3517. EBB to Sarianna Browning
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 67–70.
[Florence]
[ca. 10 February 1855] [1]
How kind & tender of you, my dearest Sarianna to care so much to hear that I am better– I was afraid that Robert had written in the Crimea-style about me, for he was depressed & uneasy, poor darling, & looked at things from the blackest point of view. Nevertheless I have escaped some bad symptoms. No spitting of blood for instance—no loss of voice .. & scarcely a threatening of pain in the side. Also I have not grown thinner than is natural under the circumstances. At Genoa (after our cold journey) I wasted in a few days, & thought much worse of myself than there was reason to do this time.
I can assure you I am now much restored. The cough is decidedly got under, & teazes me for the most part only in the early morning—the fever is gone, & the nights are quiet– I am able to take animal food again & shall soon recover my ordinary strength. Certainly it has been a bad attack, & I never suffered anything like it in Italy before– The illness at Genoa was the mere tail of what began in England & was increased by the Alpine exposure. Our weather has been very severe—wind & frost together—something peculiarly irritating in the air. I am loth to blame my poor Florence who never treated me so before (and how many winters we have spent here!) and our friends write from Pisa that the weather was as trying there—while from Rome the account is simply “detestable weather”. At Naples it is sometimes furiously cold—there’s no perfect climate anywhere, that’s certain .. you have only to choose the least evil. Here for the last week it has been so mild, that if I had been in my usual state of health I might have gone out, they say,—& of course I have felt the influence beneficially– One encourages oneself in Italy, when it’s cold, with the assurance that it cant last– Our misfortune, this time, has been that it has lasted unusually long. How the Italians manage without fires, I cannot make out. So chilly as they are, too!– It’s a riddle.
You would wonder almost how I could feel the cold in these two rooms opening into each other, & from which I have not stirred since the cold weather began. Robert has kept up the fire in our bedroom throughout the night– Oh, he has been spoiling me so! If it had not been that I feared much to hurt him in having him so distressed & worried, it would have been a very subtle luxury to me this being ill & feeling myself dear– Do not set me down as too selfish– May God bless him.
Penini flourishes. Charmed he is with the dear nonno’s illustrative design. He made me explain to him what a “neglo” was, & thinks now that he has seen such a thing in his walks—“a gentleman—wiz velly white teeth.” I am delighted that ‘nonno’ liked the ‘goose’—because that “poem” [2] is an immense favorite of mine. I was flattered too by the ideal “mother,” who is the only one, (I hope you observed,) who does’nt ask the impertinent question, “where you got that goose”—instead of which she makes a place for it on her knee with the most active sympathy.
Penini improves rapidly, & grows more & more winning I cant help thinking. He came yesterday to beg me to “speat to papa,” about his going to the ‘opera’ to see Stenterello. [3] Girolama had assured him that little children as high as that .. (holding his hand three inches from the floor) went to see Stenterello—& he felt convinced that he should laugh so much there wd be no danger of his falling asleep. I was to tell papa all this, and add that, if papa wd let him go, he wd promise to be “good for twenty two days.” A magnificent engagement which did not persuade Robert into yielding. For my own part I should have been silly enough to give way, I think—I take the goose on my knee—I cant resist Penini in his most exorbitant exactions when they are not of a character plainly wrong & injurious. But after all, at his age he is better asleep, in one of his profound rosy slumbers, than laughing at Stenterello.
I dare say Mrs Carmichael Smith is an excellent woman. Annie Thackeray told me however .. implied to me .. that she & Minnie were not very happy with her on account of the discrepancy between their father’s views & her’s .. they feeling with their father– A less dry & narrow religiosity on her side, wd have been most favorable to those girls .. who have had to choose, I fear, between the vaguest kind of creed or no creed and a wide tolerance, and the strictest dogma & a bigotry to suit– [4] I am quite fond of both Annie & Minnie & would do anything for either of them.
Young Mrs Norton has received no lessons from her husband since their marriage .. which is a great shame upon him. Isa Blagden is teaching her to read, & finds her quite docile & quick, & anxious to get on– She is a sweet, simple creature, .. and, “as a human being,” to use my friend’s words, “worth six of her husband.” Not that there is not good in him also—but he has that sort of poetical self-absorbed temperament which is not, after all, the noblest thing. His curious pretension for his wife is .. exceeding beauty! You see beauty is a sort of aristocracy, and would half justify his marriage. Well—it wont do. One calls her pretty when one is very goodnatured .. she has a good, pure face—but nothing of the Italian grace, even!– He swears (& I dare say it is true) she is spoilt by putting on shoes & stockings! There may be a great deal in that.
Robert has been frantic about the Crimea, & “being disgraced in the face of Europe” &c &c. When he is mild he wishes the ministry to be torn to pieces in the streets .. limb from limb. I do not doubt that the Aberdeen side of the cabinet has been greatly to blame—but the system is the root of the whole evil. If they dont tear up the system they may tear up the Aberdeens “world without end,” [5] and not better the matter. If they do tear up the system, then shall we all have reason to rejoice in these disasters .. apart from our sympathy with individual sufferings. More good will have been done by this one great shock to the heart of England, than by fifty years more patching & pothering, & knocking impotent heads together. What makes me most angry is the ministerial apology .. “it’s always so with us for three campaigns!!!” “it’s our way”—“it’s want of experience” &c &c[.]
That’s precisely the thing complained of– As to want of experience, if the French have had Algerine experiences, we have had our Indian wars, Chinese wars, Caffra wars [6] .. and military & naval expenses exceeding those of France, from year to year. If our people had never had to pay for an army, they might sit down quietly under the taunt of wanting experience– But we have soldiers, & soldiers should have military education as well as red coats, and be led by properly qualified officers, instead of Lord Nimcompoop’s [sic] youngest sons.
As it is in the army, so it is in the state. Places given away here & there to incompetent heads, .. nobody being responsible, no unity of idea & purpose anywhere .. the individual interest always in the way of the general good. There is a noble heart in our people, strong enough, if once roused, to work out into light & progression, & correct all these evils. Robert is a good deal struck by the generous tone of the observations of the French press, as contradistinguished from the insolences of the Americans .. who really are past enduring just now. Certain of our English friends here in Florence have ceased to associate with them on that ground– I think there’s a good deal of jealousy about the French Alliance– That may account for something.
My father has put down “one of his crutches”—is a pitiful improvement. Poor dear Trippy was wonderfully better when I heard last. How kind of that generous dear nonno to give away Rousseau’s autograph. “Like him,” says Robert. May God love you both– Dearest kindest Sarianna, remember not to think anymore about me, except that I love you & that I am
your attached Ba
Publication: LEBB, II, 202–204 (in part, as 12 June 1855).
Manuscript: Lilly Library.
1. Dating suggested by EBB’s remark concerning “the last week” of “mild” weather. In letter 3518, she writes: “For more than a week it has been mild spring weather.”
2. One of Pen’s compositions.
4. According to Gordon N. Ray, “there was a serious cause of dissension in the Carmichael-Smyths’ household. For years Mrs. Carmichael-Smyth had been distressed at Thackeray’s failure to give Anny and Minny what she regarded as proper religious instruction. … Anticipating his mother’s campaign to convert his children, Thackeray had warned Anny, whose views were accepted by Minny with entire loyalty, that though she should listen to everything ‘Grannie’ told her, she was to make up her own mind about questions of religion. … Yet … Mrs. Carmichael-Smyth had given up the struggle with a good grace. ‘You may find some assurance of the children’s faith in you,’ she wrote Thackeray, ‘when I tell you that they wd think it a crime to think otherwise than as you have told them—& so firmly am I convinced that I can do nothing, that I have ceased for some time to read the Scriptures with them, they taking them as the word of Man & upon Man’s word called to believe the most stupendous of mysteries, I firmly believing them to be the word of GOD.’ And so the household remained, divided in faith, but united by love” (Thackeray: The Age of Wisdom, 1847–1863, 1958, pp. 204–206).
5. Isaiah 45:17.
6. Generally known as the Kaffir Wars into the twentieth century, they were a series of conflicts between European (mainly English) colonists in South Africa and various indigenous tribes, which began in the late eighteenth century and occurred intermittently over the next hundred years. The wars are now often referred to as the Xhosa Wars (named for the language of the native people), the word Kaffir being a racial insult. The wars ended when the last independent Xhosa territory was appropriated by the British Cape Colony.
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