4656. EBB to Sarianna Browning
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 292–296.
[Rome]
[late April 1860] [1]
Thank you my dearest Sarianna for your most kind & tolerant letter. It’s a shame that it should’nt be an answer to a letter of ours. Robert talked every day of writing—which leaves us ungratified, I fear– Forgive us.
Ah—you bear with the poor poems. That is kind. They are roughly treated by even my brothers & sisters in blood– George is “obliged to tell” me so & so—much as when one has to break with a disreputable friend. Not that he has broken with me, poor dear George!–
Pray Sarianna, observe, now that the American destination of the “Curse” is understood by our countrymen,
“How the line softens,” [2] & the wrath refines!
Your uncle Reuben writes a letter all compliment, ingeniously avoiding to notice anything but this ‘Curse’– ‘Publicola’ himself (Mr Fox sent me the article) [3] takes the same ground– It was altogether wicked … of America!! [4] to abstain from the Italian war, & quite natural & womanly for me to cry out at such a provocation–!! That’s really good– It’s curiously good–
As I have this moment read in the Examiner, “The English have not been useless to Italy, though they forced no armed assistance on her.”– [5] No—“we forced no armed assistance on her” certainly! It is undeniable. For Savoy, the Vote speaks– [6] There is I think a lawful choice between ‘noble Piedmont’ & noble France, but however that may be, the populations have made it, justifying Cavour & Napoleon from the charge of selling & siezing them. “The feeling against Cavour,” says Forster, “gets to be very strong in England, & grieves him far more than the feeling against the Emperor”– [7] It scarcely grieves me. I like even an injustice to be complete– You will see how it will be at last. Italy will find herself constituted into a free nation by the work of these men,—who, because they did the deed & it is good, will be damned to all eternity for doing it, in the minds of us all, according to the exact logic & mild theology in use among us.
Oh—dont let me grow too sarcastic. I, who have been considered all my life such a meek sheep of a Ba,—am turning over that new leaf Pen talks of for ever, it seems, & I scarcely know myself under the words fastened to me, .. of “violent,” “scolding,” “swearing,” “savage,” “without natural instincts” “bitter” .. & what not?– It was almost better to be “immodest” & “impure,” by help of Aurora Leigh––
But dearest Sarianna, after all, get your diploma as a liberal Englishwoman, rather from me than Bessie Parkes, who is very narrow out of her own particular road .. where she counts the posts accurately I dare say. I have never forgiven her for the ignoble paragraph, in which, after I had clasped her hands in both mine last spring here, & entreated a sympathetic word for Italy, she disposed of the question in her Journal. [8]
The English carry England with them on their backs when they come abroad, & the weight makes them crooked. An “English resident” whether in France or Italy, always (almost) is stiff with English prejudices. Poor Lady Elgin’s sovereign love of truth made her a striking exception,—but her children, [9] uninfluenced by her, are steeped to the throat in insular prejudices of every kind & colour.
Before you have my diploma I shall examine you, my dear sister Sarianna, on the meaning of “absolute governments” for instance. Every English newspaper & talker applies the term to France—but no writer on government, from Locke to Filangieri, [10] calls a government “absolute,” where a veto on the taxes remains with the representative assembly .. much less when the said assembly is elected on the widest popular basis, as in France– Why, should we not use words instead of calling names? We may dislike centralization if we please, or object to any degree of repression on the newspaper press. Fifty years ago, we had not an absolute government in England, had we?—yet such excellent men as the poet Montgomery could be kept in prison for two years on account of a newspaper article written in a moderately liberal sense. [11] Also, in Italy .. in Piedmont .. some repression of newspapers has been found necessary. Jessie Mario & her husband conducted a paper there [12] .. siezed only the other day–
At any rate we must all pray here against the coalition in France, now taking place against the emperor in the name of the papacy,—& of which Lamoriciere & M. de Merode [13] are the expression in Rome. The party usually designated as “all the intellect of France,” distinguishes itself now greatly. I hear that Mdme Mohl on the bosom of Villemain, [14] Thiers’, [15] is refreshing her hate of Napoleon in her new love for Pius IX– On the life of the emperor, the finished work in Italy .. & much work elsewhere depends mainly– His difficulties have been & are immense– And if everything were known, the Savoy affair would produce a different impression– The Patrie uses an expression sometimes to conciliate the more selfish classes in France & to prepare them for the next movement necessary in the Italian cause– You see I grant to you that there are selfish classes even in France– Yes, indeed. And you must grant to me, that Mr Russell’s compliment to the emperor,—of having “conducted himself rather like an Italian than a Frenchman here,” .. though pleasant to my ears, was scarcely a popular form of praising the Head of a State at home in reference to any alien question. He must not allow his enemies to say, “In order to gratify your personal sympäthies & be Italian, you have been the means of the formation of a nation of twenty five or six millions, settled on a double sea for commerce, & surrounded by natural fortresses, .. who, after a generation or two may turn against France– You, the Head of the French State, have done this work for the pleasure of being generous, scorning the duty of taking a small precaution for France in the way of a few mountaintops of frontier.” Observe, Sarianna, we mean to be a very great nation here & we understand such precautions– I believe the Emperor to be doing simply the thing he should do, & that no touch of stain rests on his disinterestedness–
I am sorry for Garibaldi. It is said he broke his sword & sent it to the King. He has not a strong head, & is apt to lose it at moments– Still the trial to him who knew nothing before,—was quite unprepared .. must have been bitter. Poor, heroic heart– That he should have fought for Italy to such an end! There is a small minority in Nice, of which he is one, & which is very bitter on this subject. [16]
Mind you get the Punch, to see how admirably I am put down. [17] Nothing was ever cleverer in its way! There’s something of my manner too in the stanzas–
True love to the dearest Nonno from Pen & me– Pen is worked so hard that I scarcely like to catch him after his three or four pages of copybook, & set him down to the letter he owes you. Tell Nonno, the poor child falls into scrapes about the multiplication table which he cant do ‘jumping’. I am tender, having “sins within me unwhipped of justice” [18] —but Robert shows righteous indignation– Love to dear M. Milsand–
Your ever affectionate
sister Ba—
Indeed there has been fever here throughout the winter—but we have heard less of it, there are so few English. Pen & Robert are radiant, & I am looking quite other than I did. What would my decryers say if they knew that copies of the most interesting letters from Paris were rushed to me by Italian patriots on the condition of “not showing them to the English.” [19] (Except Robert.) Yet .. not a single scheme of invasion or of siezing Malta! no!–
Address, in RB’s hand: À Mademoiselle / Madlle Browning / 151. Rue de Grenelle, Fg St Germn / Paris.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Dating based on EBB’s paraphrasing of Forster’s comment on Cavour, written to RB in letter 4650, and her reference to the Savoy vote (see note 6 below).
2. We have been unable to trace the source of this quotation.
3. EBB refers to an article by “Publicola,” the pseudonym of William Johnson Fox, entitled “International Sympathies and Duties,” which appeared in The Weekly Dispatch of 8 April 1860 (p. 7). In what we consider to be a review of Poems Before Congress, Fox began: “To Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Blessing on you for that curse!” For the full text of this review, see pp. 383–384.
4. EBB has circled the exclamation marks.
5. This statement comes at the end of an article in The Examiner of 21 April 1860 that defended the government’s actions regarding the annexation of Savoy and its ramifications for Swiss neutrality: “The conduct of our Government hitherto is the best security that their proceedings in this important business also will be worthy of themselves and of the country. They have not been useless to Italy, although they forced no armed assistance on her, and they will probably do Switzerland some good service also in the same quiet and unassuming way” (p. 242).
6. The plebiscite to determine whether Savoy would be annexed by France was held on 22 April 1860. There were 130,533 votes for annexation and 235 against. The plebiscite in Nice took place a week earlier. There were 25,743 votes for annexation and 160 against (George Martin, The Red Shirt and the Cross of Savoy, New York, 1969, p. 529).
7. See the part of letter 4650 addressed to RB.
8. In Bessie Parkes’s periodical, The English Woman’s Magazine, an article entitled “Sent from Italy” and signed “B.R.P.” compared the sensibilities of Italians to those of the English and Americans, with the Italians suffering from the comparison: “I do not pretend to feel, as many do, the want in Italy of those moral ideas and feelings which form the daily portion of every English or American man, woman, and child. It does not seem to me that any amount of liberty, of discipline, or of political institutions would ever infuse an ideal into the instinctive Italian race, nor that it is right and wise to demand that they shall possess it. Their own perfection they can doubtless attain, but it is not ours. Considered therefore from this southern land, thoughts which seem at home to possess roundness and completeness sink into mere parts of the whole; and aims which are all absorbing in London, are reduced in proportion when measured against the vastness of Rome” (1 May 1859, pp. 196–197).
9. Lady Elgin (1790–1860) and her late husband, the 7th Earl of Elgin (1766–1841), had seven children. For the four sons, see letter 4206, note 8. The daughters were Charlotte (see letter 3041, note 6); Augusta (see letter 3038, note 11); and Frances Anne (see letter 3591, note 6).
10. Gaetano Filangieri (1752–88), Italian jurist and philosopher.
11. James Montgomery (1771–1854), British poet, hymn writer, and editor of The Sheffield Iris for 31 years (1794–1825). He was imprisoned at York in 1795 “for publishing a supposedly seditious poem celebrating the fall of the Bastille” and imprisoned again the following year for reporting on “the use of the militia to fire on a riotous crowd in Sheffield” (ODNB).
12. Perhaps Pensiero e azione, a republican, underground periodical founded by Mazzini that, beginning in September 1859, Alberto Mario edited from his temporary residence in Lugano, Switzerland (see Elizabeth Adams Daniels, Jessie White Mario: Risorgimento Revolutionary, Athens, Ohio, 1972, p. 89).
13. Frédéric Ghislain de Mérode (1820–74), a Belgian of noble birth and a cousin of Lamoricière, had achieved success as a soldier in Algiers (1844–45), after which time he entered the priesthood. He attracted the attention of Pius IX when he responded promptly to threats against the papacy in 1848. He was appointed the Pope’s minister of war in April 1860.
14. Abel-François Villemain (1790–1870) had recently published La France, l’empire, et la papauté (1860), which defended the temporal power of the pope.
15. Louis Adolphe Thiers (1797–1877) had supported Louis Napoleon’s presidency, but he opposed the coup d’état and the subsequent imperial government. Though exiled in 1852, he was allowed to return a year later.
17. “Postscript to ‘Poems Before Congress,’” a parody of “Napoleon III in Italy,” appeared in the issue of 7 April 1860 (p. 137). It reads as follows:
Mr. Punch presents his best compliments to Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (of whose genius there is not a more devoted and discriminating worshipper than himself), and having just read her Poems before Congress, and specially her outpour of womanly gratitude for the supposed good conduct of their friend L.N., Mr. P. will not trouble Mrs. B. to send him over the Postscript which he knows that, on becoming acquainted with the truth, she must be composing. He has done it himself, for her, and hastens to publish it.
XX.
Stop! Ho! I bar!
I’ve been going a little too fast,
I thought the Imperial Star
Was blazing too brightly to last,
And now it goes out with a smell.
What, does that Sworder of Edom
Come driving a piece of trade,
And selling Italian freedom
By the yard instead of the blade?
Hanging at France’s waist
The sun-red tops of my Alps,
As a savage’s girdle is graced
By a row of his crimson scalps.
Ah me! Well, well!
Must I then rank him, perforce, a cur,
Him I had deemed a brave hound;
And in the rich blood of Corsica
Still must the puddle be found?
Marching his soldiers come. Such is
Terrible end of my hopes,
After enfranchising Duchies,
Scaring the Last of the Popes,
Now he goes stealing the Slopes.
Emperor
Evermore.
XXI.
Ay! I beg to retract
All I’ve said in his vaunt,
I wasn’t aware of the fact
With which the Governments taunt
The Nephew of Him of the Rock.
And I own I did not remember,
Mid Italy’s joy and halloo,
That second grim day of December,
Stamping him eminent Do.
Nor the oaths that he trampled through:
Trampled with feet that grew redder
With Mars’s murderous sign,
Like the foot of the vintage treader
When grapes are bleeding to wine.
I retract it, every line.
Stop crowing, thou humbugging Cock.
Ye have right, I affirm, to be scowling,
Sons of old England free:
I joy in thy grunting and growling,
Lion that sits by the Sea.
You knew him better than I did,
That mystic and Sphynxlike talker;
He ought to be jolly well hided
For his vows that have turned out Walker.
Look to your shore, or some day on its
Soil, without telescopes,
You’ll see half a million of bayonets:
Windsor has also its Slopes.
Emperor
Evermore.
18. Cf. King Lear, III, 2, 52–53.
19. Letters from Charles Fauvety to Francesco Dall’Ongaro (see letter 4616, note 2).
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