3550. EBB to Anne Braun
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 152–155.
Florence–
May 13. [1855] [1]
My dearest Madme Braun,
You have classed me & ticketed me before now I think, as among the ungrateful of the world—yet I am grateful, grateful, grateful! When your book came (how very kind you were to send it to me!) [2] & when I had said so some five times running, .. in came somebody who was fanatico per la .. Roma, [3] & reverential in proportion for Dr Braun, who with some sudden appeal to my sensibility .. the softer just then that I was only just recovering strength after a sharp winter attack .. swept the volume off the table & carried it off out of the house to study the contents at leisure. I expected it back the next week but it lingered– And I really had’nt the audacity to write to you & say, .. “Thank you, but I have looked as yet simply at the title-page.” Well—at last it comes home—and I turn the leaves .. examine, read, approve .. like Ludovisi & the Belvedere [4] with a double pleasure of association, & become qualified properly to thank you & Dr Braun from Robert & myself for this gift to us & valuable contribution to archæological literature. I am only sorry I did not get to Rome after the book—it would have helped my pleasure so—holding up the lanthorn in dark places. So much suggestiveness in combination with so much specific information, makes a book (or a man) worth knowing.
Of late, other hindrances have come to writing this, the shape of various labours of Hercules … which fall sometimes to Omphale as well. [5] We go to England in a week or two or three—and we take between us some sixteen thousand lines, eight on one side, eight on the other, which ought to be ready for publication– I have not finished my seventh thousand yet– Robert is at his mark. Then, I have to see that we have shoes & stockings to go in, & that Penini’s little trowsers are creditably frilled & tucked. Then, about twenty letters lie by me waiting to be answered in time, so as to save me from a mobbing in England. Then, there are visits to be paid all round in Florence, to make amends for the sins of the winter—visiting like almsgiving, being put generally in the place of virtue, when the latter is found too inconvenient– Altogether, my head swims & my heart ticks before the day’s done, with positive weariness– For there are Penini’s lessons, you are to understand, beside the rest– And “between the intersections,” [6] cod liver oil to be taken judiciously in order to appear before my English friends with due decency of corporeal coverture.
Well now—do tell me .. shall you go to England, you? You will see my reasons for being very interested. Oh—I hope you wont be snatched away to Naples, or nailed down at Rome. Railroads open from Marseilles—the exhibition open at Paris! Surely, surely, Dr Braun will go to Paris to see the exhibition. His conscience wont let him off. Tell him too, from me, that in London he may see a spirit if he will go for it– I have a letter from a friend [7] who swears to me he has shaken hands with three or four … “softer, more thrilling than any woman’s hand” … “tenderly touching” .. think of that!– The American ‘medium’ Hume [8] is turning the world upside down in London with this spiritual influx–
Let me remember to tell you. Your paper was in the Athenæum– [9] Therefore, if you were not paid for it, it was the more abominable. Robert saw it with his own eyes, printed. When I heard from you that you had heard nothing, I mentioned the circumstances to Mrs Jameson in a letter I was writing to her, and I do hope she has not neglected since to give you some information at least. You are aware probably of the excellent effect with which that kind Mrs Procter has managed a private subscription in behalf of dear Mrs Jameson, [10] in consequence of which she will be placed in circumstances of ease for the rest of her life. Fanny Kemble nobly gave a hundred pounds towards this good purpose– Mrs Jameson spoke in her last letter of coming to Italy this summer, and I dare say we shall have the ill-luck to lose her, miss her, cross her en route perhaps.
We hear from dear Mr Kenyon & from Miss Bayley—each very well & full of animation– If it were not for them, & my dear sisters, .. & one or two other hands I shall care to clasp (beside the [‘]spirits’!!!) I would give much not to go north. Oh—we Italians grow out of the English bark—it wont hold us after a time. Such a happy year I have had this last! I do love Florence so!– When Penini says .. “Sono Italiano—voglio essere Italiano”, [11] I agree with him perfectly.
So we shall come back of course, if we live—indeed we leave this house ready to come back to, meaning, if we can, to let our rooms simply.
Little Penini looks like a rose, & has, besides, the understanding & sweetness of a creature “a little lower than the angels.” [12] I dont care any less for him than I did, upon the whole.
I hear the Sartoris’s think of Paris for next winter & mean to give up Rome. She has been a good deal secluded until quite lately, they say, on account of her father’s death & brother’s worse than death, [13] .. which may account in part for any backwardness you may have observed. As to her “not liking Dr Braun” … do you believe in anybody’s not liking Dr Braun? I dont .. quite. It’s more difficult for me to “receive” .. than the notion of the spiritual hand .. “tenderly touching.”
Do you know young Leighton .. of Rome? If so, you will be glad of this wonderful success of his picture bought by the queen, [14] & applauded by the academicians—& he not twenty five.
The lady who brought your book did not leave her name here, so of course she did not mean to be called on.
Our kindest regards to dear Dr Braun, & repeated truest thanks to both of you– Among his discoveries & inventions, [15] he will invent some day an Aladdin’s lamp, & then you will be suddenly potentates, & vanish in a clap of thunder.
Till then, think of me sometimes, dearest Madme Braun—as I do of you, & of all your great kindness to me at Rome.
Ever your affectionate
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Address: À Madame / Madame Braun / Casa Tarpeia / Roma.
Publication: LEBB, II, 195–198.
Manuscript: St. Joseph College.
1. Year provided by EBB’s reference to Leighton’s painting; see note 13.
3. “Fanatical for .. Rome.”
4. In The Ruins and Museums of Rome (Brunswick, 1854), Emil Braun devotes a chapter each to the Villa Ludovisi and the Belvedere. The latter, more specifically, the Cortile di Belvedere (“Courtyard of the Belvedere”), located in the Vatican, was “built from the designs of Bramante. This court is an octagonal space, of unequal sides, surrounded by an open portico, with 4 small cabinets in the corners, which contain some of the most celebrated examples of ancient art” (Murray’s A Handbook for Travellers in Central Italy, 1853, part II, p. 164). The Villa Ludovisi, located near the Porta Pinciana, was built in the seventeenth century by Cardinal Lodovico Ludovisi and comprised three casinos, one of which housed “a fine collection of antique sculpture” that included “the beautiful colossal head of Juno, well known as the Ludovisi Juno” (part II, pp. 239–240). The smallest of the three, and the only one that survives today, features the “celebrated fresco of Aurora, by Guercino, representing the goddess in her car driving away Night and scattering flowers in her course” (part II, p. 240). The villa was broken up in the 1880’s, the Buoncompagni family retaining the small casino as a residence.
5. In Greek mythology, Omphale was a legendary Queen of Lydia who acquired Hercules as a slave from the god Hermes.
6. Cf. Samuel Johnson’s definition of “network” in The Dictionary of the English Language (1755).
7. James Jackson Jarves, as identified in letter 3552.
8. Recalling his arrival in London on 9 April 1855, Home wrote: “It soon became known that I was in England, and in less than a month I had more engagements than I could well fulfil” (Daniel Dunglas Home, Incidents in My Life, New York, 1863, p. 96).
10. When it became known that Mrs. Jameson’s husband had left her nothing in his will (see letter 3524, note 5), her “faithful friends collected a sum sufficient to buy an annuity of £100 a year, and Mrs. Procter presented her with a purse containing £70 surplus” (Anna Jameson: Letters and Friendships (1812–1860), ed. Mrs. Steuart Erskine, 1915, p. 285).
11. “I’m Italian—I want to be Italian.”
12. Cf. Psalm 8:5.
13. Mrs Sartoris’s father died on 12 November 1854 (see letter 3490, note 11). Her “brother’s worse than death” may refer to his financial problems, which led to the sale of his library on 12 May 1855. An advertisement in The Times of that day announced: “Messrs. Foster and Son will sell by auction … the remaining library of J.M. Kemble, Esq., the celebrated Anglo-Saxon scholar, consisting chiefly of works illustrative of the Anglo-Saxon, Teutonic, and Scandinavian languages and literature” (p. 13). John Mitchell Kemble (1807–57), philologist and historian, was the elder brother of Fanny Kemble and Adelaide Sartoris. He attended Trinity College, Cambridge, and became a member of the Apostles, the famous literary and social group that included Tennyson, Hallam, and Maurice, among other notables. According to the ODNB, Kemble’s Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici (6 vols., 1839–48) displayed his “mastery of Anglo-Saxon” and furnished the material for his “most popular major work, The Saxons in England (2 vols., 1849).”
14. “Cimabue’s Madonna Carried in Procession through the Streets of Florence” was purchased by Queen Victoria after its success at the Royal Academy exhibition in 1855. Leighton would turn 25 on 3 December 1855.
15. The Morning Post of 16 October 1854 mentioned one of these in a brief item concerning commissions from the Papal government for the coming Paris Exposition: “Dr. Braun, a Prussian, who, with a certain composition of his own invention, is to execute several ancient monuments, such as the Colosseum, the Pantheon, &c., on a small scale” (p. 5).
___________________
