3205. EBB to Sarianna Browning
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 102–104.
[Florence]
[ca. 1 June 1853] [1]
<***> in the general appreciation of “cet homme terrible.” [2] Still you may get on with him perfectly. I am sure we did. I never lived in a situation I liked so much anywhere except at Venice .. it is at once quiet & animated. The green trees & the human life, the sunshine & the moonlight, & the music on summer nights coming up along the wind .. I liked it all, & so did Robert. Still, at the height of the summer I should be half afraid of the heat .. if the heat is ever to come again, by the way. I hope (n.b) you observe that the trains are stopped in England by the snow. [3] Arabel has not lost her cold yet, she says, but is not ill otherwise. They have all been moving tables in Wimpole Street with great success. Alfred, Set, & Occy with a friend of theirs made a table turn so fast that they had to run to keep up with it,—but directly Arabel touched it, it became motionless– Which confirms Mr Tennyson’s hypothesis that the whole thing is the work of the Devil, he says, Arabel’s piety resisting the influence. He was much comforted himself the other day because a magnetic person failed in moving his hat– You see we are learned here about the Rapping Spirits (with whom the table-movements originated), & you would set us down as mad besides, if you were to hear us talking on the subject. Not that I accept Mr Tennyson’s theory about the devil by any means. The theory is one thing—but respecting the fact of spiritual manifestations good or bad (probably a mixture of good & bad) we are all agreed .. Mr Powers, Mr Tennyson, Mr Lytton, & I– Robert wont believe till he sees & hears, he stoutly maintains, which is the more heroic in him that he stands in a desolate minority of one. That there is much imposture & delusion proves nothing against a mass of facts. The quantity of mediums in private families in America, persons of conscience & indisputable character, is little known in Europe. I wish I could tell you some stories—but you would laugh me to scorn, Sarianna! I was assured the other day that the most “grand & beautiful communications” were being constantly made, the persons who received them keeping them to themselves as a thing too sacred to speak of. Also the “spirits” (so called) declare that the “raps” are intended to induce doubt, incredulity, & discussion in every form, in order to familiarize mankind with spiritual manifestations & prepare them for other forms which are at hand. It is the opening of a great epoch—and it is the intention of Providence to gradually destroy by such familiarizing means the natural terror & horror of the fleshly human nature towards the disembodied, who are now permitted to approach us.
Let me remember about Miss Lynn. We dont know her personally & we have neither of us read her books– She is the Miss Lynn who was crowned at the Capitol by Mr Landor. Mr Chorley told me that, having been spoiled in a coterie, she wrote such a book, (after one of considerable promise) that the sense of decency of the English nation slew it at its birth—a monstrous book, [4] with more than the badness of the worst vices of George Sand, .. shameless & unpardonable. So spoke Mr Chorley. I asked Fanny Haworth about it afterwards, Miss Lynn’s name falling out between us by some accident. Fanny Haworth assured me that it was just a bold book, & that nobody would have thought of calling it bad, if it had been written by a man instead of a woman. Now you must take these two opinions & try to make one of them. Mr Chorley is a little prudish it seems to me, and the “sense of decency of the English nation” is more than a little conventional. Therefore I incline to Fanny Haworth’s view. I cant believe that anything really gross & indecent would not have offended her—can you? Probably there is something of a socialistic tendency in the book. I think there is– I never heard a breath against the personal reputation of the Author, and, for my part, I [5] never should doubt about the adviseableness of associating with her [6] ——only I am not “particular enough” people say, on such points of propriety. My love to <***>
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Lilly Library.
1. Approximate dating based on EBB’s references to the trains in England being stopped “by the snow” (see note 3) and to “moving tables in Wimpole Street,” which Arabel had evidently mentioned in a letter to EBB (see the sixth paragraph in letter 3210).
2. “That terrible man.” Considering that the context is the Brownings’ former residence (now Sarianna and her father’s present one) at 138 Avenue des Champs Élysées, the “terrible man” is probably the landlord, Miles Byrne.
3. In the 16 May issue of The Times, an article headed “Snow-bound Railway Trains in May” described the blocking of a Sheffield passenger train bound for Huddersfield because of a heavy snowfall, “a yard in depth” (p. 3).
4. Realities (1851), a novel by Elizabeth (“Eliza”) Lynn (afterwards Linton, 1822–98), which was dedicated to Walter Savage Landor. The ODNB describes it as “a fiery attack on Victorian respectability. Even with the expurgation of certain sexually suggestive passages the novel received scathing reviews, and it established the young Eliza Lynn’s reputation as a person of questionable moral character.” In the 14 June 1851 issue of The Athenæum (no. 1233, pp. 626–627), Henry Chorley attacked the book for its “outrageous exaggerations,” “imaginary monsters,” and “plain speaking”—this last in regard to situations involving lovers. Chorley is given as the reviewer in the marked file copy of The Athenæum now at City University (London). EBB’s comment about Landor crowning Miss Lynn at the Capitol presumably refers to Landor’s poem “To Eliza Lynn, on Her Amymone” (her second novel, 1848) in The Examiner of 22 July 1848, in which he names her with Corinna and Sappho and calls her the “Protectress of Aspasia’s fame.”
5. Underscored twice.
6. Sarianna may have had an opportunity to meet Elizabeth Lynn. From 1851 to 1854 she worked as “foreign correspondent in Paris” for The Morning Chronicle (ODNB).
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