3700. EBB to Euphrasia Fanny Haworth
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 51–53.
3. Rue du Colisée.
Avenue des Champs Elysées
Dec. 27. [1855] [1]
My dearest Fanny
At last I know where you are. German or English, I have you—betrothed or unbetrothed, I can write to you!
And now .. will you tell me plainly,—you who write in mysteries .. are you going to be married or not? If so, to whom is it? German baron, or male watersprite? An Undino with a dripping moustache? [2] I can write nothing but questions, & shall not be able, until I get your next letter. Here’s another. Why, pray, does Mr Spicer fall in love with somebody else after having fallen in love with you? On what principle, is it? Is it because he is’nt “flippant”?
I am glad he has money, & I am glad he has an adopted child [3] (since he wanted one) but I cant be glad that he could’nt keep in love with you (since he began so well). See how it is with men who give up rapping spirits?
My own history in Paris has been very tragic. We fell by accident into a trap of a cold house—& I suffered much from the weather, with bad symptoms on the chest– Now we have moved into rooms as warm as the others were the contrary; and, to make us perfect, the weather has changed into Italian weather—almost “too close,” say the complainers; & my spirits have risen, (I dont mean the Disembodied.) & I have gone to my work, & am able, as you observe, at intervals; to write unimaginable nonsense to you.
Dearest Fanny, we shall be here till the fifteenth of June– You may rely on us till then, seeing that the house is taken. Afterwards we go to London for some three months–
Charles Dickens lives opposite, & as Mrs Dickens has already been good enough to call on me, I shall see him presently—though not in order to take council on the affairs of the spiritual world. [4]
Have you heard that Hume is shaking Florence to its foundations? The “spiritual hands” carried an accordion & deposited it on the lap of a friend of mine, (a woman) [5] & it played excellent music, no human finger touching it– Séances are held constantly at different houses—at Mr Powers’s for instance, the Trollopes’, &c &c– Mrs Powers kissed the hand of her mother– My friend held the hand of her baby, [6] feeling down all the fingers– I wont tell you any more, because I know you believe nothing of it by this time.
As to Paris, from what I told you of my state of health & house, you may conclude the truth,—that we have been as dull as possible—in fact, hiding underground from people, & seeing nobody who did’nt burrow for us– Now we have come up however—and, though I remain still, of course, among the “spirits in prison”, [7] Robert goes out sometimes of his own will, & is sometimes driven out by mine.
Dearest Fanny, if you marry a German, dont for heaven’s sake & mine, go to live at Stuttgard [8] at least. I feel a little uneasy– Now, if it had been an Italian—or even a Corsican–
Write to me. You will remark that besides my ordinary indisposition, I have a disposition to be written to, & am dying of curiosity.
Yes—& “we are not so bad as we seem” [9] .. I am more than curious– I love you, dear Fanny—& you should’nt throw your lovers into fits of anxiety with letters such as this.
Your ever affectionate
Ba.
Address: Angleterre / Miss Haworth / 45. Onslow Square / Brompton / London.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. EBB plays on the gender of the title character in Undine (Berlin, 1811), a romance by Friedrich Heinrich Karl de La Motte-Fouqué about a water-sprite who marries a mortal and thus acquires a soul.
3. Ethelinda Beaumont (aged 11, born in Wales) is listed as Henry Spicer’s adopted child in the 1861 England Census.
4. Dickens held strong negative opinions about spiritualism and had published such exposés as “The Ghost of the Cock Lane Ghost” in his weekly magazine Household Words (see letter 3159, note 5). In his own article, “The Spirit Business” (Household Words, 7 May 1853, pp. 217–220), Dickens made light of his subject by including numerous passages from an American spiritualist newspaper, The Spiritual Telegraph. The passages are accompanied by his amusingly dry comments.
5. Sophia Cottrell; see the fourth paragraph in letter 3699.
6. See letter 3699, notes 5 and 6.
7. Cf. I Peter 3:19.
8. Sic, for Stuttgart.
9. An allusion to the comedy Not so Bad as we Seem (1851) by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (see letter 2920, note 18, and letter 3173, note 3).
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