4192. EBB to Sophia Eckley
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 25, 132–134.
Casa Guidi.
Wednesday. [16 June 1858] [1]
Dear, dear, dearest–. What shall I say in answer to such words? You touch me, Sophie, to the heart of my heart, and there I love you, dear–
But there are things which you should not say because they do not fit me—and it seems sometimes as if you must take me so for another, that the intimate Me of me has scarcely a right to thank you for those– Love me & do not over-praise me– Overwhelm me, if you please, but do not too much humiliate me. Understand how.
I will go out in the woods with you or sit in the house! You shall see me closely, tenderly .. not enlarged in a mist .. or it will not be Ba .. & I want to be my very own self when I am with you, dear–
Robert comes in & tells me .. what does he tell me? That you have been here. It was my darling Sophie who would not come to me that she might not go from me—& how entirely I feel with her & thank her– The “goodbyes” are such bad things. One in a summer is enough, & too much. Yet that you should have been here, & I not aware till you had gone again, seems strange & sad, as so much on the earth is!
Fanny Haworth was with me two days ago, & she would try & lay her hand on mine that I should write– I had attempted it in vain with Mrs Tappan, so thought that would be vain– But I tried, as she would have it so .. & my hand was moved strongly, first in long lines, then in complicated circles– It might be perhaps the beginning of things with me. I wish I had made the trial with you, dear Sophie—dear!
Tell me if any sign comes to you out of that spiritual world, to me so dead & dumb—or rather, to which I am so dead & deaf–
We have not fixed our day for going yet. Would that we were fixing it for coming back.
Do you read Dickens’s letter in the papers, [2] & do you understand farther that he has separated from his wife, the mother of his eight children, & after the union of twenty three years, on the ground of incompatibility of temper–? Is not that hard? The unhappy woman– How disgraceful to both, also, that rather than keep their tempers they should consent to lose half their children!—for the children are divided– The eldest son remains with the mother, which pleases Robert well. She looked goodhumoured while she seemed commonplace,—and whoever may be most in fault, I feel sorry chiefly for her. Is’nt this very strange? ..... Her sister, [3] who has lived in the family for years, is to continue to live on with MrDickens–
You did not come to me—yet, Sophie, you came. Yes, you are here .. you. I love you. Ought’nt I to love Fanny Haworth who brought this lovely sketch to me, with those unspeakable eyes, and the brow, & the lips .. you, yourself? [4] I did think it most tenderly kind of her, & I kissed her, .. and Robert kissed her, Robert, .. so to exhale my gratitude for me, .. and more & more grateful I feel the more I look up there, where it is, the picture! It was good too of you, dear, to sit and be drawn that I might keep such a precious shadow of you– Thank you.
Write– Tell me how you got home—& that your journey to Florence answered the purpose for which you undertook it–
Our love to all of you. Peni misses Doady. I miss my Sophy.
Her ever & ever loving
Ba–
The ring is a talisman. [5] It is Leonardo da Vinci, not Michel Angelo– Da Vinci, the most wonderful of men– But I think, when I look at it, less of men than of women– <& Da Vinci wd himself forgive me for that.> [6]
My voyage-bag [7] is in time to replace one given to me by my sister Henrietta soon after my marriage, & now dropping to pieces– This bag also is from a sister—— How I thank you, darling.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. Date provided by EBB’s reference to “Dickens’s letter” (see note 2 below).
2. A personal statement by Charles Dickens, directed to the public, had appeared widely in British newspapers beginning 7 June 1858 and through the following week. Its purpose was to dispel rumors concerning the separation of Dickens and his wife of twenty-two years, Catherine Thomson (née Hogarth, 1815–79), which became legal on 12 June. Referring to the separation as “domestic trouble … brought to an arrangement,” Dickens wrote: “This trouble has been made the occasion of misrepresentations, most grossly false, most monstrous, and most cruel—involving not only me, but innocent persons dear to my heart” (The Times, 7 June 1858, p. 10). Dickens concludes: “I most solemnly declare, then—and this I do, both in my own name and in my wife’s—that all the lately whispered rumours touching the trouble at which I have glanced are abominably false” (p. 10). One of the “rumours” in circulation concerned Mrs. Dickens’s sister (see note 3 below); another, a teenaged actress named Ellen Ternan (1839–1914), with whom Dickens had become infatuated (see Dickens, 8, xii–xvi). Charles Culliford Boz Dickens (1837–96), the Dickenses’ eldest son, thereafter resided with his mother, while the remaining eight children stayed with their father. The statement was also printed on 12 June in the London weeklies, including The Athenæum and The Examiner. These and previous publications cited as their source Household Words, Dickens’s own magazine, where the statement was published on the first page of the 12 June issue.
3. Georgina Hogarth (1827–1917) joined the Dickens household in 1842. She shared in the housekeeping and the education of the younger children, and “all the children were devoted to her” (Dickens, 8, 559n). She stayed with Dickens and the children after the separation, giving rise to rumors that linked her romantically with the novelist; none of them was true.
4. We have been unable to trace this likeness.
5. Doubtless, a gift from Mrs. Eckley, listed by EBB in the sixth paragraph of letter 4190.
6. Text within angle brackets has been inserted as an afterthought.
7. Another gift from Mrs. Eckley, listed as a “travelling bag” in letter 4190.
___________________
