3777. EBB to Anna Brownell Jameson
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 207–210.
3. Rue du Colysée.
May 2. [1856] [1]
My dearest Moña Nina, it’s very pleasant always to get letters from you, & such kind dear letters, .. showing that you have’nt broken the tether-string in search of “pastures new”, [2] weary of our cropped grass.
As for news, you have most of the persons, upon whom you care for gossip, in your hand now .. Mrs Sartoris, Madme Viardot, Lady Monson, & the Ristori herself– Robert went to see her twice, because Lady Monson led him by the hand kindly, & was charmed, .. thought the Medée very fine, .. but wont join in the cry about miraculous genius & Rachel out-Racheled. He thinks that as far as the highest & largest development of sensibility can go, she is very great,—but that for those grand & sudden aperçus which have distinguished actors .. such as Kean [3] for instance .. he does not acknowledge them in her. You have heard perhaps how Dickens & others .. Macready among the rest .. depreciated her. [4] Most unjustly, Robert thinks. Dickens went so far as to say, I understand, that no English audience would tolerate her defects,—which will be put to the proof presently– By the way, you had better not quote Macready on this subject, as he expressed himself unwilling to be quoted on it.
We are going on smoothly just now—but you will have heard perhaps, that Robert suffered much at one time from ulcerated sore throat complicated with biliary affection, & was not himself for two months .. chiefly, I think, because he revolted against remedies. Then little Peni caught the sore throat, & was so feverish for two or three days that we had in a French medical man who put him to rights again instantly––(never have any other but a Frenchman when you are in Paris & want help of this kind.)! He paid the greatest attention, charged only five francs a visit, & refused an invitation to repeat his visits, when, in his own mind, they ceased to be necessary. A phenomenon, altogether, in the medical world.
So now we are well again, thank God—&, if Robert will but take regular exercise, he will keep so I hope– As to Penini he is radiant—& even I have been out walking twice, though a good deal weaker for the winter. More open air, & much more, is necessary to set me growing again .. but I shall grow—& meantime I have been working, & am working, at so close a rate, that if I lose a day I am lost, .. which is too close a rate, & makes one feel rather nervous. We see nobody till after four meantime. I have finished (not transcribed) the last book but one, and am now in the very last book, [5] which must be finished with the last days of May. Then the first fortnight of June will be occupied with the transcription of these two last books, & I shall carry the completed work with me to England on the sixteenth, if it please God. Oh, I do hope you wont be disappointed with it .. much! Some things you will like certainly, because of the boldness & veracity of them,—& others you may—I cant be so sure. Robert speaks well of the poetry—encourages me much. But then he has seen only six of the eight books yet.
He just now has taken to drawing, & after thirteen days application, has produced some quite startling copies of heads– I am very glad– He cant rest from serious work in light literature, as I can—it wearies him—& there are hours which are on his hands .. which is bad both for them & for him. The secret of life is in full occupation—is’nt it?—this world is not tenable on other terms. So while I lie on the sofa & rest in a novel, Robert has a resource in his drawing—and really, with all his feeling & knowledge of art, some of the mechanical trick of it cant be out of place.
Tonight he is going to Madme Mohl’s,—who is well, & as vivacious as ever– When Monckton Milnes was in Paris he dined with him in company with Mignet, Cavour, George Sand, .. and an empty chair in which Lamartine was expected to sit– George Sand had an ivy wreath round her head & looked like herself. But Lady Monson will talk to you of her, better than I can– Now, mind you ask Lady Monson.
As to this government, I only entreat you not to believe any of the mendacious reports set afloat here by a most unworthy opposition, & carried out by the English Athenæum & other prints. Surely a cause must be bad which is supported by such bad means– In the first place, Berenger [sic] did not write the verses attributed to him. [6] The internal evidence was sufficient .. for Victor Hugo is his personal enemy [7] .. to say nothing of the poetry. Then it would be wise, I think, in considering this question, & in taking for granted that the “literature & talent” of the country are against the government, to analyze the antecedents & character of the persons who do stand out—persons implicated in former governments, or favored by former governments, & whose vanity & prejudices are necessarily contrary to a new order– These persons either in themselves or their friends, have all been tried in action & found wanting– They have all lost the confidence of the French people, either by their misconduct or their ill-fortune– They are all cast aside as broken instruments. Under these circumstances they think it desireable to break themselves into the lock, to prevent the turning of another key—they consider it noble & patriotic, to stand aside & revile & throw mud, in order to hinder the free action of those who are acting for the country. In my mind, it is quite otherwise,—in my mind, & in many other minds—Robert’s for instance! and he began with a most intense hatred of the government, as you well know. But he does not shut his eyes to all that is noble & admirable going on, on all sides. At last he is sick of the opposition, he admits. In respect to literature nothing can be more mendacious than to say there are restraints upon literature. Books of freer opinion are printed now than would ever have been permitted under Louis Philippe .. as was reproached against Napoleon by an enemy the other day—books of free opinion, even licentious opinion, on religion & philosophy– There is restraint in the newspapers only. That the Athenæum should venture to say that in consequence of the suppression of books, compositors are thrown out of work & forced to become transcribers of verses like Berenger’s (which are not Berenger’s) is so stupendous a falsehood .. in the face of statistics which prove a yearly increase in the amount of books printed, .. that I quite lose my breath, you see, in speaking of it. [8]
The government is steadily solving, or attempting to solve, that difficult modern problem of possible socialism, which has been knocking at all our heads & hearts so long. That is its vexation. It is a government for the bas peuple [9] .. the first settled & serious government that ever attempted this case. Its action is worth all the pedantry of the ‘doctrinaires,’ and the middling morals of the ‘juste’ milieu [10] —& I, who am a democrat, will stand by it—as long as I can stand .. which is’nt very long just now, as I told you.
Dearest Moña Nina, I am so uneasy about dear Mr Kenyon—who has been ill again, is ill, I fear, I fear. He is in London—more’s the pity! & Miss Bayley is with him– He gives me sad thoughts.
Do write of yourself– Dont you be sad, dearest friend!– Oh– I do wish you could have come, & let us love you & talk to you—but on the sixteenth of June, at any rate.
Your ever affectionate Ba–
Address: Angleterre. / Mrs Jameson / Ealing / London.
Publication: LEBB, II, 228–232 (in part).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Milton, “Lycidas” (1638), line 193.
3. Edmund Kean (1787–1833), great actor of the English stage, known for his insights (“aperçus”) into character—especially in his portrayals of Shylock and Richard III.
5. At this point, EBB thought that the eighth book was “the very last book.” Sometime in June, she realized she would need a ninth.
7. In line 20 of “Aux Étudiants,” as published in the 5 April 1856 issue of The Athenæum, the speaker rhetorically asks: “Et Belmontet me tient-il lieu d’Hugo?” (“And does Belmontet take the place of Hugo for me?”). Louis Belmontet (1798–1879), poet and politician, was an enthusiastic, if not fawning, supporter of Napoleon III. Victor Hugo despised the current emperor and was exiled from France a month after the coup d’état of 2 December 1851 (see letter 2999, note 8).
8. EBB refers to an item in The Athenæum of 12 April 1856: “French compositors, who have lost their living by the system of suppression, are finding, we are told, a new resource in copying these Béranger-verses and other clandestine productions of the same class” (no. 1486, p. 461). The gist of the verses (an “epigram on the Imperial Prince”) is that said prince’s heritage is Dutch, Scottish, English, and Spanish, but only a little French.
9. “Lower or working class.”
10. “Happy medium,” a term applied to the early reign of King Louis Philippe, by its supporters, detractors, and by the regime itself. In a book “written and edited by the king’s inner circle” (Deux ans de règne), the juste milieu was explained: “The condition of existence of this monarchy will always be to hold to a juste milieu, that it must remain equally distant from the abuse of royal power or absolutism, at risk of perishing like the Restoration, and the excess of popular power or the abuse of excessive liberty, at risk of being submerged by the democratic element; that is to say, that this government must always be moderate” (Albert Boime, Art in an Age of Counterrevolution, 1815–1848, Chicago, 2004, pp. 272–273).
___________________
