3530. EBB to Eliza Anne Ogilvy
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 99–103.
[Florence]
March 6 [1855] [1]
My dear friend, dearest Mrs Ogilvy, I cant bear that you should be the first to write, after all. Here is my vindication—I was on the point of replying to your letter instantly, when I was taken ill with the worst attack on the chest I ever suffered from in Italy—the consequence of the conjunction of more frost & a bitterer wind than are common to us. The cough was very wearing, & the night-fever most depressing .. & by the time there was a possibility of sleep for either me or poor Robert (who passed his nights in keeping up the fire & warming the coffee) of course I had become very weak & thin, & dull at letter-writing. Then the good news reached me through the papers, of the birth of your boy, [2] & I knew you were too happy to have time for wondering after negligent friends. Am I pardoned? Still, it vexes me that I should not have preceded you in a letter .. & after the birth of your child. I congratulate you warmly upon it– I dont feel the need of five children myself, [3] and yet, if I had them, I should be proud & happy– I have a decided taste for children as you are aware– Sophia Cottrell has just produced another … a boy .. which is a disappointment—small but healthy. She submitted to chloroform & suffered nothing– They all go to England in May for six months–
So do we– We shall linger at Paris in going,—& our plan has always been to spend the winter there—but Robert has taken such fright at my illness that he swears he will not trust me as far north as Paris– We shall see– Very probably the purse will run dry & we shall have no tide, after october, for going south– Casa Guidi we have taken on for another year––that is, till May twelvemonth– We both love Florence, & a house is cheaper here than elsewhere & we must have house-room for our furniture & books– The winter has been mild here in comparison to what it has been in other places—and even at Rome & Pisa they have suffered from our disadvantages– For the last six or seven weeks, with a great deal of wet, we have had a mild temperature– I am tolerably well,—only of course weakened, & obliged to have recourse to cod’s liver oil in order to appearing in England with a decent covering on bones. It has been an intense comfort to me to see my Penini with cheeks of rose all this time– I wish I could be grief-bearer for him always. You give a delightful idea of your Alexander—& all I ever wished for my child was the moral nature tenderly developped. As to genius, it is a good thing & a great thing, but we make more of it than God & his angels do– It does not imply happiness at any rate, to the individual gifted so– Penini has a great deal of quick perception & ready faculty—what more, remains to be seen. I should like you to look over a book of compositions, from five years old to five & a half or seven months, perfectly genuine & written in pencil by himself—& if you care to do it, write a word to my sister at 50 Wimpole Street, & she will let you have it– The book belongs to Robert’s father, & was lent to Arabel– You will know Penini by it, it is so very characteristic. Robert & I both cried out in horror at your question about cutting off the curls– What! break off the noses of our marble saints! We are not such roundheads. [4] No, no– When Penini is twelve years old, it will be time enough to think of such barbarisms, unless by that time the fashion of male heads should become less barbaric– Even as it is, young England is much given, I observe, to divide the hair seraphically, (& Miltonically) in the middle of the head—& Penini’s costume is admired I assure you—he was called “a little Vandyke” [5] but yesterday. He is just as you saw him, but with very short petticoats, & deep embroidered collars, when covered up to the throat as he has been this winter—(when it is warm we shall see the white shoulders again) & short embroidered trowsers– His hair has been cut several times, but only the ends to prevent splitting—& the long sweep of golden brown ringlets under the low-crowned black-velvet hat & feather, is very picturesque,—& you would’nt have the heart, if you saw him, to suggest cutting off a curl. You know I wonder at you, in the matter of Alexander!– But then he had been ill—& such things give us utilitarian ideas about broadcloth. Only, you always plotted a little against his infancy– You must have dreamt of a toga before he was born. Do you remember the blouse at two years old, & how I protested? Ah well– You have a relay of babies. I have but one, & must keep him as long as I can. Six years old– Yes, it’s dreadful. I grudge the six years old. He talks of the toys he is to have at “his Christmas” (as he calls his birthday) to unsympathizing years– (See how I have spelled ‘ears’ .. I grow distracted in thinking of them!)– But the child with all his cleverness is peculiarly infantine still, thank God .. which is remarkable considering that he is an only child. There’s nothing old-fashioned & overshrewd about him .. & as he is open & scarcely ever shy, it’s charming to hear him talk. He reads very well & with great animation .. sometimes, when a book’s amusing, twenty pages at a time. We go through heaps of books—childish books .. as high up, however, as Andersen & Grimm’s fairy tales which he enjoys much. Then he writes four lines a day in running hand! Robert gets him on beautifully with his music– He plays all the scales, sharp & flat—& he plays from the book some easy airs– Robert takes the greatest pains with the child—& to hear him play & count, shaking about his small heels under the piano, is quite funny. He has a decided vocation for music– Indeed as he says of himself, .. “I tan do anysing when I tly” .. there’s a want of nothing except of application—he’s like a bird for keeping still .. playing at omnibus for instance on the arm of my chair, while I hear him read .. but gentle & sweet– If I begin to scold .. “Oh, you darling pet Ba,” says he, “be dood.” What is one to say, .. half strangled in the little hugging arms?
Dear Louisa must be very forward in all ways– She always was forward, that child– Tell me if the children talk Italian with Gigia, or if the English has been too strong with them. Penini always calls himself an Italian, “io voglio essere Italiano” [6] —also he’s tremendous at Napoleonism, which he catches up from his Tuscans rather than from me, I beg to say. Poor England– We have the most depressing statements & opinions from different quarters– Dickens, Sir Edward Lytton, & the Examiner-editor [7] seem to have agreed that we are on the verge of a “first french revolution.” The people are said to be sullen & to have lost faith not only in their governments but their parliaments. In the midst of it all, down drops the Czar, by apoplexy or other strangulation– [8] What a coup de theatre! The times are turning to melodrama.–
I scarcely agree with you about Gerald Massey [9] —reading him simply in the Athenæum. He seems to me poetical, but effeminate—somewhat feeble really. Several of the A.S. sonnets on the other hand were intense– [10] I thought two of them fine, in particular. A[.] Tennyson’s ‘Light Brigade’ is ragged & unartistic for so great an artist—though, as Robert says, “with the germ in it of a great lyric.” [11] Read a new book of poems by Owen Meredith—meaning Robert Lytton—Sir Edward’s son; & tell me how you like them. There’s a good deal of unconscious sympathy rather than imitation in this young man, but, he will work his way clear & I expect excellent things from him as a true poet, .. give him time.
We shall have our books ready this summer for publication, I hope—but here are between five & six thousand lines in blots .. not one copied out .. & I am not nearly at an end of the composition even—Robert has at least all his rough work done– Tell me if you are doing anything .. you. Mrs Stuart has been here with all her children. He has been well & prosperous this winter,—giving lessons, & writing railroad papers– [12] Mrs Trollope’s baby [13] has been desperately ill with convulsions and recovered. Mr Costigan & his family have vanished to Leamington in a farewell dinner given to him by the English Florentines. [14] No letter this time for Gigia! It’s not my fault. We are very glad to hear of Mrs Ogilvy’s being better. I see you dont think of emigrating anymore! If I were you I wd put my five children into panniers & make the best of them. Keeping to the mother-soil for the sake of the children is being “par trop” [15] maternal. May God bless you & dear Mr Ogilvy say Robert & I—
your ever affectionate EBB.
Address: Mrs David Ogilvy / Peckham Rye— / Surrey.
Publication: EBB-EAHO, pp. 130–134.
Manuscript: Eton College Library.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Angus Edward Ogilvy (1855–1928), sixth child and third son of David and Eliza Anne Ogilvy, was born on 25 January. His birth was announced in The Times of 29 January 1855.
3. The Ogilvys’ first child, Rose (1844–45), had died in infancy. They now had five surviving children.
4. EBB refers to the iconoclasm of some Puritans during the English Civil War, the best known of whom was William Dowsing (1596–1668). He “was commissioned by the Earl of Manchester to implement a Parliamentary Ordinance of 28 August 1643. … The Ordinance … required the removal and/or destruction of all fixed altars, altar rails, chancel steps, and of ‘all crucifixes, crosses, and all images and pictures of any one of more persons of the Trinity, or of the Virgin Mary and all other images and pictures of saints or superstitious inscriptions in or upon all and every church.’” (John Morrill, “William Dowsing and the Administration of Iconoclasm in the Puritan Revolution,” The Journal of William Dowsing, ed. Trevor Cooper, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2001, p. 12). A further ordinance issued on 8 May 1644 restated and expanded the one of 1643, “specifically adding to the list of things to be taken away and/or defaced representations of angels … holy-water stoups and organs together with their cases and frames; and it explicitly speaks of images in stone, wood, glass and of images on church ‘plate or other things used … in the worship of God’” (p. 15).
5. Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641), Flemish painter who received an English knighthood in 1632, was known mainly for his portraits, especially those of Charles I and his court.
6. “I want to be an Italian.”
7. John Forster.
8. Czar Nicholas I (1796–1855) died of pneumonia on 2 March.
9. A review of War Waits, poems on the Crimean War by Thomas Gerald Massey (1828–1907), appeared in The Athenæum of 3 February 1855 (no. 1423, pp. 138–139).
10. Presumably, EBB saw the review of Smith and Dobell’s Sonnets on the War in The Athenæum of 13 January 1855 (no. 1420, pp. 45–47), which quoted six of the sonnets in full.
11. Alfred Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” which commemorated one of the principal actions at the Battle of Balaklava, was first published in The Examiner of 9 December 1854. An altered version appeared in Maud, and Other Poems (1855), and it was altered again for the second edition in 1856. Tennyson continued to tinker with the poem for many years (see Edgar Shannon and Christopher Ricks, “‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’: The Creation of a Poem,” Studies in Bibliography, 38, 1985, 1–44).
12. We have been unable to trace any such papers by James Montgomery Stuart. They may have pertained to current railroad construction in Italy being directed by English contractors (see letter 3671, note 2).
13. Beatrice (“Bice”) Trollope (1853–81), only child of Thomas Adolphus Trollope and his wife Theodosia (née Garrow).
14. According to the Passport Register in the State Archives of Florence, John Costigan was given permission to leave Florence on 4 December 1854. Travelling with him was his mother, Catherine, and sister, Elizabeth.
15. “Far too.”
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