3259. EBB to Sarianna Browning
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 257–262.
[Bagni di Lucca]
[late August 1853] [1]
My dearest Sarianna forgive me for not recognizing you at once as a “moderate person” .. but you misled me a little by your hypothesis about the probable damnation of the Gallic race—dont you remember? I lost my way by that flash of wit, long ago. And, although plainly wit, jest & so forth, a certain serious degree of opinion scarcely tenable with much moderation properly so called, seemed under the words. Oh—but this last letter of yours sets you right with me at once—and do you know (now you never would have thought of that!) I too have the pretension to be a moderate person on most occasions. I see French defects & dangerous qualities as distinctly as any of you do, through all my sympathies & admirations in some respects. I dont see that there is a despotism in France even with the help of Mr Corkrane’s eyes. There are despotic features .. despotic tendencies in the government .. but where the base is decidedly democratic, these things are sure to be worked straight & clean presently. To call it a despotism in France, is to misuse words, I think. Come here, & wherever the fang of Austria strikes, look for despotism– Oh—I feel bitter when I speak of Austria. It is hard to be moderate in respect to Austria—here. Penini was gathering box from the hedges the other day .. (wherever there’s a hedge here, it is box) .. & he gathered a yellow flower with the rest. Down he threw the flower in disgust .. “Ah, brutto! color Tedesco!” [2] I am delighted with that!
I have good news from Wimpole Street. They are all permitted to go down to the sea, near Lymington, & it is likely to do good to my dear Arabel, particularly as the weather seems better. [3] When Arabel was a child, through the accident of overbleeding when she was a baby & cutting her teeth .. (a leech got upon an artery) her system became enfeebled & she was subject to swellings on the glands. It is a complaint from which our family, on all sides of it, has been uniformly free, but there is a beginning to these things of course. When she grew up the tendency appeared to have ceased; but two years ago there was a return .. and now again this spring– Cold winds & weather are necessarily injurious, & the exceptional season everybody complains of has re-acted on her. She has suffered acute pain .. which is now past, she says, but the swelling continues .. on the back of the neck, this time. Poor darling. That sort of affection is vexatious & disagreeable on other accounts than for the actual suffering. They give £5– 9s a week for the house they have taken .. only large enough to hold them .. & it is not considered dear—their rent for a fortnight being ours for above three months!
Well—your Frenchman may be right or wrong .. I cant say .. but the probability is that he misinterpreted. There’s a ridiculous handle to most things, .. and I confess to you that I, believer as I am, laughed till I cried, on that sofa the other day, over Dickens’s very uncandid but most irresistible account of the spirit-manifestations, in Household Words. [4] Mr Appleton’s expression as he spoke of the Paris seance was .. “everybody was convinced & the poet in ecstasies” .. and I understood from his letter that the said séance was held at Lamartine’s own house. Perhaps, Lamartine was “not persuaded” into the theory of the spirits of deceased persons being involved: There’s a theory of inferior spirits .. and a theory of devils .. and a theory of a peculiar kind of clairvoyance,—<& one wd be called a believer, in accepting any of those theories.> [5] Oh, with regard to “lying spirits,” these agencies, whatever they are, undoubtedly lie very often—though the facts which have reached me do not commend the devil-hypothesis to my mind. To admit that there’s a mixture of evil & good spirits, together with a great amount of personation (a favorite spiritual trick) covers all difficulties, I think .. & explains, among the rest, why the Napoleons are dull sometimes. Sir Edward Lytton had two Shakespeares, one contradicting the other. We shall learn presently, I hope, to distinguish individuals better, so as to be less subject to such mistakes. We just receive a letter from Mr Chorley who is chivalric enough to deliver a message from Mr Marston to me (that must have been like passing a redhot poker, & not by the handle.)—to this effect. “I am charged with a message to you from Mr Marston, “The patrician’s daughter,” [6] whom I saw two days ago at Folk[e]stone, & who believes everything .. to the point of his having received communications from his own mother & from Mr Senold’s [7] mother, (both deceased[)]. —He will be most glad to write & communicate to you the result of his experiments if such letter will interest you.” Mr Chorley is absolutely incredulous & holds by Faraday with both hands. He is very sad about his sister who grows worse, he says.
Yesterday, no, the day before, I had a letter from Fanny Haworth, who sends me one or two or three graceful illustrations of my poems, (outlines) [8] & is to send more by Mr Spicer, the great spirit-historian, author of Sights & Sounds, who is coming to Italy with a note of introduction to us. There’s a prosperous circumstance for me! I dont mean the ‘outlines’—but Mr Spicer. She is out of spirits, I think, but does not say why .. and is going out of town, into Wales near Denbigh, instead of to Brighton with her mother. There’s a good deal about the spirit-manifestations—“One evening here Lord Stanhope, Mr Spicer, Mr Smith & Mr Reece [9] .. (Alfred Tennyson’s great friend ..) .. these with myself had a “table-turning” which was very satisfactory, and then Lord Stanhope earnestly requested the spirits to rap on the table. At first faint & then most distinct raps were heard by all present– Even unbelievers out of the circle cd not doubt it. We did not however try any questions of consequence, but put it off to another séance—. With the usual fate of London engagements I could not get the same circle again together, but had, another time, Mrs Westland Marston, Mrs de Morgan[,] [10] Lord Stanhope & Mr Smith– Here a very curious modification of the phenomena took place. Both Mrs Marston & Lord S. being media, one neutralized the power of the other, & though the table tilted and bowed to Mrs Marston and answered by the alphabet, Lord Stanhope was not worth a rap. Much time was lost in trying to overcome this rivalry, but the fact was most clear to me, & the tilting of the table quite as curious as Mrs Hayden’s rapping. It would not in the least admit of the “involuntary action” interpretation. There was an intelligence. What can we think of these things?”
She has given up oil-painting– She met Mr Kenyon at the Procters’ the other day .. “ruddier than cherry”, she quotes.
Do try to see Miss Kemp again. That sceptic Robert who always, after a new evidence, falls back into a revived fit of doubting, suggests that if Henrietta Corkrane pretends to ‘rap,’ she may have been the agent in the other phenomena–!—— What do you say?
I dare say your apartment may be cold in the winter. Rooms under the roof I always distrust on account of both heat & cold. You might enquire of Mrs Byrne whether she found it cold when she lived there. Our apartment in the same house I set down as the warmest winter-apartment I ever inhabited in any climate. The Hedleys used to swear that I suffocated myself, the warm air struck them so on entering the door—and yet we did not burn much fuel. Dearest Sarianna, I feel for you & with you deeply, and deeply understand how the gravity of one’s own spirits may make the air heavy everywhere. Still I hope that, for all our sakes, you will try to be as happy as you can. As for the last event in England, [11] Robert does not care for it .. he is absolutely indifferent … He is growing quite stout (for him) with an exemplary insensibility to the wickedness of the world. Try to button his coat and you will see!–
We have donkey-excursions with the Storys, & I am thinking of appearing in the frontispiece to some new edition, centauresquely, half ass, half woman. (By the way, my edition is not out yet. Is’nt it too bad of Chapman & Hall?) The scenery here is exquisite, & we are all enjoying ourselves & the mountains,—Penini, too much, I think! He is really wild, & you cant get him to draw or write, without pressure which we dislike using. He is such a baby, after all. Good, sweet, innocent, frank & bold!– We do, though, insist on the reading every morning, because he would have to begin again if he forgot, & that would cost him too much trouble, little darling. His romantic attachment to Edith Story who was nine years old the other day, is quite amusing, & there are heaps of little Italian friends whom he orders about with a royal air as if he felt the difference of races. I heard him calling out of the window lately– “Chi piange per nulla? Cattivi bambini!” [12] But Edith is the love of his heart. He was to spend her birthday with her, but when the morning came, he fell into a melancholy state of meditation and emulation! “Oh dear me!” said he .. “I wish one of mine years gone away! Not lis ear and not lat ear” .. (catching himself up with explanatory gravity, & applying a small hand to each side of his head!) “but a year like Edith’s! I wish I had mine birsday!”
The other day I overheard a soliloquy of his as he looked in the glass, spoken with the profoundest dissatisfaction .. “I not a bit lite a boy wiz mine turls! I just like a dirl. I not lite it a bit, mine turls!” “Mine curls” are not however the chief reason of his looking a little like a girl—it is the grace & delicacy of limb & movement & the brightness of complexion. He looks much stronger since he has been here, & is decidedly more robust .. fatter & firmer. You need’nt be afraid of the river .. which is rather a brook than a river .. for he never would go to bathe again. “Non mi piace, ton telle donne”!—con queste donne!– [13]
He receives the dear nonno’s artistic gifts with deep gratitude, and deposits them in his album. It’s wrong that he should not write to you .. & there’s a letter begun .. but what can we do? I hear him laughing just now, with the very laughter of the Pucks, as if he were born to do nothing but laugh.
Give our love to the Corkrans. They will be leaving Paris now, I suppose, since there’s to be no war after all. Write & tell us everything. I love you both!– Dearest Sarianna, may God bless you & make you happy. Have you heard any lectures at the Collége de France? Entrance is free, & they are good sometimes.
Your ever attached
Ba.
How very sorry I am about the prospects of poor Mrs Silverthorne! And that dear little boy!– [14]
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Lilly Library.
1. Approximate dating suggested by EBB’s reference to Edith Story’s ninth birthday, which occurred on 23 August 1853.
2. “Ah, ugly! German color!” The flag of the Austrian Empire at this time consisted of two horizontal bands: the top one black, the bottom yellow.
3. The Moulton-Barretts would spend the next two months at Milford House, near Lymington, Hampshire.
4. Charles Dickens’s “The Spirit Business,” the lead article in Household Words, 7 May 1853, pp. 217–220.
5. Passage in angle brackets is interpolated above the line.
6. A play by John Westland Marston, published in 1841 and staged by Macready the following year to great success.
7. EBB placed a cross here, and another at the bottom of the page, where she wrote: “I cant be sure of that word.” We have been unable to identify anyone of that name. Regarding “his own mother,” Chorley must have meant Marston’s mother-in-law, Elizabeth Potts (see letter 3253, note 7). Marston’s mother was still alive. She was the former Mary Anne Wright (d. 1874, aged 82). She had married in 1818 Stephen Marston (d. 1840, aged 48), a Baptist minister, of Boston, Lincolnshire, and later Grimsby.
8. One of these was probably an illustration of EBB’s “A Thought for a Lonely Death-Bed” (1844); see the first paragraph of letter 3262.
9. Robert Reece (1808–74), barrister. “Mr. Smith” may be James Elishama Smith (1801–57), a Scottish religious author, who attended séances at the de Morgan home (see Sophia Elizabeth de Morgan, Memoirs of Augustus de Morgan, 1882, p. 173).
10. Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan (née Frend, 1809–92). She and Augustus De Morgan (1806–71), professor of mathematics at University College London, were married on 3 August 1837.
11. A reference to outlawry being declared against RB, Sr. on 8 July 1853; see letter 3220, note 31.
12. “Who cries for nothing? Bad children!”
13. “I don’t like it, with those women!”
14. Edward Christian Silverthorne (1844–1906), the son of RB’s late cousin James Silverthorne (1809–52). As indicated in letter 3176, RB had given some money to his cousin’s widow, Jane Street Silverthorne, the previous February.
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