3273. EBB to Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 308–311.
Bagni di Lucca–
October 7– [1853] [1]
My dear Mrs Gaskell
Your letter followed me to this place where we have been living for three months an exquisite summer-life, somewhat in the manner of the dwellers in tents .. which is my native manner I think .. for there must surely be gypsey blood in me, unless gypsey-soul should be enough for the purpose. I like social liberty better than political liberty even, & hate Mrs Grundy [2] worse than the Czar. Such a summer we have had here! Nothing makes a strong woman of me,—but I ride about the mountains on a donkey in a round peasant’s hat for which I should be pelted in Manchester, and see such divine visions as of a new heaven & new earth [3] from the summits as you cannot dream of in England except when you are poetical or take opium. But all is at an end now. It is getting too cold, here in the mountains, for a tent-life, and in this room I write in, is no carpet, while five folding doors keep up the draughts carefully “sans intermission”. So we go back to Florence on Monday, to stay there a month or more, previous to our removal to Rome for the winter. Next summer we must be back in London for a time.
I turn to a second page (which looks ungrateful) to thank you for your most kind & interesting letter. How it pleased me that you should care to write to me so much of yourself—and, now, how I seem to know you and to hold your hand!– May God bless you, & the world through you! I think you have the power of doing a great deal of good. But I shall not tell you of my past as you have told me of yours. You are happy to be able to talk of your past. I never can talk of mine—no, not even to my husband. The plough furrowed up all my green lands, so that to look back even to my joyful childhood makes me start with pain. My husband says I am morbid in respect to these things .. which is true perhaps. My past will never learn to lie still, as perhaps a past should– It is alive, & throbs even under this present. Feel.
There is one anniversary which I like to remember .. nay, two .. my wedding-day, above seven years ago .. and my child’s birthday. For all the rest I cultivate oblivion, and am in this assisted by a natural gift of inaptitude for numbers, days of the month, & years. But these seven years I am ready to talk of to anybody– I like to talk of them, to lift up the folds of them, & to thank God for all the happiness hid in each. If there are shadows even here, .. a little rent or a little stain .. it has not been the fault of my husband—no indeed.
One feels shy, as you say, in speaking of one’s husband, so I leave mine to tell you of my child .. Wiedeman .. Penini .. as we commonly call him, because in his vain aspiration to say Wiedeman, he called himself so– [4] Penini sounds like a fairy’s name .. and he looks like a fairy .. he has been called twenty times a fairy-child by different strangers .. & really he does look like a fairy. Slight & small, radiant & active, his running is like flying, & his long shining ringlets seem to lift him up from the ground. With an affinity though for angels rather! “Oh, dear mama, I do want a litty angel to play wiz so velly mush– An angel wiz wings, and no dless on!” (He has seen angels “with wings and no dress on” in his Florentine pictures–) And when his nurse objected to his running about the room in the morning without his nightgown before going into his bath, the answer was .. “But the angels does it.” He is four years old. More’s the pity. I wish they were coming over again.
Now let me confess to you. My whole personal vanity is absorbed in that child. As women are vain of their eyes & hair & complexion .. yes, just so, .. just as vilely .. I am vain of his curls & his red cheeks, & his long dark eyelashes. I look at him for halfhours together as the Lady Matildas look in the glass. [5] More’s the shame, I know.
As to my husband, I am not vain of him– On the contrary a very wholesome state of humility is always connected with him, because I know so perfectly that he is too good for me .. that I am not worthy of him in one thing but love. Only Love is a sort of leveller.
Oh, that first mother’s rapture you speak of, and I have felt & feel!—how I echo back what you say– It was the stronger in me that I had made up my mind not to have a living child .. without much reason I believe, for everything on that occasion had gone right with me. But I was weak you know, and I had had two disappointments already through weakness, as I have had two since [6] —yet in the midst of all these shipwrecks the living soul was landed safely– I could’nt realize to myself the possibility though– I was sure he would’nt be born alive. And I remember how all the time I was ill, the sight of the prepared cradle lined with pink & set at the bottom of the bed, tormented me—how I could have given anything in the world to say “Take that cradle away,” but had not courage because I was too superstitious to say it. (I am horribly superstitious when you come to know me.) And when the child was born I fell into an unbecoming sort of ecstasy .. clapped my hands & talked aloud various pure madnesses for which only God & a woman can hold me excused. “He is mighty and despiseth not.” [7] I remember that my impulse was to leap out of bed & dance & sing. Now a solemn joy is what one should have felt. I should have written it so in a poem. But life is stronger than our art.
I could not nurse him & was content. That, more than anything will prove to you my overflowing joy—yes, that more than anything. I was as meek and satisfied as was possible when the physician announced to me that for his sake & mine, I could not be allowed to nurse him. Can you believe it, you?
My husband, I must tell you what is characteristic of him, was nearly, if not quite, as enchanted with the child as I was. My husband, day by day & week by week, came to see that baby undressed & put into the bath, taking note of how it grew .. how the eyebrows were coming .. how the hair would be thick one day. We were both like children with a new doll .. I of course the more unreasonable of the two! … as is reasonable.
Imprudent marriages are the most prudent marriages according to my philosophy .. & experience .. for I too have made an imprudent marriage, I thank God for it. I even remember dear Mr Kenyon wishing to somebody, who of course, told me directly, that we might have no children. So the world judges, even the golden side of the world, made of the Mr Kenyons! For my part, I congratulate you, dear Mrs Gaskell, from the bottom of my heart, on having made an imprudent marriage. [8] Also, on all your other goods & blessings of life.
Shall we ever put our children together, I wonder? Is there a chance of your being in London next summer, and do you ever bring with you your youngest child who is most contemporary with mine?
My love to all of them for your sake– My husband is gone to Lucca to see a Fra Bartolomeo, [9] or he should send you a message. Let me remain in affectionate esteem,
your friend
Elizabeth Barrett Browning–
I have sent you a letter of personalities because I liked yours so much– Keep the law with me henceforward even so—an Ii [10] for an I.
Publication: Ross D. Waller, “Letters Addressed to Mrs. Gaskell by Celebrated Contemporaries,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 19 (January 1935), 43–46.
Manuscript: John Rylands University Library.
1. Year provided by EBB’s reference to the Brownings’ seven years of marriage.
2. A character in the Thomas Morton play, Speed the Plough (1798), whose name is synonymous with propriety.
3. Cf. Revelation 21:1.
4. Many years later, Pen provided a different explanation of the derivation of his nickname; see letter 2965, note 12.
5. We have been unable to trace this allusion.
6. EBB refers to her four miscarriages, which occurred 21 March 1847, mid-March 1848, late October 1849, and 28 July 1850.
7. Cf. Job 36:5.
10. Both I’s are underscored twice. EBB puns on the phrase in Exodus 21:24, Leviticus 24:20, Deuteronomy 19:21, and Matthew 5:38.
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