3525. EBB & RB to Arabella Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 86–91.
| [In EBB’s hand] | Florence. |
[ca. 26 February 1855] [1]
<***> that he who speaks it like English, should not read it as currently—and there’s a good Italian translation here of Frank, [2] I understand. A quarter of an hour a day will be enough for this. Thank you about the books, my dearest dearest Arabel—but you had no business to add that other book. Observe, I shall be quite afraid to ask you to do business for me if you persist in taking the opportunity to give me alms. I am convinced that you have done nothing effective about the Edgeworth series, by the way, because it is only now that I have found out the secret of the Knot of the blunder made by Chapman & Hall. There are six numbers of ‘Frank’—whereas I have one number of Frank .. no. 2. of Harry & Lucy [3] .. no. 3. of Rosamond .. & so on. Never mind. We shall have books enough & more than enough till we get to England. Your parcel [4] has not reached us yet—but I have the loan of a heap of excellent books from Mrs Powers .. not Swedenborgian, Arabel .. and through our regularity in reading eight or ten pages daily, we read a great deal in quantity.
So anxious I am about our dearest Henrietta & the mediterranean possibilities. [5] It will be terrible if she has to go, with those children even!. I dont quite understand what the post is, for which Surtees has been applying .. but I do trust & pray, whatever it may be, he may succeed. Whatever it may be, it must be better than barracks at Gibralter [sic] or barracks at Malta, each of which places is intensely hot in the summer & unproper as the residence of infants from England– They are expensive too—that’s another objection … more expensive than London is! Altham must be really handsome by what you say of his dark brown large eyes, & light long hair. I like that combination. I only hope Henrietta does not over work the child—it makes me a little uncomfortable to hear of his remarkable forwardness, & I ventured to say a word or two on the subject, for which, may she not be vexed with me! but really I could not help it. Penini never looked so robust as he does now. His cheeks are red as a pomegranate, & round too. He is fat & full of dimples. Just now he has come back from the fair with what he calls “a violin.” I tell him I rather prefer his gun & pistol– I feel rather more tenderly for his very drum. My soul is on edge with this divine instrument of his, which I admit however, “will look very pretty hung on the wall.”
If I once began to write politics, I never should end, and the “revolutionary Times” is writing for me I am happy to perceive, & to more probable results than any writing of mine. We are both sick at heart about the Crimea. At the same time, & apart from the dreadful amount of individual suffering, there will be good in the state of gangrene declaring itself. For I blame the ministry less than the system. The misfortune is that, after hanging Lord Aberdeen, you have probably done an injustice. Where everybody means well & everything turns out as it has, one may “despair of the republic” [6] indeed! A wholesome state of humiliation & European pillory .. will in the meanwhile be excellent for us—it will be opportunity for meditation, & necessity for reform, at once– Penini said yesterday .. “After all, mama, .. perhaps it would be better if the French & English left off fighting.” “Left off fighting” .. said I! . “how do you mean?” “Why, perhaps then, the Russians would leave off too. They might think then, ‘Perhaps the French love us’ .. and then they would go & kiss directly.” Angelical Penini! He had heard something of some of the French workmen being blown up in the mine, [7] & though he is immensely military on the grand scale, he cant bear the details of suffering. He has rather the Tuscan notions of war .. military music, plenty of trumpets, & flags flying, & guns with only powder “to make a noise & hurt not.”– [8] It is curious how the nations are “gathering like eagles” [9] to this war, certainly [10] —and I do not in the least wonder that the Newman street churches who declared three years ago that precisely such a state of things was imminent .. (“There must [11] be a general war,” said their Paris “angel’[’] [12] to me who was incredulous!) are more confirmed than ever in their views. At the same time I am not drawn over to them on this account– I believe their churches have communication with spirits .. but with fallible spirits (dont think I mean what are called evil spirits) & that they have partial glimpses of truth. They are too much in disaccord with scripture as I understand it, to impress me in any other way than this. Mr Jerves has returned from Rome, & I have heard him read (yesterday we saw him) various American letters. The bishop of Rhode Island [13] held a paper in his hand, upon which under his eyes & in a strong light, the spirits wrote—(understand without his instrumentality in any way.). Then, there are a presbyterian minister (a Mr Fields) & his sister, [14] who see & converse with the spirits, face to face & voice to voice. Mr Jerves goes to America in April, & will write me his own experience. The ‘raps’ continue at Mr Kirkup’s, but I answer for nothing there. Mr K’s deafness & unphilosophical habits being against much confidence.– Sophia Cottrell has a baby .. a boy! I am sorry it is a boy [15] —she was naturally anxious for a girl. Henrietta was so happy in that completion of wishes. I would give several curls from my Penini’s head for a little girl—that’s certain! but another boy I would scarcely accept. No other could be like Penini– And if he could, he would be impertinent. When I see how Robert has written an “Iliad in a nutshell,” [16] I am ashamed of my great scrambling m∙s.—he has sent you a letter as long as mine, and really I do feel half jealous of it. Let me diminish too, .. “small by degrees & beautifully less” [17] so as to emulate him—particularly as he has made me swear not to read a word of what he has written, which is quite irritating. We have just taken on Casa Guidi for another year from May, but dont be frightened .. we are coming nevertheless. It seemed unwise, considering everything, (the cheapness of the apartment with the rest) to drag ourselves up by the roots, leaving ourselves without a home in the fixed sense. Books & furniture—where were they to go?—and then I love the house & Robert indulges me in the love of it– We have applied for the bath .. & hope to succeed in getting it. [18] It will help us to let the apartment to advantage. Robert is afraid of the Paris winters for me. (he has had a fright about me you see) but a winter there, now & then, wont hurt me, even if a succession of them should prove too much—which it may. The railway will open this spring the whole way from Marseilles to Boulogne; & Florence will be by so much nearer to England. Tell me how dear Minny is—& what were the last accounts from Maddox. Tell me about you all—& of yourself chiefly, my darling Arabel. I am anxious about you. Write to me, will you dearest? Your notes through Mr Kenyon are welcome, but dont count as letters, remember.
[Continued by RB]
Dearest Arabel,—I dont think I have written one word to you for years—two or three! Now, why should I? As I never see a word in Ba’s letters I suppose them to be complete things, like whatever else she puts all her heart into—that she not only speaks for herself but for me. At the same time, I feel I could tell you at times many little matters she may, by a chance, leave out—for of course she can’t see herself as I see her, or know herself as I know her—can she? Be sure of one thing, however; that writing or not writing there is no one more constantly in both our thoughts, both our words—your dear & perfect goodness, the remembrance of you in a thousand ways, and the ever-renewed hope to see you soon again and get more to remember .. if our life must needs be spent with these unfortunate intervals of absence from you. Ba has been very far from well,—very ill, indeed, this winter: I could not have imagined that the cold could do her so much harm,—no previous winter here was ever so formidable: she was ill enough, for instance, when we left Paris & reached Genoa—but a week here seemed to set all to rights: now this winter began favorably,—till January came with horrible cold, and she broke down at once: that is over now, I can assure you: her cough is quite gone,—and she is far less reduced than one would expect. It is exquisite spring-weather at last, and I am quite easy as about the end of it all—only, I shall fear winter for the future, I promise you. I shall say nothing about her entire sweetness and patience under those sad coughing-fits,—you know her. All else has been favorable to us. Penini’s health, for instance, was never so visible & satisfactory: he is very dear & affectionate,—very clever, too—& more child-like than children of his age, I seem to think: certainly we have not polished off any of his natural bloom,—what he does, he does easily and at once—of course Ba tells you every thing about him, however. We have been altogether at home, of late. I went out of evenings at Rome,—being forced to do so—here I can do as I please, and I please, very decidedly, to keep the fireside. It will soon be extinguished, I suppose—and we shall be turning our faces to you & England, .. if .. you know the terrible “ifs,” which suggest themselves from time to time! I believe we shall manage it, however. And how do all the brothers thrive, I wonder? Henrietta’s household is as intimately known to me as this of our own, pretty nearly—but I can only hope that George and the others do well in these disastrous times. Ah, dear Arabel,—there are poor blunderers in the world beside our Italians, are there not? You can’t know,—you in England, in your own house, as it were, what it is to read day by day the opinions of the world, our natural enemy, on the broken prestige of “the Duke” and the “British arms” and all we have been so proud of! [19] Don’t let us talk of it. Did you hear of the danger we ran a week or two since from the floods? The Arno, which dwindles to a mere thread in dry weather, gets into a famous torrent with a few days’ rain,—and he was all but among us the last night of it: people provisioned themselves, on this side the river, as for a siege (the markets being on the other side) and bricked & plastered up all low windows, cellars’ gratings & the like: a boat plied in the quarter of Sta Croce,—with other delights, and I, for my own little adventure, could not cross the nearest bridge, the waters covering the foot of it—& when I did get home, there was Penini crying as if his heart would break at my impending fate! All the lower country is under water, the railway broken,—& our “comfort” is that at Rome they have suffered worse still. [20] It just occurs to me that you will want an eyeglass to read this scribble .. which I have been effecting as if solely for myself! But my allowance of paper was so limited—& even as it is, I have done so little justice to the great love of yours most affectionately, Robert–
Publication: EBB-AB, II, 127–132.
Manuscript: Gordon E. Moulton-Barrett.
1. Approximately dated by EBB’s reference to the birth of the Cottrells’ baby (see note 12) and by RB’s reference to the floods in Rome (see the fifth paragraph in letter 3522).
2. In Prime Lezioni (4 vols., Milan, 1833), translation by B.M. Mojon of Maria Edgeworth’s Early Lessons (1801). The Brownings bought Pen a copy in April 1855; see letter 3549. These volumes sold as lot 646 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A849).
3. “Harry and Lucy” by Maria Edgeworth was first published in Early Lessons (1801). Sequels appeared in 1813 and 1825.
5. Earlier in the month, at Plymouth, Surtees recorded the following: “Henrietta & the children arrived by the Express this evening. The men of the 1st. Somerset were this day asked by their Colonel, Lord Hinton to volunteer for the Mediterranean Stations, viz. Gibraltar, Malta, & the Ionian Islands for five years: in compliance with the directions on this subject from the War Office. Most of the officers and non-commissioned officers stepped to the front: but only 255. men were willing to go” (Surtees, 1 February 1855). Henrietta and Surtees remained in England.
6. Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares, V, 13, 3, trans. W. Glyn Williams.
7. The Morning Chronicle of 26 February 1855 carried the following item: “The affair of the mine, spoken of in a Russian despatch, is explained. A Russian countermine cut into a French mine on the night of the 4th. Only two men were killed” (p. 5).
8. Cf. The Tempest, III, 2, 135–136.
9. Cf. Matthew 24:28.
10. On 10 January 1855 Piedmont signed a treaty of alliance with France and England. The Daily News of 16 January reported that according to the terms of the treaty, Piedmont would provide “15,000 men of all arms,” while transportation costs would be “defrayed by France and England. A loan of 25 millions in each year the war lasts will supply the Sardinian government with the means … for keeping its army on a war footing” (p. 5). The Piedmontese forces left for the Crimea in April but saw no action until August when they participated in the battle of Chernaya.
11. Underscored three times.
12. i.e., Collings Mauger Carré; see letter 2982, note 13.
13. Thomas March Clark (1812–1903), Bishop of Rhode Island from 6 December 1854 until his death.
14. Emilia Ann Brewer (née Field, 1807–61) and her brother Henry Martyn Field (1822–1907), Presbyterian clergyman, scholar, and traveller, who was at this time owner and editor of The Evangelist, a New York publication.
15. Clement Cottrell, third son and fourth child of Henry and Sophia Cottrell, was born in Florence on 25 February. He died three weeks later on 17 March and was buried in the English Cemetery in Florence.
16. From the Latin proverb: “in nuce Ilias.” RB’s portion of this joint letter is written in an extremely minute, but entirely legible hand, on half of the final page.
17. Cf. Matthew Prior (1664–1721), “Henry and Emma” (Poems on Several Occasions, 1709), lines 427–430.
18. The Brownings’ lease on Casa Guidi was renewed annually for £25 on 1 May. Based upon the outline of a plan of the apartment made in 1914 and given to Kate Gowey—a founder of the San Francisco Browning Society—by Ellen Laura Centaro, the American owner of the palazzo, the Brownings were given the bath as part of their lease (see Browning Institute Studies, 1, 1973, 3–5).
19. RB refers to the mismanagement of the war; see letter 3514, note 4. By “the Duke,” he means the Duke of Wellington, England’s great military leader.
20. See the fifth paragraph in letter 3522.
___________________
