3681. EBB to Arabella Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 4–8.
102. Rue de Grenelle. Fg St Germain.
Nov. 22. [1855] [1]
My ever beloved Arabel I get your letter & Henrietta’s on the same day—one in the morning, & one in the evening. Though I have some-thing especial to say to Henrietta, I break out at once to you—I cant help it. See how right I was in being uneasy about your silence—you were unwell—& not only that .. for I cant help suspecting that you are still not by any means well. [2] Now my dearest, dearest Arabel– What is the full sense of this? And have you taken the right remedies—those which were so useful to you before? Have you gone to your homeopathic man, & done what he bade you? As to love, .. I wont think you know the meaning of the word if you dont accede at once to my earnest entreaties on this point. Observe me, when I am unwell!,—Robert has only to speak, & I swallow the most horrible coarse preparation of cod’s liver oil you ever looked at or smelt at, every day, & in spite of my strongest disgust. Very different from the “refined” preparation I had in Italy! The coarser oil is considered more beneficial, & I have taken it for a fortnight regularly, just because Robert asked me. But you, if I ask and beg & pray, you wont take anything—you leave yourself to fall into all sorts of evil,—you sit in armchairs & use no remedies. Darling Arabel, do remember how I hang on you—how I love you! Dont forget me so far as not to remember yourself for good. It will be cruel. Write to me, dearest, & say that you have had recourse to the old means, & that you are really & truly better .. if it shall please God. Dear Minny too is suffering. Give her my best love, & say how I wish her to be well. In order to which, she must submit to lie the right time in bed—it’s the necessity & the duty at once. Oh—Arabel—mind you write to me. I shall be restless till I hear again—only you must tell the truth, or the use will be small. For myself I am really much better again. The immediate cause of my unwellness was simply, I think, going out on a raw cold day, catching cold, in fact—but it was a slight push which would scarcely have pushed me down if it had’nt been for the chest being previously in an irritable state– Let London bear the blame for that. This house is detestable enough—looking to the east—full of draughts. Still, we have kept the rooms warm, and, to be sincere, I dont lay much blame on its back. Only, if the cold came suddenly!—— Dearest Arabel, Robert has talked again & again of throwing up the house—but are we justified, or indeed, can we conveniently, throw money out of the windows, considering the present shape of our purse? Then, we have only three more weeks of it to bear, & we should bear it, it seems to me. Meantime we are very sulky & wont see anybody or do anything. But I am much better—quite myself again– Mrs Jameson who arrived from Italy yesterday thought me looking much as usual, & I dont cough now.
She remains in Paris a fortnight, then goes to London on business, & returns for the winter: it[’]s her plan for the present. It was a great pleasure to me to see her–
No indeed, Arabel, we never meditated living with the Ruxtons. I would’nt do it with anybody—and such an idea in relation to them, never once entered my head. I have heard nothing of Mary since I went in your fly to see her, when she told me she had some thoughts of going to Paris. By the way I might have managed the spiritual sèances delightfully under the same roof with her– But, as Robert would have blown it off directly of course, they would’nt have profited me much.
I am going to write to that dear Henrietta instantly, by the way, to set him in the right position in her eyes—for what do you think she has taken into her head .. that his poem about Lazarus [3] is written with irreverent & even blasphemous intentions against our Lord. Can you conceive of the poem striking any human being so? Here is a Gentile of that day giving his own impression of Lazarus!. The phenomenon of the raising of Lazarus is looked on from without? Can any one say rationally that the poem is not for the honor of the Lord? It seems to me wonderful that a dramatic intention should be so mistaken. People in general praise the poem as “sublime in conception,” which to my mind it is. Tell me honestly .. is there anything in it offensive to your mind? I rub my eyes—I can’t realize Henrietta’s objection. But oh, of course we are not in the least vexed with her about it, dear thing. She is right to speak the truth as she sees it—only I rub my eyes, as I say, and cant see it by any manner of means.
The Athenæum has treated us very shabbily, and, if Mr Chorley wrote that article—shame on him for it! [4] Did papa make a remark? And why need I ask? There has been an article in the Globe, with high admissions, & long drawbacks. [5] I shall be anxious for next saturday, & the Examiner & other saturday papers. [6] Translators are wrestling for Robert, in the service of the Revue des deux mondes,—but he is faithful in his preference to Milsand, [7] as he ought to be. M. Milsand often comes to tea—& Mrs Jameson was here last night & will be tonight. Sarianna & her father come nearly every evening too, & generally in the morning. They live at the end of this street—half a mile off though at least—& a little too far (past the Invalides) for the position to be fashionable. Otherwise, nothing can be better than their apartment, looking upon pretty gardens, due south aspect, & the rooms warm to a fault—drawing-room & dining-room, complement of bedrooms, kitchen &c .. twenty eight pounds a year– Furniture so cheap too, that Robert & I seriously thought, at one time, of taking our apartment unfurnished, & furnishing ourselves– It would not have cost us fifty pounds to furnish comfortably, and at the end of eight months we should not have paid more than we shall at the end of eight months on the furnished-apartment principle. We might have let the rooms afterwards, & had a place to return to from Florence, which would have rendered our journey to & fro much less expensive. But now, the bubble breaks—I am shut up for the winter, & we have been nailed here for two months of our time– It’s not worth while to think of it any more. Also, to get the use of fifty pounds at once is beyond us just now—so we need’nt talk of it. Only to people who have the use of their hands & purses, it’s by far the cheaper way of managing. Isa Blagden comes to Paris next month, & goes to Madrid, she says, in April, for three months, previously to going to Italy for ever. Ferdinando writes romantic letters to his wife on the very day he receives hers always, & is seriously aggrieved because she does’nt do the same. Such a discourse we heard from him this morning—“It was the way with women! they could cry—but they did not feel love or pleasure or pain deeply as men did! Out of sight, out of thought, always.” I could’nt help laughing, though he was seriously taking it to heart. I told him that the true charge was quite the other way. But Penini put up his head gravely from his drawing & observed—“Ferdinando ha ragione. Io lo credo anche. Le donne dimenticano sempre.” [8] Women “always forget” indeed! Was’nt that exquisite? Little Penini, by the bye, has taken a passion for drawing & reading, & for three days has given up every sort of play .. sitting with the book or the pencil from morning till night. Robert declared this morning that he would’nt allow it any more. The impulse to drawing & painting was, I think, from Nonno’s [9] instruction & sympathy. I will send you one of his heads, [10] which nobody touched, observe, or looked at till he brought it as a present. He is full of cleverness. Such a leap he has made in his lessons too—& so good, so perfectly good he is. Even Robert begins to wonder at him rather– His “own love” to you. He threatens you with a letter. He really “must write to Alibel.”
I was speaking of Wilson– It torments me to think what will become of us all, babies & the rest, as time goes on. There may be an Electra, to match Orestes, [11] if she comes back now, by next September—and even if she does’nt, and if there is’nt, how shall we manage presently? With the most affectionate intentions towards Wilson, what can we do for her or with her? I think sometimes that if he could get a good situation as game-keeper, with the Peytons for instance, it would be well for them to remain in England—but then he would be miserable there– It’s a problem to solve.
Read ‘Paul Ferrol’ by Mrs Clive. [12] The book has power & interest, though to my mind entirely unnatural in the conception of the chief character. Well—I am writing in a dislocated manner—out of joint in every sentence. You can scarcely know where you have me. Dearest Arabel, I beseech you to write soon & smooth me from my disorder a little. We do nothing here but grumble from morning till night but it wont last very long now, & we shall grow more amusing in time– I cant fancy myself in Paris, for my part. Penini has a ticket to go to the Invalides with Sarianna & her father, to see the reception of Napoleon & the King of Sardinia. [13] Ah– the poor Strattens! how deeply I do feel for them. [14] I would not for the world have been you to pay that visit—and yet, how right of you to go & bear it! Next time it will be better for you all. You do not realize to yourself how little I doubt that Mr Stratten is right in his impression—& that his daughter’s spirit is present to him very often. The obstacle is in h<im & n>ot in her, that there is no positive & patent intercourse; an obstacle not in his spiritual nature either, but in his physique. How hard that while the spirits yearn out towards us, we will not use the means God has opened to us, of communicating! There must be waiting till this snow of our prejudices has melted slowly away by much shining of the sun. A medium in the house would probably show the daughter in her place again & fill the parents hearts with joy. But no– <When does> George come back? You say nothing of d<ear>est Papa. Write to me darling Arabel, & write particularly of yourself & him– How did you find Trippy? My love to her. Robert’s dear love to you– Your own Ba.
Address: Angleterre / Miss Barrett / 50. Wimpole Street / London.
Publication: EBB-AB, II, 188–193.
Manuscript: Gordon E. Moulton-Barrett.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Here and in letters 3688 and 3693, EBB expresses concern about Arabella’s health, though nothing specific is named. In a letter of 27 December to Henrietta, Minny writes of Arabella’s “sweld legs and hands” (see SD1896). This condition was probably related to the one EBB had described in letter 3259 as “swellings on the glands,” which supposedly resulted from a “leech … upon an artery” when Arabella was a baby.
3. “An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician” (1855).
4. Chorley’s review of Men and Women in The Athenæum (17 November 1855, no. 1464, pp. 1327–28) opens with the claim that “the fifty poems … will make the least imaginative man think, and the least thoughtful man grieve. Who will not grieve over energy wasted and power misspent.” He charges RB with “obscurity” and “extravagant licence,” concluding that “the riches and the ability are there, but the employment and the expression of them seem to us, on the whole, more perverse, personal, and incomplete than they were formerly.” Chorley’s authorship of the review is confirmed in the marked file copy of The Athenæum now at City University (London). For the full text of this review, see pp. 293–296.
5. The reviewer of Men and Women in The Globe and Traveller of 16 November 1855 wrote that in spite of “Browning’s defects—want of melody—wilful mannerism—an apparent desire to startle his readers by paradox and verbal eccentricity—and a habit of making his meaning implicit not explicit … there are qualities in Browning’s works which are rarely to be met with in poetry. A lofty and courageous spirit … direct, eagle-eyed intellect, and a strange subtilty” (p. 1). For the full text of this review, see pp. 292–293.
6. Weekly periodicals were generally issued on Saturdays. The Saturday Review published its notice of Men and Women on 24 November 1855. The following Saturday, 1 December, reviews appeared in The Atlas, The Critic, The Examiner, The Leader, and The Literary Gazette. For the full text of all these reviews, see Appendix III.
8. “Ferdinando is right. I believe it too. Women always forget.”
9. “Grandfather’s.”
10. Preserved with this letter is a drawing of a man’s left profile; it is reproduced facing p. 80.
11. Ferdinando and Wilson’s son, Orestes Wilson Romagnoli (1855–1936), born on 13 October. In Greek mythology, Electra was the sister of Orestes.
12. Paul Ferroll: A Tale by V., the pseudonym of Caroline Clive (née Meysey-Wigley, 1801–73), was published in July 1855. The book’s title character murders his wife in order to marry the woman he loves. After eighteen years of marriage to the latter, he confesses his crime to her. In the interim he is portrayed as a model citizen despite committing another murder for which he is tried and acquitted.
13. “In November 1855 Victor Emmanuel and Cavour visited Paris. Both the King and his Prime Minister had been excommunicated for their anti-Papal policy, but Louis Napoleon and Eugénie nevertheless received them, and several of the French bishops took part in the festivities during the visit” (Jasper Ridley, Napoleon III and Eugénie, 1979, p. 407).
14. For the death of their daughter, Fanny, on 31 August 1855 (see letter 3602, note 6).
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