3697. EBB to Julia Martin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 46–48.
3. Rue du Colyssée– [sic]
Avenue des Champs Elyssées– [sic]
19. Dec– [1855]
[1]My dearest Mrs Martin I was very glad to have news of you, and I know you will be the same to hear of me—for I am better, (after having been worse) & can announce to you our triumphant removal from the house in the air, in which I suffered so much. Your letter was too late with it’s good advice. Robert had seen & taken this apartment just out of the Avenue Ch. Elyssées, just round the corner, .. & catching the sun– First floor, the right complement of rooms, & every corner as warm as possible—so that I can move about & dine in the dining room with my husband, which is a comfort to both of us. No glitter, nor a patch of yellow satin—but carpets & conveniences, & warmth I repeat—and Robert & I walk up & down, “as if,” says he, “we had never lived in a house before”! Moreover the weather changed the very day we moved, so that my only risk was of being suffocated under the swathing of woollen shawls, in which I was mummified for the nonce. For days it has been unseasonably warm—moist & close. Today it begins to freeze again—but the house stands steadily against the cold– We are fortunate in our house. So that I need not speak of being much better, much– I have quite revived– And if it would but be good enough not to freeze too hard …
Well—you hear of the new senators, Ingres, Aubert [sic], Delavigne– [2] That is excellent, is it not? “They do these things better in France”, [3] —& Louis Napoleon does not spoil them, let the Institute traduce him as it may.
Now tell me .. have you provided yourself with George Sand’s memoirs– The latter volumes I have rather burnt up with my eyes & soul, than read, they have so intensely interested me. Remember me in the eighteenth volume, much of which seems to me magnificent. [4] People are horribly malicious & disappointed about this work, simply because it is’nt wicked as they expected—but if you get over that, .. get over the suppression of facts which she begins by telling you her resolution to suppress, .. your opinion of the woman’s extraordinary intellect & height of general nature must certainly be raised by it. She is wonderful, yes, & noble– Some things she does not see—but, even so, she reasons in the dark with a surprising degree of lucidity–
I heard from Wimpole street some days ago, but there was nothing new, except that I fear Arabel is not quite as strong as usual just now, which makes me anxious. She maintains however that it is nothing, & that she is better, moreover.
Mrs Sartoris came down suddenly one evening on us, to inaugurate our new rooms, looking like a gorgeous St Cecilia, [5] with her green velvet dress & great singing eyes & brow. And really she talks as well as she sings, or better, some people might think– I like her, too, otherwise– With her came young Leighton, the successful painter of the English exhibition this year, whose first picture the queen bought for six hundred pounds—you remember? [6] He is full of talent in his art—but I always must doubt that there will be a development of the highest kind of genius, where there is so little humility–
As you spoke of having heard that “Mrs Trollope was in her dotage” .. probably from Sir David Brewster’s letter on the subject of a séance at Ealing, [7] I must tell you that I heard some indignation expressed on the subject only two days ago,—Sir Edward Lytton maintaining, his son told me, that to his knowledge & in his presence, Sir David was as much impressed as anybody, & subsided to his present opinions after a full time for prudent consideration– Not that he may not conscientiously believe what he says now, but that he had no right, having been startled & shaken himself, to refer as he does to the feelings of another person on an identical occasion– In fact these scientific men can be & are apt to be, very ignoble. Mrs Trollope is no more in her dotage than she ever was– Of that you may be quite certain– Her son, who is a hard, shrewd, sceptical Nemesis-of-faith [8] sort of man, was with her, & equally convinced—a fact, which though of no weight otherwise, goes to prove that dotage is no necessary part of conviction. Layard (of Nineveh) passed through Paris from Florence the other day & reported to Lady Cowley that the whole place was moved by the strange things done under the mediumship of Hume– But he is dying fast, they say–
Charles Dickens lives nearly opposite to us,—&, as Robert knows him, I shall see him .. which will please me. He is nearly the only one of the great men of England whom I have not seen now—he & Leigh Hunt– Thackeray is filling moneybags in America & drinking in disgust of the people, it seems. [9] Dearest friend, tell me how you both are, & whether you find pleasant people & cheerful days at Pau this year as usual. I have come to hate Christmas wishes—they sound so hopeless somehow—too full of memory, for much hope! I like the time only for the excuse of buying toys for Penini. Still, I wish the best & happiest for you now & always–
May God bless both of you dearest Mr & Mrs Martin. Robert’s warm regards.
Your ever affectionate
Ba
Address: À Madame / Madame Martin / Poste Restante / Pau / Basses Pyrenées.
Publication: Sydney Musgrove, “Unpublished Letters of Thomas de Quincey and Elizabeth Barrett Browning,” Auckland University College Bulletin, 44 (1954), 22–25 (in part).
Manuscript: Auckland Public Library and Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780–1867), painter; Daniel François Esprit Auber (1782–1871), musician; and Germain Delavigne (1790–1868), playwright. All three artists were Bonapartist in sympathy; Ingres painted an apotheosis of Napoleon I for the new Emperor in 1853 and was rewarded by being made a Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur. Auber composed music for Napoleon III’s marriage and was named Director of the Imperial Orchestra in 1857. Although Ingres did eventually become a Senator in May 1862, none of the three had been elevated to this rank by December 1855.
3. Cf. the opening line of Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (Dublin, 1768): “They order, said I, this matter better in France.”
4. See letter 3692, notes 7 and 8.
5. The patron saint of music.
6. EBB refers to Frederick Leighton’s oil painting “Cimabue’s Madonna Carried in Procession through the Streets of Florence.” The price paid by Queen Victoria was six hundred guineas, not pounds (see Emilie I. Barrington, The Live, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton, 1906, I, facsimile of letter from Charles Eastlake to Leighton, facing p. 194).
7. A letter from Brewster that referred to a séance at Ealing, directed by Home and attended by Frances Trollope, appeared in the 3 October 1855 issue of The Morning Advertiser. But it neither indicated that “Mrs. Trollope was in her dotage” nor that she believed in the powers of the medium. Brewster wrote: “I saw … at Ealing, in company with Mrs. Trollope, several mechanical effects which I was unable to explain. But though I could not account for all these effects, I never thought of ascribing them to spirits stalking beneath the drapery of the table; and I saw enough to satisfy myself that they could all be produced by human hands and feet” (p. 4).
8. The Nemesis of Faith (1849) by James Anthony Froude details the religious doubts of its hero, Markham Sutherland. It caused a minor scandal in Oxford, and a copy of it was publicly burned in the Hall of Exeter College by the sub-rector (ODNB). It was, presumably, this novel that EBB was reading in June 1853 (see letter 3217).
9. Thackeray was in America delivering lectures on The Four Georges (i.e., English Kings: George I–George IV), later serialized in The Cornhill Magazine (July–October 1860). In a letter to his daughters, dated 3–4 December 1855, Thackeray referred to his treatment in the American newspapers and the lucrative aspect of his lecture tour: “I suppose I am a little sore at the way in wh. the Press has treated your Papaw—very kindly in the main—but with an ignorance and impertinence often that turns my stomach at times. … If it werent for the dollars I think he would not be long here—but … I get 4000 dollars in the month—shall make if health holds out nearly as much next month” (The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray, ed. Gordon N. Ray, Cambridge, Mass., 1945–46, 3, 512).
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