3290. EBB to Emelyn Story
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 345–346.
Perugia
Friday. November 18th, 1853.
Dearest Emelyn:
I snatch such paper and ink as the gods here provide (niggardly gods, though) to tell you that we have come half way, as far as Perugia that is … to receive the blessings of your hands and handwriting.
Thank you, thank you, you reconcile me even to the third piano, [1] if nothing lower is to be had, even though Robert [frightens] me by proposing to carry me upstairs. Certainly we must be reasonable and accept the disadvantages with all the advantages you speak of, and I expect to have an additional lobe of lung to walk up steps with in the Roman air. The room for Robert is worth waiting for besides, isn’t it? How we thank you for all your deeds, but for the feeling that prompted them, most!
Oh yes, of course having been filled with sinister suspicions against me, you have supposed that we should be kept at Florence somehow. In spite of this, however, we have broken the chain. We set out on Tuesday, arrived here yesterday, and finding an excellent hotel [2] resolved on staying a whole day to see the pictures and the tombs. [3]
Such an exquisite journey we have had!—lovely warm weather—Penini (for one of us) describing himself as “warm as a lion and alive as a nosegay”! He however does not approve of our loitering here at all. He wants to see Edith and Blome (Rome).
All this morning Robert and I have been spending before the Peruginos, [4] or wandering up and down this romantic Perugia. How picturesque! … It seems lifted up in the sunshine to look at the mountains, and all the houses strain upwards. I scarcely ever saw a town I liked better. We sleep to-morrow at Foligno, the next night at Spoleto, the next at Narni, the next at Cività, and on Tuesday 22nd shall be in Rome. So take our rooms—we trust you entirely!—and remember unless by miraculous interposition something better (that is lower) shall offer itself we accept thankfully your third piano. Will you let your tradespeople supply us with bread, milk, coffee, sugar and eggs for our arrival? Thank you, both of you, from us both, warmly and gratefully, and best of love to you both from Robert as well as
Your affectionate
E.B.B.
Text: Isabel C. Clarke, Elizabeth Barrett Browning: A Portrait (London, [1929]), pp. 298–299.
1. i.e., three stories above the ground floor. The apartment was located at 43 Via Bocca di Leone.
2. Probably L’Europa, recommended by Murray’s A Handbook for Travellers in Central Italy (1853) as “very well spoken of” with a “civil and obliging” landlord (part I, p. 233).
3. EBB refers to the Etruscan tombs outside Perugia, one of the principal cities in the confederation of ancient Etruria. Discovered by a peasant in 1840, the main tomb “consists of 10 chambers … in one of these are 7 cinerary urns of very fine workmanship … . The ceiling of this chamber is coffered in squares, and has in the centre a Gorgon’s head of enormous size and of startling power of expression” (Handbook, part I, p. 235). During the Italian Renaissance, Perugia was the center of the Umbrian school of art, best represented in the works of Perugino (mentioned below), the master of Raphael. As outlined in Murray’s Handbook, Perugia contains a wealth of Renaissance art, including the earliest known fresco by Raphael and works by, among others, Caravaggio, Titian, Parmigiano, Andrea del Sarto, and Guercino (see pp. 236–246).
4. The works of Perugino (ca. 1450–1523), Italian painter, who was born Pietro Vannucci in Cietà della Pieve, Umbria. He spent his early adult years studying and working in Florence. About 1479 he received a commission from Pope Sixtus IV to help decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel with frescoes. Some of these were later destroyed in preparation for the work of Michelangelo, but three remain, of which the most acclaimed is “Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter.” In the mid-1490’s Perugino made Perugia his permanent home, though he continued to maintain a studio in Florence. The Brownings could have seen his paintings in many different places in Perugia, but the most dramatic of these may be the Sala del Cambio, where the walls are decorated by his frescoes, “the best perhaps which he ever painted” (Handbook, part I, p. 242).
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