4488. EBB to Henry Fothergill Chorley
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 26, 296–297.
Villa Alberti. Siena
Sept. 12. [1859] [1]
My dear Mr Chorley This is’nt a letter, as you will see at a glance. I should have written to you long since, and have also sent this poem, [2] (which solicits a place in the Athenæum) if I had not been very ill & been very slow in getting well. We wanted to answer your kind letter, & shall. As for my poem, be so good as to see it put in, in spite of its good & true politics, which you Athenæum people (being English) will dissent from altogether– Say so if you please, but let me in– “Strike, but hear me.” [3] I have been living & dying for Italy lately– You dont know how vivid these things are to us,—which serve for conversation at London dinner-parties.
Ah—dear Mr Chorley– The bad news about poor Lady Arnold [4] will have affected you as it did Robert a few days ago—I do pity so our unhappy friend, Sir Joseph– Tell us if you can & will, what you hear.
We came here from Florence five or six weeks since when I was very unfit for moving,—but change of air & a cooler air & repose had grown necessary– We are at a villa two miles from Siena, where we look to scarlet sunsets over purple hills, & have the wind nearly all day. Mr & Mrs Story are half a mile off in another villa, and Mr Landor at a stone’s cast. Otherwise the solitude is absolute. Mr Russell spent two days with us on his way to resume office at Rome. I should remember that.
So much I could write to you of! but I do want to <save the post> [5] today. <…>ite, we will write– But write you, dear Mr Chorley, & tell us of yourself,—& tell me how your sister [6] is, & give her my love.
And dont take me for “Judy and Judith” in one [7] .. or do, if you must: I feel sometimes as if I deserved it.
Little Penini grows big, & rides about on a poney the colour of his own curls.
May God bless you–
Yes, Robert, I am ready. Take his love with mine who remain <…>
We stay here till the first week in Ocber—then go back to Florence.
Publication: LEBB, II, 334 (in part).
Manuscript: Boston Public Library.
1. Year provided by EBB’s references to the poem that she was sending.
2. “A Tale of Villafranca,” published in The Athenæum on 24 September 1859 (no. 1665, pp. 397–398).
3. Cf. Plutarch, Lives: Themistocles, trans. Bernadotte Perrin, XI, 3. EBB uses this phrase in The Battle of Marathon (1820): “Strike Greeks! but hear me” (line 519).
4. Maria Arnould (née Ridgway, 1816–59), wife of Sir Joseph Arnould, died on 23 July at Malabar Hill, Bombay.
5. EBB’s closing and signature have been excised, affecting text here and below.
6. Mary Ann Chorley (1801–63).
7. The title character of one of the Old Testament Apocrypha, who, by cutting off the head of the Assyrian general Holofernes, inspires the Israelites to victory over Nebuchadnezzar's invading army. EBB also refers to Judy, the shrewish female half of the famous street puppet duo, Punch and Judy.
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