3379. EBB to Sarianna Browning
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 174–177.
[Rome]
[early April 1854] [1]
My dearest Sarianna we are all well, & so is the weather which is diviner. We sit with the windows wide open & find it almost too warm—& today Robert & I have been wandering under the trees of the Pincio & looking to the Monte Marino [2] pine. Let the best come—I dont like Rome, I never shall—and as they have put into the English newspapers that I dont, [3] I might as well acknowledge the barbarism. Very glad I shall be to see you & Paris, even though my beloved Florence shall be left behind– Dearest Sarianna, after a short rest at Paris, we go on to London for the printing of Robert’s book (mine wont be ready till later in the year) & for the sight of some dear English faces while the weather shall admit of it, before we settle for the winter in France. Well—you will go with us to England, wont you? The dear nonno will spare you to go with us? It will do you good & it will do us good certainly.
I quite agree with you that there’s no situation like the Champs Elysées—really there is scarcely anything like it in Europe, if you put away Venice, for a situation in a city. The worst of the Champs Elysées is that it is out of the way, & expensive on the point of carriages when you cant walk far. People tell you too that the air is sharper at that end of the avenue, yet the sun is so brilliant as to make amends for the disadvantage, if it exists. Then you pay more for houses on account of the concourse of English– And what if I object a little to the English besides—? If I do, the desireableness of the pure air & free walking for Penini counterbalances them.
The Thackeray girls have had the scarlatina at Naples, & have been very desolate I fear, without a female servant or friend near them. They probably were indisposed towards Naples by their own illness (.. which was slight however .. the scarlet fever is always slight in Italy they say ..) & by their father’s more serious attack .. for I have heard very different accounts of the Neapolitan weather. Still it has been an abnormal winter everywhere, & there are cold winds on that coast on certain months of the year always– Lockhart has gone away with the Duke of Wellington who was in deep consideration how he should manage his funeral on the road– Robert was present when the question was mooted on the Duke’s last evening– Should he send the body to England or bury it? Would it be delicate to ask Lockhart which he preferred? Somebody said .. “Suppose you were to ask what he would do with your body if you died yourself.” —I am afraid poor Lockhart is really in a dangerous state of health, & that it would have been better if he had had something tenderer and more considerate than a Dukedom travelling with him under his circumstances. He called upon us, & took a great fancy to Robert I understand, as being “not at all like a damned literary man”–
Penini is overwhelmed with attentions & gifts of all kinds, & generally acknowledged as the king of the children here. Mrs Page, the wife of the distinguished American artist, gave a party in honor of him the other day– There was an immense cake inscribed Penini in sugar .. and he sate at the head of the table & did the honors– You never saw a child so changed in point of shyness. He will go anywhere with anybody, & talk, & want none of us to back him. Wilson is only instructed not to come till its “velly late” to fetch him away. He talks to Fanny Kemble, who ‘dashes’ most people– “I not aflaid of nossing” says he in his eloquent English. Mr Fisher’s cartoon of him is very pretty but does’nt do him justice in the delicacy of the lower part of the face. Yet I cant complain of Mr Fisher after the admirable likeness he has painted of Robert. It is really satisfying to me– You will see it in London– Oh, how cruel it is that we cant buy it, Sarianna. I have a sort of hope that Mr Kenyon may—but zitta zitta. [4] Arabel will be very grateful to you for the drawings.
The involuntary writing is very strange. I have been anxious to write myself & persisted a good deal, having been told through Wilson that I shall write at last. The pencil in my hand, moves evidently, with a peculiar unmistakeable motion .. the hand & arm are partially affected by numbness .. but the force with me has never been strong enough to write words or letters. Yet once, a word was written .. a name .. very slowly & laboriously. I mention my experience simply because it is experience of the physical phenomena. Through Wilson various touching things have been written to me .. whatever is meant for me being presented to me .. written upside down & backwards .. & sometimes in an involved way, as if the word opened like a flower from the middle & blossomed out—in a way that no human being in a normal condition could have written it. Robert is quite an unbeliever .. but he has seen nothing .. I would’nt let him see Wilson write while in such an exasperation of scepticism. Her veracity he does not doubt.– No one who knows her as we do, can doubt that. A more upright, simple integrity is not to be found in woman. Robert says it’s all nervous affection & madness on the part of Wilson & me, & so he puts it aside.
I should like you to try yourself, Sarianna. Hold a pencil on paper quietly with a passive hand. Some people do it for half an hour a day at a particular hour & succeed after a longer or shorter period, but with some the power comes immediately. The pencil leapt in Wilson’s hand as soon as she took it up. I should like you to try–
Mrs Carmichael Smyth’s friend Mrs Brotherton writes Greek in this involuntary manner,—she not knowing a letter of the language. The character is written beautifully, the words for the most part correctly,—the grammatical construction is null, but a certain significance is apparent in the grouping of the separate words. Such words have been written for instance, as “God,” “Christ,” “sea,” “storm,’[’] “blood,” “wound,” “tears,” “lamentation,” “tomb,” “joy,” “calm,” “sun,” “morning,” after a sort of sequence of this kind–
Now .. either she swindles .. copying words out of a lexicon .. (and Robert has the courage to say that she does)—or there is an agency independent of her altogether. Nerves will account for nothing here. For my part I dont accuse people of swindling or murder willingly, or without some previous suspicion of their reputation. A woman who would do so bad & blasphemous a thing as get up such a trick of swindling, must be thoroughly evil, you will agree. Mrs Brotherton is an accomplished woman & writes very pretty verses. I do not know much of her—but Mrs Carmichael Smyth knows her, Frederick Tennyson knows her, & my friend Miss Blagden knows her well.
Alexis probably saw what was in your mind & no more. There are mistakes made in the spiritual as well as in the natural sight—& “men are seen like trees walking” [5] sometimes in both states. For my part I believe in a spiritual sight quite as much as I do in a natural sight.
I believe too in a Miss Heaton. Prodigious is her audacity, really,—and one laughs and is angry at once. If she comes to Paris when we are there it may become necessary to quarrel with her outright, & for that I should be very sorry indeed.
Best of loves to the best of nonnos. Penini was reading two days ago, & came on the word “son”. He did’nt comprehend the relation at all so I explained at full length. “Oh—yes” .. said he at last with great satisfaction. “Now I untand (understand) .. Nonno is mine son.”
Your attached Ba.
Publication: LEBB, II, 161–163 (in part).
Manuscript: Lilly Library.
1. Dating based on EBB’s references to Lockhart’s departure, which occurred on 29 March.
2. Sic, for Monte Mario, the highest hill in Rome, though outside the ancient boundaries and therefore not one of the “seven hills.” EBB would have seen it from the Pincio, looking across the Tiber to the northwest.
3. In The Critic of 15 March 1854, their Italian correspondent reported: “Mr. and Mrs. Browning arrived shortly before Christmas, whilst the most dismal weather the season has yet inflicted was prevailing—partly accounting for, what I learnt with regret, the fact that the first impressions of Rome in the mind of that gifted poetess were disappointing” (p. 160). According to Mary Brotherton, in a letter to Frederick Tennyson, Charles Hemans was the Italian correspondent for The Critic (13 December 1853, ms at Harvard).
4. “Hush hush.”
5. Cf. Mark 8:24.
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