4681. EBB to Sarianna Browning
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 26–30.
[Florence]
[ca. 14] [June 1860] [1]
I did’nt write last time [2] dearest Sarianna not only because of being over-busy or over-tired, but because I had’nt the heart, that day. Peni had another touch of fever, & was forced to have a doctor & cataplasms to his feet. It was only a day’s anxiety, but I did’nt like writing just then– He had been in the sun or the wind or something– I was glad to get away from Rome– There were two cases of fever in our court-yard, & both the sun & the shade were ‘suspectes’. As far as Pen is concerned, the evil was averted, & I assure you he is looking in the full bloom of health, & we have been congratulated on all sides on his appearance & growth since we returned to Florence. Riding so much has agreed well with him .. & the general results of the Roman campaign cannot be said to be otherwise than favorable. Set down as much for Robert. Everybody exclaims at his stoutness. In fact never since I have known him, has he condescended to put on such an air of robustness:, there’s no other word for it. Shall we give the glory to Rome, or to nux [3] .. to which he is constant. For two years & a half he has had recourse to no other remedy, & it has not yet failed to produce its effect– How do you unbelievers account for that?– At the same time, I never would think of using it in any active or inflammatory malady, & where a sudden revolution or scosso [4] is required from the remedial agent.
We find poor Mr Landor tolerably amenable to Wilson, & well in health, .. though he cant live more than three months he says, & except when Robert keeps him soothed by quoting his own works to him, considers himself in a very wretched condition .. which is a sort of satisfaction too– He is a man of great genius & we owe him every attention on that ground– Otherwise I confess to you he is to me eminently unsympathetic—perfectly without truth, in its higher manifestations, and incapable of any stedfast feeling, .. whether of simple affection or common gratitude. Robert is a great favorite just now, but the least dropping of the wind, .. & we should be set down among the scoundrels & the enemies– That’s Landor. His bearing to Forster moves my indignation .. calling him “that fellow Forster” before indifferent people,—and now he takes to abusing his family in England, who are providing for his necessities from day to day. Good benevolent Mr Empson, who is not a friend of Forster and is an adoring friend of Mr Landor’s, knowing what Forster had done for Landor, could not restrain his tears in speaking of the latter’s ingratitude. By the way, I am sorry to say poor Mr Empson was attacked with fever here in Florence, at Mr Landor’s house where he was staying, & rushed away when he was perfectly unfit to travel, lest it should turn out to be contagious. At Genoa he broke down, & had to be left by his travelling companions to medical help,—then rallied .. had to call in Doctors at Lyons & Dijon, & was laid up at Paris when he wrote– The doctors said it was the “worst kind of fever” which sounds vague. But Italy has its risks to persons of a certain age– Never was a more amiable, benevolent man—& I should be very sorry if it went ill with him at last. Pen took the greatest fancy to him at Rome, & used to hang on his stories of South America. [5]
If Bessie Parkes “turns catholic” as you say, on the ground of the organization of certain institutions, it will be a proof of very peculiar ignorance– [6] This power of organization is French, & not Catholic. You look for it in vain in Rome for instance except where the organization comes from France– The sœurs de la charitè, [7] who are of all catholic nations, are organized entirely by the French. The institutions here are branch-institutions. In Rome the tendency of everything is to confusion, & “individuality” with separate pockets. Lamoriciere was in despair at it all, & even now people talk of his resigning—though he gave a dinner the other day to his staff, with the toast of “Henri cinq.” [8]
Individuality is an excellent thing in its place, & an infamous thing out of it– In England we have some very successful efforts at organization .. the post office—which is nearly perfect—and society, .. in which the demarcation between class & class is much too perfect to be humane. In other respects we are apt to fail–
We do not fail however in organization only, with regard to these charitable institutions– We are very hard & unsympathetic in them. A distinguished woman has been here lately .. a Miss Cobb (a fellow-worker with Miss Carpenter) [9] she having over-worked herself was forced by her physician to come here for three months & rest, under dire penalties. She went to Isa Blagden’s & returned to England & her work just now– She is very acute, & so perfectly without continental prejudices, that she did’nt pretend to much interest even in our Italian movement, .. having her heart in England & with the poor– But she was much struck, not merely with the order in Foreign institutions, but with their superior tenderness & sympathy. The accounts she gave of the English workhouses & hospitals, was [sic] very sad, very cruel—corresponding in fact to what I have heard from other quarters–
Ah—Sarianna, .. “charming old men” who call the Tuscan[s] angels .. except that they lie .. (what an exception) can be mistaken like others. That passes for “liberality”—does it? We are not angels, & we dont lie——there’s no more lying in Italy than in England, I beg to affirm. Also, M. Tassinari was in prison, not a week, but a month [10] —& well did he deserve it. We deal now in French coinage & are to see no more pauls after the middle of next month. [11] Robert thinks it will destroy the last vestige of our cheapness—but I am very favorable to a unification of international coinage– It agrees with my theories, you know.
We are all talking & dreaming Garibaldi just now in great anxiety. Scarcely since the world was a world, has there been such a feat of arms. [12] All modern heroes grow pale before him. It was necessary however for us all even here, & at Turin, just as in Paris, to be ready to disavow him. The whole good of Central Italy was hazarded by it. If it had not been success it would have been an evil beyond failure. The enterprise was forlorner than a forlorn hope. The hero, if he had perished, would scarcely have been sure of his epitaph even.
And “intervention” does mean quite a different thing at Naples & in Lombardy. In Lombardy there was the foreign tyrant– At Naples, Italians deal with Italians,—and the Austrian influence is indirect. So also at Rome. It is this which makes the difficulty of dealing with southern Italy, & the difference of treatment which you observe in certain French papers.
I am sure, though you dont like photographs you say, that you will find nothing lacking in what we send you & dearest Nonno of our Penini. It is’nt like him: it’s himself. As for me, I murmur in the depths of my vanity, that like the Emperor Napoleon (& the devil) I’m not so black as I’m painted—but I forgive everything for Pen’s sake. [13] Robert is not very favorably represented I think– The beard on the upper lip had not been properly clipped & makes the space seem too long for him. [14] Another time, I will mend that.—. I was very unusually tired after my journey, but am getting past it. Weather was hot—but within two days we have had some cooling rain.
Give my best love to dear M. Milsand .. besides the photographs, and thank him for not being offended in his “patriotism” by my Congress poems. If he approved of the preface as he says, I cant see how he can have written anything about “intervention” which I would not accept– Nothing could have ended the intervention of Austria, except the intervention of France,—and it was on that account that we feel the latter to be a great and chivalrous action– Italy is grateful. And if France were in difficulty, she might count on this delivered nation, as on herself. In spite of all the bad words hurled at me in every English newspaper & periodical nearly (and I assure you I have been put in the pillory among them) the poems are going into a second edition, [15] Chapman says, & Aurora Leigh into a fifth– [16] Also, Chapman junior who has come out here to see after Lever (who is driving three carriages at the expense of the firm, while his books dont pay adequately) smooths me down a little about Robert, & says that the sale is bettering itself & that a new edition of the ‘poems’ will soon be wanted– [17] I just now see a pleasant notice of myself in Bentley’s Mag. Abuse of the Cong-poems, of course. Then a side stroke at Aurora Leigh—which was original of course, because its my way to stand alone & attack people—but the principal merit of which otherwise was the suggestion of Lucille [18] —(Lytton’s new poem.) ‘Lucille’ says the critic, being superior in holiness & virtue & that sort of thing to Aurora!!—— Of course. [19]
They subscribed in England five thousand pounds for Tom Sayers!– [20] There’s the advance of civilization. Napoleon has gone to Baden to arrange the world a little more comfortably I hope. [21]
Mr Lewes & Miss Evans have been here & are coming back to settle into our congenial social bosom– I admire her books so much, that certainly I shall not refuse to receive her—tho’ she is not a medium, Sarianna!!!
Your ever affec sister
Publication: LEBB, II, 396–400 (in part).
Manuscript: Lilly Library.
1. Approximate dating based on EBB’s references to the photographs (fourth to last paragraph), which she was also sending to others at this time.
2. i.e., the last time RB wrote (see vol. 1, p. xxxviii).
3. Nux vomica, a homœopathic medicine (see letter 4148, note 8).
4. Sic, for “scossa”; “shake.”
5. Charles Empson (1794–1861) travelled in Colombia, South America, from 1824 to 1827. He later published an account of his experiences as Narratives of South America; Illustrating Manners, Customs, and Scenery (1836). Before he left Rome for Florence, EBB presented him with a photograph of Hamilton Wild’s portrait of Pen on horesback. Now at the National Portrait Gallery, London, it is inscribed: “From Elizabeth Barrett Browning that Mr. Empson may remember us all in kindness, and Rome– May– 1860.”
6. In 1859 Bessie Rayner Parkes visited the Sisters of Charity in Paris and wrote of their “depths of the spiritual life which I have never sounded”; she was especially drawn to the “broad open working charity in the Roman Catholic Church,” in particular the virtues of Catholic women’s social work (Emma Lowndes, Turning Victorian Ladies into Women: The Life of Bessie Rayner Parkes, 1829–1925, Palo Alto, California, 2012, pp. 142–143). She converted to Catholicism in 1864.
7. “Sisters of charity”; see letter 3524, note 10.
8. Comte de Chambord, Legitimist claimant to the French throne (see letter 2727, note 13).
9. Mary Carpenter (1807–77), social reformer and children’s advocate. In 1858, Frances Cobbe moved to Bristol, where for a short time she lived with Miss Carpenter, assisting her with her ragged schools and reformatory work (see Life of Frances Power Cobbe, As Told by Herself, 1904, pp. 275–286).
15. Never issued.
17. The next collected edition of RB’s poetry, The Poetical Works, was issued by Chapman and Hall in 1863.
18. Sic, for Lucile, Robert Lytton’s verse novel, published under his pseudonym “Owen Meredith” on 12 April 1860.
19. The reviewer in Bentley’s Miscellany (May 1860, pp. 445–446) describes the verse in Poems Before Congress as “harsh and tuneless” and the substance of “unintelligible rant.” In comparing EBB and Robert Lytton, the critic adds: “There is a wide difference between the author of ‘Aurora Leigh’ and the author of ‘Lucile,’ and the impartial reader will give the full benefit of that difference to the younger poet, who, with equal command of language and equal powers of versification, has a far deeper knowledge of the human heart, and a truer instinct of what is best and holiest in human nature.” For the full text of this review, see vol. 27, p. 395.
20. According to the ODNB, “Sayers retired from the championship on 20 May 1860. The sum of £3000 was raised by public subscription, the interest of which was paid to him on condition that he did not fight any more. The money was afterwards divided among his children when they came of age.”
21. For a conference with the Prince Regent of Prussia (Prince Wilhelm), which took place 16–17 June at Baden-Baden. Also in attendance were the kings of Württemberg, Bavaria, and Hanover, as well as other heads of state of the German Confederation.
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