3942. EBB to Robert Browning, Sr.
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 161–163.
[Florence]
Christmas Eve [1856] [1]
I must write one word to thank Penini’s dearest nonno, for his kindness to me and my book. I was delighted to have the little note which gave me so much sympathy, & told me of an affection very valuable to me.
Here is Christmas—and our thoughts & prayers go out in desires for you both—for yourself, & for dear Sarianna– We are wondering whether you will dine with the Corkranes,—now that I have corrected my mistake of imagining that M. Milsand was to dine with you on that particular day. In my hurry of reading the letter first, I misunderstood it quite. Only there was a plum pudding & Sarianna made it– The date does not alter that great fact.
I feel very much inclined to sulk and be melancholy tomorrow, hating all anniversaries (except Peni’s birthday & our marriage-day) & feeling myself as black as my gown on this particular Christmas. By the way, you are not to think of Penini as being “black”—it was not necessary to put him into our necessary mourning, darling child. He has been looking forward to his Christmasday with rapturous anxiety, and when we had a medium here a few days since (Count Ginnasi, [2] a cousin of Count Gamba’s) [3] and Mr Kirkup, & Regina’s ghost, and a table moved a little, Penini gravely wanted to know whether he could’nt have Christmas moved from thursday to wednesday, so as to bring it nearer. He is a most good, dear child, & thinks & talks of you always. Now, Robert is going to provide the toys of the season—a horse, a cart, a dissected map. [4] May God bless you. May we all have what you wish for, “June, July, & the Bois de Boulogne”, and light hearts to enjoy them with!
Your ever affectionate
Ba
Do give my love to Mr & Mrs Corkrane. Frederick Tennyson has come from Pisa for a day, & dines with us.
Address: Robert Browning Esqre
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Lilly Library.
1. This letter was enclosed in letter 3943.
2. Count Luigi Stanislao Ginnasi (d. ca. 1864), of Faenza, was a son of Alessandro Ginnasi (1774–1844) and his wife, Lucrezia (née Gamba), sister of Pietro Gamba’s father (see the following note). On this, probably his only, visit to Casa Guidi, Ginnasi performed a feat of clairvoyance that involved a pair of gold wrist studs belonging to RB. The episode is described by James T. Knowles in a letter to The Spectator for 30 January 1869. Citing RB as his source, Knowles recounts that, as part of a demonstration of Ginnasi’s clairvoyant powers, the poet handed him one of the wrist studs. The Count “held it in his hand awhile, looking earnestly in Mr. Browning’s face, and then said, as if much impressed … ‘There is something here which cries out in my ear, “Murder, murder!”’ ‘And truly’ [says Mr. Browning,] ‘those very studs were taken from the dead body of a great-uncle of mine, who was violently killed on his estate in St. Kitt’s, nearly 80 years ago’” (p. 136). On an undated draft of Knowles’s letter, RB appended several notes addressing errors of fact (which he enclosed to the author in a letter dated 27 December 1868, ms at ABL). Knowles incorporated many of those notes in the final version. In correcting Knowles’s statement that Ginnasi was a friend of the poet’s, RB writes: “Count Ginnasi … was not a friend, nor indeed acquaintance of mine: he was brought to my house without previous introduction by an intimate friend [i.e., Seymour Kirkup]. … I believe, I saw him only once afterward: he was only a visitor at Florence.” Concerning Ginnasi’s powers of clairvoyance, RB points out: “It should be remembered that the Count was Italian to the finger-tips: and that the Italian penetrativeness into whatever one’s physiognomy may reveal, is unmatchable by the rest of the world.” RB identifies the great-uncle as his “grandfather’s first wife’s brother,” the brother of Margaret Tittle (1754–89). We have been unable to identify him further.
3. Pietro Gamba (1801–27), son of Count Ruggero Gamba Ghiselli (1770–1846) and younger brother of Teresa Guiccioli (née Gamba, 1800–73), Byron’s last mistress.
4. “A map … mounted on a thin board and divided into variously shaped parts, to be put together as an exercise or puzzle” (OED).
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