4671. EBB to Euphrasia Fanny Haworth
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 8–11.
28 Via del Tritone—
May 18— [1860] [1]
My dearest Fanny, it seems to me that you have drunk so much England, which “cheers & inebriates,” [2] as to have forgotten your Italian friends– Here have I been waiting with my load of gratitude, till my shoulders ache under it, not knowing to what address to carry it! Sarianna sent me one address of your London lodgings with the satisfactory addition that you were about to move immediately– You really might have written to me before, unkindest & falsest of Fannies! or else (understand) you should not have sent me those graceful & suggestive drawings, for which only now I am able to thank you– Thank you, thank you, thank you– It was very kind of you to let me have them–
Then .. pray, how did you get my ‘Poems before Congress”– Was I not to send you an order? Here I send one at least, whether you scorn my gift or not,—& by this sign, you will inherit also an Aurora Leigh– [3]
Yes, I expected nothing better from the ‘British public,’ … which strictly conforming itself to the higher civilization of the age, gives sympathy only where it gives “the belt”– [4] As the favorite hero says in his last eloquent letter, “In all my actions whether in private or public life, may I be worthy of having had the honor ....... of a notice in the Times,” [5] he concludes … “of the abuse of the Saturday Review” [6] &c &c &c &c &c say I–
For the rest, being turned out of the old world I fall on my feet in the New World, where people have been generous, & even publishers turned liberal– Think of my having an offer (on the ground of that book) from a periodical in New York, [7] of a hundred dollars, for every single poem, though as short as a sonnet .. that is for its merely passing through their pages on the road to the publisher’s proper– Oh, I shall cry aloud & boast, since people choose to abuse me. Did you see how I was treated in Blackwood? [8] In fact you & all women, though you hated me, should be vexed on your own accounts– As for me, it’s only what I expected—& I have had that deep satisfaction of “speaking though I died for it”, [9] .. which we are all apt to aspire to now & then– Do you know I was half inclined to send my little book to Mr Cobden [10] .. and then I drew back into my shell, with native snail-shyness–
We remain here till the end of May when we remove back to Florence– Meanwhile I am in great anxiety about Sicily– Garibaldi’s hardy enterprise may be followed by difficult complications.
Let us talk away from politics which set my heart beating uncomfortably, & dont particularly amuse you– Write me a good long letter about yourself, & how people are petting you (because I feel they are) & dont be spoilt but remember me, and remember too to tell me of Mrs Milner Gibson, & of Hume, & how they set the tables floating, [11] & what you yourself you, have seen with your eyes– Here I am, cut off from the world in Italy, or only coming up to the light to be shot at by a Rifle volunteer, so that its your duty as a Christian & a Fanny, to dispense to me some broken news from your social table. (Particularly if the “Spirits” should be rapping it–)
Speak of books too– Have you read The Mill by the Floss? [12] —and what of it?– The author is here, they say, with her elective affinity, [13] & is seen on the Corso walking, or in the Vatican musing. Always together– They are said to visit nobody & to be beheld only at unawares– Theodore Parker removed to Florence in an extremity of ill health, & is dead there– I feel very sorry– There was something .. high & noble about the man—though he was not deep in proportion– Hatty Hosmer has arrived in America & found her father alive & better, but threatened with another attack which must be final– Gibson came to us yesterday, & we agreed that we never found him so interesting– I grieve to hear that Mr Page’s pictures (another Venus & a Moses) [14] have been rejected at your Academy.
Robert deserves no reproaches, for he has been writing a good deal this winter—working at a long poem which I have not seen a line of, and producing short lyrics [15] which I have seen, & may declare worthy of him– For me if I have attained anything of force & freedom by living near … the oak, <…> [16] the better for me– But I hope you don’t think I mimic <him, or> lose my individuality & <… Penini> sends his love with Robert’s. <He ri>des his poney & learns his <L>atin, & looks as pretty as ever—to my way of <thinking.>
If you don’t write directly, address to Florence.
We have another thick Indian letter for you, [17] but Robert is afraid of sending it till you give us a safe address.
Address: Angleterre. / Miss Haworth / 61, [18] Ebury Street / Belgravia / London.
Publication: LEBB, II, 386–389 (in part).
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Cf. William Cowper (1731–1800), The Task, Book IV (“The Winter Evening”), 38–41: “And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn / Throws up a steamy column, and the cups / That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, / So let us welcome peaceful evening in.”
3. We have been unable to trace these presentation copies. In her will, Miss Haworth bequeathed to her niece May Haworth “Mrs. Browning’s Poems given me by herself” (ms at PRO).
4. i.e., the belt worn by the champion prize fighter. EBB alludes to the recent Sayers-Heenan bout (see letter 4659, note 20).
5. EBB quotes from a letter to The Times submitted by Tom Sayers, who praised and thanked the newspaper for its coverage of the prize fight with John C. Heenan: “Upon my own part, and that of my children, I humbly offer to you my most grateful thanks, and I trust, to whatever period Providence will extend my life, that no act of mine, either in private or public life, will be unworthy of one who has received the notice of The Times newspaper” (7 May 1860, p. 9).
6. EBB refers to the notice of her Poems Before Congress in The Saturday Review of 31 March 1860. For the full text of this review, see vol. 27, pp. 367–370.
7. The Independent. See letter 4657, note 9.
9. We have been unable to trace the source of this quotation. EBB’s includes a variation of it in letter 4675 and elsewhere.
10. In view of his favorable impressions of Napoleon III (see letter 4595, note 10).
11. See the fourth to last paragraph in letter 4625.
12. The Mill on the Floss (1860), by George Eliot, was published by William Blackwood & Sons in early April.
13. Mary Ann or Marian Evans (afterwards Cross, 1819–80), better known by her pseudonym, George Eliot, had formed a union with a still-married George Henry Lewes in 1854. The nature of their relationship often resulted in her exclusion from polite society. George Eliot and Lewes had left England for Italy on 24 March, only two days after she had completed The Mill on the Floss; they went first to Rome and then to Florence, where they became acquainted with the Trollopes, but their visit did not include a meeting with the Brownings (see Rosemary Ashton, George Eliot: A Life, 1996, p. 243).
14. “Moses, Aaron and Hur on Mount Horeb” (1857), now at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. For the “Venus,” see letter 4405, note 8.
15. Doubtless, some if not all of the “short lyrics” would appear in Dramatis Personæ (1864). The editors of The Poems of Robert Browning, Vol. 4, ed. John Woolford, Daniel Karlin, and Joseph Phelan (Harlow, England, 2012), suggest the possibility that two of these may be “A Likeness” and “The Worst of It” (see pp. 45 and 121). They further suggest that “Caliban upon Setebos” (1864) is “the likeliest candidate” for the “long poem” (p. 576). See also SD2391, where D.G. Rossetti writes to William Allingham: “I know no more than yourself of the matter of Browning’s Poem though he told me of it (and of an additional series of Men & Women in progress!).”
16. The letter was continued on the flap of the envelope, of which only a fragment remains.
17. From an “Indian poet,” as indicated in the second paragraph of letter 4691.
18. Redirected to 102.
___________________
