4877. EBB to James & Julia Martin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 83–86.
<Rome> [1] 126 Via Felice.
[Postmark: 20 April 1861]
<My> very dear friends, how am I to thank <you> both. I receive the photograph with a heart running over– It is perfect– Never could a likeness be more satisfactory. It is himself– Form, expression, the whole man & soul, on which years cannot leave the least dint of—a tooth. The youthfulness is extraordinary– We are all crying out against our “black lines” .. (laying them all to the sun of course!) and even pretty women of our acquaintance in Rome, come out with some twenty years additional on their heads to their great dissatisfaction. But my dear Mr Martin <is my> dear Mr Martin still, unblac<ked,> unchanged, as when I knew him in the sun long ago .. when suns were content to make sunny places, instead of drawing pictures! How good of dearest Mrs Martin (it was she I think!) to send this to me– I wish she (or he) had sent me her’s besides– (How grasping some of us are–)
Then she sent me a short time since a book for my Peni, which he siezed on with blazing eyes & an exclamation “Oh, what fun!” A work by his great author Mayne Reid who outshines all other authors [2] .. unless, it’s Robinson Crusoe,—who of course wrote his own life. It was so very, very good of you. Robert had repeatedly tried in Rome to buy a new volume of Mayne Reid for the child, & never could get one– Our drawback in Rome relates to books– We subscribe to a French library [3] (not good) & snatch at accidental “waifs”—and then the newspapers (which I intrigue about, & get smuggled through the courteous hands of French generals) are absorbing enough–
I had a letter from George yesterday, with good news of dearest Mrs Martin– May it be true. But I cant understand whether you have spent this winter in Devonshire or Worcestershire, or where. The thick gloom of it is over now—yet I find myself full of regrets– Its so hard to have to get out into the workday world, daylight, open air & all—& there’s a duty on me to go to France, that Robert may see his father. You would pity me if you could see how I dread it. Arabel will meet me, & spend at least the summer with us .. probably in the neighbourhood of Paris:—and after just the first,—we .. even I .. may be the happier– Dont tell anyone that I feel so– I should like to go into a cave for the year– Not that I have’nt taken to work again, & to my old interests in politics. One does’nt quite rot in one’s selfishness, after all. In fact, I think of myself as little as possible—its the only way to bear life to throw oneself out of the personal.
And my Italy goes on well, in spite of some Neapolitan troubles .. which are exaggerated, I can certify to you. Rome, according to my information as well as my instincts, approaches the crisis we desire. In respect to Venetia, we may, (perhaps must,) have a struggle for it—which might have been unnecessary if England had frankly accepted co-action with France, instead of doing a little liberalism & a great deal of suspicion on her own account. As it is, there’s an impression in Europe that considerations about the East, (to say nothing of the Ionian islands) [4] will be stronger than Vattel, & forbid our throwing over our “natural ally” for the sake of our “natural enemy.”
I am sure you must have been anxious lately on account of America. There seems to be a good deal of weakness, even on the part of Lincoln, who if he had not the means of defending Fort Sumter & maintaining the Union, should not have spoken as he did. [5] Not that it may not be as well to let the Southern states secede. Perhaps better so. What I feared most was that the north would compromise: & I fear still that they are not heroically strong on their legs on the moral question: I fear it much. If they can but hold up, it will be noble.
We remain here (where we have had the mildest of winters) till somewhat late in May—when we go to Florence for a week or two on our way to Paris. Little Pen is grown much, & more robust than he used to be. He reads “Viri illustres” [6] and translates Italian into Latin not badly considering that he has learnt only a year. We did’nt get on so fast according to the old scholastic ways of England. Still, he does not shine in application, and I should like him to show force of character very much. In music he succeeds well: plays Chopin & Thalberg, & wants to be taught “composition,” “harmony” &c .. which Robert “pooh poohs,” & desires first that he should learn spelling. “I assure you mama,” says Pen to me complainingly, “I have plenty of musical ideas in my head—& if papa would but teach me the rules &c &c!!”
But almost, mama agrees with papa. There’s so much we ought to learn first. Certainly spelling.
Robert called on Mr Airey, [7] & did not find him—& he is gone, we hear. I have lived a very solitary life this winter, though for a month past there has been rather a rush of visitors, morning visitors, English & American– I feel more able to see strangers than friends– I wonder if you ever felt that. The stranger is free from associations, and also does not come near enough to froisser [8] you– I had a cousin of the Saturday Review [9] for a visitor some weeks since, who rather took to me, (because we differed so?) and used to come & sit here for an hour at a time & beat me about the head with his English politics. The last day, he brought me a huge nosegay to cover our battlefields. And did I tell you of Sir John Bowring .. who agrees?– He has been dangerously ill, poor man .. & only now begins to be better. Then there’s a Mr Dicey, a sympathizer—very keen, & honest– Read his book called ‘Rome in 1860’– It is dedicated to Robert & me. I want you too to read a novel called “Agnes Tremorne”, written by a very dear friend of mine, Isa Blagden, a resident at Florence & a faithful, noble heart, having that great need of absolute self-sacrifice, which belongs to certain women. I have not got her book yet– Its on the road to me still—but the Athenæum & other periodicals have praised it.
George says he cant afford to meet us in France this summer, & shall let Arabel come alone. Of course he has been ruining himself with his pretty house & furniture .. which I sigh over unconvinced– Over the house I mean, and all these clogging expenses .. which tether him to a post, when he might use his new liberty in a larger view of the world. If he married, it might be well—but to live alone in that way——oh, between you & me, my dearest friends, I am very sorry—sorrier than I shall ever say, so as to vex him. Arabel did not please me much when she took her house in London,—but Arabel at least had a distinct object & occupation– Well! we must all please ourselves. I, who speak, am not above criticism with you all, I know– Of course not.
You see my Emperor is “crowning the edifice” [10] —it is the beginning. Sir John Bowring says that the more liberty he can give, the better he will like it. He told Sir John so.
Is it right & loyal meanwhile of Guizot & his party to oppose the empire by upholding the enemies of Italy? I ask you. Such things I hear from Paris! Guizot corrected Keller’s speech with his own hand.
May God bless you– Love me & think of me a little.
Your ever affecte & grateful
Ba.
Pen’s love & gratitude. If Robert were here he would be named.
Will you tell me when you write how the Peytons are.
Address: Angleterre / Mrs Martin / Colwall / Malvern / Worcestershire. Redirected: 1 Clifton Terrace / Bournemouth.
Publication: LEBB, II, 438–440 (in part).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. A portion of the sheet, at the upper left of the first page, has been cut away, affecting text here and below.
2. The most recent work by Mayne Reid (1818–83) was The Wild Huntress, published in early January 1861.
3. “Merle, French bookseller, Piazza Colonna” (Murray’s A Handbook of Rome and Its Environs, 1858, (p. xviii).
5. EBB refers to Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address (4 March 1861), in which he said: “The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government.” Yet Fort Sumter fell to the Confederates on 13 April 1861 (see letter 4870, note 8).
6. De Viris illustribus urbis Romae, a Romulo ad Augustum, a textbook for beginning Latin students by Charles François Lhomond (1727–94), a French educator. First published in 1779, it was reprinted and re-edited many times.
7. Possibly George Sherbrooke Airey (1810–80), R.N., younger brother of Richard Airey, the British general who “wrote out the order which led to the fateful charge of the light brigade” in the Crimean War (ODNB). Airey and his wife, Anne (née Glasgow), spent their summers at the Château de Bilhères near Pau, where they may have become acquainted with the Martins, who had a summer residence there. Airey is listed in the Brownings’ address book of this period (AB-4) at the Hôtel des Iles Britanniques, Piazza del Popolo.
8. “Ruffle,” or “hurt.”
9. Charles Christopher Bowen.
10. A slight variation of this phrase (“crowned the edifice”) occurs in the motto to RB’s Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau (1871). An explanation of it is given in The Poems of Robert Browning, Vol. 4, ed. John Woolford, Daniel Karlin, and Joseph Phelan (Harlow, England, 2012): The phrase alludes “to an expression first coined by Louis Napoleon in a speech to the National Assembly of Feb. 1853, in which he argued that … ‘liberty never did assist in founding a political edifice of any durability, but it crowns it when time consolidates it’ … This idea of ‘crowning the edifice’ of the Second Empire with liberty became (according to Soheil) ‘at best a cliché, at worst, a joke’ in the English press throughout Napoleon’s reign” (p. 453). EBB’s use of the phrase probably refers to the recent lifting of constraints on the French legislative bodies to express criticism of the government (see letter 4855, note 15).
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