4703. EBB to Sophia Eckley
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 66–68.
Casa Guidi.
Tuesday. [3 July 1860] [1]
My delay in sending the photographs, my dear Sophie, (which are enclosed) arise from our hourly expectation of getting one of those ‘imperfect copies’ of the book which you promised us– Now I cant bear to think that your kindness should have involved you in the trouble & expence of sending us the perfect one from Goodban– We should have preferred the imperfection—seeing that its contrary to all privelege of authorship to buy one’s own books, & ought not to be suffered. If any bought from Goodban, it should have been we, only that your promise hindered us from thinking of supplying ourselves so. Bentley’s [2] apparent negligence arises I suppose from his waiting for some private hand– Publishers have small sympathy with authors on the subject of gift-copies. They are wise after their generation– Did’nt I wait a year or more for certain copies of Aurora Leigh in the new edition? Yes, indeed–
This too perfect copy of your book is beautifully got up with its suggestive palm on the cover, [3] —(to do Mr Bentley justice!—) & when we open it, the illustration within is very pretty,—creditable both to artist & engraver– I need not tell you of the interest with which we took the volume into our hands & cut the leaves– “Anything about Do?” [4] says Pen– I wish there had been. I have read to the very last line & am now qualified to thank you cordially.
You must have had a great deal of pleasure, on which I entirely congratulate you, in writing this memorial to yourself & those dear to you, of your interesting journey. Thus you have enjoyed it twice, once in the experience & once in the relation,—& perhaps the enjoyment was not least in the latter way. And as your life advances & these images recede, there is the book to re-suggest to your own mind the colour of that tract of life, & quicken again the pulse of old associations. So it must be a success to you, whatever headstrong critics may say– The very jottings down out of books about your journey have been a pleasant occupation & borne fruit to you in various ways, I do not doubt, though the volume would have gained (shall I venture to say?) so far as the outside public is concerned, if you had “drowned your books” [5] of reference in the Nile or lost them on the desert. Without a good deal of both scholarship & power of assimilation it is dangerous to touch on certain questions .. such for instance as Ægyptian & Greek theologies & philosophies. Second hand information is better kept to one’s own ‘Common-place book,’ or is apt, if intruded into print, to destroy the air of freshness while suggesting superficialness. Even with regard to Christian dogma & the controversies on it, unless there is something new to say, new in essence or form at least, silence is better– People hear with impatience from a traveller what they hear at home every sunday. This is not condemning the “religious element,” observe– How you felt, thought, & worshipped in Palestine was a part of the personal story, which if simply & directly told, makes a book of travels, or any book interesting– I feel a little as my Peni does, .. “Where’s Do?” I should have liked a glimpse of him on his camel, or of his tame ibis–
But I hope you will not suffer yourself to be too much disturbed by anything said or not said by critics about your book– You have had your own pleasure in it,—in writing it .. I am sure—and this, no Athenæum can take away from you– [6] I did not advise you to go into print, but I do advise you now not to be vexed by any possible consequences of it. See how I have been fired at by nearly all the rifles of the English volunteers this summer on account of my unnatural & unnational vice of politics! My best friends can only discover in me one virtue .. that of “pluck”! Yet I am alive & contented– Not wounded, .. as I was last year at Villafranca!.
We send the photographs– But the photographs of Hamilton Wild’s picture, of which you shall have one, we are yet waiting for,—Mr Macpherson having finished only a few, & those being already given away.
With love to dear Mr Eckley, Fanny & Do—& an earnest desire that God may bless & keep you all in all good, I am affectly EBB.
We are going at once to Siena,—having lingered here too long– Robert’s love—you are to accept his thanks with mine, & imagine we speak them with the same voice.
Address: Madame Eckley / Casa Webbe / Bagni di Lucca.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. Dated by EBB’s reference to receiving a copy of Mrs. Eckley’s The Oldest of the Old World, published on 1 May 1860, and by EBB’s postscript comment, “We are going at once to Siena.” The Brownings left for Siena on 7 July 1860, a Saturday.
2. Richard Bentley (1794–1871), Mrs. Eckley’s publisher.
3. A copy of The Oldest of the Old World sold as lot 645 in Browning Collections. It is inscribed by EBB: “R. & E. B. Browning, Casa Guidi, 1860. From the author” (see Reconstruction, A845).
4. A nickname of David Eckley, III (1849–81).
5. Cf. The Tempest, V, 1, 57.
6. Here, The Athenæum stands for any adverse criticism. The weekly did not review Mrs. Eckley’s book.
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