3752. Anna Brownell Jameson to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 157–160.
[London]
Monday March 17 [1856] [1]
Dearest Ba– I feel much inclined to begin my letter with a congratulation—for I know you will be glad of the birth of a little french Prince [2] —& I am glad too—for the sake of that poor Empress whom I have always pitied knowing how much of her future depended on her motherhood. I read last week, with a sort of shiver, the programme of ceremonies laid down for the French Court, in case of the birth of a son—which seemed taken for granted [3] —& see the Napoleon star prevails still!—how long? —How much I have to write to you!—how full my life has been these last two weeks of my sojourn in town!– I go back to Ealing tomorrow—and I have been trying to cram all that is possible of work into the last days—my object has been to procure evidence as to the result of the present system in our charitable institutions—& now I am beginning to have men—influential men on my side—but what torrents of bigotry, intollerance [sic] & ignorance & vulgar jealousy are rushing against us– —If I could only get a committee to summon evidence—& that evidence could be published half the work would be done—mean time we go on moving opinion, & strengthening the weak, & encouraging the disheartened so far as we can[.]
Now to other matters. Have you read the life of Beaumarchais by de Loménie?– [4] I found the Dean of St Pauls [5] reading it the other day—& he seemed quite pleased with it– The life of Goethe by Lewis [6] is much read– M. Milnes praised it highly—I think it written with vigour & earnestness—& a real love of the subject—but the style seems to me tinged with vulgarity– I have had a most interesting letter from Madme de Goethe about the book & Lewis’s visit to Weimar, which I long to show you– I have been reading a book called “Dr Antonio” (by Ruffini) [7] which I like—& which as a specimen of English style from a foreigner is quite wonderful—these are all the things I have read lately—the rest has been work,—& hard work[.]
Dearest friend!—how I wish to go to Paris—tho’ but for a week or two!– I have been dreadfully crippled in money matters—these last 3 months– My sister Camilla’s Brighton Speculation [8] has failed utterly—(at least for the present) & has cost me 65£, a large sum from my thin purse– I shall not repent it—if it will quiet her mind—but I will risk no more—one duty—one sight I have, as eldest sister .. to keep a home for us four old women—which shall be based in peace & security & to diminish the risk consequent on my precarious existence– I am better in mind & health—better as one is better who has had a limb amputated—but liable to spasms of pain—which also will pass away—only some of my friends agonise me with a mistaken sympathy—not you—but you also are too severe on that character [9] —some day you will & shall appreciate what is good & excusable, even in what has made me suffer–
Talking of which—I also have met the Guiccioli & my impression was very much that of your friend Aidé—extremely disagreeable—something hard, false, discordant—in the whole visible nature—what may be beneath I know not—but it will be known some day—terrible the power of Genius to drag into immortality & pervade with light—characters better left in obscurity—& apropos to that—was ever any thing so infamous as the publication of this “Table talk of Rogers”– [10] I call it infamous—because save for money—without the slightest regard for the dead or the living—& falsifying in spirit many thing told—the grace & elegance of the manner vulgarised—all that is not vapid & commonplace is cruel or mistaken—I have never seen any thing so disappointing & disgusting—but the compiler has made 500£ they say! & they say it—as if it were a reason, an excuse to be accepted for what they allow to be wrong.
Dearest—thank you for telling me of your poem—but do not ask me to judge you—(“to know you” as you say) only by your new poem—all you have written is a part of your own soul—into my soul I have taken it as a part of you—& this new poem will be the same—only perhaps more matured in spirit & more artistic in form—it may be so—but I so love all you have done—that till I have read or heard your new poem—do you know dear Ba—that to read it or have it I would get into the Express train tomorrow morning!—write to me soon again—tell me that this dreadfully cold weather has not made you suffer—& tell me more of Penini—why did you not send me his little poem?– —I think it would be well for his health of brain—if you would for a definite time, however short, make him command his faculty of attention so as to work—but of this you are the best judge– I am going this moment to Hammersmith to see the R Catholic institution there for penitent women [11] —those of the protestant penitentiaries I have seen—do not work well—now I must go. God bless you dearest friends both
—your affecte Anna
—You never mention Adelaide Sartoris nor Mad[.] Mohl
Address: Mrs Browning / Champs Elysées / Rue du Colisée / No 3– / à Paris.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. The Prince Imperial, Napoleon Eugène Louis Jean Joseph Bonaparte (1856–79), who was born on 16 March.
3. The “programme of the ceremony to be observed on the birth of Princes or Princesses, children of the Emperor” was published in The Daily News of 10 March 1856 (p. 5). Following a long list of ceremonies, which included presenting the infant prince with the Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honor, there was a note of explanation: “The official programme assumes that it is a Prince that will be born, but in the margin certain alterations are made, in case it should be a Princess. The alterations relate principally to the portion of the ceremonial of a military character.” For instance, if the child was male, there would be “a salvo of 101 guns”; if female, 21 guns.
4. Louis de Loménie (1815–78), Beaumarchais et son temps: études sur la société en France au XVIIIe siècle d’après des documents inédits (2 vols., 1856).
5. Henry Hart Milman (1791–1868), poet, historian and ecclesiastic, was Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral from 1849–68.
6. Sic, for Lewes.
7. Giovanni Ruffini, Doctor Antonio: A Tale (Edinburgh, 1855).
9. Further reference to her break with Lady Byron.
10. Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers, to which is added Porsoniana, edited by [Alexander Dyce], was published by Moxon on 7 February 1856.
11. The Asylum for Penitent Women was a charity established in 1841 by the Roman Catholic Order of the Good Shepherd from Angers, France, “to carry on the work of the reformation of female penitents under the auspices of Dr. Griffiths, then ‘Vicar-Apostolic of the London District’” (Edward Walford, Old and New London, 1893, 6, 539). Mrs. Jameson was conducting research for her second lecture on this subject, which was delivered on 28 June 1856 and later published as The Communion of Labour: A Second Lecture on the Social Employments of Women (1856).
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