4822. EBB to Euphrasia Fanny Haworth
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 301–306.
126 Via Felice. Rome.
Feby 1st [1861] [1]
In one word, my dearest Fanny, I will thank you for what is said & not said—for sympathy true & tender each way. It is a great priveledge to be able to talk & cry—but I [2] cannot, you know– I have suffered very much & feel tired & beaten– Now, its all being lived down,—thrown behind or pushed before, as such things must be, if we are to live: not forgetting, not feeling any tie slackened, loving unchangeably .. & believing how mere a line this is to overstep, between the living & the dead.
Do you know the first thing from without which did me the least good was a letter from America from dear Mrs Stowe. [3] Since we parted here in the spring, neither of us had written, .. & she had not the least idea of my being unhappy for any reason. In fact her thought was to congratulate me on public affairs (knowing how keenly I felt about them) but her letter dwelt at length upon spiritualism– She had heard, she said, for the fifth time from her boy—(the one who was drowned in that awful manner through carrying out a college jest—) without any seeking on her part. She gave me a minute account of a late manifestation, not seeming to have a doubt in respect to the verity & identity of the spirit. In fact, secret things were told, references to private papers made—the evidence was considered most satisfying– And she says that all of the communications descriptive of the state of that Spirit, though coming from very different mediums, (some high Calvinists & others low infidels) tallied exactly. She spoke very calmly about it, with no dogmatism, but with the strongest disposition to receive the facts of the subject with all their bearings,—& at whatever loss of orthodoxy or sacrifice of reputation for common sense– I have a high appreciation of her power of forming opinions, let me add to this– It is one of the most vital & growing minds, I have known. Besides the inventive, the critical & analytical faculties are strong with her– How many women do you know who are religious, & yet analyze point by point what they believe? She lives in the midst of the traditional churches, & is full of reverence by nature,—& yet if you knew how fearlessly that woman has torn up the old cerements & taken note of what is a dead letter within, yet preserved her faith in essential spiritual truth,—you would feel more admiration for her than even for writing Uncle Tom. There are quantities of irreverent women & men who profess infidelity. But this is a woman of another order, observe, devout yet brave in the outlook for truth—& considering not whether a thing be “sound,” but whether it be true. Her views are Swedenborgian on some points—beyond him where he departs from orthodoxy on one or two points—adhering to the orthodox creed on certain others– She used to come to me last winter, & open out to me very freely, & I was much interested in the character of her intellect. Dr Manning [4] tried his converting power on her– “It might have answered” she said, [“]if one side of her mind had not confuted what the other side was receptive of.” In fact she caught at all the beauty & truth & good of the Roman Catholic symbolism,—saw what was better in it than protestantism, & also just as clearly what was worse– She admired Manning immensely—& was very keen & quick in all her admirations—had no national any more than ecclesiastical prejudices—did’nt take up Anglo-saxons outcries of superiority in morals & the rest, which make me so sick from American & English mouths– By the way (I must tell Sarianna that for M. Milsand!) a clever Englishwoman (married to a Frenchman) told Robert the other day that she believed in “a special hell for the Anglo-Saxon race on account of its hypocrisy.”
I confess to you that if Mr Squires does “concentrate himself” in the manner you describe, (making every allowance for unimaginative spirits,) I never can believe that upsetting a table on a bed as the only spiritual ministration in a course of years, can be held to be “satisfactory.” No .. it would be highly suspicious to my mind– Still, I have heard that in various manners besides the one in question, Squires exercises his mediumship—I mean that various ways of lifting heavy bodies are adopted– Try to ask him more in detail– See if the sounds are not heard– And enquire for the odythic lights– [5] I have understood that they come through him. The ‘hands’ do not, I suppose. Mr Hazzard told me he had seen twelve hands at a time with the od lights playing on them. But Squires is a medium of a lower & more coarsely physical order—which is just as interesting to me, observe, because every separate part of this subject is necessary to any conception of the general bearing of the whole– Do you hear about Mr Appleton (Longfellow’s brother in law) [6] who is in Paris just now, & knows Squires, and is deeply interested in all these things? And will you tell me if this Squires ever holds a séance which is successful & not in his own rooms. Your clever sketch,—was it of an operation in his own rooms? Answer this–
And now, dearest Fanny, I am going to talk about you– Why cant you learn to say no plainly, with eyes & mouth at once? M. Pierart [7] may be very amusing, & very useful, but he would not do for a husband:—& you could not be put at the head of the Revue Spirite, & remain comfortably yourself– But then, if you left Paris for Germany, other Pierarts would leap up? Where is a woman safe from Pierarts? Not in England. But then you would get in England that harmonious background colour of life in which you were born & bred—it is a support to a woman—& I observe that all Englishwomen (in whom the nationality has not died out as in me) even when they have taken sympathetically to continental ways, hanker after it sooner or later. There is even Isa Blagden who will end by going back though many reasons are plainly against it—health chiefly. I believe the soil draws with many & that patriotism is really more than partizanship. Also single women have status & dignity in England beyond what they have elsewhere—because, the convenance marriage (by family manufacture) not being the rule, the single state is considered a matter of choice on the part of the single, & on that account respected. The married woman is better off in France than in England—has more controul in the family, more partnership in her husband’s affairs, more rights in law, & more influence in society. But with single women, è tutt’altro, [8] as you must have seen often: & indeed the single woman here in Italy, is generally absorbed by collateral branches as a “disgraziata,” [9] & considered a sort of upper servant or hanger on of a married sister’s or brother’s establishment, which is very offensive & unpleasant. In Germany this may be otherwise,—I do not know– But after all, if I were you, I should set up a pretty green perch to fly from at will, somewhere in England, a perch where there was no room to exercise hospitality .. except to books & pictures. I can scarcely believe that objections to Paris would not be objections to any part of the continent. For society no place whatever offers the facilities of Paris—no place offers one so much, expecting one to bring so little. I have lived in Paris both quietly & noisily—& I know how you may do both with equal ease. Also it is the most various & interesting society in the world, if you know by what handle to take it up. In Florence you have felt how it is—people have to push hard, & when there [sic, for they] are in, small is the advantage. Then, dear Italy is too far—& the climate does not agree with you—& the expense increases & will increase– I hear of Parisians lamenting over Rome as far ahead of Paris prices—& Mr Newton the accomplished English consul, who is about to be married, has gone back to London to live on the ground of cheapness. He cant get on here, he says, on seven hundred a year!—one of his reasons being the forced travelling in which people are thrown in Italy, in avoiding chills & heats—and that is true. The travelling is dreadfully expensive, & unpleasant too—both Robert & I are tired of it—and yet we shall be forced back to Rome every winter, I dare say– (Florence is too keen for me.) To say nothing of our necessary journeys to the north—& if we live & are able, we shall be in Paris next summer– But we must do as best we can—& it seems our destiny to live a tent life.
Meanwhile you will care for Roman news & I have not much to tell you. I am very much in my corner, & very quiet. Robert who has been most dear & tender & considerate to me through my trial, kept all the people off—& even now when the door is open a little, gloomy lionesses with wounded paws dont draw the public, I thank God, & I am not much teazed, if at all. Sir John Bowring came with a letter of introduction, & intimate relations with Napoleon to talk of, & he has confirmed certain views of mine which I was glad to hear confirmed by a disciple of Bentham & true liberal of distinguished intelligence. He said that nothing could be more ludicrous & fanatical than the volunteer movement in England rising out of the most incredible panic which ever arose without a reason. I only hope that if the volunteers ever have to act indeed, they may behave better than at Naples, where they left the worst impression of English morals & discipline. They embarked to return home dead drunk all of them—& the drunkenness was not the worst– Sir John Bowring has been ill since he came—so perhaps he may go before I see him again. Then Mdme Swab [10] whom I slightly knew in Paris has been with me today—talking on Italian affairs. There is room for anxiety about the Neapolitans—but dont believe in exaggerations: we shall do better than our enemies desire. There will be war probably.
I have not seen Gibson (to prove to you how little I have seen) & Hatty has been here but once. The Eckleys are at Rome– (We have met twice, I think), & the Bruen-Perkins’s & other Americans. The English are rarer: they are prudent before times of crisis. Mr Massey Dawson is going to be married at Florence to a lady with some fortune [11] —sixteen thousand pounds, I understand—& the Pantalaleoni’s [sic] are very much vexed, Robert says,—which is unreasonable.
But my dear Fanny—do be careful about your Pierart– I assure you I think of you anxiously. You might find yourself entangled where to cut the cord would be hard & unpleasant–
Have you been writing any other novelets for Chambers?– And the painting?–
Poor Mrs Bracken– I am very sorry for her. I hear you have been kind as you can be– That is well. (Be kind to anybody but Pierart–) Beppa [12] is said to have been delicate always,—& then in matters of congestion & inflammation, homœopathy is powerless, I believe. Only, as many gross mistakes are made by allopathists! ‘A plague on both their houses’! [13] I have small faith in either. About as much as Faraday in turning tables. [14]
Robert has taken to modelling under Mr Story (at his studio) & is making extraordinary progress—turning to account his studies on anatomy. He has copied already two busts, the Young Augustus, & the Psyche, & is engaged on another—enchanted with his new trade—working six hours a day. In the evening he generally goes out as a bachelor—free from responsibility of crinoline—while I go early to bed, too happy to have him a little amused. In Florence, he never goes anywhere, you know—even here this winter he has had too much gloom about him by far. But he looks entirely well—as does Penini. I am weak & languid. I struggle hard to live on. I wish to live just as long as & no longer than to grow in the soul.
May God bless you, dearest, Fanny. Write.
America is making me very anxious just now– If they compromise in the North, it is a moral death,—but a merely physical dissolution of the states would be followed by a resurrection “in honor,” I should not fear. What are you painting?
Your affectionate as ever,
Ba.
Did you see Lacordaire received? [15] Those are things I care to see in Paris,—wishing however to Guizot, the king of Prussia & all prigs, the contempt they deserve.
Address: Mademoiselle / Mlle Fanny Haworth / 49. Avenue Montaigne / Champs Elysées / Paris.
Publication: LEBB, II, 408–411 (in part, as [autumn 1860]).
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Underscored twice.
4. Henry Edward Manning (1808–92); see letter 4332, note 19.
5. Sic, for odic lights, a supposed manifestation of a hypothetical force known as “od” (see letter 3252, note 6).
6. Thomas Gold Appleton (1812–84); see letter 3248, note 5.
7. Zéphyr Joseph Piérart (1818–79), French spiritualist and author, founded in 1858 the Revue spiritualiste, a rival to Allan Kardec’s Revue spirite (see letter 4559, note 6).
8. “Everything is different.”
9. “Wretch.”
10. Julie Salis Schwabe (1818–96), German-born art patron, philanthropist, and compiler of Reminiscences of Richard Cobden (1879). She had married in 1837 her older cousin Salis Schwabe (né Salomon ben Elias Schwabe, 1800–53), a wealthy calico printing manufacturer, established at Manchester, who was also born in Germany.
11. Francis Dennis Massy-Dawson (1803-70), father of Jane Isabella Pantaleoni, married on 20 March 1861 Harriet Griffinhoof (1807–67), daughter of Reverend Thomas Sparke Griffinhoof. Massy-Dawson’s first wife, Susan Agnes (née St. Clair), died in 1856.
13. Cf. Romeo and Juliet, III, 1, 99–100 and 106.
15. Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire (1802–61), a Dominican priest, known as a great orator. He was elected to the French Academy to occupy the seat vacated by de Tocqueville, who died on 16 April 1859. The Academy reception took place on 24 January 1860. Following Lacordaire’s eulogy of de Tocqueville, François Guizot (1787–1874) delivered the reply, part of which, translated into English, appeared in The Morning Chronicle of 28 January 1860 (p. 6). EBB would have objected to Guizot’s remarks on affairs in Italy. He compared the “disturbances” and “invasions” of the Napoleonic era with those ocurring in Italy and wondered why they were not equally condemned. “Have they changed their nature because it is no longer France who accomplishes them only for her own account, and attributes to herself the fruits of them?” Guizot thought the French Empire had gone too far in assisting Italy’s democratic aims: “When democracy … thinks itself master to change at its will Governments, dynasties, and the relations and limits of states; it is not liberty, it is not progress, it is anarchy, or tyranny, and perhaps also foreign ambition, which profit by such disorders. And the evil is never so grave as when it attacks at once the foundations of the Church and those of the State.”
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