3252. EBB to Anna Brownell Jameson
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 239–242.
Casa Tolomei
(Alla Villa)
Bagni di Lucca.
August 23. [1853] [1]
It is strange to feel any sort of little pang at the sight of a letter of yours dearest Moña Nina,—but I did reproach myself that it should be, this welcome letter, the second unanswered– I had meant to write to you instantly on arriving here, and put it off from day to day. Forgive me & believe that I have held you in my thoughts nevertheless.
I wish I knew what was the matter—it would make me more comfortable about you perhaps .. or perhaps not .. but as I cant hear I cant, & must only hope as stedfastly as I can that you will pass clearly through the anonymous troubles & be as happy presently as if you had’nt been troubled at all. In the meanwhile you seem to have a great deal to occupy your thoughts .. the outside thoughts at least .. in Dublin. The building [2] strikes me, to judge by newspaper illustrations, as more beautiful than the original chrystal palace. I am glad you saw Mrs Cust who has not written to me for ever so long, & glad to hear that she is well enough & happy enough to be able to remember us if she liked .. which is something worth hearing. If you see her again give her our love & that bitter speech.
Mr and Mrs Watson [3] called on us in Florence when we had left it I understand. A young Mr Wilson, [4] son of the orientalist, spoke rather well of him the other day—they had been together at college—and I suppose I ought to congratulate you on the marriage of your remaining niece. It’s a good marriage, in a worldly point of view .. is it not?– I shall see dear Gerardine presently & talk of you, even if I dont talk with you in Rome, which you cant make me despair of doing for all you say that is discouraging. Tell me, if you can, that your mother [5] is a little better, & that you are easier in other ways. We shall certainly (as far as there is certainty in life) go to Rome in the winter. Now we are enjoying ourselves heart to heart with the mountains here .. such mountains, such ravines, such chesnut forests and apocalyptic sunsets! I have taken to donkey-rides .. and you may represent me mythically, centauresquely, half donkey half woman, when you do “outlines” upon the age. It may express an opinion with delicacy on your part, after hearing mine upon the table-movings & spiritual influences. Who knows? For as to Faraday, … I dont know what you conclude upon Faraday .. but for me, I am sorry not to be able to do more reverence to the name & authority of a man of science such as he. His letter meets none of the important phenomena, .. ignores facts altogether .. & has a tone of insolence & arrogance which sets the blood burning in me—what do you think: how do you feel? It seems to me from what you say that you have witnessed or had testimony upon only the inferior phenomena, and I have been long aware that these may be simulated involuntarily by the muscular hypothesis, & that many of the amateur operators have exercised their muscles simply. Therefore you may be convinced by the Faraday letter as some other persons have been. But if you were in the possession of certain facts, which, as I know them, Faraday ought to have known, before he gave an opinion on the subject .. such facts for instance as the movement of tables without a touch from finger or foot .. you would feel, as I cant help doing, considerable indignation at the treatment of the subject in this famous letter. You get out of the letter however that even the inferior phenomena in question are not accountable on any of the known laws of physics—& this is valuable as far as it goes. In the meanwhile the subject is making steady advances everywhere .. & is destined to advance, I think, still further. Nothing interests me so much– I shall not have rest till I know what is to be known on it,—the “sublimest conundrum ever offered to the world’s guessing” as it is called in an interesting letter from Paris, from Mr Appleton[,] Longfellow’s brother in law, which I heard read the other day– I expect from the solution that it will be the breaking up of some of the deepest & dumbest mysteries of our double Being. The modus may be electrical or odilic [6] .. but there is something beyond, we may be sure. Nevertheless, I observe that the intelligent men who are engaged in the subject, doubt still, many of them, whether there is an external agency, or whether the whole may not be resolved into the unconscious projection of a second personality on the part of the medium, accompanied with clairvoyance & certain physical manifestations .. which seems very hard and mystical, & is not my theory certainly. But people go into convulsions rather than believe in “spirits” .. properly so called. As to imposture .. it’s an hypothesis fuori di stagione. [7] The subject has past beyond that possibility. I have heard very much. In the first place we had a succession of Americans in Florence, and even England & Paris have given us the most extraordinary testimony. The pedantic orthodox notions about the spiritual world interfere with belief a good deal, and fill the popular ear with Ulysses’s wax .. which does’nt stop the singing. [8] The [‘]‘rappings” have been produced, observe, in English private circles, .. and so also have the intelligent motions of the table. The question of simple table-turning is only the fringe of the subject. Swedenborg’s philosophy throws more light on the whole than all the flambeaux of the Faradays.
I forget whether you have been at the Baths of Lucca, & if you will understand anything when I tell you that we are at the Villa, in a house that turns sidelong from the village & fronts the mountain through a colonnade of seven plane trees. It is a comfortable summer-house & roomy, & we pay some eleven pounds for it during a term of above thirteen weeks. Mr. and Mrs Story are here & helping to make the place agreeable. Do you know them? I think not. He is the son of Judge Story, & has distinguished himself in legal authorship, and sculpture .. not to mention a volume of poems [9] which is poetical. Now he is engaged on a statue of his father in Rome, [10] & returns to his work in the winter. I can only say of it that it looks very well in the calotype, but the sculptor himself I do decidedly appreciate—also his wife who is fresh & true, heart & mind. We are always meeting for tea & talk at one another’s houses,—and their children coalesce with our child. Penini gives entertainments “in mine arbour,” which are reciprocated in the loggia at the top of the mountain– There’s a romantic attachment between him and Edith Story, who, being double his age, is peculiarly attractive to him. Oh, you would think our Penini much improved, it seems to me: He is radiant with health and joy just now, and strangers call him “a lovely child” when they meet him by the river, & stop to ask Wilson about his parentage. His shining swinging curls & graceful movements are apt to strike people. But, as he observed himself the other morning, looking in the glass with profound dissatisfaction .. “I not a bit like a boy, with mine turls!”—he is often mistaken for a girl, & not so much for the curls’ sake, after all, as for the delicate features and complexion. I should like you to see him, dearest Moña Nina! You would like him to call you “Aunt Nina,” I think. Such a loving little heart! Literally he does’nt know what ‘hate’ is. He asked yesterday for some vinegar– “But,” said I, “you used to hate it, I remember.” “So I do hate it—& I like it velly mush”. He thought hating was a form of appreciation. He does not mix the languages now, & both English & Italian come fluently. Robert adores the child, as well he may, & I dont particularly dislike him you may guess easily. Indeed there never was a more ingenuous fragrant piece of lovely nature. There’s a philosopher who never doubts or wonders at anything except about people being “naughty”!. No spinning table nor rapping spirit would startle him for a moment—he talks of angels as if he saw them everyday. Robert told him yesterday that at night, if he looked, he would see the comet [11] .. “a star with a tail.” The child enquired .. if there would be “music”. Then, seeing us laugh, he said quietly, .. “Well! I [12] sint music would mate it mush more pretty.” (A choir of angels would have seemed the most natural thing to him that could be.) Robert observed .. “there was the music of the spheres, but too far off for us to hear” … but never could the little creature understand why we laughed.
Mrs Stisted, her majesty of Lucca you know, enquires particularly after you, and asks me to name her to you as an admiring friend. She has been very kind & attentive to us, and if it were not for our horror of the lion-hunters, we should be yet more grateful than we are. We are doing some work. [13] Do you know I have written to Mrs Gaskell, in consequence of a kind letter of hers (kind to me) which Mr Kenyon allowed me to see. I deeply admire her. Do you know the author of Villette? Do write to me & tell me everything. Robert has grown to be tolerant of the spirits though resolved on not believing till he sees, he swears. He is well—& so am I. Take our true love!
Your ever affectionate,
Ba.
I do injustice to Mrs Stisted’s message– “She desires to see you here,” says her majesty.
We are here till October, & then return to Florence.
Address: Angleterre viâ France– / Mrs Jameson / Ealing / London.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. EBB refers to the structure that housed the Great Industrial Exhibition of 1853 in Dublin (see letter 3208, note 4), evidently attended by Mrs. Jameson, and echoes the thoughts expressed in The Daily News: “It will, no doubt, seem most presumptuous to compare it in any way to the wonder of the world which stood in Hyde Park, but the truth is, nevertheless, that nearly all those who arrive here from London assert that in some respects the Dublin building strikes them as even grander than the Crystal Palace itself, its interior being in a much more imposing and beautiful style of architecture. The spectator may fancy himself on entering in a vast cathedral” (13 May 1853, p. 5).
3. Andrew Watson (1830–67), of Torsonce, Scotland, third son of Hugh Watson (d. 1834, aged 61) and his wife Elizavetta Andrevna (née Watson, d. 1886, aged 86), married Camilla Ottilie Bate on 19 July 1853 at the Chapel of the Prussian Embassy in Rome. Watson, as his father had been, was a member of the Society of Writers to Her Majesty’s Signet.
4. Andrew Wilson (1831–81), traveller and writer, was born in Bombay, the eldest son of orientalist John Wilson (1804–75) and his wife Margaret Bayne (d. 1835). Wilson and Andrew Watson had attended the University of Edinburgh at the same time.
5. See 3217, note 3.
6. Sic, for odic, which pertains to a unique natural force known as the “od,” as postulated by Austrian scientist and industrialist Karl Ludwig von Reichenbach (1788–1869). His theories regarding such a force were eventually refuted.
7. “Out of season.”
8. Of the Sirens. Cf. Odyssey, XII, 170-200, trans. A.T. Murray.
9. Poems (Boston, 1847). Story had published two significant legal works: A Treatise on the Law of Contracts not under Seal (Boston, 1844) and A Treatise on the Law of Sales of Personal Property (Boston, 1847), both of which went into several editions.
12. Underscored twice.
13. On EBB’s Aurora Leigh (1857) and RB’s Men and Women (1855).
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