3745. EBB to Jessie Meriton White
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 146–148.
3. Rue du Colysée.
Wednesday. [5 March 1856] [1]
I write in haste, my dear friend, to tell you that the petition will be at 138. Avenue Champs Elysées by the time you receive this. I have attained to one or two more signatures– Was it not very unwise to print that starving proportion of names which appeared in the Examiner? [2] And how was it that no Jesse White was among them?
While Ferdinando informed us at dinner two days ago that there were rumours in the streets of the “great Powers not agreeing in Conference,” .. little Penini laid down his fork & observed with the most ineffable dignity & gravity … “Ed io anche non lo credo, Ferdinando. Non vi sará la pace—vedrete.” [3] It was impossible to help laughing– Louis Napoleon could not have said the “Ed io anche” more imperially– You are not to imagine that Penini is giving up Italy– On the contrary .. he admires the French much of course—but the “io sono Italiano” [4] is persistent– When Isa Blagden approaches him with a yellow gown,—down he drops on the sofa on his face, not to see the horrible Austrian colour!– [5]
The tone of the Leader against France, as reported by my husband who sees the paper at Galignani, seems to me in the highest degree ungenerous & unjust– [6] But nothing is so bad & contemptible as the Athenæum, which gnaws like a rat, & should be poisoned for vermin. [7] I am sorry for the liberal party in England if such things must be. [8]
But how glad I am that Bessie Parke[s]’s poem [9] should have as much beauty as you say– Give my love to the poetess & tell her that I send her a ‘God speed’– When does the poem come out? I am very much & heavily worked with mine–
With respect to the French government, people should keep to facts– If the press is restrained in France, they should remember & specify that it is the newspaper press & not the general press which is under restraint– While such books as Lanfrey’s on the Church & Philosophy, [10] for instance, are printed & circulated, there must certainly be freedom of the press– Let them look to facts .. and books actually published in these times.
Dearest Jessie, you have a right to hope, if any mortal woman has. And hope is the best of life, after all– May God bless you. A step here, and then a step beyond. But the second step will be modified by the first—and so this present life is of awful importance. A dream? No, indeed– Robert would send his love, only he is gone out– But Peni shall stand for him! <***> [11]
Publication: Simonetta Berbeglia, “Il Risorgimento delle figlie adottive: lettere inedite tra Elizabeth Barrett Browning e Jessie White Mario,” Antologia Vieusseux, 16 (2010), pp. 59–60.
Manuscript: Scripps College.
1. Date provided by EBB’s reference to Pen’s remark as having been made “two days ago.” In letter 3744, she reported that the remark was made “yesterday.”
2. A news item describing the Petition for Reform of the Married Women’s Property Law ran in the 23 February 1856 issue of The Examiner (p. 122). It concluded with the following list of twenty-four names: “Anna Blackwell, Isa Blagden, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sarianna Browning, Mrs Carlyle, Mary Cowden Clarke, Charlotte Cushman, Amelia B. Edwards, Eliza F. Fox, Mrs Gaskell, Matilda M. Hays, Mary Howitt, Anna Mary Howitt, Anna Jameson, Geraldine Jewsbury, Mrs Loudon, Mrs Lovell, Harriet Martineau, Hon. Julia Maynard, Mary Mohl, Bessie Rayner Parkes, Mrs Reid, Barbara Leigh Smith, Miss Sturch.” The petition begins: “To the Honourable the House of Peers (and House of Commons) in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned Women of Great Britain, Married and Single, Humbly Sheweth—That the manifold evils occasioned by the present law, by which the property and earnings of the wife are thrown into the absolute power of the husband, become daily more apparent. That the sufferings thereupon ensuing, extend over all classes of society. That it might once have been deemed for the middle and upper ranks, a comparatively theoretical question, but is no longer, since married women of education are entering on every side the fields of literature and art, in order to increase the family income by such exertions” (Lee Holcombe, Wives and Property, Toronto, 1983, p. 237). The petition was presented to both houses of Parliament on 14 March 1856, but no change in the law occurred until 1870.
3. “And I don’t believe it either, Ferdinando. There will be no peace there—you’ll see.”
4. “I am Italian.”
5. The flag of the Austrian empire at this time consisted of two horizontal bands: the top one black; the bottom yellow.
6. In an article entitled “The Past and Future of the French Alliance,” in The Leader of 23 February 1856, the writer declared: “This war was, from the first, an act of French Imperial policy, and that policy alone has it subserved. … After the Second of December, England, true to herself, her principles, her liberties, held Europe in the palm of her hand. All the reigning dynasties were distrustful of the French Empire; scarcely one was yet free from the menace of the Revolution. Great Britain might then have commanded the policy of Imperial France. But our Government has, from first to last, played into the hands of the French Emperor; in peace as in war, we have been content to act a secondary and subservient part. After setting up the idol, we fell down to adore it” (p. 179).
7. In the “Our Weekly Gossip” column in The Athenæum of 1 March 1856, a “Correspondent in Paris” wrote on the French government’s stifling of literary creativity: “A piece of doggerel” was applied to the Empress by an audience at the Odéon theatre, and the “police—secret and avowed—were … soon at work, and the disturbance was suppressed.” The writer went on to lament that “every literary manifestation of an independent character provokes attention from the police” (no. 1479, p. 266).
8. The Leader, founded by George Henry Lewes and Thornton Hunt, was considered at the least a liberal publication if not a radical one. The Athenæum, though embodying liberal principles, tended to avoid politics and any expression of political bias.
9. Gabriel by Bessie Rayner Parkes (1829–1925), a series of poems about Shelley’s life from the point of view of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, was advertised as “now ready” in The Athenæum of 19 April 1856 (no. 1486, p. 500).
10. L’Église et les Philosophes au dix-huitième siècle (1855) by Pierre Lanfrey (1828–77), French historian and politician.
11. EBB presumably wrote more, including her signature, on the envelope, which is not extant.
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