3460. EBB to Eliza Anne Ogilvy
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 289–292.
Florence–
Monday– [28] August– [1854] [1]
My dearest Mrs Ogilvy I am almost ashamed of having kept the enclosure above a week, and I do hope that it may be none the less welcome for arriving late. We have been first uncertain, then vexed .. quite unable at last to leave Florence for even the Baths of Lucca on account of pecuniary back-slidings .. & as to Paris & England they became early out of the question. We must get to London somehow next summer to print our books– Till then we remain here, & shall be more given to writing letters, now that we are delivered from the position between the ‘si’ and ‘no’; so do write to me & provoke me (in the good etymological sense) into answering you. I am anxious to hear more about you, seeing that even in your last accounts you speak of new indispositions– How much serious illness you seem to have had! and now that a tranquil mind is so important to you, how doubly a trial to dear Mr Ogilvy. As to the event which is imminent, I suppose one should, after the seventyseventh child, leave off congratulating the gifted mother [2] —but in spite of everything reasonable, I cant help thinking, you a happy queen-bee with such a hive buzzing round you, & wishing I had one of the supernumerary honey-makers to hum in the cell next Penini’s. Last winter he expressed a humble opinion that, if he was “velly dood,” “peaps” (perhaps) “Dod would send him a little broller” .. but now, being desperate, he confided the other day to Wilson that “leally” (really) he “tould’nt bear it any more, & that papa & mama must buy him a boy to play wiz”—. Your children scarcely can know the blessing they are born to, of companions on their own level. Penini is the most social child in the world, and it’s quite painful sometimes to see the yearning with which he looks after young children, poor solitary darling! He has had a bright life of it, beset with every sort of tenderness & indulgence—but the drawback is still felt in spite of us all, & all we can do– I had hoped for him as well as for ourselves that we should have had you here in Florence—but you put the extinguisher fairly over us—we are black to the wick. Of course I comfort myself by “wondering how you could do so”, and abusing Peckam Rye [3] .. is that the name?,—and all London neighbourhoods. Tell me minutely about your house & whether you like it, & if the expenses are not consuming. Mrs Ogilvy’s health is too good an excuse .. I am grieved you should be so justified … but for the question of education .. why people in general come abroad precisely for facilities in education– You dont think of putting your boy to a public school at six years old,—& for the rest, what can you find in England which is not here at every corner? Do set down this piece of impertinence of mine to my disappointment at not having you here. It’s enough to turn my usual meekness into bitterness– I’ve been camomile tea ever since. For my part, in all seriousness, I hold Florence to be the most desirable place of residence in Europe, and it seems to me very probable that the result of giving another trial to Paris will be our return here to make an ultimate settlement– Oh—we shall try Paris fairly– But my misgiving is that I personally shall not be able to bear consecutive winters there on account of the climate. In other respects I like the place as you know. But I love Florence—even Robert says he loves Florence since he has been at Rome. (Before then, he used to hanker rather, you remember, after Rome.) And we have had a very pleasant summer here in spite of disappointments, want of pence, & superfluity of sun–
For the last, the season has been milder as to heat, than it usually is in Florence, and I have had the comfort of seeing my Penini grow fatter, in spite of his being, as he elegantly expresses it in pure Tuscan, “tutto bagnato” [4] seven times a day. I steadily keep him to half an hour’s application every morning, between reading & writing, & though he reads only tolerably he writes really well, beautifully .. I am very conceited about his writing. He indulges too, in compositions, which he calls his “poems” .. we have nearly a book full, in his own handwriting, of which the grammar & language altogether are something indescribable, as you may suppose– With all the faults however, (and perhaps the faults are the most precious part of the thing to me), there is a certain verve & intention by no means common at his age– He’s so infantine in his ways too that it makes it more striking. The drawing sometimes is suspended for a time—& then he takes it up again as he has done lately .. but, dear Mrs Ogilvy, there’s a frightful constancy to gun & sword .. I am getting alarmed at it! As some of my friends may be at the state of his religious opinions—for he goes occasionally into the Catholic churches to pray, (I wd let him go into St Sophia’s) [5] and talks & writes a considerable quantity of Swedenborgianism. Such a pair of black knees he brought out of the Duomo the other day! What have you been doing? “Saying my players.” And what prayers did you say? “The same sort I say at night—about papa & mama.” He has taken up a dislike to the priests .. I cant conceive how—perhaps from Ferdinando who is a protestant “at heart” as they say. “I leally dont lite lose pliests! not a bit.” But the “naughty priests” & the “beautiful prayer-music” in the churches, are not to be confounded, he thinks.
Tell me if you have read Frederick Tennyson’s poems & what you think of them. There is another poet here just now .. a poet in the shell .. young Norton, Mrs Norton’s second son. He has turned Roman catholic, married a Capri girl without shoes and stockings (or beauty) committed follies enough to win his poetical spurs before twenty one. His verses are not quite so convincing– Even they however are not ill-done—& he may do much better as he lives longer, in all ways– [6] As to faculty he is not equal to Lytton—you will see a poem of Lytton’s, by the way, in the last Blackwood .. ‘The Villa’ signed Trevor [7] which is an anagram of Robert:—he’s Robert Lytton. I think he will achieve something excellent some day—I hope in him. At present he suffers in his imagination from the strength of his memory. We are all poets in Florence. Not to rhyme would be a distinction. My friend Miss Blagden, who lives in a villa & gives us tea-parties with a sunset to correspond, is going to try to print a book in America [8] .. (I remember Mr Ogilvy’s hitting upon an idea of the kind & of my smiling against it: I doubt much still.) Then there’s Mr Buchanan Read who has just finished a pastoral epic (toned between Thomson & Cowper—will that do?) of some eight thousand lines. [9] He talks of bringing it out simultaneously in America & England. Also, Mrs Kinney, wife of the ex-minister (American) at Turin, residing here now, has completed, a narrative poem, a tragedy [10] .. I dont know what—we have plenty of Muses you see in Florence, though the “mediums,” it is pronounced at New York, are for the present deficient. Also, Mrs Norton, her son says, is likely to come here before long. She is said to be nearly as beautiful as ever—under which brilliant circumstances it must be rather trying to be a grandmama, and Brinsley Norton need’nt have been in such haste to send her the news yesterday by telegraphic despatch. [11]
Mrs Gordon is gone to England .. to Devonshire .. with her family. Mrs Stuart has returned—and Mr Stuart’s brother’s daughter [12] is now staying with them for a year. I fear they dont get on much better. He bids me give you his best regards– You received the books he sent—did’nt you?
Write soon & fully—do! Do you happen to know any lady who want[s] a companion & would be kind & gentle to her? Poor Haydon’s daughter [13] writes to me in a desolate state– She has fifty six pounds a year of her own but it is not enough to keep her in any comfort of course, & she wants protection– She wd like to go abroad she says– Under thirty she must be: father & mother gone! [14] Will you tell me if you hear of anything?
May God bless you all– With our united love to you both I am ever my dear friend most affectionately yours
EBB.
I direct to Perth for fear I shd miss you.
Address: Angleterre viâ France / Mrs David Ogilvy / King’s Place / Perth / N.B. Redirected: 3 Melville Street / Portobello.
Publication: EBB-EAHO, pp. 125–129.
Manuscript: Eton College Library.
1. This letter is postmarked 28 August 1854, a Monday.
2. Eliza Ogilvy was pregnant with her sixth child and third son Angus Edward (1855–1928), who was born on 25 January 1855.
3. The Ogilvys are listed in the Brownings’ address book of this period (AB-3) at “Peckham Rye, Surrey,” which is just east of Camberwell. By October 1855 they had moved slightly farther south to Lower Sydenham.
4. “Soaked.”
5. A Greek Orthodox cathedral in Istanbul until the mid-15th century when it was converted into a mosque. It has been a museum since 1935.
6. In 1856, Norton published anonymously a volume of poems entitled Pinocchi, which was poorly received.
7. In the June 1854 issue of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, pp. 687–698.
8. Mrs. Kinney reported in the Newark Daily Advertiser of 24 January 1855 that “Miss B. … though an English lady, is preparing a volume of poems for the American press” (p. 2). In letter 3462, EBB refers to several of Isa’s poems, some of which later appeared in her posthumous Poems (1873). There is no evidence that Isa ever found an American publisher for them.
9. The New Pastoral (Philadelphia, 1855). The dedication is dated “Florence, August 5th, 1854.”
10. Felicità: A Metrical Romance (New York, 1855).
11. Of the birth of his first child, Carlotta Chiara Maria Norton (1854–1931), on 21 August.
12. Unidentified.
13. Mary Mordwinoff Haydon (1824–64).
14. Mary Haydon (née Cawrse, formerly Hyman, 1793–1854) died at her home in St. John’s Wood on 25 July 1854. Her husband, the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, committed suicide in 1846.
___________________
