4675. EBB to William Allingham
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 15–18.
Rome–
[ca. 28] May. 1860 [1]
My dear Mr Allingham, you complain of our silence, & certainly I have written to you from Rome this winter. [2] We puzzled a little over your address, and I think that my husband did not suggest the right one– Anyhow such words as I sent you never reached you, so that you have had reason to misjudge us .. which might be fatal, now that injustices are “going about” in the world, under the prevalent malaria–
Now forgive us, & set us on the right shelf as your friends– We have been in Rome all the winter & are going back to Florence in a week, to stay there till we are burnt out, when we think of getting into a villa at Siena– Next year, unless fire & sand shall devour us, expect us in the north. Now we are waiting on the troubles of Italy—in great anxiety at this moment about Garibaldi in consequence of an alarming telegram. [3] Little Penini is growing into great Penini– He rides his own pony about Rome, & learns Latin of his own abbé, who proposes to follow us in the summer & catch up the lessons. He is taller, but looks in the face much as he did, & will beam on you, if it pleases God that we all meet, with the same smile–
But you .. do write to us at Florence. Casa Guidi, Florence. We catch sight of you in rivulets of melody shining between the leaves of the Athenæum, [4] which makes room for you (as it well may!) and does’nt set its wild beasts roaring at you as it does at me, gnashing their teeth in the thickets. See how I’ve been treated in England this year. “This is my own, my native land” [5] ——and, moreover, & may it please Mr Chorley, .. I never did “curse” it. [6]
After all, one laughs—but one is “angry & sins not,” [7] in spite of the laugh– You are so wrong, it seems to me, in England, & the consequences in the bearing towards France threaten so disastrously. There’s an “English seaman”, I observe, who preserves the truth of it & speaks out– [8] As for my poor little book I have pulled an arrow out of my flesh in writing it & relieved myself,—realizing the need of; “speaking, though one dies for it.”
Dear Mr Allingham I send you a photograph of my husband, [9] which I know you will like to have—you, who, in your kindness, have had to do with photographs! [10] It was done in Rome this winter.
What are you doing, besides what we see in the Athenæum? Write & tell us of your works & ways, & I will promise for both of us to behave better to you for the future. We have had a very tranquil winter, Rome having been made a solitude of by political fears. The end however seems to be coming, & the pope going—as far as his civil power is concerned, notwithstanding the help you send him from Ireland. [11] It is said that the last Irish squadron in landing at Ancona astounded their allies; the “complete mail” [12] of certain of them, consisting of a cloth with a hole for the head to go through!– No other garment, literally– And, for flags, rags.
So best–
Robert is writing, not political poems, but a poem in books, a line of which I have not seen—and also certain exquisite lyrics which I have seen. [13] Neither he nor I have been idle this winter, nor mean to be idle this summer–
Do you hear anything of Mr Tennyson. Do all the poets do exercise with rifles, and bet on Tom Sayers? Why, how you are all advancing in the “national defences” and in civilization, quotha! Draw a little of this “muscular Christianity” [14] into the field, to help my Italians .. in Sicily or Venice, instead of spending it in dreams of a French invasion which wont turn up after all. “Garibaldi’s Englishman” [15] does’nt waste his shot so, I assure you–
Now write to us– And with my husband’s love & Penini’s.
believe me affectionately
yours
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Publication: Letters to William Allingham, ed. H. Allingham and E. Baumer Williams (London, 1911), pp. 105–108.
Manuscript: R.H. Taylor Collection.
1. Approximate dating based on EBB’s mention of “going back to Florence in a week.” The Brownings left Rome on 4 June 1860.
2. We have not traced such a letter. The last recorded letter from either of the Brownings to Allingham is letter 4501, dated Siena, [5 October 1859].
3. Presumably one announcing a Neapolitan victory over the Garibaldians in Sicily. The Paris correspondent for The Times reported the contents of two telegrams just received on 24 May: “One is … to the effect that the Neapolitan troops have gained a great advantage close to Palermo; the other is of quite an opposite character—viz., that Garibaldi’s soldiers have again beaten the Royalists. The news of the Neapolitan triumph is from the Neapolitan Government; that in favour of the Garibaldians comes from Turin or Genoa. The Neapolitan Government is known for its total disregard of truth and for the facility with which it fabricates” (26 May 1860, p. 10). There was no truth in the Neapolitan account.
4. Two poems by Allingham had recently appeared in The Athenæum: “In Weimar” (10 March 1860, no. 1689, p. 340) and “Song” (19 May 1860, no. 1699, p. 683).
5. Cf. Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto Sixth, 1, 3.
6. In his notice of EBB’s Poems Before Congress, which appeared in The Athenæum of 17 March 1860, H.F. Chorley presumed, incorrectly, that “A Curse for a Nation” was directed towards England. For the full text of this review, see vol. 27, p. 358.
7. Cf. Ephesians 4:26.
8. EBB refers to A Word for Truth (concerning our attitude toward France) (1860), a pamphlet written by Frederick Augustus Maxse (1833–1900), British naval officer, which was issued in late April by Chapman and Hall. A copy of this pamphlet, inscribed by EBB, sold as lot 912 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A1575).
9. A copy of the Alessandri photograph (see letter 4571, note 6). However, EBB failed to enclose it (see the beginning of letter 4693).
10. In letter 4259, Allingham had advised the Brownings to entrust W.M. Rossetti with the engraving of the Macaire photograph of EBB for the fourth edition of Aurora Leigh (1859).
11. The Papal government had been recruiting in Ireland to enlist volunteers for the Papal army. The Morning Post of 4 June 1860 carried a report from a correspondent in Limerick: “In corroboration of the facts set forth in my letter of yesterday respecting the movement going forward in this city to augment the Pope’s army, I am now in a position to inform you that this morning 22 active young men left by train for Rome, viâ Waterford, thence to Belgium, Trieste, and Ancona, where they will join the army of General Lamoricière” (p. 6). The correspondent went on to add that “80 members of the Young Men’s Society of Kilfinnan, in this county, leave tomorrow for the ‘Eternal City’” (p. 6).
12. Robert Southey, Madoc (1805), Part I, XV, 211.
14. The OED provides a definition, “A term applied (from about 1857) to the ideal of religious character exhibited in the writings of Charles Kingsley,” and an illustrative quotation from The Edinburgh Review of January 1858 (p. 190): “The principal characteristics of the writer who earned this burlesque though expressive description [‘muscular Christianity’], are his deep sense of the sacredness of all the ordinary relations and the common duties of life, and the vigour with which he contends .. for the great importance and value of animal spirits, physical strength, and a hearty enjoyment of all the pursuits and accomplishments which are connected with them.”
15. John Whitehead Peard (1811–80), barrister and army officer who became known as “Garibaldi’s Englishman” after he joined the invasion of Sicily. He later commanded an English legion in the advance on Naples (ODNB).
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