4533. EBB to Sarianna Browning
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 52–54.
[Rome]
[ca. 5 December 1859] [1]
Dearest Sarianna,–
Robert will have told you of the success of our journey .. which the necessities of Mr. Landor very nearly pushed back into the cold too late. We had even resolved that if the wind changed before morning we would accept it “as a sign” and altogether give up Rome– We were all but run to ground, you see. Happily it did’nt end so; and here we are in a very nice sunny apartment, [2] which would have been far beyond our means last year or any year except just now when the pope’s obstinacy and the rumoured departure of the French have left Rome a solitude and called it peace [3] .. very problematical peace. (Peni, in despair at leaving Florence, urged on us that “for mama to have cold air in her chest would be better than to have a cannonball in her stomach”! but she was unreasonably more afraid of one than of the other.) Apartments here for which friends of ours paid forty pounds English the month last winter are going for fifteen or under—or rather not going—for nobody, scarcely, comes to take them. The pope’s “reforms” seem to be limited, in spite of his alarming position which is breaking his heart[,] he told a friend of Mrs. Stowe’s the other day, and out of which he looks to be relieved by only some special miracle—(the American was quite affected to hear the old man bewail himself!) to an edict against crinolines—the same being forbidden to sweep the sacred pavement of St. Peter’s. [4] This is true—though it sounds like a joke.
Even Florence has very few English– A crisis is looked for everywhere– Prices there are rising fast .. but one is prepared to pay more for liberty. Carriages are dearer than in Paris by our new tariff—which is an item important to me. We left Mr. Landor in great comfort. I went to see his apartment before it was furnished– Rooms small—but with a look-out into a little garden; quiet and cheerful—and he does’nt mind a situation rather out of the way. He pays four pound ten (English) the month. Wilson has thirty pounds a year for taking care of him—which sounds a good deal—but it is a difficult position. He has excellent, generous, affectionate impulses .. but the impulses of the tiger, every now and then. Nothing coheres in him—either in his opinions, or I fear[,] affections. It isn’t age—he is precisely the man of his youth, I must believe. Still, his genius gives him the right of gratitude on all artists at least—and I must say that my Robert has generously paid the debt. Robert always said that he owed more as a writer to Landor than to any contemporary. At present Landor is very fond of him—but I am quite prepared for his turning against us as he has turned against Forster, who has been so devoted for years and years– Only one is’nt kind for what one gets by it—or there would’nt be much kindness in this world.
I keep well—and of course at Rome there is more chance for me than there was in Florence,—but I hated to inflict an unpopular journey, of which the advantage was solely mine. Poor Peni said that if he had to leave his Florence, he w. rather go to Paris than to Rome. I dare say he would. Then his Florentines frightened him with ideas of the awful massacre we were to be subjected to here. The poney travelled like a glorified Houyhnhnm [5] and we have brought a second male servant [6] to take care of him. It was an economy: for the wages of Rome are inordinate. Pen’s tender love to his nonno and you—with that of
Your ever affectionate sister,
Ba.
Publication: LEBB, II, 352–354.
Source: Kenyon Typescript, British Library.
1. Approximate date based on EBB’s first sentence. Doubtless, this letter accompanied one from RB that was written soon after the Brownings moved into their apartment in Via del Tritone (see note 2 below).
2. At 28 Via del Tritone, where the Brownings moved on 4 December after spending their first night in Rome at the Hôtel de l’Angleterre.
3. Cf. Byron, The Bride of Abydos (1813), II, 20, 425.
4. We have been unable to trace a copy of this edict. However, EBB’s report is confirmed by Theodore Parker in a letter dated 7 December 1859: “[The Pope] has just published an edictum against crinolines, and forbids women accoutred therein to enter the churches” (John Weiss, Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker, 1863, II, 389).
5. One of the rational, ruling horse-creatures that Gulliver discovers in the fourth part of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726).
6. i.e., Lazzari (see letter 4535).
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