4694. EBB to Sarah Bayley
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 50–52.
Casa Guidi. Florence.
June 17 [1860] [1]
.My dear friend, I send you enclosed our three shadows, transferred at Rome. Our last act there in this present month, was to submit to this execution, & I fancy that you will rather like to have such late news of us, you, who have always been so kind. Robert’s portrait does not perfectly satisfy me, though generally applauded. I myself, (like the devil & … perhaps … the emperor Napoleon!) am not as black as I am painted—but Penini is exquisite—not so like him, as himself. Forgive his curls—Mine probably are still more objectionable .. for the proprieties of advanced life. Peni does look a darling,—now doesn’t he? And if you were to see him on his poney, you would admit that I had not tied him tight to my apron-string,—he rides so well & fearlessly.
Just before we left Rome,—& only a week ago we arrived here .. we said goodbye to dearest Madame Braun, who set out to Switzerland with Mlle de Müller [2] & had the goodness to make her way up to me the day before. It gave me real pain to part so—for the future looks all uncertain, & however it is, she will suffer much I fear before we meet again. She was in extraordinary spirits & hope—but the more cheerfully she talked, the faster ran the tears down the cheeks of her affectionate friend Mlle de Müller, who was naturally looking forward to the journey & its responsibilities with great anxiety. Madame Braun is a person of most remarkable force of character. Physical suffering has not quenched the fire of life & of the love of it in her– She is resolved to try every possibility of cure—looking the danger calmly in the face & keeping her ground stedfastly. After all, she looks well—laughs with the vivacity of a happy girl– I have not laughed so, I know, for these twenty years back. And yet continual pain is said to exhaust the nervous system. She is really a wonderful woman. And sometimes I think that that energy of soul & body will at last conquer disease. The vitality must be strong. Mlle de Müller promised to write to me if there should be a change, or indeed in any case.
Now let me try to answer your question about French novels. “Lui et elle” is certainly Paul de Musset’s rejoinder on George Sand for her “Elle et lui” [3] —and it seems to me and to Robert also, that the truth is rather with him, Paul, than with her. The statement on his part was provoked by her ferocious cruelty in driving out romance to pasture on her old lover’s new grave, & has an air of veracity, none the less striking for being so painful. I understand however that a Madame Collet has written a ‘Lui’ [4] … which is not in his favour. But this I have not read.
The Westminster reviewers seldom fall across our path. Chapman [5] is not generally a man of acute “articles”– But I read everything I can catch, clean or unclean: it amuses me when you talk of my “orthodoxy”– Among our friends, it is rather I than Robert, who pass for “heterodox” and wild in my opinions, & subversive of traditions. Unless you consider it “orthodox” to believe in “turning tables”,—which, dearest Miss Bayley, I still do—& Home is taking in a great many more besides me, I hear from London. Mr Trollope has just returned from thence, & related to me that the subject was making a great sensation, & provoking much enquiry .. though Edwin Landseer (who had seen & believed, & “ridden on a curvetting table as if it were a spirited horse”) couldn’t with all his entreaty persuade Dickens to investigate for himself—Dickens is too deeply committed to negatives. I ask you. Is a true philosopher ever afraid of a truth? I ask you who are a philo[so]pher.
We travelled from Rome through Chiusi & Orvieto. Exquisite scenery but I was unusually tired. Early next month we go to our last year’s villa at Siena for the hot weather—and our Abbé (who taught Peni Latin at Rome) is to come to the tryst there. Oh,—we dont overwork Pen. But you see it began to be time for him to take up his Latin. Next year we shall go north,—so keep us a place in your dear love– By that time, some of my sins will be forgotten perhaps—though a second edition of the B C. poems is coming out—(and a fifth of Aurora Leigh). I am not slain yet; & our Italy is going on to the perfection of unity,—Garibaldi having begun the end for us. The whole world is agreed, (except Austria & Rome) in confessing him a hero. Mazzini is characteristically trying to combine his own safety with the right degree of mischief towards other people, by arriving at Palermo just as Garibaldi’s work there is completed. [6] I wish Etna would blow him up. Lamoricière gave a dinner to his staff at Rome the other day, & the toast was, Henri cinq– The Pope sees visions of Sant Agnese bidding him hold fast & he shall recover the Romagna. [7]
I dare say you may be scarcely aware how I have stood in the pillory for English critics small & great, ever since my last publication, & have not been spared any sort of Hienaism [8] .... though, (to do myself justice) I was not a candidate for the championship. The pummelling of the Saturday Review never had an end– Served me right, of course you think– Well—but as I’m punished, dont owe me a grudge– Its enough that Harriet Martineau, not thinking me hanged enough, guillotined me in a letter to an American Newspaper. [9] Think of that,—& then only remember that I am as I was, however astray & abandoned, <***>
Publication: None traced.
Source: Transcript in editors’ file.
1. Year provided by EBB’s reference in the penultimate paragraph to Chiusi and Orvieto; 1860 was the only year the Brownings visited those towns.
2. Theodora von Müller; see letter 4611, note 6.
4. Lui: roman contemporain (1859) by Louise Colet (née Revoil, 1810–76) is an autobiographical novel focusing on her love affairs with Alfred de Musset and Gustave Flaubert.
5. John Chapman (1821–94), editor of The Westminster Review.
6. Mazzini was in Genoa at this time, after which he went to Florence and later (September) to Naples (see Denis Mack Smith, Mazzini, New Haven, Conn., 1994, pp. 138–140).
8. i.e., Heenanism, referring to John C. Heenan (see letter 4659, note 20).
9. The National Anti-Slavery Standard (New York); see letter 4680, note 11.
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