4009. EBB to Arabella Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 81–85.
[Florence]
Friday– [19 June 1857] [1]
My beloved Arabel, The house must be very pretty and I like everything about it except two things,—the situation .. the distance .. and the canal .. oh, the canal least of all. [2] I should prefer the row of houses which is away .. anything, in fact, to water, to be deprecated particularly, in London. Tell me if it is not generally considered a drawback. Tell me too if there are facilities of cabs quite close, and how far you have to go to get to the chapel & the Refuge. [3] The house itself looks beautiful in description. Get plenty of low seats & sofas—and I do advise you to have French mattrasses [4] for your beds instead of the old-fashioned feather-beds which are going out everywhere even in England, & are perfectly out in other countries. If you once gave them up you would wonder that you ever could bear to use them, besides the advantage to your health obviously– And here, Arabel, I come to the point which has pricked me—for I see, in spite of all your professions, that you have not been well again– How am I to believe & take rest in the thought that you have been well now? Your letter made me unhappy notwithstanding the assurance of present well-doing—and I do give you warning that I shall bitterly repent not having teazed you still more than I did about leaving London, if you manifestly suffer in health there. Darling, not that I mean to teaze you now. Only you see you must be careful & be good, & quiet, & take wine as you are bid, and not overwork yourself at the Refuge– As to claret, it is not dearer than port, and if it were, it would’nt be so dear as medecine. Any way, it is your duty to take it. You were wrong before not to take it when it was ordered for you. I did not like to teaze you in London, but the little bottle you were so fond of, was given to you precisely on the same principle as wine would have been given, and if the one agreed with you, the other would not have disagreed. Now I entreat you to go on with the claret. A little flushing of the face is nothing .. nothing but an inconvenience. Take more animal food, dearest. Do you know what is discovered of late? .. that the vegetarian system acts injuriously on the brain .. on the organ of the thinking principle? and that the intellect positively suffers from the defect of animal nutriment. You dont want to wane in your intellect I am certain. No intelligent being would. Accept life with the conditions of useful life, and force your taste & inclinations into these conditions. It is a part of God’s will. As to the heat of Italy, you would have been the better for it, I believe, if you had gone with us into the mountains where it is not extreme. You say heat agrees with you, and if that is true of the heat of London it would be of the heat here which is a hundred times less oppressive & heavy. In the winter I should really be afraid of you here in Florence– You would go out in the tramontana,—nobody could keep you in. Well—we must manage as we can & take what we can get—& when you will come you will be accepted with open arms. We are as undecided in our plans, our own, as ever– I dont know how we are to go really. Wilson & Ferdinando have taken a house for a year & are seeing to the furnishing of it– [5] For the first eleven months they are to give eleven pounds English, & then sixteen pounds a year. It is in Via Maggio close to us—& there are seven or eight rooms, very convenient—no taxes. I cant bear to think of taking them away—it might be a disadvantage to them. If they could finish the furnishing, they might go with us, leaving the apartment with somebody & return at the first prospect of letting it– It wd be very selfish of me to consider the inconvenience under such circumstances. She must be at home at the end of October at farthest. As for me I scarcely think yet of what I shall do– I dare say I shall hear at last of some very nice Italian maid who will attend to Peni & me: & I would rather have an Italian. Of course I must as you say, be particular, on account of Peni. It will be a real grief to me to part from Wilson.
And you, Arabel, .. Bonser leaves you. [6] I am very, very sorry. Mrs Crispin is not lively enough, to please me for you—still, if you like her! Do you know I dream sometimes how it would have been if I had remained unmarried– I am afraid we should not have agreed much about one another’s plans, you & I, Arabel. You would have hated being taken gypseying, and I should have hated the Harrow Road. We should have had to draw lots for it perhaps, and one of us would have given up much. So it is better as it is– But I should not differ with you about the carpet & curtains which must be very pretty. You can put plants in the balcony– Our terrace is green with quite high trees—daturas & others—& the smell of lemon blossoms comes through the open windows.
Robert went to Pisa on tuesday with Isa Blagden & her inmate Annette Bracken, a girl of twenty two, to see the Luminara, a peculiar illumination of the town which is exquisitely beautiful & is offered once every three years in honour of San Ranieri. [7] They went at three in the afternoon on tuesday, & Robert was not at home till seven the next morning. I was not up to going—it was too noisy & out of tune—but I am going up to the villa tonight with Robert & Mrs Jameson to sit on Isa’s terrace & look at the divine view,—and I shall have my “Luminara” in the fireflies. Would that you were there too– You do good to the suffering & dying at your Refuge, darling, but I want you to receive good, as well as to give it: & Observe—you cant in the end & when all’s said, give more than you receive: there must be a proportion kept somehow– Was not that girl the one afflicted with some mal-formation? Tell me– If so, it is a blessing for her that she should go.
The heat has begun here, and today Peni represents himself as “suffocating.” It is very hot. I am quite well, be certain. I grew thin & weak for a time—& I dont walk as far as I could before—but I am well, have no cough, & use the carriage most days for two hours at least. Also I occupy myself sturdily,—have begun to teach Peni German; I read books & newspapers—and set my face [8] to God’s future to live as little mournfully as I can. I observe, in most of my great griefs, there has been a drop of bitterness .. a mingling of self-reproach, or of something the nearest to it– But christ’s perfume may sweeten our unsavoury places, & we must walk steadily over the uneven ground, through them all– A little while and ye shall see me– [9] Not through the mist, but beyond it.
Tears are so vain, so vain– It’s the worst waste of time, to cry–
Also I hate & detest this fashion of wearing black. The smell of the crape makes me sick.
Saturday–
It is impossible to wear thick materials in the summer here– I began with silk, trimmed deeply with crape on the three flounces—but I have had to change it for barege with the like trimmings. And I have a black muslin skirt by me, to put on when the heat becomes extreme, & I shall wear it (with my barége open jacket, & crape under-body—& sleeves), the latest that can be bearable.
It is true that Hume is in Paris, his sister placed at a school by the Empress, [10] & himself adopted by the Emperor as his private medium. I hear that he breakfasted the other day with Louis Napoleon & the King of Bavaria. [11] What an extraordinary destiny for a weak, commonplace, foolish young man! But he is the electric wire between the two worlds, and I am the last to wonder at Louis Napoleon’s action– Napoleon is great enough to bear the weight of possible ridicule. What does he care for fifty Mrs Grundys? I dare say Hume will misbehave as usual, and forfeit his priviledges. So weak the creature is that no motive can keep him upright long, I fear– Wherever we go, we shall have a piano for Peni. It will be shameful if we do not. Robert is as earnest in this as I am– Now he is learning something of Donizetti’s [12] & he brought home besides yesterday a new duet. Do you know what Mi[r]atry [13] plays? & what is paid for her music-lessons. I am so glad you have such a nice room for dear Minny. My love to her always– What a dreadful business about Mrs Gaskell! I should never look up, after it, I do believe. The worst is, that the retractation is made out of cowardice, I fear– [14]
May God bless you, my beloved Arabel– Remember—I dont push nor pull you– I wont– But I hold out my arms to you constantly. Best love to all of them. I wrote to George.
Your own Ba–
Robert’s best love.
Address: Angleterre viâ France / Miss Barrett / 50. Wimpole Street / London.
Publication: EBB-AB, II, 302–306.
Manuscript: Gordon E. Moulton-Barrett.
1. Date provided by Florence postmark of 20 June 1857, a Saturday.
2. The Paddington branch of the Grand Junction Canal (now Grand Union Canal), which ran from Brentford near London to Braunston in Northamptonshire. The canal was across the street from Arabella’s house.
3. Paddington Chapel and the nearby Lisson Street Refuge for Destitute Girls were less than a mile east of Arabella’s house.
4. French mattresses were stuffed with wool rather than feathers.
5. The announcement that Wilson was expecting a second child meant that she would no longer be able to work for the Brownings. Therefore, the Romagnolis decided to rent a house at 1905 Via Maggio, three doors away from Casa Guidi, “which they furnished with £50 from their savings. Wilson was to live in the apartment, taking in lodgers, while Ferdinando stayed on with the Brownings. RB paid the £11 rent for the first eleven months” (see vol. 13, p. 384).
6. Elizabeth (“Betsy”) Bonser (1828–72), who had replaced Wilson as lady’s maid at 50 Wimpole Street, married Edwin Hingson (1827–1908), the Moulton-Barrett’s principal man-servant, on 20 February 1858 at St. Saviour’s Church, Paddington.
7. San Ranieri (1117–61); see letter 2797, note 4.
8. Cf. Luke 9:51.
9. Cf. John 16:16.
11. Maximilian II (1811–64) succeeded to the Bavarian throne on his father’s abdication in 1848.
12. Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848), Italian composer of operas.
13. i.e., Mary Arabella Susan Reynolds (1849–1917).
14. Not long after the publication in late March 1857 of Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Brontë, which was both a critical and commercial success, the author was threatened with legal proceedings unless she publicly retracted statements she had made in the biography concerning a certain lady’s involvement with Charlotte’s brother, Branwell Brontë (1817–48). In Chapter XIII, Mrs. Gaskell explains the cause of Branwell’s decline into alcoholism, opium dependency, and death as his seduction and ultimate rejection by a “married woman, nearly twenty years older than himself,” in whose home he was employed as a private tutor. Although the woman is never named in the book, she was known to be Lydia Robinson (née Gisborne, afterwards Scott, d. 1859), wife of the Rev. Edmund Robinson, of Thorne Green. The retraction, published in The Times of 30 May 1857 (p. 5) and a week later in The Athenæum (no. 1545, p. 726), took the form of a letter from Mrs. Gaskell’s solicitor addressed to the injured party’s solicitors and included their letter accepting the retraction. All unsold copies of the first and second editions were withdrawn from the market, and a third edition, with the offending passages rewritten, was issued in November 1857.
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