3316. EBB to Charlotte Stisted
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 50–52.
43. Via Bocca di Leone. Rome
Jany 2. [1854] [1]
My dear Miss Stisted,
Have you thought that not even hot water in the feet-warmer could keep me warm in the heart & memory? The truth is we have been in great tribulation since we came to Rome & I scarcely liked to write about a train of evils while they were still going on.
After a delightful journey of eight days, one of which was spent at Perugia, we fell into an abyss in Rome. The morning after our arrival, before we had breakfasted, our friends Mr & Mrs Story sent their little Edith over to us by a servant with the news that the boy was in convulsions, in great danger– All that day we were by his deathbed, for when evening came he died. Edith sickened the same day & could not be removed from our house, & on the second night the physician [2] was of opinion that she could not survive it– The children’s English nurse [3] too was in imminent danger—and in the apartment below us, a daughter of Mr Page’s, [4] the artist, who had taken in Edith because we could’nt give her a room, was siezed with the same fever .. gastric, with a tendency to the brain. Of course it was a distracting state of things—and I confess for my own part to having lost my head a little & caught up ideas of contagion, in spite of the assurances of physicians, in terrible fears about my own child. It seemed as if we had brought him to a city of the plague; & I wished for wings like a dove [5] (even bat’s wings would have contented me) to fly away with him to the ends of the earth.
But now we breathe again– The storm has passed—& the only shipwreck is the one poor little grave– Edith has come safely through the danger—& though an access of Roman fever & ague has followed, it is removeable by quinine & change of air—it does not threaten life—and the other patients are convalescent.
So we breathe. But Rome is scarcely Rome to me even now. My first day here, spent by a deathbed,—my first drive, to the cemetery .. the new ruins blotting out the old ruins .. all this has distorted the associations of the place– My own breath against the windowpane prevents my seeing through. [6] It is a doubt to me whether I shall ever feel clearly that it is Rome. Yet we have very comfortable rooms, & we are all well. And poor Mrs Story who lost the light of her eyes [7] in that boy, is beginning to look a little to the sun again– One child is left to her, poor thing, in this distracting sorrow of irremediable losses– Drowning men will hold up by less, you know.
But what a change from the happy summer at the Baths of Lucca! Oh, it has been very affecting to us both!–
We saw your friend, the padre Leonardo [8] & performed your commission. He has a pale gentle face, which lighted up at Mrs Stisted’s name & gift—but the seals were not done, he said—his duties occupied his time so much that the pleasures were limited. The letters of introduction we did not present on account of our being hurried. The hotel had passed into other hands.
Rome is very full– We have lions here .. not such as were let in upon the Christians in the Coliseum, but such as Mr Thackeray, .. who gnashes his satirical teeth indifferently at Christians & pagans, & leaves everybody somewhat the better for it, his admirers say. Dr Braun has been to see us, with his English wife, my friend. [9] He is as fervid as ever, & she very happy.
I wish I had good news of dear Mrs Stisted & all of you– May God bless you all in this new turn of the years– The feet warmer was of the utmost use & comfort to me, & my husband is using it at this moment instead of a fireplace in the next room, while he is writing verses. [10] So if heat in the extremities flies to the head, the public may be the warmer for your kindness, dear Mrs [sic, for Miss] Stisted!– People will call it “celestial fire,” [11] to be sure!
Affectionately yours
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Robert’s best regards, as of course!——
Address: Miss Stisted / Villa Broderick [12] / Bagni di Lucca / Toscana.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Harvard University.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Diomede Pantaleoni.
3. Jane Cartwright.
4. Emma Page.
5. Cf. Psalm 55:6.
6. Cf. EBB, “The Prospect” (1847), lines 1–3: “Methinks we do as fretful children do, / Leaning their faces on the window-pane / To sigh the glass dim with their own breath’s stain.”
7. Cf. Psalm 38:10.
8. Unidentified.
9. Anne Braun (née Thomson, 1810–63). She had married August Emil Braun (1809–56) in 1849.
10. During the Brownings’ stay in Rome (1853–54), RB composed a number of the poems that would appear in Men and Women (1855).
11. i.e., inspiration. Cf. Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1751), line 46. EBB used this expression in several of her early birthday odes; see, for example, letters 22 and 28.
12. Sic, for Brodrick.
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