3974. EBB to Anna Brownell Jameson
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 27–28.
Florence.
March 15. [1857] [1]
Dearest Moña Nina, I could’nt send a letter to meet you at Rome– It was’nt within the possibilities. When I received yours from Marseilles you had arrived already. And so, and so, because I could’nt do the thing as soon as you wished, I am doing it later than I need—and that’s very human & inexcusable.
Dear friend, I do hope & trust that you are better & brighter than you expected to be at Rome, & that all those cleaving cares, that old man of the mountain, is thrown off & left beyond seas. [2] How strange & true it is, that the soul changes scene, like the rest! I, at least, often find it so. I feel lighter here– I have run away from my debts, .. lawful & unlawful—nobody taps me on my shoulder & arrests me, as every ten minutes in England.
If ever I have done you good, dont be too curious for the reason– Let me flatter myself & fancy it is because you love me. That I should love you, would’nt be enough you know, of itself.
And now, let me say how delightful I feel it is that you should be here in Italy,—as near as Rome is, and soon to be nearer. Meanwhile write, & tell me, first of your dear self, .. then, how you find your Geddie, (give my love to her). Tell me too of dear Madme Braun with whom I am in deep sympathy, though I never wrote to her to say so. [3] I have suffered so much myself from the “confort” [4] of letters of condolence, that I never write them, except under peculiar circumstances, and I sent her some words through Miss Bayley (who was writing at the early time of her great affliction)—which seemed enough to suggest what my feeling was. I want much to know whether she decides on remaining in Italy or going to England,—& how she is in health & in spirits. It seems to me so natural, so true to the sentiment of the situation, that she should dislike the thought of taking up the old life in England—but I think I told you that of me.
Now, mind you be good & wise, dearest Madonna, & feel interested & happy in Rome & the Romans as assembled this coming Easter. Everybody admires you & is charmed with you, be sure, as I am sure—oh, never get morbid & fancy otherwise! be certain that you have a devil (and very blue) when that fancy strikes you– The other day some one was boasting of the social lights of Rome this season .. “Mrs Stowe, Mrs Gaskell here, Mrs Jameson coming”—three lionesses roaring softly. Well, we shall have them in Florence in turn, I suppose,—and my particular lioness shall be three times welcome, & I will feed her with galette & love, .. to say nothing of what Aurora Leigh calls the “blood of suns.” [5] And by the way, I do hope you have brought me the especial “marked copy,” that I may learn something from your ‘objections’– [6] Yes indeed. I am forward sometimes, but not past bettering, I hope, I hope: and I agree with you that every poem should be worked as clean as possible of its necessary flaws, .. of the many faults, in the case of my poem.
We have lovely weather today, bright & warm– The key is in the lock, which lets me out of prison. Robert is out or would send you his love.
Your ever loving Ba–
How we laughed at your picturesque vision of our friend in Paris! [7] —— Hume the medium, is there, with recovered powers, “ecclipsing the Persian ambassador” [8] & astonishing Louis Napoleon.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Huntington Library.
1. Year provided by EBB’s reference to the “Persian ambassador” (see note 8 below).
2. EBB has confused Hasan-bin-Sabah, an 11th-century Persian Shi’ite warrior known as “The Old Man of the Mountain,” and the fictional Old Man of the Sea, who forced Sinbad the Sailor to carry him on his back in “The Fifth Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor” in The Arabian Nights. She refers to the old man of the mountain in letter 2751, where she identifies her source as the Sinbad story.
3. For the death of her husband, August Emil Braun, on 12 September 1856 at Rome.
4. French, for “comfort.”
5. i.e., sunsets (Aurora Leigh, 5, 178).
6. Mrs. Jameson had questioned the similarity between the blinding of Rochester in Jane Eyre and Romney in Aurora Leigh (see letter 3944). She later wrote to Ottilie von Goethe: “My belief is that if Mrs. Browning had kept her poem for a year before it was printed, she would have given it a more correct and polished form” (see SD2092).
7. Unidentified.
8. British newspapers reported that the Persian ambassador to the court of Napoleon III, Ferouk Khan (1812–71), would arrive in Paris mid-February 1857 to a brilliant reception. The Daily News of 21 February (p. 4) reported the arrival of Khan and his entourage in Paris the previous day.
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