4682. EBB to Charles John Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 30–33.
Casa Guidi. Florence.
June 14. [1860] [1]
My ever dearest Stormie, if I have waited to tell you how it touched me & overjoyed me, made my heart swell & beat, to see your handwriting again & hear your kind words, it was because I wanted to send you these photographs of us, [2] & had to be patient for them, in that I could not get out in the winter to do my part in having them taken. They were done at Rome, just before we left it,—& we have only just arrived here, in Florence. So now, accept us—look us in the face & dont disown us, you dear Storm. Penini is represented to the least hair of him– We are delighted with this card [of] Penini—it’s himself. Where he stands alone he is trying to keep himself from laughing– Never was anything more perfect– The representative Ba, because she is so ugly perhaps, & because of the black shades & ungolden “diggings” round her eyes, the real Ba has the conceit to be dissatisfied with. (Mr Talfourd was much more complimentary. [3] Also its pleasant to look very young & rather pretty .. on paper at least–) Still my ungratified personal vanity in this matter of the photographs takes refuge in my Penini .. who looks very dear & lovely, here and elsewhere, as he cant help doing indeed,—& so makes up for the rest. Accept him, & me also—& love us—me for me, & because I dearly love you—& him for my sake—and Robert too, whom I must try to persuade into letting me send you his portrait though I fear I shall fail– He is a little shy of you, Storm– He says you never send him your love, though he has written to you—and he is afraid of seeming to force himself on you–
Dearest dear Storm, I wish we had met when you were last in Europe—and I hope, hope, hope, that after this summer we may all meet. I dearly, dearly love you, Storm, & would fain see you in the face & hold your hand & be Ba to you as I used to be–
Arabel tells me that you praise my last book—which is very extraordinary for an Englishman. Oh Storm– If you were to see, if you were to read, if you were to know, how I have been abused in England. The Saturday Review gave me three columns of Sunday Billingsgate [4] —& on all sides the abuse has come in like the waves at springtide. All which proves to my mind that I was right and not wrong,—& that the English public has been wrong & not right. When people are so keen in taking offence, they have generally unquiet consciences– Chapman, the junior publisher, has come out to Florence upon business,—(in fact, to call Lever to order, who persists on keeping three carriages at his (Chapman’s) expence, while his books sell by no means excellently) and tells us that the “Poems before Congress” have done me no sort of real harm, in spite of all the impertinence, & that there has been a universal acknowledgement of the “pluck” of the writer. “Impudence, you mean,” said I– But he says no—it is not so bad. Also he says there’s to be a second edition soon [5] —and a fifth of Aurora Leigh.
Our Italy is going on to unity admirably. The annexation of Savoy & Nice was the condition of the constitution of a great nation here of twenty six millions probably, and the French Emperor who caused it all, could not leave it to his own people to reproach him in after years for having neglected to protect their frontier while calling into life a neighbour so powerful. Heads of States have peculiar duties, & should provide for possible circumstances a hundred years before us. Then nobody has been wronged here. The populations .. French in language & sympathy .. were consulted & assented with even enthusiasm, with the exception of that small minority in which is a great hero .. Garibaldi– [6] I feel tenderly for him– But for the outcry in England .. I grieve to say that a poor mean jealousy makes up the whole emotion–
The pope has been very ill advised– If he had given up the temporal power, the spiritual would have been stronger here than ever. But with Antonelli for an adviser he risks both. He is a very amiable man, & conscientious in his resolutions, I do not doubt. Napoleon will protect him personally & as Head of the church, & will even keep him at Rome if it should be possible, in the state & dignity due to him, supported by subsidies from the Catholic governments. But the Papal states, so called, he will have to give up, as the populations cannot be expected to submit to the peculiarities of ecclesiastical government while the rest of Italy is free.
A Corsican Abbé, who speaks equally well French & Italian, has been giving lessons to Penini at Rome in Latin & the rest, and is to meet us at Siena where we go next month to spend the summer. Pen has a very pretty poney & rides beautifully– How I shall like you to know Pen. You will at least see him in the photograph–
Dearest dear Storm—do write to me sometimes. I am very much the old Ba you knew—with the difference, of course, of being older still—only I go on just the same in fighting the world upon things not supposed to concern me– About my last book, every soul belonging to me in England, thinks me dreadfully wrong– Henrietta thought it horrid to hear how I cursed–! Arabel concluded that I had done for myself for ever– And George .. George set me down, I assure you. Its a great comfort to have your good word—particularly as I was frightened of you, on account of “Christmas Gifts”– [7]
I have made Robert give up his modesty & his photograph together– So now, here we are all three of us. See how we crowd round you & kiss you .. if you will let us–
You dont come to Europe this year they say. And I stay in Italy– May God bless you my dearest dearest Storm– You will be startled to hear of George’s withdrawing from his profession– Though he ought not to be overworked to the point of headaches, I am sorry, yes, very sorry– I cant help it—I fear he may feel the want of an occupation.
With love from all the photographed, let me name myself as your
unchanged & very loving
Ba
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by EBB’s references to Poems Before Congress (1860).
3. EBB refers to the Field Talfourd portrait, completed in late February 1859. It is reproduced as the frontispiece to vol. 26.
4. Billingsgate is “one of the gates of the city of London; the fish-market near it; the latter noted for vituperative language” (OED).
5. Never issued.
6. Garibaldi opposed the cession of his native Nice to France (see letter 4654, note 3).
7. In this the sixth poem in Poems Before Congress, EBB implies that the Pope is more interested in the temporal than the spiritual: “He sits in the place of the Lord, / And asks for the gifts of the time; / Gold, for the haft of a sword, / To win back Romagna averse, / Incense, to sweeten a crime, / And myrrh, to embitter a curse” (lines 31–36). EBB worried that such lines would offend Charles John, who became a Roman Catholic in 1862.
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