3536. EBB to John Ruskin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 115–116.
Florence–
March 17– [1855] [1]
I have your letter, dear Mr Ruskin. The proof is the pleasure it has given me .. yes, & given my husband .. which is better. “When has a letter given me so much pleasure?” he exclaimed after reading it– Will you write? I thank you much, much, for thinking of it, and I shall be grateful for anything you can tell me of dearest Miss Mitford. I had a letter from her just before she went, written in so firm a hand & so vital a spirit, that I could feel little apprehension of never seeing her in the body again. God’s will be done. It is better so, I am sure. She seemed to me to see her way clearly, & to have as few troubling doubts in respect to the future life, as she had as to the imminent end of the present.
Often we have talked & thought of you since the last time we saw you, &, before your letter came,—we had ventured to put on the list of expected pleasures connected with our visit to England, fixed for next summer, the pleasure of seeing more of Mr Ruskin. For the rest, there will be some bitter things too. I do not miss them generally in England,—& among them, this time, will be an empty place where I used always to find a tender & too indulgent friend.
You need not be afraid of my losing a letter of yours. The peril would be mine in that case. But among the advantages of our Florence .. the art, the olives, the sunshine, the cypresses .. & dont let me forget the Arno & mountains at sunset time .. is that of an all but infallible post office. One loses letters at Rome. Here, I think we have lost one in the course of eight years—& for that loss I hold my correspondent to blame. [2]
How good you are to me!– how kind!– The soul of a Cynic, at its third stage of purification, might feel the value of “gold” laid on the binding of a book by the hand of John Ruskin. Much more I, who am apt to get too near that ugly “stye of Epicurus” [3] sometimes! Indeed you have gratified me deeply. There was “once on a time” as is said in the fairy tales, .. a word dropped by you in one of your books,—which I picked up & wore for a crown. [4] Your words of goodwill are of great price to me always—and one of my dear friend Miss Mitford’s latest kindnesses to me was copying out & sending to me a sentence from a letter of yours which expressed a favorable feeling towards my writings. [5] She knew well .. she who knew me .. the value it would have for me, & the courage it would give me for any future work.
With my husband’s cordial regards,
I remain most truly yours
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Our American friends, [6] who sent to Dresden in vain for your letter, are here now, but will be in England soon on their way to America, with the hope of trying fate again in another visit to you. Thank you!– Also .. thank you for your enquiry about my health. I have had a rather bad attack on my chest (never very strong) through the weather having been colder than usual here—but now I am very well again .. for me!
Address: Angleterre viâ France. / John Ruskin Esqre / Denmark Hill / Camberwell / London. In unidentified hand: Missent to Walworth.
Publication: LEBB, II, 190–192.
Manuscript: The Ruskin Library.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. We count three letters lost since the Brownings first moved to Florence: one from Miss Mitford (see letter 2703) and two from Henrietta (see letters 2737 and 2847).
3. An allusion to Horace’s mocking description of himself as “a hog from Epicurus’s herd [or sty]” in his Epistles, I, iv, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough. EBB quoted the Latin in letter 2297.
4. In The Stones of Venice (3 vols., 1851–53), Ruskin writes: “But there is not more difference between the commonest doggrel that ever broke prose into unintelligibility, and the burning mystery of Coleridge, or spirituality of Elizabeth Barrett, than there is between the dissolute dulness of English Flamboyant, and the flaming undulations of the wreathed lines of delicate stone, that confuse themselves with the clouds of every morning sky that brightens above the valley of the Seine” (I, 184–185).
5. EBB had thanked Miss Mitford for this kindness in letter 3425. For Ruskin’s comments on EBB’s poetry, see SD1730 in vol. 20.
6. John Rollin Tilton and James Jackson Jarves.
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