4425. EBB & RB to William Johnson Fox
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 26, 181–186.
| [In EBB’s hand] | Casa Guidi. Florence. |
June 6– 1859–
My dear Mr Fox,
I cant help writing to you to thank you for my husband & myself & for Italy in sending you this Italian report of your speech on the Italian question– [1] One generous voice raised, & that such a thrilling voice as yours, is a thing indeed to thank God for, after all the disappointment &, let me add, the humiliation we suffer here as to the words & acts of England. Miss Hayes assured me [2] that I was under a mistake in supposing there was no sympathy for the Italians among you: Mrs Jameson writes to me that the Austrian feeling is confined to a “clique.” But I answer—if this is so, why do you suffer a clique to represent you? Why does a clique write your newspapers[,] preside over your elections, speak in your parliament, make your government .. and, what is worse still, inspire your poets? [3] Why, your extreme liberals, your men of the people even, have all spoken in the sense of the “clique”. How are we to know what is behind it—how?– And how do you suppose these things are understood by the Italians,—how?– Do you expect them to believe with their intelligence, that Louis Napoleon who was good enough to help England in the Crimea, (& had an ovation among you afterwards) [4] & good enough to help you again in China, [5] is not good enough to help them, who find no other helper?– If you have suspicions of France, have you no certainties about Austria? When a man leaps into the Thames to save a drowning child, is it your charitable custom to pelt him with stones from the bridge because he owes you a grudge, you fancy, & may come to fists with you next tuesday?– Is it charitable that the child is to be let drown for that? Is it not rather cruel & pusillanimous, & ignoble, I will add, to the last degree?
Yes, I am sure you feel it so– But the worst is that the Italians feel it, & that other foreign nations are aware of it, & that the shame of it is on us all openly. Such men as Massimo d’Azeglio, moderate, wise, attached to English institutions & the English name pass awful judgements upon us– I have seen such in his handwriting. Intellectual men here, whom I have known as distinguished for Anglo-mania, as it is called, & Anti-Gallican tendencies, turn their faces away from us in sadness & anger together. Robert on our first arrival from Rome, met Busacca the present minister of finances, walking in the street, with a book under his arm, & no gloves– Robert stopped to congratulate him on the prospects of Italy– “Ah, but,” said the minister, “England has done ill.” The grief seemed as near to him as the joy– He had always loved England.
Also, nearly all the English abroad have conducted themselves in the sense of Mrs Jameson’s “clique” at home. There has even been a small intrigue among them to bring back the Grand Duke. Mr Scarlett has identified himself with the Grand Ducal party [6] —that is to say, with the employés. The insult to the Italian flag at Leghorn [7] (which was keenly felt) has been reproduced by individuals in their small miserable degree. Think of “success to Austria” being drunk in a circle of English gentlemen,—our informant [8] being the only one who refused it,—here in Florence. Theodosia Trollope (who wrote the article in the Athenæum) [9] said to me yesterday with emotion, that she was “ashamed of speaking the English tongue in these streets.”
Moreover there are dreadful rumours that the end will be your taking part in the war in the Austrian sense: people who are rational cant understand a “neutrality” expressed by a general arming and sending out a fleet into the Adriatic. [10] And we ourselves heard the other day from a liberal and well-informed quarter, that in the case of Germany taking part with Austria, and of Russia therefore coming down on Germany according to her promise, .. (that is, of Russia helping France & Piedmont to withstand the onslaught of above a million armed men, flagitiously armed against the rights of humanity) England “must go in to the war against Russia–”! That is, under certain expected circumstances, England must commit a crime.! And this is the position into which the small jealousies of the nation have drawn it– This is the possibility open to us at last, after all our prate about ‘freedom’ and ‘duty,’ & morality in general.
There is a beginning of talk among the Americans, that, (in the case of such a complication) as the struggle would plainly be between the principles of progress & national justice & their opposites, America must, with whatever sorrow, go in against England.
Meanwhile your statesmen keep meddling here & there in Italy .. now at Naples, now in Tuscany, .. just as if they had a right to meddle, & as if a finger’s touch might not precipitate you into war–
As to Louis Napoleon, he is as he always has been, the representative of the democracy,—& he never could have stood a moment except upon that ground. He goes where he must go– He comprehends the age, & passes on with it—by means of the people, & for the people. What you have called “despotism” in England, has been simply ‘delegated power’ for the temporary use of those who delegated it. A great man in the highest sense, I think—but his acts will speak for him presently—and such as look for a repetition of the mistakes of the first Empire, signally mistake both the man and the times. It is considered that your politicians in England do not comprehend the times & the necessities of civilization & progress– I heard Massimo d’Azeglio say so. In fact, as an apostle said long since, “you make the word of God (i.e.—the justice & truth of God) of none effect by your traditions–” [11]
Forgive all this insolence, dear Mr Fox from a woman,––“who should not speak in the churches”, [12] .. much less among the politicians, do you think? But I want to make you feel what is felt here, & how keenly it is felt & how there is a call upon your great heart & eloquent voice, for England’s honor’s sake, still more than for the sake of Italy’s safety. As to Italy, we have no fears– Never was there a greater contrast than between the Italians of forty eight, & the Italians of fifty nine. They have learnt, by the suffering of ten years, unanimity, selfrestraint, calm—they have attained to conviction & faith. Nothing can be finer than the attitude of the people. What has been done here, was done with dignity & quiet,—& is supported with constancy & courage. Such as cannot go to fight, give of their substance, [13] or of their day’s labour—most affecting it is to see the account of half pauls’ flowing in from the hands of the poor. You may believe in the story of the bombardment [14] —also you may believe in a letter found with other correspondence in the hands of a woman, a legatee of Radetski .. found by Cavour & communicated to this government, .. a letter under the hand of the Grand Duke, to this effect .. “I send you the hottest heads of my subjects. Do me the favor to shoot them.” [15]
The rapture of gratitude with which the French intervention has been received, you can but faintly conceive of. Some French soldiers told us (when we went down to gossip in the camp at the Cascine the other day) that at Pisa especially, the enthusiasm was quite moving– “Tears,” said they, “as well as acclamations”—and they were particularly charmed with one Italian girl, who came to give them a cigar or two each, saying “Mes chers amis, je suis heureuse de vous voir ici.” [16] They repeated ‘mes chers amis’ .. as if it were something peculiarly precious to them.
The Victoria medal [17] was on the breast of one of these soldiers, and he said, “many of us have it, & I assure you we all wear it with great pleasure”– Robert complimented him on the chivalrous deed they had come to do in Italy– He answered smiling, “Certainly we shall get nothing by it– We shall go away without a recompense—that is,” added he modestly, “such of us as are not killed.” This soldier, when we parted, kissed Penini with effusion, and little Pen, who is very zealous for his Italy, kept saying long afterwards .. “How very happy I do feel! How kind it was in him to kiss me.”
Dear Mr Fox, forgive all these wanderings. Give my love to your daughter, whose continued anxiety about her husband, I grieve to understand– [18] May better accounts reach us soon. I dont think Rome agreed as well with him physically as it did artistically, and the English bracing air will give a better chance to his convalescence than he could get out of Italy.
We arrived, about a week ago, by the Siena road– The country was quiet & solitary. We had letters from Rome yesterday, describing a continuance of the state of feeling we left there & which is identical with the feeling through the peninsula. A great irritation everywhere at the bearing of England.
Perhaps my husband will put in a word—only where’s the room? Yes, reproach me—for surely he is better worth hearing. We are however of the same mind on this question.
Thank Miss Hayes, giving her my love, for her welcome letter–
Believe me, dear Mr Fox,
affectionately & gratefully yours
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
[Continued by RB]
I put in a whole heartful of thanks, dear Mr Fox, & am not troubled to find the phrase that implies them—“you have done just like yourself:” & what a comfort it has been to see “a word in season how good it is”!– [19] you will take advantage of every opportunity, won’t you? Kind regard to Tottie & best wishes to her husband—with all the old gratitude & loyalty to yourself from R Browning.
Address, in RB’s hand: Angleterre / W.J. Fox Esq– M.<P.> / 3. Sussex Place, / Regent’s Park, / London.
Publication: R. & E. Garnett, Life of W.J. Fox (London, 1910), pp. 319–323.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. On 25 May 1859 at a public dinner given in his honor at Oldham, Fox, in reply to a toast to his health, spoke on the Italian question. He expressed concern that England would be drawn into the war and take the wrong side, adding: “I am for Italy, for the Italians … and I do not object to their calling in French aid. We have turned the cold shoulder to them. They would have been glad of English aid. Not having that, keeping, as I hope we shall, a strict neutrality, I see no objection to their availing themselves of French aid; and I trust they will do it with safety to the end of the struggle” (Daily News, 27 May 1859, p. 3). Fox went on to condemn support in the English court for the deposed Grand Duke of Tuscany and to warn against a so-called neutrality that would actually aid Austrian despotism.
2. In a letter that has not surfaced. Matilda Hays was renting “an apartment in Mr Fox’s house” (see the sixth paragraph in letter 4383).
3. A reference to Alfred Tennyson’s poem in The Times (see letter 4417, note 18).
4. During his state visit to England (see letter 3548, note 13).
8. Henry Cottrell.
9. Theodosia Trollope had lately contributed three letters to The Athenæum, the most recent appearing in the issue of 28 May 1859 (no. 1648, pp. 713–714). But EBB probably has in mind the first letter, which ran in the issue of 7 May and which famously began: “We have made at Florence a revolution with rose-water” (no. 1645, p. 612).
10. “On 21 May 1859, H.M. Steam Sloop Argus … despatched from Malta, arrived in Ancona harbour [on the Adriatic coast], where, under orders from the Foreign Office, it remained for the duration of the Austro-Sardinian war. In June and July, a squadron of six large screw steam ships, also from Malta, sailed in powerful display up the Tyrrhenian coast and then up the Adriatic, calling in the major ports. … Three steam ships from Malta—the Conqueror, the Terrible and the Centurion—and one from the Ionians—the Vigilant—kept individual schedules up and down the coasts during the crisis of 1859 and 1860” (C.T. McIntire, England against the papacy, 1858–1861, Cambridge, 1983, p. 58). In the spring of 1859 the garrisons at Gibraltar and Malta were increased by 21 per cent and the garrison at the Ionian Islands base, by 36 per cent (see McIntire, pp. 57–58).
11. Cf. Mark 7:13.
12. Cf. I Corinthians 14:34–35.
13. Cf. Luke 8:3.
15. We have been unable to confirm that Leopold II wrote such a letter to Count Radetzky (1766–1858), commander of Austrian forces during the first Italian War of Independence (1848–49). Thomas Adolphus Trollope questions the existence of the letter in Tuscany in 1849 and in 1859 (1859): “It is asserted, then, that a quantity of papers, correspondence chiefly, which had belonged to Radetzky, was purchased for a very considerable sum in Milan; that among these papers was a letter from the Grand-Duke to the Austrian general, telling him that he sent him twelve thousand “canaille,” which he hoped he—the general—would rid him of” (p. 105). Trollope goes on to write that if the Grand Duke had written such a letter, while pretending to support the liberal cause in 1848, “it would be difficult to find a parallel for the atrocity of the act even among the annals of Italian royalty. Of the existence of this damning paper the present writer has, he repeats, no evidence save the very positive assertions of usually well-informed and upright persons” (p. 105).
16. “My dear friends, I am happy to see you here.”
17. Not the Victoria Cross but rather the Crimea War Medal, bearing on one side an image of Queen Victoria.
18. According to the ODNB, Frederick Bridell’s “health failed almost immediately” after his marriage to Eliza Fox. “Although he seemed to have had every prospect of a brilliant career, his health worsened. He continued to paint until within six months of his death, on 20 August 1863 … at the age of thirty-two, when he finally succumbed to tuberculosis.”
19. Cf. Proverbs 15:23.
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