3692. EBB to Anna Brownell Jameson
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 33–35.
3. Rue du Colysée.
Avenue des Champs Elysées.
Saturday. [15 December 1855] [1]
How pleasant, dearest Moña Nina, to hear you, though the voice sounds far! Try & come back to us soon, & let us talk—or listen rather to your talking. Why should’nt I too, have a sister of charity, [2] like others? I appeal to you.
Still, I have only good to tell you of myself– I am better through the better weather & through our arrival in this apartment, where, as Robert says, we are as pleased as if we had never lived in a house before. Well—I assure you the rooms are perfect in comfort & convenience & not large, but warm, & of a number & arrangement which exclude all fault-finding. Clean, carpeted: no glitter, nothing very pretty––not even the clocks—but with sofas & chairs suited to lollers such as one of us, .. & altogether what I mean whenever I say that an “apartment” on the continent is twenty times more really “comfortable” than any of your small houses in England. Robert has a room to himself too– It’s perfect. I hop about from one side to the other, like a bird in a new cage. The feathers are draggled & rough though. I am not strong though the cough is quieter, without the least doubt–
And this time also, I shall not die perhaps. Indeed I do think not.
That darling Robert carried me into the carriage, swathed past possible breathing, over face & respirator in woollen shawls. No, he would’nt set me down even to walk up the fiacre-steps, but shoved me in, upside down, in a struggling bundle—I struggling for breath—he accounting to the concierge for “his murdered man,” [3] (rather woman) in a way which threw me into fits of laughter afterwards to remember—“Elle se porte tres bien—elle se porte extremément bien. Ce n’est rien que les poumons.” [4] Nothing but lungs! No air in them—which was the worst! Think how the concierge must have wondered ever since about “cet original d’Anglais,” [5] & the peculiar way of treating wives when they are in excellent health. “Sacre!”
Kind Madme Mohl was here today, asking about you—& the Aïdës, male & female [6] —whom we did not see, being at dinner—& dear Lady Elgin came to the door in her wheel-chair.
We keep Penini (in a bed, this time,) in our bedroom. He was so pathetic about it, we would not lose him.
Write to us, keep writing to us till you come. I think much of you—wish much for you .. & feel much with you– May God bless you, my dear, dear friend. The frost broke up on thursday, and it is raining warmly today—but I cant believe in the possibility of the cold penetrating much into this house, under worse circumstances .. and I shall be bold, & try hard to begin writing next week.
Oh—George Sand. How magnificent that eighteenth volume is—I mean the volume which concludes with the views upon the sexes! [7] After all, & through all, if her hands are ever so defiled that woman has a clean soul.
On the magnetic subjects too, her “je ne sais” [8] is worthy of her. And yet, more is to be known, I am sure, than she knows.
I read this book so eagerly & earnestly that I seem to burn it up before me. Really there are great things in it.
And to hear people talking it over coldly—pulling it leaf from leaf.!
Robert quite joins with me at last. He is intensely interested, & full of admiration.
Now do write. With our united love, we are ever yours, be certain.
RB & EBB—
Remember not to agree to do the etching. [9] Pray be careful not to involve the precious eyes too much. How easy it would be to etch them out! Frightfully easy.
Address: Angleterre– / Mrs Jameson / Ealing / near London.
Publication: LEBB, II, 220–222 (as 17 December 1855).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. This letter is postmarked 16 December 1855, a Sunday.
2. A teasing reference to a cause that Mrs. Jameson was promoting; see letter 3688, note 4.
3. Cf. John Keats, “Isabella,” line 209.
4. “She is well—she is extremely well. It is nothing but the lungs.”
5. “That eccentric Englishman.”
6. Charles Hamilton Aidé (1826–1906) and his mother, Georgina (née Collier, 1790–1875).
7. In Histoire de ma vie (18, 7, 265–282), George Sand responds with repugnance to a friend’s advice that she reconcile with her husband by submitting herself to him as a mistress would: “This did not appeal to me in any way. Closeness without love is wretched to contemplate. A woman who courts her husband for the purpose of subduing his will is doing something analogous to what prostitutes do for bread and courtesans do for luxuries” (Story of My Life: The Autobiography of George Sand, a group translation, ed. Thelma Jurgrau, Albany, New York, 1991, p. 1009). Concluding her remarks on this subject, Sand writes: “Not only do I regard the lie in sensual love as a mortal sin—and I find that expression quite apt, because it implies that certain mistakes kill our very soul—but I regard as a mortal sin also the illusion that the senses come to some sort of fruition in such unfulfilled love. I say, and I believe, that one must love with one’s being, or live in complete chastity, no matter what the consequences. This will not impress men at all, I am well aware” (p. 1012).
8. “I do not know.” George Sand discusses her views on magnetism in Histoire de ma vie (18, 5, 175–185). She admits to being a sceptic and a “very uncooperative subject where direct magnetic influence is concerned,” but concludes: “For my part, I have at last come to understand—after torturing myself for some time with these problems—that there is no great shame in not being able to settle them satisfactorily. … Our weak spot lies in never daring to say ‘I don’t know.’ We are afraid of being written off as ignorant or lazy. You can easily be neither one, however, and esteem yourself no greater than the age in which you live” (Story of My Life, pp. 990, 993, and 995).
9. Mrs. Jameson did not follow this advice. In letter 3735 she writes that she has been “etching” and “correcting proofs.” She was probably about to begin work on the third edition of Sacred and Legendary Art, which was published in January 1857. In her preface to this edition she wrote: “The whole has been carefully revised; the references to the pictures and other works of Art corrected from the latest authorities, and many new examples have been added. All the Illustrations, which were formerly etched on copper have been newly etched on steel; two have been omitted, and three others, as more interesting and appropriate, have been substituted; and twelve new woodcuts have been introduced” ([p. 5]).
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