3276. EBB to Sarah Jane Cust
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 317–320.
Florence–
October 24 [sic, for 17]. [1853] [1]
My dearest Mrs Cust we have been reproaching one another after the manner of men, one of us being as guilty (or innocent) as the other. I never received either of the letters you speak of, and I think you never could have received my last letter. I accordingly sent a most bitter message to you by Mrs Jameson, (when she had told us that she had seen you & that you looked “very pretty & very happy,” ..) to the effect that I was “glad you were happy enough to be able to forget your friends.” It was cross of me—but to have somebody you love called “pretty & happy” just as she turns her back on you, is too much for natural patience, now is’nt it? I was cross, .. & Robert was cross to boot .. which is more awful .. and we both needed this kind welcome letter, accounting for the others not coming, and precious for itself. Thank you, dear friend!– Try to fill the cup by coming to Rome this winter. You say there is not much chance of it—which sounds as if there were a little chance. Make it larger, and come. It is to be a brilliant winter, I understand—all the celebrities of Europe seem going there. For my part, in spite of the whole, I feel lazy in my nest here in Florence, & it will cost me something to have to tumble out again & fly away. Yet we certainly must go this year to Rome—it’s a necessity. We have just returned from the Baths of Lucca where your letter followed us, missed us, & returned to catch us at Casa Guidi. Oh—we both thought you had given us up, bewitched either by the new baby [2] (whom I had in vain begged you to tell me of—how can these letters have been lost?.) or by some of the Phoenixes of Phoenix Park & the vice royalty. [3] Instead of which, you are humble and good .. though the queen did call on you and you “could’nt see her” [4] .. (oh, I advise you to keep literally to the legend if you “talk about it for forty years” .. you wont hit on a better phrase for all Mon[c]kton Milnes’s help [5] ..) you are humble & good & think of us a little, poor expatriated wanderers as we are, lying like dogs in the sun & waiting for the bones (bonnes paroles) [6] you throw to us!
Such a happy summer we have had at the Baths of Lucca, notwithstanding misanthropy. Seven plane trees stood before our windows, putting their heads together in a conspiracy to keep out the mountains, but could’nt. We saw the hills over & through them—and such hills! Such divine piling up of hills, & such sights from the top of them! I explored a good deal on a donkey, while Robert led the way. Then we found agreeable friends “to whom to say the solitude was sweet,” [7] the Storys, Mr & Mrs Story. Americans—he is the son of Judge Story & full of all sorts of talent, and she an intelligent & graceful woman with much amiability. We were nearly every day at one another[’]s houses, taking coffee by moonlight or lamplight, & talking art & nature, & with plenty of merriment & folly to help the sense– Then our little Wiedeman grew rosier & rosier, plumper & plumper all the time, filling up the measure of contentment– It really has been a happy summer to me—nor quite an idle one neither, we both have done some work—and especially Robert, who has nearly prepared his bookfull of lyrics. [8] We shall go to London next year to see them through the press.
While we were at Lucca, Mr Lytton, Sir Edward’s only son, the attaché to the Legation here, came to spend a fortnight with us—we could not use our spare room more pleasantly, considering he is only ‘a man & a brother’ [9] —not you. Really an interesting young man, full of faculty & noble aspiration—affectionate too, & good & pure. He is a poet, with a half fledged volume in hand, [10] but will do better things still one day. I have belief in him. Meanwhile he is living like a poet, or a king, in a villa on the height of Bellosguardo looking over Florence grandly, & there we went to spend what Robert calls a Boccacio-evening, with him, we and the Storys together last friday. It was almost as good as the evening before at the opera, where Verdi’s music in that new work of his, the Trovatore, [11] was intensely dramatic & passionate. Last night we had an influx of Americans at home—the Piedmontese minister & his wife [12] among the rest– She is one of the ninety nine muses distinguishing the land of stars (& stripes)—he is earnest & thoughtful, & interesting to me for the hope he gives to Italy through Piedmont. You see we have not been living quite in a cave lately.– Still, we look backward, & forward, to Paris,—Robert does especially—& we shall end by trying it as a residence. My only fear is of the climate, but one must brave a little, to get at an experience. Shall you go on much longer living at Dublin? I am glad you saw Mon[c]kton Milnes. I shall always like him .. shall be bound to him in my soul for ever .. for his goodnature in writing from Paris to desire my child to be invited to his christening breakfast. That was worthy of a man of genius, I maintain. Also, I do like him for his abandon .. for not being afraid of speaking & thinking in the centre of that great social lie of London civilization. If he does not pose well as a poet, he does his man’s life with an excellent thorough-heartedness which is a thousand times better & rarer than an excellent grace. Still, I understand exactly what you mean. She is the shadow of a gentle woman [13] —evidently adoring him with joined hands.
Please to understand that I am writing all this with the poker, which may account (in part) for the infamous blottingness.
Well—I should like to see your Baba,—and the new baby—but you, chiefest of all. Dear, do not forget us, & write oftener to make up for the two lost pleiads. [14] I wish with my whole heart you had the whole hundred & twenty thousand a year [15] —you would be a Cleopatra & melt pearls for us all. [16] Also you would be free of Dublin this winter, & come out to Rome to make a double carnival.
Wiedeman’s ringlets hang half way down his back, & the Italians call him ‘angiolino,’ ‘amorino,’ [17] and the like names. He talks both English & Italian, & with equal fluency—A darling!–
You know the Hedleys are at Brighton—or were? & that there’s a small ‘Robin.’? [18] The large one is being snared, I am afraid just now, in a farming scheme, in Somersetshire or elsewhere. The qualification for farming, is an inability to do anything else. In such a desperate undertaking my most sanguine wish is that he may lose his money with dignity. The Hedleys return to Paris for the winter, I conclude—meaning the paternal Hedleys.
Robert has been already in search of your Colonel Forester [19] &c, but failed in finding names at the library– [20] He may succeed better at the Legation perhaps.
Meanwhile care for us, dearest Mrs Cust! We remember you in true affection & steadfastness,—Robert taking his share in all my words. Our regards to Capt Cust—and kisses to Baba.
Ever your affectionate
Elizabeth B Browning.
Address: Angleterre viâ France. / Mrs Henry Cust / Cockayne Hatley / Biggleswade.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection.
1. This letter is postmarked 17 October 1853.
2. Lucy Anna Maria Cust (1853–1923) was born on 6 July.
3. The Vice-Regal Lodge, Phoenix Park, Dublin, was the residence of the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. EBB addressed her letters there when Mrs. Cust’s husband was private secretary to Lord Eglinton, the Lord-Lieutenant from February to December 1852.
4. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited Dublin in late August (see letter 3208, note 4) and stayed at the Vice-Regal Lodge.
5. Richard Monckton Milnes was in Dublin during the Queen’s visit and also stayed for a time at the Vice-Regal Lodge, as a guest of the Lord-Lieutenant (see T. Wemyss Reid, Life, Letters, and Friendships of Richard Monckton Milnes, 1890, I, 483).
6. “Kind words.”
7. Cf. William Cowper, “Retirement” (1782), lines 741–742.
8. Men and Women (1855). EBB was at work on Aurora Leigh (1857).
9. Cf. “Am I not a man and a brother,” as engraved on Josiah Wedgwood’s anti-slavery medallion of 1787.
10. Clytemnestra, The Earl’s Return, The Artist, and Other Poems (1855).
11. Il Trovatore, based upon the play El Trovador (1836) by Spanish playwright Antonio García Gutiérrez (1813–84), was adapted as a libretto by Giuseppe Verdi’s friend and collaborator, Salvatore Cammarano (1801–52) and first performed in Rome, at the Teatro di Apollo, on 19 January 1853. It had already been seen in many other cities in Italy, including Milan. The performance EBB saw was staged at the Teatro della Pergola, Florence’s principal opera house at this time, situated a short distance from the Duomo.
12. i.e., the Kinneys.
13. Annabella Hungerford Milnes (née Crewe).
14. In Greek mythology, the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione were transformed into a cluster of stars, the Pleiades. One could not be seen and was known as the “Lost Pleiad”—variously thought to be Electra, mourning the destruction of Troy, or Merope, hiding in shame for having wed a mortal.
15. A reference to the great wealth of the late John Cust (1779–1853), 1st Earl Brownlow, who died on 15 September. He was a paternal uncle of Mrs. Cust’s husband, Henry Francis Cust. John Cust’s eldest son, John Hume, having died in 1851, the earldom devolved to the latter’s eldest son, John William (1842–67).
16. EBB alludes to the story, first recorded by Pliny the Elder, of Cleopatra’s dissolving a rare pearl in a goblet of vinegar and then drinking the mixture in order to prove to Mark Antony that she could spend ten million sesterces on a single feast (see Natural History, IX, 58, trans. H. Rackham).
17. “Little angel,” “cupid.”
18. Alice Jane Hedley; see letter 3266, note 17.
19. Cecil William Forester (1808–81), second son of the Rev. P. Townshend Forester, prependary of Worcester, and his wife Anna Maria (née Byne). From 1851 to 1853 he commanded the 52nd Light Regiment, garrisoned in Dublin where he and his wife Henrietta Maria (née Stopford) were evidently acquaintances of the Custs. On 3 June 1853 he retired on half-pay with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He later became the assistant Deputy Serjeant-at-Arms in the House of Commons.
20. Presumably Vieusseux’s Reading Rooms, which included a circulating library. RB may have been allowed to consult the Libro dei Soci (“Book of Members”) in searching for Colonel Forester.
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