4036. EBB to Bessie Rayner Parkes
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 128–129.
[Bagni di Lucca]
[ca. September 1857] [1]
I write to you my dear Miss Parkes, to answer that word in your letter to Isa Blagden which invited me to speak of our dear Jessie White to the public– [2] I write to make you understand that I am silent not because I do not love her, but because I do, .. & that my silence is the only possible expression of my love for her. She has been attacked, as far as I am aware, not in her private life, but simply on the ground of what she has done or attempted to do, in relation to political men & things in Italy & elsewhere– <No one has called her unchaste & unfaithful, or doubted of her being unselfish.> [3] I tell you I am feeling bitterly what her opponents are saying violently, & that if I speak at all, I must speak in their sense. I think her very foolish, very wrong, .. very much led astray. While it was yet time to speak I spoke to herself, I remonstrated in letters written with tears in my eyes, I besought her face to face in London. [4] Now, the hour for speaking is past. But I love her dearly now as then, & shall always,—believing unshakingly in her nobleness & disinterestedness of nature,—knowing & loving her quand même– [5]
For the rest, I consider her one of the many victims of a man [6] who has done more harm to Italy than an Austrian could. Some lie with bullets through the heart, and some live on with disasters on theirs, like dear Jessie. And observe—when I speak of disasters, I dont mean the mere external misadventure– The prison is nothing– But it is a disaster to suffer the influence of such a .. man to be warped in principle because evil & good are equally welcome to him as means, and to be mistaken in ends with him <***>
Publication: None traced.
Source: Incomplete author’s draft at Brown University.
1. Approximate dating suggested by EBB’s remark: “The prison is nothing.” Jessie White was held in prison at Genoa from July to November1857.
2. Regarding her imprisonment at Genoa; see letter 4017, note 6.
3. Sentence in angle brackets is interpolated between lines.
4. Shortly before leaving London in October 1856, EBB wrote Jessie White, inviting her to 39 Devonshire Place (see letter 3894).
5. “All the same.”
6. Giuseppe Mazzini.
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