3961. EBB to Ellen Twisleton
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 216–218.
Florence–
Jany 27– [1857] [1]
My dear Mrs Twistleton [sic],
I vex myself with measuring the time since I had your most welcome & kind letter. Is it so, that we do business for our friends,—after offering, too, to do it? Really I feel ashamed. Let me hasten at last (which is what a Roman poet called ‘making haste slowly’) [2] to tell you before I thank you for ‘Aurora’, that an artist here, Mr Mignaty, [3] who has already made three copies of the picture in question, [4] will do your work perfectly, at the charge of about ten pounds, or a little beyond. There is another copyist who charges higher prices & presents small advantage otherwise; but if you will trust Mignaty, my husband will see himself, he says, that the copy shall be faithfully made, .. and indeed it will be a real pleasure to him to be of use to you or yours in any slight matter of this kind.
It has been hard to me to write this,—more than a page, without a word of the gladness you gave me by the feeling you expressed about my poem. [5] ‘Home we come & take our wages’ [6] when we get such words from such people. Thank you, dear Mrs Twistleton.
But I never saw Stoneleigh Abbey, [7] —no,—& the name is a coincidence. Once in a ballad (‘Duchess May’) I spoke of ‘Leighs,’ [8] —& out of the ballad I took the name to use it once more; and great good fortune it is, that it should have commended itself to Mr Twistleton so. [9] Leigh Hunt writes too, to claim kindred,—which is abundant honour. [10]
We found ourselves so happy in our old own nest at Florence, that we could’nt make up our wings to go farther. I lost my cough in the sun, somewhere between Lyons & Genoa, & have been very well all the winter, though we have had cold days, bleak winds from the snow-mountains, and a great deal of sadness to cover the place of Christmas. You cant think, .. yes, you can think .. how, after the roar & rush of Paris & London, we seem to hear the silence in Italy. The repose is delightful,—and I, who had been long at work, sit in a state of ecstatic idleness more hours than it would be respectable to count, thinking idle thoughts & reading idle books all day.
Do you never suffer temptation to come to Florence again? [11]
We were grieved to hear the other day that Mrs Carlyle was less strong than usual & looking unwell– [12] I missed her altogether in London last summer—but through no fault of mine .. only my misfortune,—& indeed Mr Carlyle himself, I only saw once– Frederick will emerge, I suppose, before another year!
My husband unites with me in true regards to Mr Twistleton & yourself. Thank you for saying that you do really love me a little. Let me be, on my side,
affectionately yours
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Yes indeed—if you could help me in anything I would say ‘Help me.’ Have I forgotten, do you think, all the shopping which you might have done that day!– [13]
Address: Angleterre viâ France. / Mrs Twistleton / 3. Rutland Gate / London– W.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Harvard University.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Cf. Suetonius, The Lives of the Caesars, trans. J.C. Rolfe, II, 25, 4. It was not a “Roman poet” but the Roman emperor Augustus Ceasar who was alleged to have used the phrase “festina lente,” though he is reported to have used it in the Greek form.
3. George Mignaty (1824–95), a Greek artist, resident in Florence and a friend of the Brownings.
4. The famous portrait of Oliver Cromwell (“warts and all”) by Peter Lely (1618–80) in the Pitti Palace, as indicated by RB in a 1 May 1857 letter to Edward Twisleton (ms at Harvard).
5. In her praise of Aurora Leigh, Mrs. Twisleton had written that she could not “understand how an Englishwoman could so perfectly see & represent English peculiarities” (see the third paragraph in letter 3959).
6. Cf. Cymbeline, IV, 2, 261.
7. Stoneleigh Abbey, near Kenilworth in Warwickshire, originated as a twelfth-century Cistercian abbey. It was acquired by Thomas Leigh in 1561. In Aurora Leigh the ancestral home of Romney Leigh is named Leigh Hall, not Stoneleigh.
8. In the ballad “Rhyme of the Duchess May” (Poems, 1844), the duchess is given in marriage to “Lord Leigh, the churl” (line 56) but chooses instead to die with Sir Guy Linteged, whom she has secretly married.
9. The family name in Aurora Leigh “commended itself” to Edward Twisleton because of his ancestry: on 8 December 1786 James Henry Leigh (1765–1823) married Julia Judith Twisleton (1771–1843), daughter of Thomas Twisleton, 13th Baron Saye and Sele.
10. See the sixth paragraph in letter 3949.
11. The Twisletons had called at Casa Guidi in December 1852 (see letter 3151).
13. 14 October 1856; see SD1981.
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