3349. EBB to Arabella Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 120–123.
Via Bocca di Leone 43.
Feb 28– [1854] [1]
My ever dearest Arabel I wrote last to you with the intention of enclosing a note to dearest Stormie, but the letter wd have been overweight so I put it off. Now I send the enclosure & write at once that you may not fancy a letter lost, or his particular letter less tenderly prized than it was. It was very kind—& the very sight of the handwriting thrilled me into joy. Do convince him out of his postage-mania. I never object to my dinner, tell him, because of the trouble of swallowing .. nor am reconciled to the silence of people I love because I should have to pay .. some tenpence halfpenny .. for the words they would send me. Why, really he must attribute to me sublime ideas about Love. I wonder if I should grudge the cab-hire of going to see him at Bayswater once in seven years, supposing that I lived in Devonshire Street. What do you think, Arabel. “What you sint”? as Penini is fond of saying– He & Robert have gone together to Mrs Page’s balcony (people take balconies for the occasion and receive their friends) on the last day of the carnival. I have seen nothing, no, nothing of it—& until yesterday Robert refused obstinately to go alone. My comfort is that Penini has been several days in the best places, throwing bonbons into carriages with great adroitness, & having them thrown at him to his immense glory– It must be the very holiday of a child .. & he thinks the world goes on most satisfactorily in spite of the Czar & other small grievances. Fancy Penini, masked (to prevent the missiles of flowers & confetti from hurting him) flinging bonbons into the carriages and on the hats of the street-passengers– “I always hit,” says he. And he’s a favorite mark for others .. standing there with his ringlets, little angel! As for me I see as much of it as you do, & this is the last day. The weather has been cold for three weeks, & through an imprudence of mine, I have had some cough– Two days ago, however, Madame Braun held out a temptation—a noontide temptation to go to her house to hear Mr de Witt, the German musical artist, & her housemate, [2] play Beethoven before the prince of Prussia [3] who had wished to hear him. Robert & I were the only visitors admitted– Dr Braun could not get a permission for even the celebrated Cornelius [4] —the prince would be alone, he said. How we obtained the right of entrance, I cant imagine, but it must have been through some goodnatured misrepresentation of our host’s, I suppose– At first I thought of nothing but refusing as usual– (I have done nothing but refuse for a month) & then Robert opened the window & decided that the air was too mild to hurt me in that middle-hour of the day—so we went. The music was perfect, and the Royalty as gentlemanly as if he were not a prince– Set it down, that he is rather like Alfred .. the sort of type. He bowed to me profoundly & I curtsied down to the ground floor– By the way I must observe that both Robert & I admired the dignity & simplicity with which Madme Braun received her royal guest .. just as if she had done nothing else all her life. Almost I was as much struck by that, as by her kindness to me. I like her very much. Dr Braun has been engaged these two months in carrying the prince through a course of ruins & antiquities,—the royal Highness having been unable to turn a corner without the learned professor at his button-hole. This is the only deviation from a three weeks seclusion, Arabel, and it has not done me much harm I am happy to say. I have missed the carnival—& the charades & tableaux at Mrs Sartoris which have been something exquisite of their kind, as they were likely to be in the hands of such artists. Robert was entreated to act in a charade with the two Kembles, but refused pertinaciously, for which really I did not blame him, though they had to give up & modify the whole of their idea as a consequence. The tragic effects were turned into comic, & most wittily managed, these seem to have been. Novice was one of the words .. a matrimonial ‘no’ to begin with. The young lady (Mrs Sartoris) gives an account of her morning at Rome (where the scene was laid) .. “I have been to the Coliseum with the Brownings” &c &c– A part of a drawingroom was fitted up with crimson silk, as a theatre—all the arrangements perfect, & the “selected” people in Rome present. I should have liked to have seen it really– There is an engagement standing for next saturday that we should make an excursion into the Roman neighbourhood in three carriages under the Sartoris auspices. She and Lockhart, & Robert & I, to go in one carriage. I am as likely to go to the moon, unless there should be some sudden change of temperature, I must add. You are giddy, you say, with the quantities of people I talk about, but, after all, it is rather a potential than an actual course of going out as far as I am concerned– I wont run risks in the cold. Rather I sit at home & read Fredrika Bremer on America—have you read her?—she is good always, & amusing often. I am reading too Kingsley’s Hypatia, fifty years after you I suppose. [5]
Judge ye, whether believing in spiritual intercourse unfits us necessarily for living on this earth. My dearest Arabel, it’s natural to exclaim
<…> [6]
our apartment to the 22d Sarianna miscalculates– Never mind. We shant linger long in Paris– Tell me of the bazaar. I want to know the number of copies wanted. [7] Dont overwork yourself, darling.
Your own Ba.
R’s best & my best love to all.
Publication: EBB-AB, II, 66–69.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. Year provided by EBB’s references to the forthcoming bazaar for the Ragged Schools, which took place on 19 April 1854.
2. Many years later, Emil Braun’s niece Marie Hansen Taylor, who was staying with the Brauns at this time, recalled that de Witt “occupied two rooms communicating with Doctor Braun’s apartments” (On Two Continents: Memories of Half a Century, New York, 1905, p. 29).
3. Wilhelm, afterwards Kaiser Wilhelm I (1797–1888), became regent in 1857 when his brother, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, suffered a paralytic stroke.
4. Peter von Cornelius (1783–1867), German painter who lived in Rome (1811–19) and became associated with a group of artists known as the Lukasbrüder (later the Nazarenes). He had recently completed a design for a fresco that was commissioned by the King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm IV.
5. Hypatia (1853), a popular novel by Charles Kingsley (1819–75), first appeared as a serial in Fraser’s Magazine.
6. At least two pages are missing. The rest of the letter is written in the margins of the first page.
7. Of the poems she and RB had agreed to write in support of Arabella’s Ragged Schools bazaar: EBB’s “A Plea for the Ragged Schools of London” and RB’s “The Twins,” which were published by Chapman and Hall under the title Two Poems by Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning (1854). The bazaar was held on 19 April 1854. RB’s poem was reprinted in Men and Women (1855); EBB’s in Last Poems (1862) where the word “Plea” in the title was changed to “Song.”
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