3741. EBB to James Jackson Jarves
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 136–138.
3. Rue du Colysée. Paris.
Feb. 28– ’56
My dear Mr Jarves,
Indeed this silence has not meant that I was unthankful for your two kind letters .. one of them so spontaneously kind in sympathy & cordial feeling on the opening of the new year. We were both of us very glad to have it, and we reciprocate to you & yours every affectionate wish for the future. It cannot be too late to say God bless you– I, too, believe in babies! May you go on to have comfort from yours. [1] At earliest, they are never too red or too mottled for me!– And when they get to understand sights with those great ineffable eyes of theirs, and to smile in your face as if they meant really to love you some day, what creature under the angels can more commend itself to you in beauty & mystery? So I should like to see your pretty baby as you describe it—and meantime I send it a thought, which would be a kiss if it were nearer. God bless it to you.
Your letter made me understand something of the complicated Hume-question—but you are mistaken in supposing that persons in general, aggrieved as you have been, [2] are capable of the reasonableness & strength you have displayed in leaving the side of the mediumship untouched by the personal feeling. Of course, too, unbelievers in the mass cry out that they are justified. They think that what impugns the authority of a man, disproves his agency .. which is very unphilosophical—but then the whole world is unphilosophical. It is whispered about, for instance, that Mrs Trollope has fairly recanted– Perhaps she has not, .. but the effect upon the whole question is bad. I am very sorry that Hume should have failed as a man, to such an extent– That he was commonplace, weak, & affected, was from the beginning sufficiently obvious to me,—but I did suppose him to be very amiable & capable of affection. Being made the centre of a coterie & the object of so much general attention, must be trying to feeble natures like his– I am very sorry, for the sake of the subject .. which may be somewhat thrown back in public appreciation here & there, in consequence. If you have the goodness to write to me again, I wish you would tell me the continuation of the story about Hume .. how he prospers in other coteries in Florence, & if the ‘phenomena’ are much talked of .. and whether they are talked of as modified in any way. Tell me too if you hear of changes or developements of the phenomena in America. I hear of ‘hands’ being seen writing in Florence. Will you tell me if anything was actually written by the ‘hands’? seen to be written, I mean?
Have you read Mr Ruskin’s new work? [3] I understand that another is coming out almost immediately. We hear from him sometimes. I have been able to read very little lately, from the quantity of writing I have to do .. which, coming, on the top of little Penini’s lessons, fills my day up to the brim. Not that Penini is made to work hard– Only one hour & a half a day .. but there is no irregularity. I have much work on my own side to do, in order to be in time for the press next summer. My husband too is working at his new edition of Sordello, .. which is to be called obscure no longer. We mean that henceforth .. “As clear as Sordello” shall pass among the proverbs.
It has been almost ever since you left us, a winter of miraculous mildness .. so that I, who was felled to the ground just after that, got up again & am now as well as usual. If I had’nt been felled to the ground, I should have been able to go in & out of doors on most weeks of the winter, the warmth of it has been so peculiar. Also, we are in a very comfortable apartment. Still, I remember my Florence with all the constancy of a true love! If tigers fought there, I should creep somewhere behind the wall, & look up wistfully to the blue lilies. [4] I must!–
Tell me how Mr Kirkup is, & how his medium gets on, [5] & how she & Hume agreed, if they approached one another at all. I should like to know if the Regina is dethroned or not, in that balcony window over Arno.
You get on with your book or books [6] .. & when they are done, will it not be necessary for you to come to London again in order to see them through the press? In which case we shall see you this summer– Miss Blagden is living in our street here, but threatens us persistingly with her intended journey to Madrid– I still hope she wont go,—I, with persistence also– In any case she means to be in Florence in May, to take an unfurnished house and live there, a Florentine for ever .. which will be very pleasant for all of us–
I hope Mrs Jarves & the children are quite well. With the best true wishes to all of you, believe me, dear Mr Jarves,
most faithfully yours
Elizabeth Barrett Browning–
We have taken steps about Mr Page’s portrait of my husband, that it should find its right place in the Royal Academy of London this year– [7] Robert bids me remember to offer you his cordial regards.
Publication: Francis Steegmuller, The Two Lives of James Jackson Jarves (New Haven, Conn., 1951), pp. 154–155 (in part).
Manuscript: Yale University.
1. Flora Amey Jarves (1855–1947), who was born soon after her father had left Florence for London at the end of the previous April (see Francis Steegmuller, The Two Lives of James Jackson Jarves, New Haven, Conn., pp. 139 and 153).
2. Wilkie Rymer had written to his father in December that Home slandered James Jarves’s mother, Anna Smith Jarves, “after she arrived in Florence and he refused to visit her” (Waddington, p. 325).
3. Modern Painters, Vol. III (1856). Volume IV was released in April 1856.
4. i.e., blue irises.
5. Regina Ronti (1837–56); see letter 3518, note 10.
6. Jarves’s Parisian Sights and French Principles, 2nd Series, published in New York at the end of 1855, had just been issued in London the week before. His Italian Sights and Papal Principles appeared the following month. In 1857 Jarves published Why and What Am I? The Confessions of an Inquirer and Kiana: A Tradition of Hawaii.
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