4809. EBB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 272–275.
Rome–
Monday– [14–15 January 1861] [1]
Ever dearest Isa, you had my letter? I hope so– I want to tell you that we have two newspapers (Naziones) directed by your hand. They were on successive days, & well covered with paper– Perhaps these were accidents. The first arrived the day after I wrote to you–
Dear, I am so unreasonable as to wonder you dont write again,—I who deserve nothing from you but a pardon for silence! I have a heavy heart,—only I can lift it up with both hands now, to say .. ‘I love you & thank you for all your goodness’–
I hear from Arabel who is in London—has been for weeks—& pretty well–
Now let me tell you things you care to hear, & I still care to know– That the French fleet is gone you are aware– [2] Mr Dicey has just come from Naples for a few days—is intelligent & impartial– I saw him yesterday for what he might tell me– He says that the state of things in the south is absurdly exaggerated—that the dissatisfaction given by Farini’s government was the necessity of any government succeeding Garibaldi’s.– [3] Garibaldi had raised expectations by impossible promises, [4] —& the reaction (.. the translation into fact ..) was necessarily painful– He thought Cavour should have slid in some temporary show of a government, just to catch the displeasure & break the fall of it lawfully,—meant to be withdrawn again immediately,—& Farini was too good for such an expedient. Still, with all this, the evil has been enormously exaggerated– The Mazzinians (who did in fact rule under Garibaldi) are a very small party, though the most energetic of all– The reactionary movements have required for the most part only the National Guard to put down—and whatever intrigues there are, the police get information of from the people, themselves, the popular horror of a return of the Bourbons being profound. At the same time, he (Dicey) does not seem to give the majority much credit for zeal about the unity of Italy or Victor Emanuel. The Piedmontese are not especially popular—are said to be stiff & to talk Piedmontese in an offensive way to one another. Then the King “wants dignity” .. tells deputations to “sit down”!. & is not decorous enough for the virtuous tastes of the Neapolitans– His Drummer’s daughter [5] was ‘en evidence,’ & everybody said that there was no sort of marriage, because of “Cavour’s not allowing it.”
Mr Dicey says that the harm done by the French fleet has been immensely overstated, like the rest. He considers that for the last month its effect on Italy was bad, but that previously the delay was the very salvation of the cause, .. as he knows of knowledge that nothing else could have stopped the Mazzinian impulse towards Rome, & the coincident rupture between the north & the south– Add to this, other motives in Napoleon’s mind .. which really may be guessed at without doing violence to anybody’s intellect or sense of justice.
Mr Dicey told me that Jessie Mario got Garibaldi to meet Mazzini at her house, .. which was not the only evil she did to Garibaldi. He (Dicey) dislikes her much—doing credit however to her energy & good intentions towards Italy. Mario is null.
There is a party for a southern Kingdom still—but the idea some people have of Napoleon’s fostering it for a Murat, [6] is, he said, perfectly unjustified by a single fact which ever came to his knowledge– Alexandre Dumas writes his own newspaper .. the Independente [7] .. Italian-French but still Italian. Of course he must get an Italian to help him to write, because when he speaks Italian, it is of the worst kind,—(Still, what an extraordinary man, Isa!) but the character of the writing & the lying is entirely his own, & does much harm at Naples.
Mr Dicey talks of coming here next month to settle for the rest of the winter– He could’nt help feeling for Mazzini, he said– Mazzini lived in a garret, & his coat was out at elbows–
I am “stern,” you know. Mazzini’s heart is not out at elbows. He would sacrifice us all unscrupulously for any ivory counter in his game–
Dearest Isa, are you at Casa Guidi– Do go, if you are not gone.
I saw Hatty yesterday for a very few minutes, & she looked well—yes, and asked anxiously when you were coming, & why not?
It is later than I thought—but the rest shall be another day—not to miss the post of this– Love me dearest Isa
& write to me–
In true love your
Ba.
Too late for yesterday’s post after all.
Here is a letter from Lytton. A note to Robert saying nothing, but kind expressions of affection making it something after all–
And a letter from Miss Haworth, (Paris) mentioning what you may have heard, the sad death of poor Mrs Bracken’s little girl Beppa, [8] —of some sort of fever– Willie was staying with Fanny Haworth .. or so it seemed– I am very, very sorry– Annette will be grieved too—though, I think, Willie was her favorite. How such griefs shake the world to us & “push us from our stools”!– [9]
Is the little Baker well again? And mention Mrs Jarves– [10]
The medium Squires is in Paris, but if it is true that his performance is limited to the feat of throwing a heavy table over upon a bed .. the circumstance of unlimited repetitions would make him very unsatisfactory to me. I imagine however that he is a physical medium of considerable power– [11] The subject takes wide root in England– Robert heard a lady lamenting it the other day, she being an unbeliever– “And people who should know better,” said she.
Dearest Isa, write & tell me of yourself– Dont you know that you are one of my lamps of the world? Light me up a little, dearest Isa.
I think with some sadness of America– If the North compromises, it will be moral death, [12] —if it does not, it will be national dissolution. Better die in the body than in the soul after all– But the risk is terrible, & I rather wonder that the northern patriots are not more depressed than they seem to be–
Anyhow slavery must come down in time—& sooner than later.
How is Dr Grisonowsky– Our regards to him always– Love to Kate.
Dearest Isa’s
Ba–
Publication: B-IB, pp. 385–388.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Dated by EBB’s reference to seeing Edward Dicey “yesterday.” She also mentions seeing him in letter 4810.
2. The French fleet withdrew from Gaeta on 19 January 1861.
3. Farini had been appointed to succeed Garibaldi as the Piedmontese governor of the Kingdom of Naples (the Two Sicilies). “At Naples, Farini had no sympathy for the people he was trying to rule. … In fact, privately, in a letter to Cavour, he excluded them. ‘The country here is not Italy but Africa, and the bedouin are the flower of civic virtue when compared to these people.’ Nor did he have more sympathy or tact for the volunteers, most of whom, like himself, came from the north. He forbade the singing anywhere of what was known as Garibaldi’s Hymn” (George Martin, The Red Shirt and the Cross of Savoy, New York, 1969, p. 630).
4. While dictator of Naples, Garibaldi promised land reform, unemployment relief, and maximum prices for goods. Such socialist policies were unacceptable to the aristocratic Cavour and the conservatives (see Jasper Ridley, Garibaldi, 1974, p. 490).
5. Rosa Vercellana Guerrieri (1833–85), Contessa di Mirafiori e Fontanafredda, was the daughter of a former drum major in the grenadier guards and had met the King when she was still a teenager. She was said to be beautiful and intelligent, though common and uneducated. When the Queen, Maria Adelaide, died in 1855, Victor Emmanuel was advised by Cavour not to marry Rosa. Nevertheless, fourteen years later a morganatic marriage took place.
6. See letter 4536, note 28. In a dispatch dated 12 January 1861, Odo Russell reports that “the attempts made to form a Muratist party have signally failed” (The Roman Question, ed. Noel Blakiston, 1962, p. 151).
7. From October 1860 to March 1864 (with an interruption from May 1861 to May 1862), Dumas issued a daily newspaper entitled L’Indipendente. The text was at first in Italian, later in Italian and French. The publication came about at the suggestion of Garibaldi, who thought it would prove useful for promoting his causes (see Anne Quinney and Michael H. Hoffheimer, “Alexandre Dumas in Naples,” Dalhousie French Studies, 94, Spring 2011, 160).
8. Her death notice appeared in The Times of 22 January 1861: “On the 5th inst., at her mother’s residence, 12, Rue Chateaubriand, Paris, after a short illness, Mary Margaret Beppa [1846–61], aged 14, daughter of the late Major [John] Bracken, of the Bengal Army, and granddaughter of the late Egerton Smith, Esq., of Liverpool, the founder of the Liverpool Mercury” (p. 1). Willie Bracken was her brother; Annette Bracken, her half-sister.
9. Macbeth, III, 4, 81.
10. Elizabeth Jarves (née Swain, d. 1861, aged 40) was ill and did not recover, dying in Florence on 27 August 1861. She had been estranged from her husband for some years, mainly because of his passion for collecting art.
11. John Rollin M. Squire (1836–99) was a junior editor with The Banner of Light, a weekly spiritualist newspaper published in Boston. He had been in England the previous summer. A letter from John Jones, dated 10 July 1860, to the editor of The Spiritual Magazine, described a séance in London during which Squire, while tied to a chair, commanded a table to pass over his head and land “top downwards” on the bed behind him (September 1860, p. 427). According to Jones, the demonstration, though performed in the dark, took place in front of nine witnesses and was successfully repeated.
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