4098. EBB to Jane Wills-Sandford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 216–218.
Florence.
Monday. [16 November 1857] [1]
My dearest Jane, so you are in Paris!– Tell me if it is’nt better than Brighton? Oh, I should fancy so– Wont you accept it as a half-way to Geneva, literally & metaphorically? By the way, I have been hearing a good deal about Geneva lately, and I dont like it. I dont think even the Alps could keep me content with that hard, dry, unartistic state of society– No—not though there’s a church-establishment there, constituted according to the gospel of the moving tables! [2]
I can tell you nothing about our plans yet, except that Robert seems to me cooling down perceptibly about Rome, (and if he cools, I shant stir the embers) & disinclined to leave his studio here, & the comforts of our home– Then next year we must go northward; and the expenses of Rome & of travelling altogether are immense,—while here we scarcely pay house-rent in comparison. Robert quotes Taylor (of Artevelde) [3] that if you doubt concerning two plans, you should choose the cheaper—and, as for me, I like quiet & Florence, (dead-still Florence is just now!) and, if he says ‘Stay’, I shall never say ‘Go’. To Rome, I mean.
We are all well. I am better since my return from Lucca, enjoying & benefitting from the repose. And Peni … you should see Peni, before you preach about the impropriety of keeping him more summers in the south. Why, Pen is an Italian, dont you know, born & bred,—used to the air & diet & customs. The risk to him is when he goes to England, where he always grows bleached & bony, poor darling. You scarcely would know him for the same child, after a summer in London, & one here. As to the fever, it came from great imprudence & exposure—an accident of violent exercise & sudden chill—it yielded quickly to remedy & left no trace of its presence. Indeed he is only the fatter for his adversities, the fatter & the rosier .. & the more impudent, let me add! I wish you could see & hear him. Radiant he is, with his shining curls, & unextinguishable of spirits & energies. I dont under-rate the risk of the climate to unacclimatised persons and always am slow to recommend people of a certain age to attempt a residence here– But Peni!—it’s his native air, observe. And never was a more healthy child. We scarcely give him medecine once a year– Yes, and he reads German; Grimm’s stories, half a page every day—to say nothing of French, Italian & English– As to music, he gets on “like a house on fire” (Robert says poetically) and is now learning a grand solo of five or six pages from the ‘Traviata’– Think of that!–
Mrs Jameson is living in this house .. in two crooked fragmentary rooms, for which she is made to pay too much—but she could’nt be pleased anywhere else, and so chose to be displeased here. She goes to Rome presently– Boxall the artist too, is in Florence for a few days, full of grumblement about the treatment of art & artists in England. And Hatty Hosmer, the American sculptress,— .. sweeping us with her skirts as she goes on to Rome– Also, we have a piercing tramontana I am sorry to say, which pleases me much less as a visitor.
Between us and the dear brown wall you hate so, [4] we have had the most lovely flowering daturas, not to mention a lemon-tree which Peni looks at with covetous eyes——“May’nt he have one lemon for lemonade?” And I turn like a tigress.
Of India I wont speak. Talking of tigers reminds me of the horrors there– And yet, would I be a tiger of a sepoy, or a tiger of an editor of the Times .. for instance .. & other bloody newspapers? [5] Really I scarcely know. The whole subject is hideous to me. Is this the Christianity which Christ left?
You will have met Sarianna Browning before now I dare say– She lives as before in the Rue de Grenelle, Faug St Germain. Tell me how you occupy yourself in Paris– I believe the Hedleys are there or to be there for the winter.
Are you well, dearest Jane? are your sisters well? & your father?– May God bless you, dear. Robert’s love with that of your ever affectionate
EBB–
Robert only draws, & not landscapes. He keeps to the figure. I, too, like physiology. And I like [‘]La Petite Comtesse.’ [6] Do you know Mdme Gil blas by Paul Feval? [7] Forgive me if it proves to be a little indecent, as some of his books are. But that writer has imagination, & is of poetical insight. I am still much interested in the spirit-question—& I am going through Hahn-hahn’s novels. [8] What a consequent letter.!!
Address: France / À Mademoiselle / Mademoiselle Wills Sandford / Champs Elysées– 69. / Paris.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Case Western Reserve University.
1. This letter is postmarked 17 November 1857, a Tuesday.
3. Cf. Henry Taylor (1800–86), Notes from Life in Six Essays (1847), chap. 1 (“Of Money”): “When you are undecided as to which of two courses you would like best, choose the cheapest” (p. 13). Taylor’s Philip van Artevelde; A Dramatic Romance was published in 1834.
4. i.e., the wall of the church of San Felice, directly opposite the Brownings’ terrace.
6. La Petite Comtesse (1857), a novella by Octave Feuillet (1821–90), was issued in a volume that also included another novella, Onesta, and a dramatic scene, Le Parc.
7. EBB had read it earlier in the year (see letter 3975).
8. Besides Countess von Hahn-Hahn’s Zwei Frauen (see letter 4083, note 3), EBB may also have been reading Gräfin Faustine (1841), Gräfin Cecil (1844), and Sibylle (1846), novels that feature strong, passionate women in somewhat racy aristocratic settings. After converting to Roman Catholicism in 1850, the Countess “repudiated her earlier works and produced a series of novels in praise of family and the Church” (Todd Kontje, Women, the Novel, and the German Nation, 1771–1871, Cambridge, 1998, p. 140).
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