3548. EBB to Julia Martin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 141–145.
Florence.
April 20– [1855] [1]
My dearest Mrs Martin, Having nine lives as I say, I am alive again & prosperous– Thanking you for wishing to know. People look at me & laugh—because it’s a clear case of bulbous-root with me .. let me pass (being humble) for an onion. I was looking miserable in February, & really could scarcely tumble across the room, & now I am up on my perch again, .. nay, even out of my cage-door. The weather is divine. One feels in one’s self why the trees are green. I go out, walk out, have recovered flesh & fire .. my very hair curls differently– “Is I, I?” I say with the metaphysicians– There’s something vital about this Florence air, for, though much given to resurrection, I never made such a leap, in my life before after illness. Robert & I need to run as well as leap. We have quantities of work to do, & small time to do it in– He is four hours a day engaged in dictating to a friend of ours who transcribes for him, and I am not even ready for transcription .. have not transcribed a line of my six or seven thousand– We go to England or at least to Paris next month, but it cant be early– Oh—may we meet you. Our little Penini is radiant, & altogether we are all in good spirits. Which is a shame you will say, considering the state of affairs at Sebastopol. Forgive me. I never, at worst, thought that the great tragedy of the world was going on there. It was tragic—but there are more chronic cruelties & deeper despairs—<ay, & more exasperating wrongs!– For the rest> [2] we have the most atrocious system in Europe, & we mean to work it out .. oh, you will see .. your committees nibble on, & this & that poisonous berry is pulled off leisurely while the bush to the root of it remains, & the children eat on unhindered on the other side. I had hoped that there was real feeling among politicians– But no—we are put off with a fast day. [3] There, an end! I begin to think that nothing will do for England but a good revolution, and a “besom of destruction” [4] used dauntlessly– We are getting up our vain-glories again, smoothing our peacock[’]s plumes .. we shall be as exemplary as ever by next winter .. you will see.
Meanwhile .. dearest Mrs Martin, .. that you [5] should ask me about “Armageddon’[’] is most assuredly a sign of the times. [6] You know I pass for being particularly mad myself, & everybody, almost universally, is rather mad, as may be testified by the various letters I have to read about “visible spirit-hands,” pianos playing themselves, and flesh & blood human beings floating about rooms in company with tables & lamps– Dante has pulled down his own picture from the wall of a friend of our’s [7] in Florence, five times, signifying his pleasure that it should be destroyed at once as unauthentic .. (our friend burnt it directly <which will encourage me to pull down mine by Read>. [8] ) Savonarola also has said one or two things—& there are gossipping guardian angels, of whom I need not speak– Let me say though, that nothing has surprised me quite so much as your enquiring about Armageddon, because I am used to think of you as the least in the world of a theorist, and am half afraid of you sometimes, and range the chairs before my speculative dark corners, that you may not think or see “How very wild that Ba is getting!” Well—now, it shall be my turn to be sensible & unbelieving. There’s a forced similitude certainly in the etymology, between the two words—but if it were full & perfect I should be no nearer thinking that the battle of Armageddon could ever signify anything but a great spiritual strife—the terms, taken from a symbolical book, are plainly to my mind symbolical, and Dr Cumming & a thousand mightier doctors could not talk it out of me, I think. [9] I dont, for the rest, like Dr Cumming—his books seem to me very narrow. Is’nt the tendency with us all to magnify the great events, of our own time, just as we diminish the small events? For me, I am heretical in certain things. I expect no renewal of the Jewish Kingdom for instance. And I doubt much whether Christ’s “second coming” will be personal. The end of the world is probably the end of a dispensation. What I expect is, a great development of Christianity in opposition to the churches, and of humanity generally in opposition to the nations, and I look out for this in much quiet hope. Also &, in the meanwhile, the war seems to me just & necessary—there is nothing in it to regret, except the way of conducting it, which on our side has certainly been de-
<…> [10]
Henrietta has gone back to Taunton to our great joy. Dear little Altham has been very ill at Plymouth with gastric fever, but was convalescent when she wrote. I have written to Alfred at Marseilles to beg him to come here if he can– It would be a shame to lose Florence & Italy, when at arm’s length from them– In Wimpole Street they seem to be all well– Papa had been out when the weather would let him.
I wonder if you have the shadow of our weather, .. by the way. It has been what is called a bad winter at Florence certainly—but except in January there has been little persisting cold—much wet—with changeable winds. On the first days of April however the year seemed to leap (two feet joined, as the French say) into summer. We left off fires from then .. we .. who linger the last over fires, of all Florentines! Here we sit in the evenings, with both windows wide open till nine or ten!– Think of that. I wait till six to go out walking, because of the heat!—— And only April!
After all, I hold that Florence is the best place in the world, just as I hold Penini to be the best child. Ah—such a darling, that child is! He told me the other day with such a shining paternal face .. “My little dearest Ba, when we get a garden I will have a spade, and dig &
<…>
meet this summer? Aunt Bell [11] is with the Reynolds now, & goes to Wimpole Street early in May. Does’nt it make dear Mr Martin smile grimly when he thinks of all editors and subs, and snobs, and nobs in England, eating their bitter words about Louis Napoleon <at the Lord Mayor’s dinner> [12] to the tune of ‘Rule Britannia’. “Received with immense enthusiasm” says our telegraph, on the subject of the English visit. [13] How strange! How romantic!– how poetical! how incredible!–
Do you know that Harriet Martineau is in a dying state, it is supposed, from enlargement of the heart, to a great extent? [14]
Write to me soon again, & tell me as much of both of you as you can put into a letter–
May God bless you always .. with Robert’s warm regards, both of you think of me as
your ever affecte
Ba.
Address: À Madame / Madame Martin / Pau / Basses Pyrenées / France.
Publication: LEBB, II, 192–194 (in part).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Bracketed passage is interpolated above the line.
3. “A Day of Solemn Fast, Humiliation, and Prayer,” proclaimed by Queen Victoria on 28 February and observed on 21 March. In her proclamation, the Queen stated the purpose of the day: “So both we and our people may humble ourselves before Almighty God, in order to obtain pardon of our sins, and in the most devout and solemn manner send up our prayers and supplications to the Divine Majesty, for imploring His blessing and assistance on our arms, for the restoration of peace to us and our dominions” (The Times, 1 March 1855, p. 6).
4. Cf. Isaiah 14:23.
5. Underscored three times.
6. Cf. Matthew 16:3.
7. Seymour Kirkup.
8. Bracketed passage is interpolated above the line.
9. On the “Day of Solemn Fast, Humiliation, and Prayer,” 21 March, John Cumming (1807–81), tireless prognosticator of the Second Coming, delivered a sermon at Crown Court, his church in Covent Garden, in which he declared that Sebastopol in Greek meant the same thing as Armageddon in Hebrew—i.e., “August City.” Finding this to be a “striking” coincidence, he was led “to believe that the last times are opening out—that nations will get worse before they are better, and yet more terrific wars usher in the advent of the Prince of Peace” (The Morning Chronicle, 22 March 1855, p. 3). Subsequent to the publication of Cumming’s sermon, various letters to the editor appeared in the press disputing an etymological connection between Sebastopol, which in Greek means “City of Augustus,” and Armageddon, which in the original Hebrew is “Harmagedon” and means “Hill of Megiddo.”
10. Part of the sheet has been excised, affecting text here and below.
11. i.e., Aunt Bummy (Arabella Sarah Graham-Clarke).
12. Bracketed passage is interpolated above the line. In 1855 the Lord Mayor of London was Francis Graham Moon (1796–1871), printseller and publisher, who received a baronetcy for his reception of the French Emperor and Empress (ODNB).
13. Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie paid a state visit to England from 16 to 21 April 1855. After spending their first few days as guests of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at Windsor Castle, they proceeded to London. On the afternoon of 19 April they left Buckingham Palace for the Guildhall in the City where they attended a reception and dinner in their honor hosted by the Lord Mayor. With many nobles and cabinet ministers present, the Emperor delivered a short speech. At its conclusion “a loud cheer was raised by those who were in a position to hear its purport, which was taken up and re-echoed by the occupants of the remoter parts of the Hall” (The Times, 20 April 1855, p. 8). The Times also described the route taken from the palace to the City of London, and remarked on the great number of spectators and their enthusiasm for the French visitors: “As for cheering, it ran along on either side of the Emperor’s carriage—an accompanying wave of sound which rose high over that of his trampling escort” (p. 7).
___________________
