour of, he has had no more to do with it, I beg you to understand, than my Penini here .. who has run in with a radiant face, his golden ringlets flying, to bring me the bundle of violets he helped to pick himself, & interrupt my letter. I am half afraid for the play– What will the gross incapacious public do with all that subtlety of poetry & refinement of sentiment? But the theatrical people ought to know what is best for them, and they would’nt have chosen a play which has been printed these ten years & more ( .. nobody asked them .. ) unless they had some reasons of their own for believing in a success .. good or bad reasons!–
I will tell you of Mr Lever. He called upon us somewhat more than three years ago at the Baths of Lucca .. and I liked the beaming face & carressing manners of the man better than ever I liked his novels. He pleased me—he meant to please me; he means to please everybody—that’s his characteristic. So Robert meaning to be cordial in return for so much cordiality, returned his visit, called twice, called thrice—and there was the end of the acquaintance. I mean that he never called on us again. We set him down in that class of persons who, being curious in natural history, desire to know, for the good of science, whether or not, we have tails or chew the cud, we poets, .. & find one visit sufficient for the investigation. At any rate no more was heard of Mr Lever——till his return from Ireland the other day!. When, under supernatural illumination from Dublin Castle, he actually deigned to leave cards on us again .. he & his wife. You may fancy how Robert looked at them!– He returned them—but it was after waiting so long, .. that Mr Lever has evidently understood the slackness in the ceremony.
Mrs Cuthbert has another little daughter [11] —so the newspapers say. Will you give her my love & congratulation?
Where are you to be confined? Tell us as much of yourself as you will let us know.
You would like Mr Tennyson, the poet’s elder brother, who comes to us very often here. He is a great favorite of ours, & loveable in various ways. The young Hedleys .. I hardly dare say the Robin Hedleys .. have been to Rome & are on the point of returning to Paris .. thence to England. They are very happy, I think. She too is looking forward to a confinement. Oh—I must tell you! I heard the other day that Miss Fitton was entangled in two legal charges of defamation. No wonder.
I am as proud of my Penini as you are of Baba. [12] He is really a darling. Since he came to Italy he has taken to speak English to us .. “betause now I tan peat Incense” .. and he speaks Italian to the Italians about as well. Such a loving little creature is seldom seen. You ought to hear him when he comes to give us his last kiss at night. “Dood night, mine two darling flends”—(friends)– But Robert’s the favorite, & I am as jealous as Othello.
God bless you we both say. Love us as we do you—and do write!
Your ever affectionate
Elizabeth B Browning.
Address: Angleterre viâ France. / Mrs Henry Cust / Dublin Castle / Ireland.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. A play on Burns’s “A chield’s amang you takin notes,” line 5 in “On the Late Captain Grose’s Peregrinations thro’ Scotland” (1793).
3. Cf. Proverbs 25:22.
4. Lucy Anna Maria (1853–1923) was born on 6 July. She was the first child of Sarah Jane Cust and her second husband, Henry Francis Cust.
5. An allusion to Harriet Martineau’s The Hour and the Man (1841).
6. Presumably a miscarriage. The Lockers went on to have one child, Eleanor, born on 22 August 1854.
7. Cf. I Henry IV, II, 4, 468.
8. “That’s really too much.”
9. Villette (1853) by Currer Bell, pseudonym of Charlotte Brontë; Ruth (1853) by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell. Thackeray’s The History of Henry Esmond was published on 30 October 1852.
10. There were alterations; see letter 3166, note 3.
11. Alice Burn Cuthbert (1853–1913). The Times of 1 April 1853 announced her birth: “On the 29th ult., at Beaufront, Northumberland.” She was the fourth daughter and sixth child of William Cuthbert and his wife Mary (née Cookson), Mrs. Cust’s twin sister.
12. Sara Marie Streatfeild, last child from Mrs. Cust’s first marriage.
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