3734. EBB to Arabella Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 120–123.
3 Rue du Colysée.
Sunday. [?10] [February 1856] [1]
My dearest Arabel, really if you are not very unwell … no, I cant say of you [2] that you are very unkind .. I cant– But I am thoroughly unhappy about you—there’s the truth– You let me wait & wait, & fret my soul [3] on the subject of how you are, what is the matter– What keeps you from writing one word to me all this time. Instead of its being gain to me, this being at Paris, it seems to me that I heard oftener in Florence from you! This, when, for fourpence, & the expense of writing four lines, I might be either set at ease, or justified myself to my uneasiness. I assure you I have been waiting & yearning so day after day, that when the post came in without you .. only a newspaper for Harriet .. (who by the way, seems to me to have twenty signs of recollection from her family, where I have one!) I had to sit down to dinner quite sick & disinclined to eat anything. Now my dearest darling Arabel—do be good to me, & think a little how I think of you! I answered your last letter instantly, & not a word have I had, since! Not a word of you! Not a word of Papa! But I am most uneasy about you, though you told me that he also had been unwell.
I have’nt the heart to write anything which shall even try to be amusing—& yet I dont like sending you a mere wail or upbraiding .. even though both should mean love. I am relieved as to dear Mr Kenyon, who is infinitely better for his removal from London,—& who talks of going to Ventnor in March. Miss Bayley keeps with him. I heard from himself & from her– He writes cheerfully & affectionately—so perhaps I am in favour again, .. if ever I was out. At any rate he is beyond danger obviously, & that’s an immense relief.
I am deep in my fourth book. [4] Robert read the third, & persists in encouraging me greatly. Chapman does’nt send us our account. So that when I am inclined to cry everyday over the failing post, Robert’s tendency is to swear. From America we hear that the success of ‘Men & Women’ is great—“they cant be printed fast enough.” I had a letter, by the way, from Mr Story!!! [5] on the subject of the spirits, which he has been investigating. He sent me some four sheets of narration, & announces in so many words that “he quite gives it for me against Robert.” You know he heard our discussions last summer on the Hume affair. He took a medium to the house of his brother in law Mr Eldridge [sic], [6] where he never had been, no one else being present except Mr Appleton a brother in law of Longfellow’s. Among other phenomena a table was broken up before their eyes .. a large, strong table .. the nails drawn, the legs broken to little bits—from twenty to thirty pieces in all. Also—hands were felt & grasped– He is going on with the investigation, & is to write to me again.
Little Peni looks so radiant it would please you to see him. He is another child from the one you had in England last year—so rosy, & fat.
As for me, think of my having been out yesterday. Isa Blagden proposed my going with her in a close carriage, & Robert thought it could’nt hurt me, & was right to go– So I went– We drove round the Bois de Boulogne, [7] which is beautiful. “Ornamental grounds” for the people! We drove by waters of chrystal, nearly two hours—an artificial lake, more like a river almost, .. with trees everywhere, & undulating green banks, which seem looking out for deer. I was very tired afterwards– Being shut up so long, makes one tired on going out. Even my bonnet was out of fashion. The world outruns us soon. As to weather, it was nearly too warm—that was all the fault.
Isa Blagden is surprised at the cheapness of Paris, & thinks she could live here almost as cheaply as in Italy– Not quite.
Mrs Sartoris was here the other day, descanting on the cheapness of a delightful house with ten bedrooms, she was desirous of taking in the Rue d’Astorg. Upon enquiring I found it was the Hedleys’s! The difficulty was that somebody was in possession & refused to abdicate before March. Indeed it surprised me to hear of the Hedleys’ going to Bath—& I am sorry, especially, for the reason’s sake. I cant conceive of a fashionable school at Bath being desireable for a young girl who has had & who may have the advantages of a Paris education. [8] There is every opening here—every facility for acquiring information & accomplishment. What you would desire besides, is familiarity with English literature—& English literature never is, nor can be, taught at schools, even in England.
When I told you what I was doing & teaching in my last letter, I should have mentioned Harriet & added that I had been teaching her french while she brushed my hair at nights. She has a very good idea of it now, I assure you, & is in earnest about it, learning her lesson everyday. Penini gets on nicely. He has formed a passionate attachment to the concierge’s little girl, who is five & a half & called Leocadie, & comes to play with him & talk with him. Its excellent for the French. He told me with satisfaction yesterday, that “really he understood her now, just as well as if he was a Frenchman.” The only ground of difference seems to me that Leocadie does’nt like to be kissed, which Penini thinks quite unreasonable & “very turious.” (curious.) He pronounces his rs perfectly well now, & finds a great deal of glory in exaggerating them. But the Gs & the Ks are, I am happy to say, as bad as ever. He has begun to read the bible—reads your bible, [9] everyday, my darling Arabel– I made him begin with the gospel of Luke. As to geography, .. I am much improved in order to keep up with him! I shall make him read Mrs Stowe’s book, [10] because you gave it to him & it will be a comfort to think of that. Not that I think much of the book in itself. Still there will be some good in it. But he takes naturally to geography & adapts it to politics as he goes on. He thinks it would be “so easy” to come & ‘sieze’ Austria!
Oh—he had a dream the other night about Charlotte. [11] “Some men were mending the house, & the plaster kept tumbling down from the ceiling! So the only way was to sleep in the corners of the room—& Mama & papa slept in one corner of the room, & he & Charlotte in another! Then he was very unhappy about his rabbits, who would run about & were sure to have their legs hurt!– Oh—a horrible dream!”——
He has been to two more “parties,” & came home from the last, discomfitted. Little Mary Corchrane [12] had been “very untind to him.” He wanted to be her “lover,” & she went away & would’nt let him. He told her he was sure she [“]hated him”. “And what did she say.” “Oh, of tourse, she said she did’nt—but I know she did.” This was at the Thackerays’ house– [13] I mean, the Thackeray girls had asked him–
As for me I live a very quiet life. Having been put out of humour (& health) when we came first to Paris, we got into a way of not ‘laying ourselves out’ for society– (Rather of ‘laying ourselves out’ otherwise!) & I cant prick Robert into leaving cards. Still people find their way to us, & he might go out every night, .. & does, very often– I had a new visitor yesterday, Lady Mansun, [14] who is sympathetical, & knows George Sand, by the way. Robert sees Rosa Bonheur often, & is in great love with her– She receives on the mornings of every wednesday. It’s pleasant to hear what a good pure life she leads, making no noise even by eccentricities. Did you see that most impertinent article in Blackwood on modern poetry? [15] If one cared for such things, it would vex one. I am reading the Newcomes– [16] Very good. Read it. But I write so much I have little time for reading– Robert says my poem is quite a novel, .. <***>
Publication: EBB-AB, II, 209–212.
Manuscript: Gordon E. Moulton-Barrett.
1. Conjectural date suggested by EBB’s reference in the second paragraph to letter 3731 and by her mention of being “deep” in the “fourth book” of Aurora Leigh. By letter 3738 she had finished the fifth book.
2. Underscored three times.
3. Cf. Edmund Spenser, “Prosopopoia: or Mother Hubberd’s Tale” (1591), line 903.
4. The previous month EBB began transcribing the work she had completed up to that point on Aurora Leigh (see letter 3716). By letter 3724 she had finished the second book.
5. EBB has circled the exclamation points. William Wetmore Story and his family had been in Boston since the previous summer. They would return to Europe in July 1856.
6. Emelyn Story (née Eldredge) had five brothers living at this time: Edward Henry (1816–65), Francis Oliver (1825–61), James Thomas (1828–89), Charles Warren (1830–95), and George (1832–64). EBB’s comment that Story had never been in Eldredge’s house before could indicate the house of James Thomas—then, the only married brother.
7. “This wood, about two miles [west] from Paris, bears the name of a neighbouring village. … An artificial lake, 1,200 metres in length, and 250 in breadth at its centre … extends between groves of fir and beech-trees, while rocks, tastefully scattered along its banks, form an agreeable contrast with the green turf on which they lie” (Galignani’s New Paris Guide, 1855, pp. 512–513). The creation of the public parks—the Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes (on the east side of Paris)—was the idea of Napoleon III, who included design features similar to those in Hyde Park, which he had admired while living in London.
8. EBB must be referring to Anna Hedley (b. 1840), the youngest of the Hedley daughters.
9. Possibly Il Nuovo Testamento, which Arabella had given him the year before (see letter 3617, note 2).
10. Harriet Beecher Stowe, A New Geography for Children (“Revised by an English Lady, by Direction of the Author, 1855”), a present from Arabella (see letter 3617, note 3).
11. Charlotte McIntosh (1829–61). She and her family, friends of Arabella by way of Paddington Chapel, were living across the street from the Brownings during their latest stay in London.
12. Mary Harley Nannie Corkran (1848–1911) was the youngest daughter and child of John Frazer Corkran (1807–84) and his wife, Louisa (née Walshe, 1824–92).
13. i.e., the house of Thackeray’s mother, Anne Carmichael-Smyth (née Becher), at nearby 19 Rue d’Angoulême, where Annie and Minnie Thackeray were staying while their father lectured in America.
14. Theodosia Monson (née Blacker, 1803–91), youngest child of Major Latham Blacker and his wife, Catherine (née Maddison), had married in 1832 Frederick John, 5th Baron Monson (1809–41). A proponent of women’s rights, she was friends with Mrs. Jameson, Bessie Raynor Parkes, and Matilda Hays.
15. “Modern Light Literature—Poetry” was the lead article in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine for February 1856. The reviewer, identified as Margaret Oliphant (1828–97) in The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, wrote of RB: “Only very few of his Men and Women is it possible to make out; indeed, we fear that the Andrea and the Bishop Blougram are about the only intelligible sketches.” For the full text of these comments, see pp. 372-373. She was kinder to EBB: “Altogether, Mrs Browning’s poems, rank them how you will in intellectual power, have more of the native mettle of poetry than most modern verses.” For the full text of these comments, see p. 291.
16. William Makepeace Thackeray, The Newcomes. Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family (1855).
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