3735. Anna Brownell Jameson to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 123–125.
28 George Street
Hanover Sq
Feby 18. [1856] [1]
My dearest Ba—God forgive me if I am ungrateful—but when I take pen & paper to write to you whom I love so much the miserable scrap of paper into which I wish to pour so much—makes me half angry & sad—my life has been so full since I wrote to you!—& so much of the stream must flow to one side—& never reach you—it is very detestable—in the first place—to write of things which present themselves[.] I have finished the life of George Sand [2] and I must entirely agree in your’s & Robert’s admiration—the woman is a wonder of a creature—some passages in the last two volumes are of that apparent audacity & real delicacy—they present so sublime an anticipation of the better future—such a picture of the true sexual relationship that I would have kissed the book—I have been hearing much of her, for Lady Monson [3] has met her at dinner—& has heard the reading of “as you like it”—in her French version [4] —it is bold to lay her hand on Shakespeare—what has been the fate of the piece?—what have you heard of it & has it appeared?—do tell me!
I have been reading Lewis’s Life of Goethe [5] which, you can imagine, had an especial interest for me. —It is written with a good deal of life & vigour and I think is generally accurate—but the style is full of vulgarisms—colloquial vulgarisms—& the tone of the whole does not please me—there is a nice letter of Thackeray’s at the end, [6] —besides these I have read the Newcomes for the first time—& think it the best of his works—more of tenderness of feeling in it than any thing he has done– You must know par parenthese that I was driven into a course of reading—because I got a blow which I expected—but could not bear at first quite well. —I think my feeling must have been something like yours, dearest Ba—in regard to one very near to you—I stood appalled & petrified before that inexorable temper [7] —but am now comparatively well—& at work again– I have been etching successfully correcting proofs & so forth[.] [8]
I had, about 10 days ago—the idea of running over to Paris for a month—to get rid of pain—but I battled it down—& now I have the idea of running over before you leave it—& perhaps coming back with you—or of waiting till you go to Florence—& remaining here to be near you when you are here—what are your plans as to time?—my dear friends the Scots Russell’s have been under a cloud [9] —that is another thing which has been occupying me but the past is past & I am more free & cheerful in mind than I have been for three years—do you make progress with your poem? [10] —will it be finished quite before you come to England?—what of Madme Mohl?—what of Adelaide Sartoris—what of Leighton?—what of all your world round you—what of your dear dear selves & boy?—it would be easy to tempt me to a run over—if there were two rooms to be had in the Champs Elysées or any where near you?–
I embrace you both—& will not be long without writing again–
your affecte
Anna
Address: Mrs Browning / No 3 / Rue du / Colisée / Champs Elysées. / Paris.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Historie de ma vie (20 vols., 1854–55).
4. Comme il vous plaira. Comédie en trois actes et en prose, tirée de Shakspeare et arrangée par George Sand (1856). It was first performed at the Comédie Française on 12 April 1856.
5. George Henry Lewes, The Life and Works of Goethe: with Sketches of His Age and Contemporaries, from Published and Unpublished Sources (2 vols., 1855).
6. Thackeray’s letter, dated 28 April 1855, appears at the end of volume two of Lewes’s biography, pp. 442–446. It describes the court of Weimar and includes an account of his meeting with Goethe. Thackeray travelled in Germany from 1830 to 1831, spending several months at Weimar.
7. We take this to be a reference to Lady Byron, Mrs. Jameson’s close friend of many years. An estrangement had occurred during the fatal illness in 1852 of Lady Byron’s daughter, Ada, the Countess of Lovelace (see letter 3115, note 2). Ada had previously run up considerable gambling debts and had at some point confided her situation to Mrs. Jameson. When Lady Byron found this out, she was upset that her friend had not apprised her of Ada’s difficulties. Over the next three years, Mrs. Jameson evidently attempted a reconciliation, without success. The “blow” mentioned here may have been a final, failed attempt (see Doris Langley Moore, Ada, Countess of Lovelace: Byron’s Legitimate Daughter, 1977, pp. 331 and 352–354).
9. John Scott Russell (1808–82), engineer and shipbuilder, was suffering financially from rising labor costs associated with the Crimean War. His shipyard on the Isle of Dogs, which was trying to fulfill “several fixed-price contracts for warships … failed in February 1856” (ODNB). Russell was named the executor of Mrs. Jameson’s estate in her will, dated 8 June 1855. In order to repay a £300 “debt now owing to him,” she left him the balance of her bank accounts and her literary copyrights (ms at PRO).
10. i.e., Aurora Leigh.
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