3264. EBB to Thomas Westwood
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 276–279.
Casa Tolomei. Alla Villa. Bagni di Lucca
Italia
September [1853] [1]
My dear Mr Westwood,
As soon as I had read your letter I felt provoked into writing instantly. I have waited however in spite of the spite you pour on me through the outlet of your praise of Mrs Brotherton. Oh—I [2] am a fickle friend, am I? I [2] write letters once in two years .. & Ii [2] dont mind a straw whether people are out of health & out of spirits! And that’s the effect .. is it? of believing in transcendentalism & rapping spirits.!!
Well—but I cant allow of your going on to think such hard things of me. I know I have grown to be a desperately bad correspondent .. which is in part the effect of floating about the world so much, & by no means of natural or acquired tendencies .. by no means at all of caring less steadily for my friends, whatever they may fancy wildly– Very sorry I am to understand from you that you are less well than usual, & to feel instinctively that you flag a little in the hopes of life– How is it? Does not Belgium suit you? Is there a lack there of friends or appliances otherwise? Your letter made me sadder, notwithstanding some of the usual sprightly intonations– Perhaps you are still more unwell than you say– Write & tell us how it is–
What you wrote last followed us to the Baths of Lucca where the most glorious of summers has been lavished on us from these beautiful mountains, and I have been riding donkeys, wandering about in happy liberty, as free as, though considerably quieter than, a Mænad of old. We have a house here, with a green screen before it of seven plane-trees, looking through them up the hills. There’s a garden too, where my child tosses up & down his long, golden ringlets, till he is set down the prettiest flower there. Altogether we have had a happy two months, & not quite idle—we have been doing a little work [3] for next year’s harvest moon– The worst want is of books .. yet even of books we have a flash now & then—& there’s a Galignani everyday, only two days old. Adam & Eve had’nt so much, you know, in the first paradise. I, for my part, am contented, & I pull back from going to Florence where we are not obliged to go till the fifteenth of October next.
When we left it, Mr Tennyson (Frederick) was setting out to England for three months .. leaving pledges .. in his Italian wife & children– Yes—I was aware that he was a friend of Mrs Brotherton’s, and indeed he lent me her graceful & fresh poems which I had not seen before– [4] Other friends of mine are acquaintances of hers, [5] and I hope to know her in the winter when we seriously intend to pass some months in Rome.
Have I “the decillionth part of a globule of faith in the rapping spirits”—? have I? What am I to say? Having been found guilty of shelving people .. (leaving them on the shelf) I shall be found worthy, next, of being shelved myself.
But I relieve you up to a certain point. Certainly I do not believe that Shelley’s spirit communicated those verses. There I stop. If spirits, .. there is much personation,—and some persons who do not question the general facts, object altogether to the spirit-theory, & propose a solution of ‘unconscious clairvoyance’– Nothing can be said to be proved indeed, except the verity of certain phenomena, the testimony to which has come to my own mind in an overcoming way, though I cannot appeal to yours from my personal experience– It is a subject very interesting to me—who am speculative naturally, & critical friends say ‘credulous’ .. that is, having strong convictions of the existence of a spiritual world.
As to Patmore’s new volume of poems, [6] my husband & I had the pleasure of reading in m∙s. the poem which gives its title to the book. He has a great deal of thought & poetry in him. Alexander Smith I know by the copious extracts in reviews, & by some m∙s once sent to us by friends & readers. Judging from these, he must be set down as a true poet in opulence of imagery, but defective, so far, (he is said to be very young) in the intellectual part of poetry– His images are flowers thrown to him by the gods .. beautiful & fragrant .. but having no root either in Enna or Olympus. [7] There’s no unity & holding together—no reality, properly so called—no thinking of any kind– I hear that Alfred Tennyson says of him “he has fancy, without imagination.” Still it is difficult to say at the dawn what he may be without at noon. Certainly he is very rich & full of colour. Nothing is more surprising to me than his favorable reception with the critics– I should have thought that his very merits would have been against him.
If ever you read novels, and you have too much sense not to be fond of them, read ‘Villette’—the scene of the greater part of it is in Belgium, & I think it a strong book– ‘Ruth’ too by Mrs Gaskell, the author of ‘Mary Barton,’ has pleased me very much– Do you know the French novels– There’s passion & power for you!—if you like such things– Balzac convinced me that the French language was malleable into poetry–
We are behind hand here in books, and elderly ones seem young to us. For instance we have not caught sight yet of Moore’s Life [8] —the extracts from which are unpropitious, I think. I had a fancy (I cant tell you how it grew) that Moore though an artificial, therefore inferior, poet, was a most brilliant letter-writer. His letters are disappointing—and his mean clinging to the aristocracy still more so–
I wish you would suddenly walk into this valley, which seems to have been made by the flashing scimitar of the river that cuts through the mountains. Ah—you in England .. and in Belgium still less .. do not know what scenery is .. what nature is when she is natural– You could as soon guess at a tiger from the cat at the hearthstone. You do not know. But, being a poet, you can dream– You have divine insights, as we all have of Heaven .. all of us with whom the mortal mud does not cake & obstruct into cecity–
I wish too you could see my child .. little Penini, as we call him. We were quarrelling the other day for presidence in his affections, when he said gravely .. “I love everybody! Ferdinando, Lisa, Mama, Papa, God and Flush.” What was to be answered to that? He is a fragrant lovely piece of human nature, with his bold blue eyes, and rosebud mouth dewy from the morning– I wish you could see him. But I dont wish you could see poor Flush .. who protests against the climate of Italy with all the baldness of his back and legs– Deplorable he is looking just now. Penini always prays for him morning & evening.
No, no, no– I protest against everything I have not reprinted. The Prometheus-poems bear the mark of their time, which was one of greenness & immaturity. Indeed the responsibility for what I acknowledge in print, is hard enough to bear. Dont put another stick on the overloaded … ass, shall I say candidly?
You who give your musical words to the dumb “snowdrop,” [9] (thank you for letting me hear them) why should you write “hieroglyphics” of a malign nature “on the back of” human people’s “silences”? I cant get over all the hardness of heart you attribute to me. Think more affectionately of your friends .. for are
<…> [10]
As long as we are shepherds & shepherdesses on these Delectable Mountains, [11] I am afraid of franking my letters– Pray never frank yours, or you make me uncomfortable.
Publication: LEBB, II, 138–139 (in part).
Manuscript: British Library.
1. Year provided by the return address; 1853 was the only year the Brownings resided at Casa Tolomei.
2. Underscored twice.
3. EBB on Aurora Leigh (1857) and RB on Men and Women (1855).
4. Mary Brotherton’s The Forest-House, and Other Poems (1850), published under her maiden name of Rees. In a letter dated 28 May 1853 to Mrs. Brotherton, Frederick Tennyson acknowledged receipt of a “Volume” (presumably The Forest-House) and remarked that it was “unsatisfactory from its shortness” (see SD1659). The book consists of just eighty pages. On 9 March 1854 Mrs. Brotherton presented EBB a rebound copy of The Forest-House where the title-page reads “Poems by Mary Brotherton.” This is the only known copy bearing such a title-page; it is now at the Pierpont Morgan Library. The volume Mrs. Brotherton presented to Tennyson may have been similarly altered.
5. One of these friends being Isa Blagden.
6. Tamerton-Church Tower, and Other Poems (1853).
7. Mt. Olympus, the home of the Greek gods, is known for its rich flora. Enna, a city located in Sicily high above the surrounding countryside, is near the place where Proserpine, while gathering flowers, was carried off to the underworld by Pluto.
8. Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore by Lord John Russell (8 vols., 1853–56), four volumes of which had been published by this time.
9. In Westwood’s poem “Winter and the Flowers,” from Beads from a Rosary (1843), the snow-drop says: “Old Winter loveth not the flowers, for they / Do mind him, with their meek and innocent looks, / How soon his sceptre must be laid aside” (lines 1–3).
10. A page (or more) is missing.
11. A place of rest, watched over by kindly shepherds, in part one of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678).
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