4198. EBB to Sophia Eckley
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 25, 143–144.
Casa Guidi–
Wednesday, June 30. [1858] [1]
Dearest Sophie I send you my last word from Florence. We go tomorrow, if God pleases,—embark at Leghorn at five or six in the afternoon. May He bless you, dearest kindest friend—you & yours .. who seem also a little mine. I am very tired, & not very bright, at leaving our Italy .. but we are coming back, we are coming back, I say that to myself.
Mr Jarves was here yesterday– His mother in America had had a letter from Hume, whose intended bride has received already, he says, twenty five thousand crowns worth of marriage gifts from her family– He speaks of her with great devotion, & observes incidentally, .. that the Prince Louis [2] ...............
At that moment a spirit came & obliterated the name from my brain.
Or, more reasonably perhaps, it’s the confusion. I have been standing, & sitting, ‘sotto sopra’, [3] all the morning, (no wonder!) & might have need, for decency’s sake & in a spiritual sense, of the famous, famous “ascension-robes”– [4] You remember?
Observe, by the way, that I am well enough to be very, very foolish.
Dear .. the nameless prince is to stand in some relation to Hume at the wedding, as bridegroom’s man .. or something corresponding.
Love me, pray for me, you who are to be (it is settled) my “sister” of the spiritual world .. sweet & precious then as now, there as here, & ever, here or there. Pray that God may love us & take care of us, & give access to us, those innocent & holy spirits who help to “deliver from evil’[’]– [5] Robert’s love—& Peni’s to Doady—& mine with Robert’s to all three of you.
Lovingly your true
Ba.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. Year provided by EBB’s reference to Daniel Dunglas Home’s marriage, which took place on 1 August 1858.
2. Perhaps, Prince Luigi di Borbone (1824–97), younger brother of the King of Naples, Ferdinand II. In 1856 the prince gave Home “a superb ruby ring … declared himself a medium like Home and retained an identical jewel as a symbol of their mystic union” (Waddington, p. 61).
3. “In disarray.”
4. Thought to be the garments worn by the Millerites (see letter 3326, note 4), in which they would ascend to meet Jesus Christ at the second coming.
5. Cf. one of the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:13 and Luke 11:4).
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