3266. EBB to Arabella Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 282–289.
Casa Tolomei, Alla Villa, Bagni di Lucca–
(September 11– 12–) [1853] [1]
My ever dearest Arabel, now for a gossip with you! I grudge the week which is between our letters .. or ten days, is it? only as I had just written to Henrietta it seemed better to wait a little till the interests accumulated a little– Even now, when I feel I must write to you, I have nothing at all amusing to say. Not a word more, or scarcely one, about the spirits. I have written to Fanny Haworth & bidden her give my address to Mr Westland Marston, so that I shall probably hear from him in a few more days .. only I cant be patient for them. At Rome they have constructed a sort of stand upon castors with a table fixed in the middle of it & chairs all round .. upon the stand .. observe. The circle was formed, & after twenty minutes the whole thing revolved, disproving the muscular motion. It is an idea far simpler & better than Faraday’s [2] ——only none of these tests are wanted at this hour of the day. Miss Blagden has a friend, a Mr Thompson, [3] who is a Swedenborgian & who had a brother, a Roman Catholic convert. [4] Mr Thompson’s father is a protestant of one of the orthodox denominations. He, the father, has lately received the gift of the spiritual writing .. & What do you suppose he writes? Communications of the most urgent kind from the spirit of the son who died a Roman Catholic addressed to the son who is a Swedenborgian, .. announcing to his brother that he himself had made a great mistake in embracing popery & bitterly repented it, & advising that Swedenborg’s views should be adhered to as the nearest approach to the truth– This is curious,—the father medium being equally opposed to the Swedenborgian & papistical theories, as far as his personal opinions are concerned. From what I can hear, they have had no ‘raps’ at Rome, nor intelligent movements from the tables. I dont think they know how to set about eliciting these things .. but we mean to try this winter, Mr Story & I and others– Here, the tables are rather scaffoldings, & of a most temporary description: it would take a whole company of spirits to move any one of them. I do wonder, you dont try, some of you who had a turn to table-turning some time ago. Why should’nt you succeed as well as others? If the tables move, you have the sign of presence in the spirits, & have only to call on them respectfully by the voice of the medium-agent.– When Mr Spicer comes, I shall hear a great deal of what is doing in England & France & Germany just now. You know he is the author of the book reviewed in Tait [5] —the ‘Sights & Sounds’– There’s a quotation from me in it, by the way, which in its application to the present phenomena pleased me ..
“God keeps His holy mysteries
Just on the outside of man’s dream.” [6]
& I am told he is an enthusiast about my poetry generally, & particularly pleased that I should be a believer in the “spirits.” He is not a ‘medium’ you must understand,—simply an observer & historian.
My dearest dear Arabel I just have your letter. It came the day before the ‘anniversary’, in time for me to think of it off & on throughout that ‘festa’ of ours—thank you, thank you. Oh yes—indeed I should thank God for a round of seven years with so much happiness everywhere! And think of being able to say .. it is even better at the end than at the beginning! A fuller love, a closer confidence, a more complete satisfaction in what has been & is– And then, here’s our Penini, with a face like an angel’s, and little human ways still sweeter to us who are human! What a present & increasing blessing he is! Thank God for all—do you help us to thank Him!–
We are not alone just now– Mr Lytton came a week ago & will stay until summoned back to Florence by the Legation. He always was a great favorite with us & has lost nothing by the closer contact—a young man without the vices & defects of young men .. full of pure & noble aspiration of all kinds. We try to amuse him by giving him his own way as much as possible, & by varying the scene & society by the help of the Storys. Last night we were all at the Stisteds—but our visitor did not enjoy it much—in fact he cant bear being with strangers, & it wd have been wiser to have kept him quietly at home, in consideration of his comfort, to talk poetry & spiritualism, upon which he is exactly as “mad” as I am said to be– Oh—so that’s the opinion of the brethren assembled in Milford House! [7] Is it? ‘I am not mad, most noble Festus,’ [8] notwithstanding. And if I am, why, I am mad in company, & in good company, I assure you, .. for everybody who has given any consideration to the subject is mad .. nobody, who has examined the question, sanely, says ‘there’s nothing in it.’ I am glad that Henrietta shows signs of right reason & logic, among you–– If we are to receive evidence, at all, the weight of evidence on this subject is to be received. If we are not to receive evidence, we have no grounds for believing in Julius Cæsar, much less in the apostle Paul. Of course it remains an open question whether the agency is of external spirits, or a development from within of some mysterious clairvoyante faculty– A man may have his opinion (more or less reasonably) on the mode of solution .. but as to the existence of the phenomena, he cannot hesitate .. because a matter of fact ceases to be a matter of opinion, & these things are established as facts by the testimony of thousands. You ask about Robert– Well—you seldom hear me quote Robert upon the subject—& there’s the reason of it. When Robert is brought face to face with witnesses to the phenomena, he believes as much as I do—but the witness being removed, he falls back into doubt .. & three days afterwards he denies, & wont admit that he ever believed at all. That’s natural, I think. He is not like me– His theories are not the same in certain respects .. & having suffered violence under the pressure of such irresistible evidence as we have had, they recover with a spring when the face & the voice of the man who says “I saw this & that” are withdrawn. He generally maintains a determination to be incredulous until he can see & hear by means of his own senses. He means to apply a test, which will be absolutely convincing & final to his own mind. Now ever so many people .. Sir Edward Lytton among them .. have applied tests of the same kind .. even in more stringent forms. A name, for instance, half spoken on a deathbed .. the last articulate word .. & kept secret for reasons .. that name was spoken by a spirit .. to the person who asked for it mentally. Only Sir Edward knew it & his son, & one other person now in Germany. Do not repeat this. It was conclusive with everybody concerned of course, and it was not all. As to Robert, he says he desires the ‘communications’ to be true, passionately. He wishes they could be justified in his own experience. And I, for my part, believe they will—only we must be patient about it. I dont like to propose trying experiments here, because there seem to be difficulties, .. and experiments which end in nothing had better not be made where there are sceptical persons concerned. For me, a hundred fruitless experiments would not shake my convictions—they are too strong. Mr Lytton expects nothing less than a new æra. What is wanted among us .. is more of the receptive mind .. we are not serious & earnest .. we play at spiritualism at the best. In this way, the inferior spirits are drawn to us, & we get no good of any kind. I told Fanny Haworth as much when I wrote to her. People who drain a course of “London engagements” of an hour or two in order to “spiritual intercourse,” had better go to the theatre & see [‘]‘the Last King of Assyria” instead. [9] The complaint is .. “But wise spirits dont come to us” .. “holy spirits dont come to us” .. & these being our dispositions,—where’s the wonder, I ask?
Let me tell you that Miss Blagden enquires particularly about you. She is delighted at the idea of having us in Rome, where she seems quite settled. Her invalid [10] is much better, she says– For answer to your question about Rome, we cant stay here beyond the fifteenth of October if the cold will let us stay as long as that .. and October is at least a month too early for Rome. So we shall go to Casa Guidi from hence & remain there till the end of november perhaps, if we dont let the house before. The weather at Lucca has changed & the autumn rains have been glooming us over for a week past, making arbours impossible. I dare say it is still too hot at Florence just as Mr Lytton left it. This place has suited Penini admirably—you never saw a child more improved. So much more rosy & round he is. Ferdinando tells Wilson that it is through drinking wine & eating fruit .. Ferdinando being reproached for adminstering to certain Bacchic tastes of the ‘signorino’ .. but the change of air & out-of-door mountain life is the more probable cause. The quantity of fruit that child eats with impunity is remarkable certainly .. sometimes five or six pears a day, with peaches & figs at indiscretion, & he never seems to be affected injuriously by anything of the kind. Arabel—we too have poultry– But ours is devoted unfortunately to the infernal gods & the spit, so that I never can bear to look at them. Their destinies are concealed from Penini who supposes that they take flight over the hills every now & then, & is not much disquieted. By the way four of our turkies were stolen the other night, & with them disappeared a rabbit of Penini’s—either it ran away or was taken. Ferdinando put another in its place directly. He is very kind to that child, & Wilson & I are rather jealous of the affection lavished in return. Penini takes violent passions of love, & just now scarcely anybody can contend with Ferdinando. The other day Wilson in joke was telling some of the signorine [11] here (suspected of considerable admiration for his moustache,) that he was going away on such a day .. whereupon Penini whom nobody had been thinking of, burst into a fit of sobs & rushed into his arms, crying, “oh no, Ferdinando! non va via! sta buono! non va via.”! [12] Ferdinando, taken by surprise, had the tears in his eyes, & there was quite a scene.
We give 1s–10d for our turkies, & five pence or sixpence for our chickens– I dare say you give more for yours. If we lived expensively it would be worth while for Penini’s sake, he is so well & happy– The Tolomei children are playfellows always ready to be played with. I complained the other day of seeing him so seldom .. “I’ve lost my friend Penini,” said I, “nobody comes to sit with me now.” “At Florence, dear Mama, I be your flend anoller time. Now I muss play wiz lose litty shildern.” One morning he prayed that it might rain, considerably to Wilson’s surprise. When he rose from his knees he said, “Lily, I sint it will lain tomollow, and then Evelina wont go to school”—Evelina being the favorite companion– [13] But Edith is the beloved par excellence!–
Well—here’s the wedding-day. Robert told me this morning that he should love me still more the next seven years—but I shall be satisfied with the old love. We are to have the Storys here tonight. Last night we had tea with them—after church in the evening– Mr Lytton & I talked theology all the way up the mountain, I on the donkey & he walking, but I dont know how far you would have gone with us– We were agreeing that there must be a breaking up of the old forms of Christianity. & that the churches must be re-organized altogether in order to the preservation of the vital Heart of doctrine– Infidelity is rising everywhere .. and scholastic phrases & ecclesiastical conventions will go out, & ought to go out, to make way for the true & rectifying Christ. That was our conclusion upon Mr Green’s sermon yesterday—not a bad sermon of its kind nevertheless, but I am apt to fall upon such reflections after nearly all sermons. By the way, it is a satisfaction that we are not likely to see you baptized! [14] Ah, we should’nt exaggerate the force of the sign & type—that is a too prevalent cause of corruption among all Christian Churches. Half our mistakes for instance, come from a clinging to Jewish ordinances .. to the forms of the Jewish church which in itself was a type only. We want the resurrection of the spiritual body .. but we look for the resurrection of the material body .. flesh & blood .. though we are taught that it shall not inherit immortality. [15] This, in ecclesiastical matters, as in others.
My dearest darling Arabel, you dont say that you are better. I wish you would never fail to mention yourself, otherwise I shall conclude on something bad. I am anxious about you, remember– So Uncle Hedley & Ibbit have been really staying with Henrietta!– That must have been an undertaking, for Henrietta! I should have been half afraid .. in a small house, & with the double babies. By the way, I wish you would write a note to aunt Jane asking her to apply either by letter or messenger (giving her name) to Messrs Chapman & Hall, Piccadilly, for the parcel of books which belong to her there. [16] I want her to have them before she goes back to Paris. Say at the same time, how glad I am about the late event, & how I congratulate everybody ‘implicated’. [17]
We have seen a little, off & on lately, of young Wilson, the son of Dr Wilson the missionary & orientalist. [18] He was intended by his father for a scotch minister, but having fallen into infidelity or what I call atheism .. (for a belief which excludes the idea of personality from God, is simply atheism, though nobody likes being set down as an atheist after all) he of course had to give up everything, & is now on his way to India to visit his father who desires to see him, for the purpose I suppose of trying on him the power of parental persuasion & argument. Really in some respects he is an interesting young man—full of earnestness & thought & cleverness .. learned in the learning of the Ægyptians .. that is, the Germans .. & believing with the whole force of his soul that he has no soul whatever, & that he is going out presently like another worm. Mr Hanna left him as a sort of legacy to us, just hinting that all was not right with him—but I cant imagine that he can have opened out to Mr Hanna as he did to us again & again– The hideous nonsense he talked in this room, is frightful to think over—considering that he is one of many .. a specimen of an increasing class. Not conceited, not insolent, having come to these results in cold blood & after a certain quantity of hard thought! It is frightful to think of. We had a great deal of discussion, & when he was going away (he is gone to Rome) we said that we hoped to see him at our next meeting with other opinions– “Oh,” said he .. “that was absolutely impossible! he never could take a step backwards.” Yet he listened with a certain respect to Robert on the subject—only evidently he was not shaken. A strange state of mind he was in altogether. He observed one day for instance that he “could’nt understand the interest excited everywhere by these moving tables”– “Oh–” said I .. “I suppose you think they move by involuntary muscular action”. “Not at all,” he answered .. “I have seen them moved .. I have helped to move them myself– Faraday is all wrong about that certainly—but I cant imagine why there should be a fuss about the matter.” I did’nt try the subject with him any farther– People seem obtuse .. blind & deaf .. in certain moods of mental obstinacy: & if they dont believe in God, after looking round the world, they cant be expected to give ear to a rapping spirit, let him rap ever so loudly– I wrote to Miss Bayley the other day & never mentioned the subject at all. A great effort, you will say.
Give my love to my dearest George, & tell him that I do most dearly love him. Ah– I wish we had him here. It would be better than Mr Lytton, though Mr Lytton is good. Such a susceptible, imaginative young man—there’s more danger that the spirits shd affect him injuriously than Penini, & his father seems to think so.– Arabel, in the midst of my sentences, rushes in one of the signorine .. “will I take charge of a bible & some religious books for her?” The gendarmerie are in the house close by, & may come here. Mrs Cunningham, & the Miss Cunninghams[,] mother & daughters[,] are arrested for having distributed protestant books among the peasants– [19] There has been a great commotion. Mr Lytton was sent for but could do nothing—he & Robert went together—but no help was possible—they had the law against them. Miss Cunningham was taken off to Lucca by the gendarmes– Oh—infamous! She has been very imprudent, there’s no denying.—
Wilson has had better news of her mother, [20] which is a relief—but she is still confined to her bed. God bless you, my beloved Arabel. Best of loves to everybody. Does dear Henry get any fishing? Say how you are & write, & love me & pray for me. Robert’s love always with that of your own Ba–
They have found a quantity of bibles among the poor peasants—in fact, the number of protestants here is extraordinary– For every bible found, there’s a fine of ten scudi! On people who live upon chesnuts!——
Address: Angleterre viâ France / Miss Barrett / Milford House / near Lymington / Hants.
Publication: EBB-AB, II, 26–33.
Manuscript: Gordon E. Moulton-Barrett.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. In Michael Faraday’s article on table-turning in the 2 July 1853 issue of The Athenæum (no. 1340, pp. 801–803), which was an expanded version of his letter in The Times of 30 June, he described the apparatus he used to test whether a person sitting at a table was exerting pressure to make it turn. Plates of various substances “were made into a bundle and placed on a table under the hands of a turner.” When it was determined that these plates would cause no interference with the normal action of the turner, Faraday introduced a “soft cement, consisting of wax and turpentine, or wax and pomatum” that would allow a slight movement of the plates and thus register any oblique, rather than simply downward, pressure of the hands. “The next step was, to arrange an index, which should show whether the table moved first, or the hand moved before the table, or both moved or remained at rest together. At first this was done by placing an upright pin fixed on a leaden foot upon the table, and using that as the fulcrum of a light lever.” Faraday observed that when table turners could see the index, the table never moved, as they were immediately aware that it was their own pressure that was initiating the movement.
3. Cephas Giovanni Thompson (1809–88), an American painter, was the second son and fifth child of Cephas Thompson (1775–1856), also a painter, though mainly of portraits, and his wife Olivia (née Leonard, 1780–1819). His studio in Rome was in the Via Sistina near Story’s. The Brownings met Thompson and his wife, Mary Gouverneur (née Ogden, 1822–95) three months later in Rome.
4. Either William Henry Thompson (1807–37) or Charles Frederick Thompson (1816–39). Although we have been unable to trace a conversion to Roman Catholicism, they were the only two of Cephas Thompson’s five sons who had died by this time.
6. “Human Life’s Mystery,” lines 25–26. In Sights and Sounds (1853), Henry Spicer introduces this quotation with the following comment: “It is thus that the solution of these questions perpetually evades us, almost, as it sometimes appears, at the moment of attaining it—and thus, as the greatest of English Poetesses writes” (p. 432).
7. As indicated by the address, the place in Hampshire, near Lymington, where the Moulton-Barretts were spending their holiday.
8. Acts 26:25.
9. EBB refers to Charles Kean’s production of Byron’s dramatic poem Sardanapalus (1821), which was enjoying a successful run at the Princess Theatre.
10. Louisa Alexander.
11. “Young ladies.”
12. “Oh no, Ferdinando! don’t go away! be good! don’t go away.”
13. She was the granddaughter of Pietro Tolomei; see letter 3250, note 25.
14. Arabella was christened in the Church of England on 14 August 1813, together with her brother Samuel, at the Colwall Parish Church, Herefordshire. Evidently, she was considering a second baptism in a non-conformist church, probably Paddington Chapel under the pastorship of James Stratten.
15. See I Corinthians 15:50.
16. In letter 3260, RB asked Edward Chapman to hold a parcel of books for Mrs. Hedley. For a list of these books, see letter 3254.
17. On the birth of Alice Jane Hedley (1853–1921) on 27 August, the first child of EBB’s cousin Robin Hedley and his wife Charlotte.
19. Sarah Cuninghame (née Peebles, 1783–1854), wife of John Cuninghame (1756–1836), and two of their daughters, Helen (1814–92) and Margaret (1815–63), had been staying in Bagni di Lucca. The younger sister was arrested on 12 September 1853 on the charge of “Protestant propagandism, by means of the distribution in the neighbourhood of the Baths of Lucca of pamphlets hostile to the Catholic religion, which is the religion of the State, and by allowing to be read, in her own house, other works equally opposed to the dominant religion of Tuscany” (British and Foreign State Papers. 1853–1854, vol. 44, 1865, p. 544). Miss Cuninghame was taken to Lucca where she appeared before a tribunal and was subsequently incarcerated to await trial. Diplomatic dispatches between Florence and London reveal that through the intervention of the British chargé d’affaires, Peter Scarlett, the charges against Miss Cuninghame were dropped, and she was released from confinement on 10 October 1853 (see British and Foreign State Papers, pp. 532–600).
___________________
