4081. EBB to Sophia Eckley
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 192–193.
[Florence]
[ca. 20 October 1857] [1]
Dearest Sophie, The address is … Robert cant remember the number .. the last house but one or so, on the left side of via Maggio as you come up our way, .. I mean with your face towards us—a large house kept by Mdme Baranowski, [2] I think the name is,—a Russian. What a clear direction I give you!!
Not for my sake but Dodys’, I concede the point of having him today– He would’nt be troublesome, not he; but he might be over-excited,—& that would not be good for him just now on the verge of the great pilgrimage– Before all pilgrimages one must gird up one’s loins you know– [3]
I will go with you anywhere & when you please .. only not today—& in true love remain your
EBB
Mr Kirkup is here talking till I cant write– I shall act for the mystic ornaments– [4]
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. Approximate dating based on EBB’s reference to the “verge of the great pilgrimage,” suggesting a date shortly before the Eckleys’ departure for Egypt. The Eckleys embarked from Leghorn on 25 October 1857.
2. Maria Baranowski, or Baranowsky, at 1870 Via Maggio. Many years later, Marie Hansen Taylor, the niece of August Emil Braun, describes her as “an Englishwoman of little education, but great kindness of heart; and … the widow of the sacristan of the Greek chapel at Florence” (On Two Continents: Memories of Half a Century, New York, 1905, p. 187).
3. Cf. I Peter 1:13.
4. Presumably, items used to facilitate communication with spirits. EBB may have in mind a passage from Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii (3 vols., 1834), a work she had read and admired (see letters 493 and 1489). In an epilogue, the narrator muses over the excavations at Pompeii: “In the midst of the city was found another skeleton, by the side of which was a heap of coins, and many of the mystic ornaments of the fane of Isis” (III, 311).
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