3262. EBB to Euphrasia Fanny Haworth
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 269–273.
Casa Tolomei
(Alla Villa)
Bagni di Lucca
August 30th– [1853] [1]
Dearest Fanny,
On your principle that “there’s too much to say,” I ought not to think of writing to you these three months, you have pleased me—& made me grateful to such an extremity by your most pretty & graceful illustrative outlines– The Death bed I admire particularly—the attitudes are very expressive, & the open window helps the sentiment– [2] What am I to say for your kindness in holding a torch of this kind (perfumed for the “nobilities”) between the wind & my poems?– Thank you, thank you!– And when that’s said, I ought to stop short & beg you, dear Fanny, not to waste yourself in more labour of this kind, seeing that I am accursed & that nothing is to be done with my books & me as far as my public is concerned. Why not get up a book of your own, a collection of ‘outlines’ illustrative of everybody’s poems, which would stand well on its own feet & make a circle for itself? Think of that rather. For my part, there’s nothing to be done with me as I said—that is, there’s nothing to be done with my publishers who just do as they like with my books, & dont like to do much good for me with them, whatever they may do for themselves. I am misanthropical in respect to the booksellers. The Chapmans & Halls manage one as they please, & not at all to please one .. I have no more to say to the fate of my books than you have .. & not much more to pocket. This third edition for instance, which should have been out four or five months ago, they are keeping I suppose for the millenium, encouraged probably by the spiritual manifestations—& my personal manifestations meanwhile have as much weight with them as facts have with Faraday, or the theory of fair play with the ‘London Athenæum’. I am sick of it all indeed. I look down on it all as the Epicurean gods do on the world without putting out a finger to save an empire .. perhaps because they cant. Long live the Chapmans who are Kings of us. It’s the best thing possible, I conclude, in this best of possible social economies [3] .. though for ourselves individually it may not be a very good thing .. not precisely what we should choose. Think of the separate book of outlines. Seriously, Robert & I recommend you to consider it. You might make a book for drawing room tables which wd be generally acceptable if not too expensive. And Mr Spicer is bringing me more? how kind of you. And when is he coming? Scarcely could anyone come as a stranger whom I desire more to see, & I do hope he will bring me facts & fantasies too on the great subject which is interesting me so deeply. His book of ‘Sights & Sounds’ we have read—but the new book has not penetrated to us. [4] ‘Sights & Sounds’ is very curious, & the authenticity of its facts has been confirmed to me by various testimonies, but the author is too clever for his position, .. I mean too full of flash & wit. There’s an air of levity, & of effective writing, without which the book would have been more impressive & convincing .. dont you think so? And here we get to the heart of most of the difficulties of the subject. Why do we make no quicker advances, do you say? Why are our communications chiefly trivial? Why, but because we ourselves are trivial & dont bring serious souls & concentrated attentions & holy aspirations to the spirits who are waiting for these things? Spirit comes to spirit by affinity, says Swedenborg [5] —but our cousinship is not with the high & noble– We try experiments from curiosity, just as children play with the loadstone—our ducks swim, but they dont get beyond that, & wont, unless we do better. To prove what I say .. consider what you say yourself .. that you could’nt manage to draw the same persons together again (these very persons being persuaded of the verity of the spiritual communications they were in reach of) on account of the difficulties of the London season!—— Difficulties of the London season!—— The inconsequence of human nature is more wonderful to me than the ingress of any spirits could be!– This instance is scarcely credible!–
I should like to see what the effect would be if a circle of thoughtful persons seriously impressed met regularly so as to concentrate the power & prepare an atmosphere for purer affinities. Would’nt it be worth trying quietly without talking of it till the results were arrived at or proved unattainable? In the meanwhile I dont agree with you that advances here & there are not being made. Did you hear a story of a visible apparition in Paris before the archbishop & other ecclesiastics? It was only in the Illustrated News & I fear, not authentic. [6] But Mr Tallmadge’s testimony in respect to the music from the guitar, & the writing without hands is said to be indisputable– Mr Kinney the American minister at Turin told me that he had known Tallmadge fifteen years & reverenced him not merely for veracity & uprightness but for great abilities. After all, perhaps what we hear least of is the greatest & purest– ‘Grace Greenwood’ told me “facts” which I could not write to you in detail so as to give them their right aspect– Her mother [7] is in constant intercourse, so she believes, with the spirit of her eldest daughter [8] who died twenty years ago & who gave proof of her identity by naming the chapter of Scripture read last at her deathbed. This daughter constantly exhorts to spirituality of mind, & promises the opening & deepening of the manifestations as we are more receptive. She explains the ‘raps’ .. as being chosen because of their triviality in order to produce discussion, scepticism, incredulity, even ludicrous effects, .. so as to overcome that natural horror set between the disembodied & us still in the body, by a familiar sign of no account. Presently, says the spirit, there will be other modes of manifestation– Wait & be prepared.
Which seems to me striking, true or not[.] [‘]‘Grace Greenwood” (the pseudonyme of Miss Clark) assured me that some of the communications of this spirit were “grand & beautiful”. I repeat the words. An experience of her’s was most singular. She was sceptical at the time, .. & once, when the presence of a spirit was being indicated by various movements of the table &c, she exclaimed aloud .. [“]If the spirit of Mary Jane is here, it must be as easy to her to play an air (which was named) on that piano on which she has so often played, as to move furniture.”– She affirms that at the moment the keys of the piano were stirred without hands & the music played .. & characteristically, as the person would have played it when alive.!!– Well– If it is not a fact, it is a lie!. there is not room for an illusion. Humbolt observes to his friends, I hear, that “there’s an epidemic in the world about spiritual influences.” [9] There, an epidemic of mendaciousness & madness for Credulity & illusion will not serve the turn.
I had a letter the other day from Mr Chorley, & he was chivalrous enough (I call it real chivalry in his state of opinion) to deliver to me a message from Mr Westland Marston whom he met at Folkestone, & who kindly proposes to write a full account to me of his own spiritual experiences, having heard from you that they were likely to interest me .. I mean, that I was interested in the whole subject– Will you tell him from me that I shall be most thankful for anything he will vouchsafe to write to me .. & will you give him my address? I dont know where to find him, & Mr Chorley is on the continent wandering. I have seen nothing for myself .. but I am a believer upon testimony,—& a stream of Americans running through Florence & generally making way to us, the testimony has been various & strong– Interested in the subject? Who can be uninterested in the subject? Even Robert is interested, who professes to be a sceptic, an infidel, indeed, (though I can swear to having seen him considerably shaken more than once) & who promises never to believe till he has experience by his own senses. Is’nt it hard on me that I cant draw a spirit into our circle & convince him? He would give much, he says, to find it true– We heard an interesting letter read the other day from a brother in law of Longfellow’s [10] who is at Paris, .. said to be a very able man, .. & he calls it “the sublimest conundrum ever offered to the world.”
Do tell me whatever you hear– Both Louis Napoleon & the Czar are said to be tugging at whisps of oracles from the spiritual manger– (Have you heard Mon[c]kton Milnes on the subject, & to what results? that reminds me.) I have been told that Webster’s widow [11] (the great Daniel) has had written communications from him, Daniel, every week by the hands of a medium .. a Mr Shore .. or Shaw [12] (the unbelievers would say Pshaw) who is now dead himself .. dying at New York in a state of rapture at the idea of drawing closer relations with the spiritualities– He was a merchant of high character .. unquestionable as to veracity–
Dearest Fanny, why are you out of spirits? and what is it that you could say in return for my sympathies? The sympathy is sure enough .. but I dont like to see the sadness making room for it.– I think of you & wonder about you, & wish you every shade of good in comfort & happiness. May God bless you– There’s some mystery now .. is’nt there? How is that “engagement” going on between the anonymous persons, by the way? Shall you have refreshment in Wales, do you think? I wish we had you here among the mountains. Perhaps you would mount a donkey with me & climb to the pinnacles of the hills & look out at the glorious blue distances built up into by the chrystallized mountains. We are very happy here & have had strawberries & cream ever since April. (Proof of happiness!) As to our child, he has tame rabbits, & fishes in a tub, and chickens, & turkeys, & looks like a radiant fairy .. talking both Italian & English, as the fairies please.
Write to me soon & fully, wont you? Why cant you draw the ‘spirits’? You are susceptible to mesmerism, which is an advantage, I think.
I hope we shall not miss Mr Spicer through being at the Baths—& we dont return to Florence till October. Think of us & love us a little .. & write me a long letter. I received the last without loss of time .. but dont care for the postage-thought if the access to the Legation should “give you pause”.
But surely Mrs Crowe was no materialist when she wrote the ‘Nightside of Nature,’ which was before the time of the American manifestations,—was it not?
Mrs Martin was kind about the newspapers if she sent seven or eight– We received just two. [13] Did you hear anything from her of the degree of acceptance of the play in the provinces?.
Here an end. Write soon & write much!–
Your very affectionate,
EBB–
called Ba–
Our friend is not the Turner, [14] but Frederic Tennyson, the eldest of the brothers. He is now in England for two or three months. Who is your “Mr Smith”? [15] you should always explain a Smith, you know.
Our child was gathering box leaves in a hedge the other day .. (wherever we have a hedge, it’s box, I would have you to understand) & pulled a yellow flower by mistake. Down he flung it as if it stung him .. “Ah, brutto!! —Colore Tedesco!”!!– [16] Think of that baby!–
Address: Angleterre viâ France. / Miss Haworth / 45. Onslow Square / Brompton / London.
Publication: LEBB, II, 135–138 (in part).
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Presumably, this is an illustration of EBB’s sonnet, “A Thought for a Lonely Death-Bed” (1844).
4. Facts and Fancies: A Sequel to Sights and Sounds (1853).
5. In A Treatise Concerning Heaven and its Wonders, and also Concerning Hell (1823), Swedenborg writes: “All, likewise, who are in similar good, know each other, altogether as men in the world know their kindred, their relations, and their friends, although they never before saw them; the reason is, because in the other life there are no other kindreds, relationships, and friendships, but what are spiritual, thus which are of love and of faith. That all proximities, relations, affinities, and as it were consanguinities, in heaven, are from good, and according to its agreement and difference” (p. 26).
6. An item in The Illustrated London News of 23 July 1853 reported that a number of French clergy, including the Archbishop of Paris, Marie Dominique Auguste Sibour (1792–1857), held a séance during which a spirit revealed itself by means of raps. A clergyman present then commanded the spirit “in the name of the Saviour” to show itself: “The spirit hereupon actually became visible, and replied to a variety of questions put to it.”
7. Deborah Clarke (née Baker).
8. Delia Adelaide Clarke.
9. EBB had heard this from William Kinney; see the fifth paragraph of letter 3227.
10. Thomas Gold Appleton.
11. Caroline Webster (1797–1882), daughter of Herman Le Roy and his wife Hannah (née Cornell), married Daniel Webster (1782–1852), U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, in 1829, about two years after the death of his first wife Grace (née Fletcher).
12. Robert Gould Shaw (1776–1853), wealthy Boston merchant and investor, had, in his later years, along with his wife, Elizabeth (“Eliza”) Willard (née Parkman, 1785–1853), become “obsessed with the phenomenon of Spiritualism” (Lorien Foote, Seeking the One Great Remedy: Francis George Shaw and Nineteenth-Century Reform, Athens, Ohio, 2003, p. 27). Shaw “visited mediums and wrote friends and relatives with accounts of his mental conversations with a variety of spirits, from deceased relations to Martin Luther and John Calvin. … After Eliza’s death on 15 April 1853, he wrote his sister that ‘the sooner I follow my dear wife the better’” (p. 27). He died less than a month later.
13. One of these may have been The Manchester Examiner and Times; see letter 3212.
14. Charles Turner; see letter 3189, note 14.
16. “Ah, ugly!! —German color!” See letter 3259, note 2.
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