4555. EBB to Julia Martin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 98–102.
Rome– 28. Via del Tritone
Dec. 29 [1859] [1]
It was pleasant to have news of you, dearest friends, & to know of your being comfortably established at Pau this cold winter, as it seems to be in the north. We came here, flying from the Florence tramontana, at the very close of november, on the Perugia road, after having been weather-bound at Casa Guidi till we almost gave up our Roman plan. Most happily the cold spared us during our six days journey which was very pleasant– I like travelling by vetturino. The fatigue is small, & if you take a supply of books with you the time does not hang fire. We had some old Balzacs, which came new, (he is one of our gods—heathen, you will say) and we had besides Charles Reade’s ‘Love me little, love me long,’ which is full of ability. Then Peni had his poney as a source of interest– The poney was fastened to the vettura horses, & came in to Rome not merely fresh but fat– And we have fallen into pleasant places, by way of lodgings here, our friends having prepared a list to choose from, so that I had only to drop out of the hotel, into bright sunny rooms, which do not cost too much on account of the comparative desertion of this holy city this year. We arrived on the third of December—& here it is nearly the first of January– Almost a month. The older one grows the faster time passes– Do you observe that?– You catch the wind of the wheels in your face it seems, as you get nearer the end—I observe it strongly.
Let me say of myself first that I am particularly well, & feel much more sure & steady than since my illness– How are you both? I do hope & trust you can give me good news of yourselves. Do you read aloud to one another or each alone– Robert & I do the last always. May God bless you both in health of body & soul, & every sort of happiness for the coming & other years– I wish & pray it out of my heart–
But Christmases are dreary things to me—except for my Penini, who considers them as children do, & whose bright eyes light them up a little even for me. He had resolved to have no toys this year—(he chooses his Christmas gifts) he was “too old”—“at ten!”: he would have “a microscope instead, & study nature.” But I was unlucky enough to send him to the toy shop to select certain presents for small friends of ours,—& he came back disconsolate & with a changed mind– “I know its foolish of me, mama—but the shop looked so beautiful, everybody buying .. & the passionate love of the old things came back to me, and I could’nt be energetic about the microscope any more.” He had seen a toy-gun, & could not resist it– “After all, you see, mama, I am not a man yet.” It was plain. And mama had to be foolish too, for people must be happy their own way: and, after all, I suppose when they grow to be “energetic” about looking through microscopes, Christmas pleasures have begun to be dismaller than such things were.
The child is quite a child still, thank God, and a very sweet & good one—more innocent than children in large families can be, & very simple in all his ways & words– We have not cut off his curls yet, nor stiffened his collar, & he looks “like a Raffael” as the Italians say, as much as ever– Since we came here we have given him an Abbate, for two hours, three times a week, to begin Latin—and arithmetic, about which he was entirely ignorant– He had the tears in his eyes at the notion of it, but is more than reconciled already—for our abbé is young & gentle & has taken his pupil into decided favor– His Italian (in conversation) struck the abbé extremely: “it has tutta la delicatezza Toscana” [2] said he—which was pleasant to hear, for though Italian is his native tongue & fluency in it, a matter of course, yet there’s a right & wrong way of talking as of doing other things. In English he does not sin either—he talks it as an English child exactly .. except that there’s an Italian idiom now & then, which makes one smile as at a picturesque accident– The music, meantime, makes its way, & is more & more remarkable. The least “pushing” on our part, would have turned him out an “infant phenomenon”, which would have been dreadful. As it is, he is a good deal admired, and General de Nouée hearing the fame of him, begged our Abbé to present him to Madame de Nouée & himself [3] .. which happened two days ago–
And you are studying music?– I honour you for it. Do tell me, dearest Mrs Martin, did you know nothing of music before, & have you taken up the piano? I hold a peculiar heresy as to the use hereafter of what we learn here– When there is no longer any growth in me, I desire to die—for one. —And at present I by no means desire to die. [4]
So you & others upbraid me with having put myself out of my “natural place”. What is one’s natural place, I wonder? For the Chinese, it is the inner side of the Wall. For the red man it is the forest. The natural place of everybody I believe is within the crust of all manner of prejudices, provincial, social, religious, literary. That is, as men conceive of “natural places”– But, in the highest sense, I ask you, how can a man or a woman leave his or her natural place? Wherever God’s universe is round and God’s law above, there is a natural place. Circumstances, the force of natural things, have brought me here & kept me—it is my natural place. And intellectually speaking, having grown to a certain point, by help of certain opportunities, my way of regarding the world is also natural to me, my opinions are the natural deductions of my mind. Is’nt it so? Still I do beg to say both to you & to others, accusing, that Italy is not my “adopted country”– I love Italy, but I love France too, & certainly I love England. Because I have broken through what seems to me the English “Little Pedlingtonism,” am I to be supposed to take up an Italian “Little Pedlingtonism?” [5] No, indeed. I love truth & justice, or I try to love truth & justice, more than any <Plato or Plato’s or Shakespeare’s> [6] country. [7] I certainly do not love the system of England, nor wish to love it– I class England among the most immoral nations in respect to the foreign politics. And her ‘National Defence’ cry fills me with disgust– But this, by no means proves, that I have adopted another country—no indeed– In fact, patriotism, in the narrow sense, is a virtue, which will wear out, sooner or later, everywhere. Jew & Greek must drop their antagonisms [8] & if Christianity is ever to develop, it will not respect frontiers.
As to Italy, though I nearly broke my heart over her last summer, & love the Italians deeply, I should feel passionately any similar crisis anywhere. You cannot judge the people or the question out of the Times newspaper—whose sole policy is, it seems to me, to get up a war between France & England, though the world should perish in the struggle. The amount of fierce untruth uttered in that paper, & sworn to by the Saturday Review, makes the moral sense curdle within one. You do not know this as we do, & you therefore set it down as matter of continental prejudice on my part. Well—time will prove. As to Italy I have to put on the rein to prevent myself from hoping into the Ideal again– I am on my guard against another fall from that chariot of the sun. [9] But things look magnificently—and if I could tell you certain facts (which I cant) you would admit it– Odo Russell, the English minster here (in an occult sense) [10] who, with a very acute mind, is strongly Russell, & English, & was full of the English distrust of LN. when with us at Siena last September, came to me two days ago and said, .. “It is plain now. The emperor is rather Italian than French– He has worked & is working only for Italy,—and whatever has seemed otherwise has been forced from him in order to keep on terms with his colleagues the kings & queens of Europe– Everything that comes out proves it more & more–” In fact he has risked everything for the Italians except their cause. I am delighted, among other things at Cavour’s representation of Italy at the Congress– Antonelli & his party are in desperation, gnashing their teeth at the Tuilleries. The position of the emperor is most difficult, but his great brain will master it– We are rather uneasy about the English ministry. It stands by so small a minority– If it would do its work in Congress it might go out for me—(fallen to pieces on the pitiful Suez question [11] or otherwise), but we do want it at Congress. <***>
Publication: LEBB, II, 357–360 (in part).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by reference to the return address; 1859 was the only year the Brownings resided at 28 Via del Tritone in December.
2. “All the Tuscan fineness.”
4. Underscored three times.
5. i.e., cant, quackery, egotism, and affectation, as delineated in Little Pedlington and the Pedlingtonians (1839) by John Poole (1785/86–1872). EBB refers to it again in the “Preface” to Poems Before Congress (1860): “Let us put away the Little Peddlingtonism unworthy of a great nation, and too prevalent among us” (p. vii).
6. Bracketed passage is interpolated above the line.
7. Cf. the “Preface” to Poems Before Congress (p. v).
8. Cf. Galatians 3:28.
9. Phaethon, son of the sun god Helios, was allowed to drive his father’s chariot for a day. But when he lost control of it and nearly destroyed the earth, Zeus slew him with a thunderbolt.
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