3736. EBB to Julia Martin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 125–128.
3. Rue du Colysée.
Feb. 21. [1856] [1]
My dearest Mrs Martin I should have answered your note, days ago! If you saw how I am in a plague of industry just now .. and not a moment unspotted!—how, for instance, I kept an Examiner newspaper (sent to us from London) three days on the table, before I could read it! .. you would make allowance for me. It’s a sort of furia! [2] I must get over so much writing, or I shall be too late for the summer’s printing– [3] If it is’nt done by June .. what will become of me? I shall go back to Italy in disgrace .. and considerably poorer than I need be .. which is of more practical consequence. So I pay– Then there’s an hour & a half in the morning for Penini’s lessons– We breakfast at nine—& receive nobody till past four– This will all prove to you two things, dearest friend—first (I hope) that I’m pardonable for making you wait a few days longer than should have been, and secondly that I’m tolerably well– Yes, indeed. Since our arrival in this house, after just the first when there was some frost, we have had such a miraculous mildness under the name of winter, that I rallied as a matter of course, & for the last month there has been no return of the spitting of blood, & no extravagance of cough. I have persisted with cod’s liver oil, & I look .. by no means ill, people assure me, & so I may assure you. But I am not very strong—& was a good deal tired after a two hours drive which I ventured on a week ago in the Bois de Boulogne. The small rooms & deficiency of air resulting from them, make a long shutting up a more serious thing than I find it in Florence in our acres of apartment. But it is easy to mend strength, when only strength is to be mended—and I, for one, get strong again easily– I only hope that the cold is not returning. The air was sharp yesterday, & is today—but it’s February, & the spring is at the doors, & we may hope with reason–
You give a very pleasant account of yourselves– It made me happy. Now dont hurry back into the damp of England in the spring—and you shant fall like Humpti-dumpti who sate on the wall so imprudently. Why not wander into Switzerland, & take the summer in an open carriage, face to face with the snow-hills? Whenever I think of a happy summer (unconnected with people) I am sure to think of Switzerland. Oh—a summer at Lucerne! How exquisite that would be!–
I have been a little uneasy this winter about my darling Arabel, who has been unwell & was forced to have advice– It was said to be constitutional weakness, & she was made to take iron .. which, I hope, proves there was no serious harm—& now the doctor has taken leave of her with the advice that she should go into the country for change of air. Some cousins of ours [4] who were coming to Paris for a fortnight offered to bring her—and she asked leave! But Jupiter bent awful brows, [5] .. & the prayer could not be pressed .. I should have been horribly aggrieved by this if I had not been immensely relieved by her account of herself– Nothing makes us so contented, observe, as having had a good wholesome fright. I observe that, always. My aunt Bell is in Wimpole Street by this time– She was on the verge of a visit when Arabel wrote.
As to poor dearest Henrietta, she is in a state of widowhood & desperation, through her husband being ordered with his regiment (her medical attendant & all) to Aldershott– [6] Because of wisdom & economy she agreed to remain behind with the children, but of course it’s a trial at this time—she expects her confinement in the early part of April– She wrote the most frantic letters to Arabel on the occasion—if Surtees had gone to the Crimea & been shot there, it could scarcely have been worse. But I heard yesterday .. from herself .. and she feels better & more cheerful .. & will get over it certainly. Poor darling– One smiles! Just because Surtees is’nt indispensable to oneself. But after all, it’s a real, real, trial. I should be as bad myself I’m certain .. & then my next neighbour would smile at me!
I have been anxious too about my dear friend Mr Kenyon .. who has been in danger with an asthmatic attack inclining to water on the chest. He is over it, however, .. & is enjoying the air of the isle of Wight where he went from London.
What do you say of the peace as a final peace? [7] You are not at least vexed, as so many English are, that we cant fight a little for glory to reinstate our reputation. [8] You’ll excuse that. Still, I cant help feeling disappointed in the peace—chiefly perhaps, because I hoped too much from the war. Will nothing be done after all for Italy? nothing for Poland? [9]
You want books– Read About’s ‘Tolla’. [10] He is a new writer—& his book is exquisite as a transcript of Italian manners. Then read Octave Feuillet. There is much in him–
Will there be war with America, dear Mr Martin? Never will I believe it till I hear the cannons<.> [11]
Talking of what we should believe—it appears that Mrs Trollope has thrown over Hum<e> from some failure in his moral character in Florence. I have had many letters on the subject– I have no doubt that the young man, who is weak and vain & was exposed to gross flatteries from the various unwise coteries at Florence who took him up, deserves to be thrown over– But his mediumship is undisproved, as far as I can understand. It is simply a physical faculty—he is just an electric wire. At Florence, everybody is quarrelling with everybody on the subject. I thought I would tell you.
Penini, the pet, is radiant, & learning French triumphantly. May God bless you! Write to me dearest Mrs Martin, & tell me of both of you. Robert’s love–
Your ever, ever affectionate Ba
Publication: LEBB, II, 225–226 (in part).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by reference to the return address.
2. “Frenzy.”
3. Of Aurora Leigh.
4. The Owens, as identified in letter 3749. Angela Owen (née Bayford) was EBB’s second cousin.
5. Cf. Alexander Pope, The Iliad of Homer (1715–20), I, 683. EBB alludes to her father’s disapproval.
8. British military prestige had fallen during the Crimean War, not only through mis-management, which led to soldiers’ deaths from privations and disease, but also because of French military victories. At the battle of Inkermann (see letter 3497, note 2), it was the timely intervention of the French that saved the day for the allies. In the final assault on Russian fortifications at Sebastopol, the British failed in their attack on the Redan, while the French succeeded in taking the Malakhov, which resulted in the capture of the city by the allies.
9. Though somewhat a simplification, from the late eighteenth century until the end of the first World War, Poland as a state did not exist. Its territory was divided among Austria, Prussia, and Russia, except for a brief period of French control when Napoleon I created the Duchy of Warsaw. The Russian portion, known as the Congress Kingdom (for the Congress of Vienna, 1815), was ostensibly semi-autonomous until the revolt of 1830–31, after which it was merely a province of the bigger country. It was hoped that with the death of Czar Nicholas I (1796–1855) and the end of the Crimean War, the allies would exert pressure on Russia to allow the Poles more freedom. This did not happen.
10. Tolla (1855) by Edmond François Valentin About (1828–85), French journalist and novelist, first ran as a serial in Revue des Deux Mondes.
11. Tensions had arisen between the United States and the United Kingdom over two separate issues: one, a treaty dispute in regard to Central America, specifically having to do with Belize (later British Honduras, now again Belize), the Bay Islands, and an area known as the Mosquito Coast; and two, charges against the British government for recruiting American citizens in the U.S. to fight in the Crimean War, thereby violating American neutrality. Although the British government sent a formal explanation for the latter, the administration in Washington was moving towards the expulsion of three British consuls and a demand for the withdrawal of the British ambassador. This last elicited an editorial in The Morning Post of 30 January 1856 that wondered why the U.S. would want to provoke a war that “would sweep American commerce from the seas, and lay the whole seaboard of the Union open to the attacks of the greatest naval Power in the world” (p. 4). Both of these issues were peacefully resolved, but the saber-rattling continued for several months.
___________________
