Correspondence

4117.  EBB & RB to William Johnson Fox

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 25, 9-12.

Jany. 17th, 1858.

My dear Mr Fox,—Do you think me really ungrateful or only stupid, for not having thanked you more immediately for the kindness of your letter? [1] If either, I am ungrateful: since I did understand the worth of the kindness, the value of the crown it gave me:—only I do hope to escape the imputation of such an alternative; I do hope you will believe that I felt the kindness at least as much as I knew the worth of praise—yes indeed– After all, there may be good reasons for silence. Shall I confess to you that I was sad and humble as I read your letter? One wishes sometimes to have done better, when praised over generously for well-doing: and then, this has been a heavy year to me, and every light-springing thought in it has run the risk of being beaten down by others not light, and somewhat bitter,—which does not make me less grateful to you but more. Also what you wrote gave pleasure unclouded to my husband (as you who know him must know) and then I had it over again, from his heart and eyes, thanking you all the time in my own. Indeed it was a pleasant surprise, that letter of yours, and it touched us to the quick, both of us, to observe by the date, that you had written on the very day of your election, [2] not too full of triumph to forget your old métier of holding out a hand to those who climb.

By the way, Robert always talks of you, you know, as “his father in poetry.” [3]

Think how pleasant it must be, that he and I should have to look the same way! I, not only (now) on his account. Nor he, only, on his own.

Here is a new year which we load with good wishes for you and yours. Is Miss Fox [4] with you? If so, she will accept our cordial regards.

We spent the summer at the Baths of Lucca, among the Apennines and the Chestnut forests, where Robert ran some frightful risks: such as the falling of his horse down a precipice of sixty feet, he throwing himself off just in time to escape the descent.– [5] Then our child caught a gastric fever and frightened me more than I like to remember now.

Afterwards we were very near going to Egypt and the Holy Land, [6] and should have gone if it had not been for my nerves, a little shaken about Penini.

He looks however rather rosier and better than before his fever, and his curls are as bright as they used to be.– He plays the piano, and reads German and French, besides of course Italian and English, and we don’t overwork him,—you may trust us for that.

I should like to hear your private thoughts about India. There seems to me a quantity of ferocious Sepoyism in the English newspapers, and I have a good deal of scepticism about our rights in Oude [7] and our aims generally in India, where we would “make the two ends meet”: of filling our pockets, and converting to Xtianity by the point of the bayonet.

There has been here lately, performing at the theatres, a glorious Neapolitan Improvisatrice, Gian[n]ina Milli; and the Italians said that she paid a visit to the “English Improvisatrice”; meaning me. The word “poet,” like the thing, seems to be dying out in our poor Italy! Only we don’t deserve all that Ruskin says of us, after all. She (La Milli) is very striking, full of eloquence in conversation, and with a voice like a musical instrument so sweet and vibrating. With eyes, too, let me tell you. Robert and I tried to persuade her to go to England, and it’s a pity she will not.

Dear Mr Fox, I do hope you are well and in spirits.– How we should like it if you wrote to us sometimes,—but this is not asking,—I do not dare! I shall leave a space for Robert, that you may be paid for having to read all this,—affectionately yours,

Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

[Continued by RB]

“A space for Robert”—who has taken a breathing space—hardly more than enough—to recover from his delight; if he won’t say surprise, at your letter, dear Mr Fox. But it is all right and like you—I wish from my heart we could get close together again as in those old days, and what times we would have here in Italy! The realisation of the children’s prayer of angels at the corner of your bed (i.e. sofa). “One to read and one (my wife) to write, and one to guard you through the night’[’] of lodging-keepers’ extortions, abominable charges for firing, etc., and so on. (Observe, to call oneself an “angel in the land” is rather humble, where they are apt to be painted as plumed cut-throats; or celestial police. You may say of Gabriel at his best and blithesomest “shouldn’t admire meeting him in a dark land!”) I say this foolishly just because I won’t trust myself to be earnest about it. I would, you know, always would choose you out of the whole English world to judge and correct what I write myself—my wife shall read this and let it stand if I have told her so these twelve years—and certainly I have not grown intellectually an inch over the good and kind hand you extended over my head how many years ago! Now it goes over my wife’s too. How was it “Tottie” never came here as she promised? is it to be some other time? Do think of Florence if ever you feel chilly, and hear quantities about the Princess Royal’s marriage, [8] and want a change. I hate the thought of leaving Italy for one day more than I can help, and satisfy my English predilections by newspapers and a book or two—one gets nothing of that kind here, but the stuff out of which books grow—it lies about one’s feet indeed. Yet for me there would be one book better than any now to be got here or elsewhere, and all out of a great English heart and head—those Memoirs you engaged to give us. Will you give us them? [9]

Good-bye now—if ever the whim strikes you to “make beggars happy,” remember me. Love to Tottie, and love and gratitude to you dear Mr Fox.

From yours ever very affectionately,

Robert Browning.

Text: Richard Garnett and Edward Garnett, The Life of W.J. Fox (London, 1910), pp. 316–319.

1. Letter 4082, in which Fox expressed his admiration for Aurora Leigh.

2. On 19 October 1857, the day before Fox wrote to the Brownings, he was elected Liberal M.P. for Oldham (see letter 4093, note 7).

3. In letter 575 RB referred to Fox as “my literary father.” In 1833, after reading Fox’s review of Pauline, RB wrote to him: “I shall never write a line without thinking of the source of my first praise, be assured” (letter 476).

4. Eliza Florance Fox (afterwards Bridell, later Bridell-Fox, 1823–1903). RB refers to her below as “Tottie.”

5. See the third paragraph in letter 4054.

6. With the Eckleys (see letter 4092, note 2).

7. The Indian state of Oude or Oudh (more properly Awadh), now part of the modern state of Uttar Pradesh, was annexed by the British government in 1856 on the grounds of misgovernment. During the Sepoy Rebellion, which began in May 1857 (see letter 4026, note 3), Oude was the region of the greatest unrest and the most intense fighting. On 16 November 1857 British forces broke the siege at Lucknow, and a month later they won the battle of Cawnpore. An editorial in The Times of 7 January 1858 (p. 6) mentioned these events and claimed that the rebellion had occurred in Oude and other parts of Bengal India because in those areas the East India Company had been the most respectful of the native religions at the cost of Christianity, which, henceforth, should be vigorously promoted. Regarding the “ferocious Sepoyism in the English newspapers,” the previous November EBB had referred to the “bloodthirstiness of the Sepoys & that of the Times” (see letter 4093, note 12). Calls for retribution and vengeance had appeared frequently in the press after news of Sepoy atrocities reached England. A Times editorial on 1 January 1858 declared: “No effeminate philanthropy stands in the way of a righteous resolution that the crimes of Delhi and of Cawnpore shall be avenged” (p. 6).

8. The Princess Royal, Victoria Adelaide Mary Louise (1840–1901), married Prince Frederick William of Prussia (1831–88) on 25 January 1858 in the chapel of St. James’s Palace. For weeks prior to the wedding, English newspapers reported performances, inspections, balls, ordering of the wedding dress, presenting of royal jewels, casting of a commemorative medal, and other details.

9. Fox had begun a personal memoir in 1835 but abandoned it. He picked it up again briefly in 1858, possibly because of RB’s remark. The memoir was never finished, and what little there was did not go beyond his early years (see Richard Garnett and Edward Garnett, The Life of W.J. Fox, 1910, pp. 1–2).

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