4299. EBB to Euphrasia Fanny Haworth
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 25, 319–322.
43. Bocca di Leone.
Decr 27. [1858] [1]
My dearest Fanny I cant judge of your “obstacles” of course– But as to your being snowed up on the road or otherwise impeded between Rome & Civita (Castellana or Vecchia) there’s certainly not room for even a dream of it– There has been beautiful weather here ever since we came except for exacting invalids– I, for instance, have been kept in the house for a fortnight or more (till Christmas day when I was able to get to St Peters) by tramontana but there has been sun on most days of cold,—& nothing has been severe as cold– The hard weather came in november before we arrived– I was out yesterday, & may be today perhaps– “Judge ye!” [2] As to prices I believe they remain most unreasonable, so that with regard to them you are perfectly informed. Only I cant help suspecting that what seemed “uninhabitable” to your brother, [3] could scarcely have been as bad, considering Mr Thompson’s account of it to me– Plenty of rooms bathed in sunshine,—sounded not ill– But you have lost the chance by this time I should fear. Meanwhile the King of Prussia has by no means absorbed any hotel extant, seeing that he drove straight to his own palace on the Tarpeian, [4] & “needed no bush” [5] of them all–
You bid me write– But to what end, if you are here on New Year’s Day? There’s not time for a letter–
And at first I intended not to write, till beginning to consider how, as you are not actually of the race of Medes & Persians, [6] you might possibly so modify your plans as to be able to receive these lines– Oh, a provoking person or persons you are—since you & Ellen Heaton are plural henceforth! No, I wont include her– You, are singular, by your own confession, on this occasion. And, instead of Christmas solemnizations, I shall take to reading the commination service over you, [7] if you stay any longer at Florence because of the impracticable, snowed up roads around Rome!!– You really might as well object to coming on account of the heat.!!
We congratulate ourselves more & more on our happiness in getting our present rooms at fifty three scudi .. including linen. It seems a marvellous luck. But dont disdain Mr Thompson’s help—no, I do advise you. For me, I hear of nothing from others. Prices are enormous—& the people “going away after Christmas,” seem to go from hotels rather than from apartments. Nobody meaning to go away after Christmas could have settled easily in private rooms: they would not have been let to persons under such a condition. I do wish I could do something for you—oh I do wish it.
Give my best love to Ellen Heaton & tell her that as I write to you today & I write what refers to both of you, I wont answer her particular letter this time, or till I hear that you are not coming directly. What! is it so cold at Florence, at my Florence, that you are justified in the unreal apprehensions of impassible roads?– Say.
I thank you very much for meaning to bring my goods for me. I wish I could have seen your pictures before they took to themselves golden wings & fled away. Is it true really that you think to exhibit in London Peni’s portrait at the piano,—as Sophie Eckley tells me? [8] I shall like to hear that you succeed in that.
I see her everyday almost, if not quite. Nobody is like her. And there are quantities of people here to choose from. I have not taken heart and “an evening for reception” yet,—but we have had “squeezes” of more or less stringency– Miss Ogle [9] is here, & her family, of course, for she is young .. the author of “A Lost Love,” that very pretty book—& she is natural & pleasing. Do you know Lady Oswald & her daughter & son. [10] She is Lady Elgin’s sister in law, & brought a letter to me from Lady Augusta Bruce. Then the Marshalls found us out through Mr De Vere (her cousin) [11] & in the name of Alfred Tennyson (their intimate friend[)]. Mrs Marshall was a Miss Spring Rice, & is very refined in all senses. Refinement expresses the whole woman. Yes, there are some nice people here—nice people: its the word. Nobody as near to me as Mr Page—whom we often see, I am happy to say—& who has just presented the world (only, that is generally said of the lady) with a son! [12] —& is on the point of presenting said world with a Venus!– Will you come & see, I wonder.
There’s one thing you have never told me. How is dear Sophia Cottrell? I am so anxious about her, & dare not write. Surely, if all had been as was hoped & expected, there would have been a birth before now, [13] & you would have mentioned it in your letter. Tell me of her, if you dont come.
I have Mr Jarves’s letter & shall answer it. Mr Montford [14] has promised to let me have the spiritual newspapers, so that I wont trouble Mr Jarves’s kindness.
I want you here to see a portrait taken of me in chalks by Miss Fox– I said ‘no’ to her in London, which was my sole reason for saying ‘yes’ to her in Rome, when she asked me for a patient .. or victim. She draws well, & has been very successful with the hair at least. For the likeness, you shall judge for yourself. She comes here for an hour in the morning to execute me, & I’m as well as can be expected under it.
We are all in great apprehension about Gerardine Macpherson, who is very ill, I fear, after her confinement—with low fever,—probably from the effect of the unhealthy situation of her residence. She has relapses, & I shall be anxious till Robert has been there today. Mrs Jameson comes in March with Mdme de Goëthe.
May God bless you dearest Fanny. What Christmas wishes warm from the heart, by heartfuls I throw at you. And say to Ellen Heaton with cordial love that I thank her much for her kind letter, & remember her in all affectionate wishes made for friends. I shall write to Mr Ruskin. Dont get this letter, I say–
Your EBB
Robert’s love and Penini’s. If ‘Fanny’ [15] strikes you, Mdme Bovary [16] will thunder-strike you.
Address: Mademoiselle Fanny Haworth / chez Mdme Tassinari / Casa Pepi / Via Pepi / Firenze.
Publication: LEBB, II, 149–151 (in part, as 27 December [1853]).
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Cf. Matthew 7:2.
3. One of Miss Haworth’s three brothers (see letter 3832, note 3).
4. Palazzo Caffarelli, near the Tarpeian Rock on the Capitoline Hill. The palace also housed the Prussian embassy.
5. Cf. As You Like It, Epilogue, line 4.
6. Cf. Daniel 6:12.
7. The service, as described in The Book of Common Prayer, is a “denouncing of God’s anger and judgments against sinners.”
8. There is no record of either of the two portraits, oil or water-colour (see Reconstruction, H10 and H70), being shown at the Royal Academy exhibition in London.
9. Anne Charlotte Ogle (1832–1918), eldest child of the Rev. Edward Chaloner Ogle (1798–1869), of Kirkley Hall, Northumberland, and his wife, Sophia (1807–96), daughter of Charles Ogle (2nd Bart.). In 1855 Miss Ogle published A Lost Love under her pseudonym Ashford Owen. She had three sisters and two brothers.
10. Elizabeth Jane Oswald (1830–1905) and Henry Murray Oswald (1832–1911).
11. Aubrey Thomas de Vere’s mother, Mary de Vere (née Spring Rice, 1786–1856) was an elder sister of Mary Alice Pery Marshall’s father, Thomas Spring Rice (1790–1866), 1st Baron Monteagle.
13. Sophia Cottrell’s baby had been expected in August; see letter 4273, note 7.
14. William Mountford (1816–85), Unitarian minister, originally of Kidderminster, Worcestershire, relocated to the United States in 1850. According to a memoir of him, he and his wife, Elizabeth Bordman (née Crowninshield, 1804–84), travelled in Europe 1858–60 and spent “a long time in Rome, where ‘the subject of the supernatural’ grew on him ‘as to importance, and deepened as to interest’” (The Unitarian Review, December 1887, p. 597). Mountford is listed in the Brownings’ address book of this period (AB-4) at 10 Via San Sebastianello in Rome.
15. Fanny: Étude (1858) by Ernest Feydeau (1821–73), a novel of love and jealousy, the jealousy being that of the hero of his mistress’s husband. By 1860, Fanny was in its nineteenth edition.
16. Madame Bovary (1857) by Gustave Flaubert (1821–80) describes the decline and fall of the romantic and foolish Emma Bovary, who tires of her provincial life and her provincial husband. She takes lovers, runs into debt, and, when faced with the threat of her husband’s learning of her affairs, commits suicide. In a posthumously published memoir, prefaced to A Lost Love (new edition, 1920), Anne Charlotte Ogle recalls that she and the Brownings “all read Madame Bovary at the same time and used to meet and compare notes about her. He [RB] was keenly interested in the course of the story, saying ‘I have seen all that’” (p. x). A copy of Madame Bovary (1858) sold as part of lot 1164 in Browning Collections; see Reconstruction, A 972.
___________________
