4034. EBB to Anna Brownell Jameson
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 126–127.
[Bagni di Lucca]
Thursday– [sic, for Friday] [28 August 1857] [1]
Dearest friend I think it better to enclose to you this letter which has come to your address. Thank you for your kind words about Lytton which will be very soothing to him– He continues better, & is preparing to take his first drive today, for half an hour, with his nurse, & Robert– See how weak he must be: & the hollow cheeks & temples remain as signs of the past. Still, he is convalescent, .. & trying to think of poems and apple-puddings in a manner other than celestial. I do thank God that our anxieties have ended so–
Robert bathes in the river every-morning, which does him great good, besides the rides, at morning’s & evening’s, on mountain ponies, with Annette Bracken .. & a Crimean hero [2] (as Mrs Stisted has it) who has turned up at the hotel, with one leg and so many agreeable & amiable qualities that everybody is charmed with him–
Robert had a letter from Chapman yesterday. Not much news– He speaks of two penny papers, sold lately, after making the fortune of their proprietors, for twenty five & thirty five thousand pounds. [3] If Robert “could but write bad enough” says the learned publisher, he should recommend one of them. But even Charles Reade was found too good .. & the sale fell ten thousand in a few weeks on account of a serial tale of his [4] .. so he had to make place to his worses. Chapman hears of a “comprehensive review” being about to appear in the Westminster on ‘Aurora’ .. whether for or against, he cant tell. [5] The third edition sells well. [6]
So happy I am to hear that Mr Procter’s son is safe– [7] We saw the name in the Galignani & were alarmed– Lytton has heard from Forster, but I had no English news from the letter. I get letters from my sisters which make me feel ‘froissée’ [8] all over—except that they seem pretty well. My eldest brother has returned from Jamaica, & has taken a place with a Welsh name [9] on the Welsh borders, for three years. What I knew he would do. He wrote me some tender words, dear fellow[.]
Would you think it too expensive to pay twelve pauls [10] a day for board & lodging .. very good board, & very comfortable lodging .. a drawing room & bedroom on the first piano—not far from us? We might perhaps bring it down to ten pauls—but I cant try without authority– All this is written in great haste– May God bless you.
Yours in much love & hope of seeing you,
Ba–
Publication: LEBB, II, 270–271 (in part).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by EBB’s reference to Lytton’s “first drive today.” In letter 4033 RB reported that the drive was anticipated for “to-morrow.”
2. William Gillum (1827–1910), listed as “Major Gillum” in the Brownings’ address book of this period (see Appendix IV). Later known as Colonel Gillum, he studied painting under Ford Madox Brown and became a patron of D.G. Rossetti and the architect Philip Webb (see Nikolaus Pevsner, “Colonel Gillum and the Pre-Raphaelites.” The Burlington Magazine, 95, March 1953, 78–81).
3. One of the “penny papers” was The London Journal, an illustrated weekly owned by George Stiff (1807–74), who had recently sold it to Herbert Ingram (1811–60), publisher of The Illustrated London News, for somewhere “in the region of £30,000” (ODNB). An item in the Caledonian Mercury of 15 August 1857 reported that The London Journal, “said to have the largest circulation of any periodical in the world, averaging nearly 400,000 per week—has, within the last few days, changed hands” ([p. 4]). We have been unable to identify the other penny paper that was sold.
4. We have been unable to confirm this remark or identify Charles Reade’s “serial tale,” but according to the ODNB, Reade was among the contributors to The London Journal.
5. A review of Aurora Leigh by John Nichol (1833–94), a student at Balliol College, Oxford, appeared in the October 1857 issue of The Westminster Review (pp. 399–415). Although the reviewer finds “excellences” in the poem, such as the “irresistible pathos” of Marian Erle’s story and lines that left him “with a sort of breathless fear and wonder,” he is critical of “those peculiar views of reform and social philosophy which this volume has for its text.” Nichol concludes by taking issue with John Ruskin’s published assessment of Aurora Leigh (see letter 4027, note 3): “The work—full of beauty, large-heartedness, and valour, though it be,—has artistic defects sufficient to render it unworthy the place assigned to it by a great critic, as the greatest poem of the century.” For the full text of this review, see pp. 357–363. A more positive notice of Aurora Leigh, written by George Eliot, had appeared in The Westminster Review of January 1857 (pp. 306–310); see vol. 23, pp. 364–366.
6. i.e., the third edition of Aurora Leigh (see letter 3976, note 15).
7. Galignani’s Messenger of 17–18 August 1857 printed an account of the Sepoy Mutiny, from the Bombay Times, that listed the names of those who were killed at Gwalior on the night of 14 June. Included was “Lieut. Proctor, adjutant, 4th Infantry” (p. 3). Montagu Mitchell Procter, of the 38th Infantry, son of Bryan Waller Procter, was in Delhi at that time.
8. “Crumpled” or “ruffled.”
9. Bryngwyn; see letter 4014, note 2.
10. Equivalent to a little over five shillings.
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