3216. EBB to Euphrasia Fanny Haworth
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 131–134.
Florence.
[ca. 20] June. [1853] [1]
My dearest Fanny, I hope you will write to me as if I deserved it– You see my first word is to avert the consequences of my sin instead of repenting of it in the proper & effectual way. The truth is that ever since I received your letter we have been looking out for ‘messengers’ from the Legation, so as to save you postage,—while the embassy people have been regularly forgetting us whenever there has been an opportunity. By the way .. I catch up that word of ‘postage’ to beg you never to think of it when inclined in charity to write to us– If you knew what a sublunary thing .. oh, far below any visible moon! .. postage is to us exiles! Too glad we are to get a letter & pay for it. So write to me directly, dear Fanny, when you think enough of us for that, & write at length, & tell us of yourself first, swirling off into Pope’s circles .. “your country first & then the human race” [2] … and indeed we get little news from home on the subjects which especially interest us. My sister sends me heaps of near things, but she is not in the magnetic circles, nor in the literary, nor even in the gossipping. Be good to us you who stand near the fountains of life! Every cup of cold water is worth a ducat here.
To wait to a second page without thanking you for your kindness & sympathy about Colombe does not do justice to the grateful sense I had of both at the time & have now. We were very glad to have your opinion & impressions. Most of our friends took for granted that we had supernatural communications on the subject & did not send us a word. Mrs Duncan Stewart was one of the kind exceptions, (with yourself & one or two more) [3] and I write to thank her. It was very pleasant to hear what you said, dear Fanny. Certainly, says the author, you are right & Helen Faucit wrong in the particular reading you refer to—but she seems to have been right in so much, that we should only remember our grateful thoughts of her in general.
Now what am I to say about my illustrations .. that is, your illustrations of my poems? [4] To thank you again & again first. To be eager next to see what is done. To be sure it is good—& surer still that you are good for spending your strength on me. See how it is. When you wrote to me, a new edition was in the press, .. yes, & I was expecting everyday to hear it was out again .. (The printers have been sluggish even beyond a Bradbury [5] in general, it seems to me.) But it would not have done, I suppose, to have used illustrations for that sort of edition—it would have raised the price (already too high) [6] beyond the public– But there will be time always for such arrangements .. when it so pleases Mr Chapman .. I suppose. Do tell me more of what you have done.
We did not go to Rome last winter in spite of the spirits of the sun who declared from Lord Stanhope’s chrystal ball, you remember, that we should. [7] And we dont go to England till next summer because we must see Rome next winter, & must lie ‘perdus’ [8] in Italy meantime. I have had a happy winter in Florence, recovered my lost advantages in point of health, been busy & tranquil .. had plenty of books & talk, .. & seen my child grow rosier & prettier (said aside) everyday– Robert & I are talking of going up to the monasteries beyond Vallombrosa for a day or two, on mule-back through forests & mountains. [9] We have had an excursion to Prato, less difficult, already, & we keep various dreams in our heads to be acted out on occasion. Our favorite friend here is a brother of Alfred Tennyson’s .. himself a poet, but more admirable to me for his simplicity & truth. Robert is very fond of him. Then we like Powers .. of the Greek Slave .. Swedenborgian & spiritualist .. and Mr Lytton, Sir Edward’s son, who is with us often & always a welcome visitor. All these confederate friends are ranged with me on the believing side with regard to the new phenomena,—& Robert has to keep us at bay as he best can. Oh—do tell me what you can. Your account deeply interested me. We have heard many more intimate personal relations from Americans who brush us with their garments as they pass through Florence, and I should like to talk these things over with you. Paid mediums, as paid clairvoyantes in general, excite a prejudice—yet perhaps not reasonably. The curious fact in this movement is however, the degree in which it works within private families in America. Has anything of the kind appeared in England? And has the motion of the tables ever taken the form of alphabetical expression .. which has been the case in America? I had a letter from Athens the other day, mentioning that “nothing was talked of there except moving tables & spiritual manifestations.” (The writer [10] was not a believer.) Even here, from the priest to the Mazzinian, they are making circles. [11] An engraving of a spinning table at a shop-window, bears this motto .. ‘E pur si muove.’ [12] That’s adroit for Galileo’s land, is’nt it? Now mind you tell me whatever you hear & see. How does Mrs Crowe decide? —By the way I was glad to observe by the papers that she has had a dramatic success. [13]
Your Alexander Smith has noble stuff in him. That’s undeniable, indeed. It strikes us however that he has more imagery than verity—more colour than form. He will learn to be less arbitrary in the use of his figures .. of which the opulence is so striking, .. and attain, as he ripens, more clearness of outline & depth of intention. Meanwhile none but a poet could write this, & this, & this. [14]
Remember us—love us a little. May I be remembered to Mrs Haworth?
Your faithfully affectionate
EBB——properly speaking,
Ba.
_________
July 3–
This was written ever so long since– Here we are in July—but I wont write it over again. The ‘tables’ are speaking alphabetically & intelligently in Paris—they knock with their legs on the floor .. establishing (what was clear enough before to me) the connection between the table-moving & “rapping spirits”. Sarianna, who is of the most unbelieving of temperaments as you know, wrote a most curious account to me the other day of a séance at which she had been present, composed simply of one or two of our own honest friends & of a young friend of theirs, a young lady, [15]
<…> [16]
the age of our child– She says that she “was not so much impressed as she should have been”, .. “but I am bound to tell the truth, that I do not think it possible that any tricks could have been played.”
This from Sarianna is equal to the same testimony … from Mr Chorley … say! [17]
We are planning a retreat into the mountains .. into Giotto’s country, the Casentino [18] .. where we are to find a villa for almost nothing, & shall have our letters sent daily from Florence, together with books & newspapers. I look forward to it with joy– We promise one another to be industrious ‘à faire fremir,’ [19] so as to make the pleasure lawful. Little Penini walks about talking of “mine villa”, anxiously hoping that “some boys” may not have pulled all the flowers before he gets there. He boasts, with considerable complacency, that “a table in Pallis says I am four years,” though the fact does’nt strike him as extraordinary.
Do you ever see Mr Kenyon? I congratulate you on your friend’s Cœur de Lion. [20] That has given you pleasure. <***>
Publication: LEBB, II, 118–121.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Year provided by EBB’s reference to Colombe’s Birthday. Approximate day suggested by her first comment in the 3 July portion of this letter and by her mention of Mrs. Crowe’s success (see note 12).
2. Cf. Essay on Man (1732–34), IV, 358.
3. One of these being Reuben Browning; see letter 3229.
4. These illustrations have not been traced.
5. Bradbury and Evans were the printers of Poems (1853) for Chapman and Hall. The book was issued in October.
6. EBB’s Poems (1850) and Poems (1853) sold for sixteen shillings each.
8. “Forgotten”; or “hidden.”
9. To Camaldoli and La Verna; see letter 3214, note 10.
10. Caroline Marsh.
11. i.e., around a table.
13. EBB refers to The Cruel Kindness, a play in five acts by Catherine Ann Crowe that opened at the Haymarket Theatre on 6 June 1853. The reviews that appeared in London newspapers the following day were mixed but all described an enthusiastic response from the audience. The Daily News reviewer declared the piece to be “exceedingly interesting in its story, and written, not only with elegance, but with no small degree of poetical beauty. … When the curtain fell and the principal performers had been called for, a loud call was raised for the authoress, who bowed her acknowledgments from a private box” (7 June 1853, p. 5). The play ran at the Haymarket for a month.
14. In his Poems (1853), published in March; see letter 3189, note 10.
15. Presumably the “Miss Kemp” mentioned in the seventh paragraph of letter 3220. We have been unable to identify her further. “Our own honest friends” are the Corkrans.
16. The bottom of this page is missing, resulting in the loss of several lines here and at the conclusion of the letter.
17. Henry Chorley had attended the crystal ball gathering at Fanny Haworth’s house in July 1852. EBB referred to him as “chief” among the unbelievers present (see letter 3075).
18. A region southeast of Florence that includes the monasteries of Camaldoli and La Verna. But the Brownings had evidently changed their minds and were now planning a visit to the Mugello region, a lush and fertile valley located north of Florence on the Tuscan side of the Apennines. It was a favorite retreat of the Medici who built numerous villas there. Giotto di Bondone was born in this region, as was Beato Angelico.
19. “[Enough] to make one shudder.”
20. The equestrian statue “Richard Cœur de Lion” by Carlo Marochetti (1805–67), Italian-born French sculptor, who was a Baron of the Kingdom of Piedmont and a member of the Royal Academy. The sculpture had been cast in plaster and shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851. The Times of 6 June 1853 (p. 8) reported that a meeting, chaired by Lord Lansdowne, had been held two days before “for the purpose of promoting the execution in bronze of Baron Marochetti’s colossal statute.” At that time, a public subscription was agreed upon, and it was announced that Queen Victoria intended “to grant a donation of 200l.” In 1860, sufficient funds having been raised, the statue was erected in Old Palace Yard outside the Houses of Parliament, where it remains to this day. Evidence indicates that Fanny Haworth was acquainted with Marochetti. In Souvenirs of Travel (2 vols., Mobile, Alabama and New York, 1857), Octavia Walton Le Vert records on 30 June 1853: “We passed this evening with Miss Fanny Haworth at Brompton. … In her pleasant circle we met many agreeable persons. Among them Baron Marichetti [sic], the sculptor” (I, 24). Marochetti is listed in the Brownings’ second joint address book (AB-4) at 34 Onslow Square in Brompton; Miss Haworth lived at 45 Onslow Square.
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