3630. EBB to Anna Brownell Jameson
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 266–269.
13. Dorset Street.
Tuesday morning. [18 September 1855] [1]
My dearest Moña Nina, it seemed so hard to sit down & write you a “sanitory [sic] letter,” as you said! Unless indeed on homœopathical principles. England has been heavy on me as usual––and when one cant be lively, thought I, why carry one’s vexations to a dear friend vexed enough without one? Bad reasoning perhaps! Certainly I like to have letters from you, even when you write sad ones. But the feeling, reasonably or not, works sometimes—& then, one gets disinclined to writing for one’s own part—there’s the truth!–
In about a fortnight we shall be going back to the continent .. to Paris for the winter: and how I long for the hope of your being there too! which you wont,—I smell the blood of the misfortunes through wide nostrils like Cas[s]andra’s own– [2] If Madame de Goethe winters in Italy she will want your sunshine besides, and you will stay with her, & I shall miss you—there will be the end for me, my dear, dear friend!–
Now I have two dear affectionate letters to thank you for. Believe that both of them were precious to me. Madame de Goethe will do you good—I know that. For the rest … do you know I have so strong a feeling that I do not dare speak. You have a heart very heroic in its tenderness. Implacable perfection is not my ideal. God Himself who alone has a right to be just, is merciful: & the human being who presumes & pretends to be merely just, is sure to sin against the first principles of justice .. to begin with– Can you fancy a sucking child in a judge’s wig? Do we not laugh at the idea?—& do not the angels laugh .... There I stop myself,—but I go on feeling. And I should feel the same, even if you were proved guilty of some awful crime, .. you who have been more than a friend or a sister!–
Take comfort my dearest friend, & let that great, tender heart be its own consolation, as it may well be– After all, if you had done the least wrong in the quarter you know, you would have suffered more. [3] Think of that–
As for me, there is no hope for me at all– My child has been seen .. was looked at steadily .. & the question asked, “whose child is that?” —“Ba’s child,” said one of my brothers. “What is the child doing here”? Not a word more—not a natural movement or quickening of the breath. Say nothing of this when you write. It’s all too painful.
How my darling Arabel was hurried away from me woefully against her will, a fortnight ago, to Eastbourne. And my married sister who was planning to come up for a week to see me, found herself suddenly in a condition requiring great care, to keep off the accident which happened last winter. [4] I had hoped that we might take Eastbourne en route to Paris, & remain there a few weeks,—but after all we find it impracticable—so I wrap myself in a London fog in a sort of sullen content– The comfort is that, my sweetest Penini who had seemed to pine & look pale, is reviving .. & indeed quite well just now. Such a seraphical disposition that child has! such an instinct for sentiment whether of the heart or fancy. I ask myself how he will ever harden into man’s life.
Then we are getting on prosperously with Robert’s work which will be out in November at farthest, in two volumes, under the name of “Men & Women” .. which I think it deserves, from its extraordinary variety of life, in situation & character. I am full of hope about it, & belief in the power displayed in it—and it seems to me that the improved clearness of expression will give it a better chance than any of his former poems, with the exoteric class of readers– Mr Fox of Oldham, & Mr Forster have read most of the proofs, & are very favorable in their verdict. Fox especially, has been intensely pleased. Forster makes more drawbacks .. considers that obscurities remain—but looks forward to a “success” in spite of them. How I shall long to hear your thought! There are many art-poems, [5] as well as poems of passion & description. You will like some if not others, I am very certain. The first volume has been sent in proof to our friend Milsand, for the use of the “Revue des deux mondes,” .. and he has used a word in answer which I must whisper to you .. “colossal”– [6]
As for me, will you wonder much if I add that I have not written a line in addition to my own work since I left Florence. Indeed I feel sometimes as if my right hand was shattered for some time—I must try however,—when I get back to Paris–
Your friends are no longer in our world. London is become as a place for camels. Everybody has gone away, & with the rest, dear Mr Kenyon more than a month ago to the isle of Wight, where his brother & sister are to outstay the cholera at Vienna, I understand. We have dined lately with Mr Forster, meeting Macready– Also, Robert went down to Chelsea on sunday evening, to talk with Carlyle, who came up from Lord Ashburnham [7] on purpose to have .. Robert for an hour or two—a council of two, likely to involve very summary damnations, I thought—but I understand that Carlyle chiefly confined himself to Keats, & damned of course alone. The Procters have been at Malvern, & are now at Norwood. I heard accidentally, since being in London, that Lady Byron had become a Swedenborgian. I wonder if that is true– [8]
As to the “spirits” .. dearest Moña Nina, you have probably heard, or you will certainly hear a good deal in reference to us and the Ealing manifestations. I will say briefly now that a good deal has happened which gave me at the time much pain & still fills me with regret—but whenever I see you, I will tell you more—& meanwhile you will not (for dear love to me) refer in your letters to me to anything I have said on the subject. In fact “spirits” are tabooed in this house. I never could understand why, considering different idiosyncrasies, & unequal perceptions of truth, we should not all consent to tolerate the differing opinions of one another: but this is difficult, difficult, in practice. Thinking Robert wrong in his view, I could certainly do that for him, which (thinking me very wrong), he cant do for me, .. or at least will not. So we keep now to the many subjects we agree upon entirely.
To you I say, that the least doubt does not remain to me of the verity of a certain class of most wonderful facts, & that in the absence of any physical solution, I stand firm before the spiritual hypothesis. Not only the Ealing phenomena constrain me to this– On all sides of us testimonies would crowd, if there were but a general tolerance– Young Lytton told me lately that Lord Stanley said to Sir Edward Lytton he thought it highly desireable for a committee, on the part of government, to consider the question. To which Sir Edward answered, that there were not a handful of men to be found, of moral courage enough to come to a conscientious decision on the unpopular side of the argument.
This is too probable—& thus, the subject falls into the hands of fanatics, or at best of unphilosophical thinkers, who mix it up with impostures & absurdities.
May God bless you, dear dearest Moña Nina–
Robert’s best love with that of
your most truly & affectionately
attached Ba–
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. Date provided by EBB’s reference to Arabella’s departure for Eastbourne “a fortnight ago” (she left on 30 August) and to Henrietta’s decision against travelling to London (see letter 3627).
2. Cf. Æschylus, Agamemnon, lines 1090–1092, trans. Herbert Weir Smyth; cf. also, “Wine of Cyprus,” XVIII, 1–4.
3. Considering EBB’s remark at the end of the preceding paragraph, this passage doubtless refers to Mrs. Jameson’s sisters, who were financially dependent on her.
5. Poems such as “Andrea del Sarto,” “Fra Lippo Lippi,” and “Old Pictures in Florence.”
6. See the end of the first paragraph of letter 3628, which is Milsand’s draft. In the first paragraph of letter 3639, RB quotes the phrase where the word occurs as he actually received it: “il y a là du colossal” (“there is something colossal about it”).
7. Sic, for Ashburton; see letter 2960, note 10.
8. There is no evidence that Byron’s wife ever became a Swedenborgian; according to one biographer, her daughter-in-law claimed that “Without apparently feeling any hostility to the Church of England, she was certainly inclined to dispute its supremacy; and she had a strong leaning towards the Free Churches” (Ethel Colburn Mayne, The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron, 1929, p. 441).
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