3387. EBB to William Wetmore Story
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 183–185.
43 Via Bocca di Leone
Sunday– [16 April 1854] [1]
My dear Mr Story
When Robert & I parted this morning on our different ways of attaining to the Pope’s benediction, [2] he bade me, if I returned first, to begin a note to you—which I begin thus. We are both anxious to express to you, dear Mr Story, our gladness & true sympathy in the happy change in dear little Edith’s health. Very pleasant it is to feel this joy with you, as truly as we felt much pain with you before. Now I do hope .. that as ‘there’s a tide in the affairs of men’, [3] the turn has come to you, & the salt water & bitter sea weed will dash back from you from henceforth. May you never be wounded again through the objects of your love—the only wounds which tell in this life. The rest are scratches. As for Edith, I begin to feel almost sure of her now, & that you will see her bloom back into her old vivacity & vigour of childhood. A change into a better air will abolish the lingering effects of this pestilent climate—oh, you will let me say so now– You know it is full of physical & moral miasma, and when I have seen the Vatican twelve times, I shall go on to say so twelve times twelve.
Meanwhile, of course I “dont boast of having seen Rome” .. no indeed. I am properly humiliated for all my disadvantages & defects, & confess meekly in writing to England that I am the most ignorant of travellers & have seen just nothing. After this Easter hubbub however, we are going to visit galleries, villas, ruins, & crowd as much sightseeing as possible into a little space. We heard the wrong Miserere I believe, on friday—but it was very fine, wrong or right, & very overcoming in its ejaculating pathos. [4] I sate that day in the Sistine chapel for the first time.
Then we have made various campagna excursions with Mrs Sartoris & Mrs Kemble, dined in bosky vallies, & pine-wood forests, & done the proper honour to your glorious opal mountains in the distance. Castel Fusano pleases me the best– Nothing could be finer in its way–
Tell dear Edie that Penini sends her his love & a kiss, & a very bad drawing of the artistic demerits of which he is properly conscious– It is pleasant to hear of her on a donkey, taking a comparatively strong hold of life again– If you stay at Genoa she will like the boating & the driving in that beautiful bay & country. I shall not forget our descent into Genoa from the mountains in the supernatural moonlight which touched my brain with all sorts of fantastic suppositions– I remember Robert wondering whether I was mad or not– That was in coming from Turin more than a year ago–
He has come in now—and now he has written a note of his own to you–
With the affectionate wishes of us both
Most truly yours
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
We have not written to the Cranchs. We are horrible correspondents as you may have perceived.
Publication: BAF, pp. 30–32.
Manuscript: University of Texas.
1. Date provided by EBB’s reference to Easter, which in 1854 fell on 16 April.
2. “At a little after 12 o’clock the pope pronounces his benediction from the balcony of St Peter’s. … At the last clause, et benedictio, the pope rises and signs the cross in front and on each side, over the people, as he pronounces the holy names; at descendat he stretches out his arms to heaven, and then folds them over his breast. Then the cardinal deacon reads in Latin and Italian (afterwards throwing the documents among the people) the bull of the plenary indulgence conceded to all who have attended the sacraments in the spirit of true repentance, whose hearts are purified from the malignancy of sin, and who are, therefore, in a state of reconciliation with God. The military bands strike up, the bells of St. Peter’s and the artillery of St. Angelo raise their chorus, as final to the celebration of the resurrection” (Murray’s A Handbook for Travellers in Central Italy, 1853, part II, pp. 111–112).
3. Cf. Julius Caesar, IV, 3, 218.
4. The “Miserere,” taken from Psalm 51 (50 in the Vulgate), was sung as part of the Tenebræ service in the Sistine Chapel on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of Holy Week, a different musical setting being used for each day. Most of the time the settings were by Giuseppe Baini (1775–1844), Tommaso Bai (1650–1718), and Gregorio Allegri (1582–1652). The last was the most esteemed and the one EBB would have wanted to hear. Although it was usually scheduled for Friday, various accounts of the period indicate that this was subject to change. In The Land of the Forum and the Vatican (1854), Newman Hall records that in 1853 he heard Allegri’s version on Wednesday (see p. 272).
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