3227. EBB & RB to George Goodin Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 163–171.
| [In EBB’s hand] | Casa Tolomei. Alla Villa. Bagni di Lucca. |
July 16–17–18– [1853] [1]
My ever dearest George, The first thing I do in our new nest is to write to thank you for writing to me. Also I want you all to know where I am to be written to for the next three months—so it’s a little for you, you see, & a great deal for me. We arrived here yesterday. We did not mean to come to the Baths of Lucca .. still less to this part of it which I never shall like as well as I did our hermitage at the top of the mountain where we lived four years ago. But hearing accidentally of this house, for which we are to pay eleven pounds for a term of above thirteen weeks, the cheapness & convenience .. for the house is large .. beguiled us, & here we came directly. We cant occupy all the rooms—there’s a separate sittingroom for Robert to write in .. & there’s a spare bedroom where we may have a friend .. & there’s a garden .. and a beautiful view out through that row of seven planetrees to the mountains beyond. The people are too likely indeed to infest us, but we have made it public (by means of our acquaintance Mrs Sunderland) [2] that we mean to be private. It’s impossible to submit to a flood of visitors in the way of wateringplaces .. & we are going to work hard, George. If Robert does’nt make good use of that cheerful little blue room with two windows, I shall give him up, I say. Penini is enchanted– “Oh how pety, lese Bads of Lutta!”. Ferdinando, it seems, has bought a “real gun”. I hope he was’nt going to kill the birds. “Oh no! only mans!” Which made me open my eyes, till it was further explained that the object was to make men “hear the thunder of the gun, & not make them die.” On our arrival last night horribly tired, the child proposed to take a walk directly to the top of the mountain. “I not a bit tired .. oh no.” Dont let me forget to tell you that when it was proposed for us to go into the mountains to live, though charmed at the thought, he considered me directly– “But,” said he to Robert gravely, “I aflaid lose cold mountains & all y snow will mate Mama not velly well.” Nothing less than Mont Cenis was in his fancy– We had to pluck him down from that sublime height. But was’nt it dear of the child to think of me in the midst of his joy? By the way, the word “snow” was idealizing itself into pleasure about the time we left Florence, the heat being intense, suffocating– It was necessary to come away, I assure you. The two last nights, I could’nt sleep, & Penini had grown paler. We left Casa Guidi in the hands of Madme Biondi’s husband, with the hope of its being let a part of the summer at least–
Well—I was sorry to leave Florence notwithstanding the heat … & the fleas. If I did’nt think by nature of my dear Arabel often & often, the fleas would remind me of her– Affecting & poetical association! Seriously I do wonder whether she could submit to shake her petticoats & be happy in Italy. Even I, who am tolerant, have rushed about the house at Florence this summer in a frenetic state, like Io from another sort of fly. [3] Then Mr Tennyson would calmly observe in the course of conversation—“Dont you find the fleas worse than usual this year, Mrs Browning?” “Yes indeed, Mr Tennyson.”
“By heaven he mocketh me
As if there were a monster in my thought ..” [4]
namely a centipede–
July 17. But I was sorry to come away. I am always sorry to leave Florence, & this time we had been happier than usual—I had, at least. Also, there was something painful in breaking the thread & letting our pleasant friends roll off like lost beads. Mr Tennyson goes to England for three months– We quite love him– He used to come to us every few days & take coffee & smoke (I graciously permitted the smoking) & commune about books, men & spirits till past midnight. (n.b. Wilson did’nt like him as well as we did.) He was with us the last night. So was Count Cottrell for half an hour, bringing Sophie’s goodbye. So was the American minister from the court of Turin, Mr Kinney & his wife .. which made rather a fuss for our disconsolate household, but we could’nt help it. The American Excellences had arrived a few days before, [5] & had given us one previous evening, .. then, hearing we were suddenly going away, they proposed to come again on that last night. What could we say? Mr Kinney pleased us much– He has a certain nobleness of mind & opinion, .. of general atmosphere .. as well as considerable intelligence. He warmed our hearts with hopeful news of Piedmont concerning the rapid progress of the people & the honest intentions of the King .. who is not a man of much intellect, but is capable of good fixed ideas .. such as .. “that he is not the state, that his ministry is not the state, but that the souls of the people are the state.” A supernatural sentiment for a King!. Mr Kinney told me he had pointed out to the King that passage in “Casa Guidi windows” about his father Charles Albert, [6] & that he was “much gratified”. “If you were to go to Turin” added Mr Kinney, “he would give you a cordial reception”. What pleased me more was another thing mentioned .. that Azeglio when prime minister, quoted the poem in the Piedmontese chamber– [7] That, I liked to hear. Mrs Kinney dabbles in literature .. wrote a review once upon Robert [8] .. & was about to write two years ago to invite us to visit them at Turin when she heard of our having just left Italy .. which vexed her so that she “cried.” So she swore .. & I believe .. I who am credulous. She is a vivacious, demonstrative, rather pretty woman, with what Alexander Smith wd call a cataract of auburn ringlets, [9] –– (No dishonor meant to Alexander Smith who is a poet ..) .. not especially refined for an ambassador’s wife, but natural & apparently warmhearted to the point of taking you by storm. They have come south for his health– As we were going to the Baths of Lucca, “oh certainly they would go too, if it were only for a week”– So the wife said, & the husband assented. They inaugurated their arrival in Florence by being cheated (through the ignorance of their maître d’hotel) to the extent of twelve pounds sterling in payment for luggage.
The evening before our last at Florence was spent more pleasantly. That, I really enjoyed– I dont know when I have enjoyed anything more– Mr Lytton invited us to a bachelor’s party at his villa, to have tea on the terrace. It’s a villa perched high up at Bellosguardo, close to Galileo’s, [10] and the double view from that terrace .. on one side, Florence seething away in the purple of the hills .. on the opposite, wood & mountain pressing, gaining on one another, into the far horizon-line still bloodied from the sunset .. is past describing. It was nearly nine when we had tea. There was a sofa on the terrace, & chairs .. & the table spread with cakes & fruit .. and as we were all bachelors I made tea like a bachelor .. that is, as awkwardly as possible– The teapot was’nt large enough, & the cups were too large .. but I managed it at last by giving everybody half a cup. Our friends were there .. Mr Tennyson, Mr Powers, & Signor Villeri, [11] a Sicilian, one of the most accomplished men in Florence. It was quite cool & enjoyable, & as we consumed floods of strawberries & cream, & the stars pressed out over us to meet the fireflies underneath, we were very sociable & had quantities of interesting & harmonious talk. Nobody struck a discord. For instance, we agreed that Faraday’s letter on the moving tables was “insolent & arrogant,” [12] & Robert did not extenuate. Signor Villeri [sic] suggested the desireableness of expounding the advent of the spirits to the Italian mind in a book which he seems to contemplate writing. Such stories were told!! The old ghost-stories, George, are effete, stale—they are nothing to the everyday events of the present generation that eats strawberries & cream in talking of them. We were a company of believers, except Robert, who believes every other day, with intervals of profound scepticism– He will make no profession of faith till he has the testimony of his own senses, he declares .. but in the meantime, being a reasonable man, he shakes a little– Really he is dying hard– Nobody can set him down as too credulous. But he & all of you must come into it .. as surely, George, as I sit in this chair & look out from it to that mountain! I tell you– I warn you! Why wait to embrace a truth with the servants of the age, the running footmen of the age—those who lag behind? Mr Faraday will have to eat every indigestible word of that letter of his. The letter does not meet the facts of the case .. only the imitations of the facts .. only those amateur performances which mimic the actual phenomena. I, for one, have always been aware (I think I said so in a letter to Wimpole Street) [13] of the fallacies which might & did conceal themselves in various of those operations, & that a very slight & unconscious muscular movement, on the part of several persons, would move a rather heavy table. But .. for instance .. no muscular movement, conscious or unconscious, of fingers laid on the surface of a table, however light, would lift that table into the air: nor can Faraday’s explanation affect the numerous cases where tables sofas lamps &c are moved & lifted without the touch of a finger or foot. An American gentleman, Mr Coale, [14] spent two evenings with us in Florence before we left it. Mr Powers brought him to us, & we had a great deal of talk on the subject. He is an underwriter to an Insurance Company in Boston .. a man of considerable quickness & apparent conscientiousness. He told us that he had given to the subject a dispassionate examination .. just as he would to any matter of business .. & he had come to the conclusion that a communication between the natural & spiritual worlds was established beyond contesting. We were talking of Faraday’s letter– “But” said he, “Faraday knows nothing of the facts. I have seen again & again tables moved & lifted without a touch. On one occasion, in a private house, I maintained that the table should not be moved. I held one leg of it with all my force, & my brother [15] held another”– The medium was sitting several yards away—& no human being touched the table except the holders of the legs. Yet it was lifted violently, “wrenched” out of their hands .. that was the expression. He has seen tables make a figure of S on the floor, as if a man skated it on ice .. without a touch .. simply at a desire. He has seen tables lifted on end .. so Illus. .. while pencils, lamps, books, which under ordinary circumstances would have slipped off, kept their places as if they were nailed to the surface, at an expressed desire. He has seen young children in private houses produce these effects– It is common for children to be mediums. A child of a friend of his in New York, whose name he told me, a child six years old who did not know how to form a letter, in the normal state, writes faster than people write a running hand, when the spiritual influence siezes her & numbs & impels the arm .. writes rapidly & earnestly page after page things of which she is not conscious. The wonderful relations he made to us exceed even these which I have told you here .. but there is no room to enter into the heart of them. One can only say in reply, three things .. “You lie”—or “You are mad,” .. or “there are great wonders on the earth.” If the man were alone in his testimony it would be reasonable, I admit, to choose one of the two first conclusions; but in the present case when I myself have received accumulated personal testimony of the same sort from men & women of good reputation & more than average intelligence, I conclude according to my reason, on the third. If I did not believe these things I should not believe in Augustus Cæsar, or any person or fact of history.
You should hear Mr Kinney talk on this subject—a grave, reasoning man, who has had to do with politicians all his life instead of mystics. He said to me these words as far as I can recollect .. “I began of course by disbelieving .. then I kept my opinion long in suspense. Now, what am I to say? Baron Humbol[d]t has just observed to me in a letter treating of other matters .. ‘There are epidemics of the mind as of the body—& the actual mental epidemic relates to spiritual influences’. Well!—if indeed it be an epidemic, the malady is reaching its crisis. Written these few days, & since I last saw you Mrs Browning, I have received accounts from America of the most extraordinary character– The first men of the country, jurists, statesmen, economists, men of the highest character in respect to mind & conscience, .. my own personal friends .. have come out frankly before the public .. committed themselves entirely with the public & risked their political deaths in doing so .. testifying to their own spiritual experiences & to their having received communications specifically from the spirits of Calhoun, Webster, & Clay. Now, I ask you– Am I to sit in this chair & say of such men, whom I have been accustomed to hold in reverence, & with some of whom I have been bound in intimacy for fifteen years .. these men are insane .. & I, I who sit in this chair & judge, I only am sane? I cannot indeed say it.” He would have sent me the papers he had received on the subject but we were to leave Florence at seven the next morning—there was no time. One letter I saw from Mr Tallmadge, member of congress, whom Mr Kinney knows well,—a political economist of high character. Mr Tallmadge after frequent communications with Calhoun’s spirit, desired a clearer proof of identity, & was directed to place paper & pencil under the table .. he heard the sound of writing .. then, said the raps “Look”– On the paper was written .. “I’m with you still—Calhoun.” [16] The autograph was precise, .. Calhoun’s son & various of his friends testifying to the facsimile of it. Also, Mr Tallmadge was desired to place a guitar under the table, which was played upon by invisible hands in the most exquisite manner. “I have heard fine performers on the instrument,” says Tallmadge, “but anything equal to that spiritual music, I never heard.” Is Tallmadge a liar or a madman? Answer, George!—— Mr Kinney calls him an able & honest man .. first[-]rate in his department, & as little likely to be visionary as our economist of England, Macgregor. [17]
Mr Coale is religious. He says there is a great admixture of evil spirits, & a great amount of personation, & that persons in an unspiritual state of mind are apt to abuse these things to their own undoing. At the same time, good has been accomplished by their means, & he knows one individual personally whose whole course of life has been renovated & turned to God, besides others who have been benefited in various ways. That the good spirits come .. he considers undeniable. A young lady, a friend of his in Paris, is a medium, & receives constant communications from the spirit of her mother. Once she asked .. ‘If evil spirits could have communication with her.’ The answer was .. “Not only they can, but they have had it.’[’] Since, she will never begin any intercourse of the sort without using the test of the apostle John .. ‘Do you acknowledge that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh’? [18] It seems to be a mixed influx from the spiritual world.
And you will set me down as an unmixed idiot, George. Nevertheless you will change your views & I shall not change mine. Arabel likes me to tell her the things I hear, & perhaps you dont .. who knows, as Penini says. But what you cant read you can throw over to Arabel– I must, while on the subject, write out a few sentences from Sarianna’s last letter, because they are curious as coming from her. “I should like to see Miss Kemp again, for so little can be gained from one experiment, but I fear she is leaving Paris. I have read Professor Faraday on the subject, & must say it scarcely applies to what I saw. The wonder was not in first setting the table in motion,—a very, very slight pressure wd have done that,—but in the odd turns it took when fairly roused to action, & its singular position. No involuntary pressure of the muscles could keep a table running on one leg in what the Americans call a ‘slantingdicular’ direction. The rapping of course must have been made wilfully, not involuntarily,—yet I kept my eyes fastened on Miss Kemp & her fingers, touching them from time to time, without detecting how it could be done. Once, when the table answered wrongly, she gave it a slap & cried “Que tu es bête” [19] —it twisted itself up and down like a child in a passion. Again I say I cannot presume to form an opinion from one imperfect experiment. Miss Kemp may be a clever manipulator, & I a poor detective,—it is quite possible,—but it is downright nonsense to call it an involuntary action of the fingers: it was a wilful deception, if one at all. Miss Kemp told me that the first time she tried it, was with a large party—they sate for an hour & a half without the slightest success & she thought it all nonsense. Some time afterwards she tried a hat, and to her surprise, moved it very quickly.”
There is just one thing proved in Faraday’s letter—that the simplest phenomena of moving tables are not to be accounted for by the known laws of Nature. Yes, there is another thing proved. That the humility of Bacon & Newton [20] does not distinguish the scientific men of this age, any more than their genius does.
I dont instruct Penini in these things I assure you, but he hears people talking. He said to me the other day .. “Dear Mama, you knocked at mine door?”. No. “Well” .. turning round a face radiant with satisfaction .. “then it muss be pinnets.” Not that he considers it to be the least wonderful or frightful or anything of the kind;—the supernatural & natural are on the same level to Penini just now. He gives me a great deal of trouble in walking about the house with him .. “Tate me at Lily, dear Mama” .. and I said foolishly the other day, ‘that I was tired of it, & that if he did’nt mean to go by himself, he ought to have an angel to carry him, who would’nt be tired.’ On which, in a moment, he cried out loud, looking upwards .. “Tome, angel.”! The next moment the strange child was down on his knees with his hands clasped, & face turned to the ceiling. “What are you doing, Penini,” said I, a little alarmed. (I fancied he was praying to the angels which wd have been un peu fort.) [21] “Mama! dont you memember lat pretty picture in the newpaper– All y angels toming down, & all y peoples waiting and looting up. I put mine hands up just lite lat.” He was thinking of a picture in an American spirit-publication called the “New Era or Heaven opened,” of which Mr Powers lent us a number. [22] The illustrative engraving represented an angelical descent, while men & women were on their knees with eager hands stretched out. A most Yankee publication, by the way, it was, .. but Penini admired the picture excessively & had remembered it for some weeks.
Robert rushes in from his blue room & asks for space just to write in a few words to you–
[Continued by RB]
My dear George. I never read Ba’s letters—and she knows so well what I feel & think, that no doubt she has told you, in her perfect way, the little that I should try & put down, otherwise. Besides, I bade her send you a message by Arabel—but no messages, nor amount of puttings down, can thank you enough for your great kindness. The opinion you gave set so many fears,—indeed nearly all my fears—at rest, comparatively. [23] These horrible nightmares slip off one’s breast at last, and become a laughing matter—while they hold us, they are formidable enough. Well, we are again at this green, cool, bright, quiet, noisy place—for it is all these in a piquant mixture,—for is it not white,—in its houses—& green, in its sycamores, vines, hemp-fields & chestnut-trees—cool, for Italy—& bright, at the same time, as a great sun makes it by day, and an even greater moon by night, leaving such colours on the mountain-side & such shadows in the valley!– Then, we are quiet—for there’s nothing civilized beyond our [house], on this side, but a few charcoal-burners’ huts, the river [24] & the woods—still, on the other side, it is too true that there’s the “Sovereign’s” family (“our Moderator,” as people say here, from pure contempt) and the late “sovereign” (the Prince of Parma) coming, and an Empress hoped for. [25] So that this place is, as it were, an epitome, or picture-in-little .. (see the rest, in any treatise on the variableness of mundane affairs)[.] Now, dear George, here we are—here we may not always be– It is too foolish to ask you, to invite you—but, if your vacation could coincide with the three months’ stay we meditate,—think what a truest delight you could give us! In any case, remember me for yours,
ever most affectionately,
RB.
[Continued by EBB]
I hope you dont, any of you, justify the Times for the infamous part it is playing about Russia. [26] As to Louis Napoleon he acts well on this question– That seems incontestable even in England. The bishop of Maryland [27] came with Mr Kinney to our door, & sent his “love” to us both, with a message to Robert that he had “read Christmas Eve through twice in one night.” There’s a bishop for you! He did’nt come in to see us because of his ill health– He was afraid of talking. Ask Arabel to write & speak of herself especially. George, do manage to get her out of town this summer. It is necessary– You or Henry ask Papa–
It is deliciously cool here. Oh, that some of you wd come to our spare room! Come George do!
Address, in EBB’s hand: Angleterre viâ France / George Goodin M Barrett Esqre / 50. Wimpole Street / London.
Publication: B-GB, pp. 187–199.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Mary Elizabeth Sunderland (1788–1871); see letter 2909, note 6.
3. An allusion to the Greek myth in which the priestess Io is transformed into a heifer and tormented by a gadfly; see letter 2849, note 3.
4. Cf. Othello, III, 3, 106–107.
5. The Kinneys had arrived in Florence on 15 June 1853.
6. Casa Guidi Windows, II, 694–723.
7. Massimo Taparelli d’Azeglio (1798–1866), writer, painter, and patriot, had been wounded fighting the Austrians in 1848. He served as Piedmont’s prime minister from May 1849 until his resignation in October 1852, at which time he recommended Camille de Cavour for the post. In an 1852 address to the Piedmont Chamber of Deputies, Azeglio quoted from the passage concerning Charles Albert in Casa Guidi Windows (II, 694–723).
8. A review by Mrs. Kinney of RB’s Poems (Boston, 1850) appeared in the 4 December 1849 issue of the Newark Daily Advertiser (p. 2). RB refers to Mrs. Kinney’s “criticism” in letter 3234.
9. Cf. “A Life-Drama,” Poems (1853), Scene III, line 61: “And on his cataract of golden curls.”
10. Villa Segni, where he lived from 1617 to 1631.
11. Pasquale Villari (1827–1917), Italian historian and statesman, was exiled from Naples in 1848 after being accused of participating in riots against the Bourbon government. Thereafter, he settled in Florence and “devoted himself to teaching and historical research in the public libraries” (EB). His principal works are La Storia di Girolamo Savonarola e de’suoi tempi (Florence, 1859–61) and Niccolò Machiavelli e i suoi tempi (Florence, 1877–82). He is listed in the Brownings’ address book of this period (AB-3) at 4032 Via dei Fossi and later at 6677 Borgo Pinti.
12. EBB refers to his letter to The Times of 30 June; see letter 3224, note 5. Faraday’s concluding thoughts may have struck EBB as “insolent & arrogant.” He wondered how anyone could attribute table-turning to a “diabolical or supernatural agency, rather than suspend their judgment, or acknowledge to themselves that they are not learned enough in these matters to decide on the nature of the action. I think the system of education that could leave the mental condition of the public body in the state in which this subject has found it must have been greatly deficient in some very important principle” (p. 8).
13. See the sixth paragraph of letter 3210.
16. See letter 3220, note 20. The appendix containing Tallmadge’s letters in Spiritualism includes accounts of communications with American statesmen Daniel Webster (1782–1852) and Henry Clay (1777–1852).
17. John Macgregor (1797–1857), writer on commerce and secretary of the Board of Trade, was at this time the chairman of the Royal British Bank.
18. Cf. I John 4:1–3.
19. “How stupid you are.”
20. Isaac Newton (1642–1727), mathematician and physicist; Francis Bacon (1561–1626), philosopher.
21. “A bit much.”
22. The New Era; or, Heaven Opened to Man (Boston and Hopedale, 1852–54) was a spiritualist newspaper published and edited by Simon Crosby Hewitt (1816–70), Universalist minister, abolitionist, and labor advocate (see John B. Buescher, The Other Side of Salvation: Spiritualism and the Nineteenth-Century Religious Experience, Boston 2004, pp. 186–188).
23. EBB had, via Arabella, passed RB’s thanks on to George, regarding the outlawry of RB, Sr.; see letter 3220, note 31.
24. The Lima, which flows into the Serchio just west of Bagni di Lucca.
25. Doubtless the former Empress of Austria, Maria Anna Carolina Pia (1803–84), daughter of the King of Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel I (1759–1824), as indicated by an item in The Times of 23 July 1853: “Letters from Turin of the 18th inst. state that the King [Victor Emmanuel II] and the Duke and Duchess of Genoa were to repair to La Spezzia on the arrival of the former Empress of Austria, Anna Pia, in that town” (p. 6). We have been unable to determine whether she went to Bagni di Lucca. It would appear from a report in The Times of 12 September 1853 that she spent time in Massa: “To-morrow the steam-frigate Constituzione goes to Via Reggio to fetch the Queen Dowager [widow of King Carl Albert], who has been on a visit at Massa to the Empress of Austria” (p. 7). The “‘Sovereign’s’ family” refers to that of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Leopold II. EBB writes in the first paragraph of letter 3235 that he and his family were staying in the Brownings’ “old house at the top of the mountain” (Casa Valeri in Bagni Caldi). The “late ‘sovereign’” was the former Duke of Lucca, Charles Louis de Bourbon (1799–1883), who was also the former Duke of Parma. The current holder of the latter title was his son Charles III (1823–54). The Duke of Lucca had ceded his duchy to Leopold in1847.
26. EBB felt that The Times should have taken a harder line towards Russia, especially after it became known that Russian troops had crossed into Moldavia. The Times of 8 July 1853 stated: “What we have to look to is the possibility of renewed negotiations under the mediation of all the Powers interested in the restoration of tranquillity. If no attempt is at once made to resist the occupation of the Principalities, it is because the several Courts have still some faith in the adoption of arrangements, which must, of course, include the evacuation of that territory” (p. 5).
27. William Rollinson Whittingham (1805–79), Episcopal Bishop of Maryland (1840–79).
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