4266. EBB to Mary Hunter
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 25, 266–268.
[Florence]
[2 November 1858] [1]
My dearest Mary, <…> I ought, to tell you of our safe arrival. Nine days were we on the road, yet there was much hard travelling, & I suffered a good deal in passing the Mont Cenis. On this side the Alps we dropped into summer & muslin dresses, & I forgot the winter altogether till two days ago, it dropped suddenly on our hills in snow, & the tramontana caught us, not “on the hip,” but in the throat, which is worse. So now we are setting ourselves seriously to prepare for Rome, where we hope to arrive at the end of this present month of November. But direct to Florence, you.
A lady of Paris [2] had written <to M. Mignaty to say that> we left <Paris on the thirteenth (of> October—) so that there was an immense excitement here, extremely flattering to our sense of importance, as to what unhappy end we had come! Three were mentioned—either we had perished by a railway accident on the Marseilles route, (hinted at in a Galignani) or gone down in a steamer, (one or two steamers having gone down) or I had died on Mont Cenis, & Robert had stopped to bury me at Turin. So that certain friends of ours were running about in a distracted way with pale faces—one confined to her room for four & twenty hours with fright, [3] —while my Italian maid’s poor sister had been dissolved in tears for three days running & would have been found in deep mourning if the delay had continued. In fact, as I went up stairs the first time to our apartment in Casa Guidi, I met an enquiring friend coming down, [4] who stared at me aghast as at the ghost of an old inhabitant of the house, haunting the ancient places!
And a ghost I might well have been,—for, a most dreadful voyage, not without cause for dread, we had from Genoa to Leghorn—eighteen hours, think of it. Half way over, the captain almost decided on returning to Genoa. We had whirlwinds, called by the Italians, burrascas, [5] & reeled about in the sea in our little old neapolitan boat. The very male passengers were somewhat alarmed, & there was an English lady who cried aloud on God to “spare her a few more days.” Add sea-sickness, & mark what an account!--
It has grown very cold quite suddenly, too suddenly to last we think, which gives us hope for the journey to Rome: otherwise I never could travel in such cold air. We have fires. Penini clasped his hands on Mont Cenis .. “Oh my dear Italy! My dear, dear Italy![”]—— & Robert & I are delighted to feel here, in a divine abstraction from civilized life. Florence looked like a city of the dead to us on our arrival. There was one man wandering along the quay .. (the fashionable Lung’Arno!) and another man looking at him with intense interest. Still we are acclimatized: & we begin again to live our own lives, one day of which we have not lived for these four months. What I wonder at, Mary, is how people get on contentedly in this world without regular work. A good aim, I mean, a decided end in life, & regular habits of application. If there is a touch of nobleness in me, I feel it through feeling that I could not live the sort of desultory meaningless life which so many others are contented with .. or appear contented with– But, I do thank God, a divine discontent is rising among the daughters of my people—(when I say my people, I mean of course the people of the world)—and the need of work is beginning to be felt everywhere. It is a need which will be felt stronger the higher we live, & strongest of all therefore in Heaven. Dont you think so? Dear, let us all live as if we did!
You have an advantage in being forced to work– Yes, it is an advantage, after all drawbacks are counted, I often think, because we want the spur sometimes, even when we give the rein freely. I often think that if I were alone in the world, & did not see my aims clear in life as an artist, or as any worker in a speciality, I would empty my pockets utterly, so as to make some kind of regular work necessary– Anything rather than the common woman’s life of … what is it? .. a little reading, a little drawing, a little playing on the piano perhaps .. all in the ignoble amateur way which is called occupation. Oh, my child, he shall be a worker—if prayer & struggle can avail in me.
Now, in return for this moralizing, dearest Mary, write to me, & tell me how you get on—exactly how. Whatever you say, will interest me, remember, if personal to yourself. How deeply all you told me in those last hours, did.
I sent you the chauff[e]rette– [6] Did you get it? Now I send you Peni’s love with mine, & my husband’s cordial regards.
Dont forget the somnambule, when the time has arrived for attaining to facts–
Your ever affectionate, &
very affectionate Ba–
Publication: W. Hall Griffin and Harry Christopher Minchin, The Life of Robert Browning (London, 1910), pp. 212–213 (in part).
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. The return address and date have been excised, affecting the text here and below. “Casa Guidi / 2 Nov.” has been supplied in an unidentified hand. The year is provided by EBB’s account of her recent journey from Paris to Florence.
2. Frances Mary du Quaire (see the second paragraph in letter 4265).
3. Sophia Eckley.
4. Caroline Tulk.
5. “Storms” in Spanish; the Italian plural is burrasche.
6. “Foot-warmer.”
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