4878. EBB to William Makepeace Thackeray
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 86–87.
Rome. 126 Via Felicè.
April 21– [1861] [1]
Dear Mr Thackeray pray consider the famous “tooth” (a wise tooth!) [2] as extracted under chloroform, and no pain suffered by anybody.
To prove that I am not sulky I send another contribution [3] .. which may prove too much perhaps,—and, if you think so, dispose of the supererogatory virtue by burning this ms, as I am sure I may rely on your having done with the last.
I confess it—dear Mr Thackeray, never was anyone turned out of a room for indecent behaviour in a more gracious and conciliatory manner! Also I confess that from your Cornhill stand-point, (paterfamilias looking on) [4] you are probably right ten times over. From mine, however I may not be wrong—and I appeal to you as the deep man you are, whether it is not the higher mood which on sunday bears with the ‘plain word,’ so offensive on monday during the cheating across the counter? I am not a ‘fast woman.’ I dont like coarse subjects, or the coarse treatment of any subject. But I am deeply convinced that the corruption of our society requires, not shut doors and windows, but light and air—and that it is exactly because pure & prosperous women choose to ignore vice, that miserable women suffer wrong by it everywhere. Has Paterfamilias with his oriental traditions and veiled female faces, very successfully dealt with a certain class of evils? What if Materfamilias with her quick sure instincts and honest innocent eyes, do more towards their expulsion by simply looking at them & calling them by their names–
See what insolence you put me up to by your kind way of naming my dignities, .. “Browning’s wife and Penini’s mother”– And I, being vain, (turn some people out of a room and you dont humble them properly) retort with .. “materfamilias”–!
Our friend Mr Story has just finished a really grand statue of the “African Sybil.” It will place him very high.
Where are you all, Annie, Minnie .. why dont you come and see us in Rome?
My husband bids me give you his kind regards, and I shall send Pen’s love with mine to your dear girls–
Most truly yours
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
We go to Florence in the latter half of May.
Address: Editor of the CornHill Mag. / (Messrs Smith & Elder / Cornhill) / London– / Angleterre.
Publication: LEBB, II, 445–446.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. Year provided by postmark.
3. “Little Mattie,” published in The Cornhill Magazine of June 1861 (pp. 736–737) and in Last Poems (1862).
4. EBB alludes humorously to the pseudonym of Matthew James Higgins (1810–68), whose three letters (signed “Paterfamilias”) on the deficiencies of English public schools appeared in The Cornhill Magazine of May 1860, December 1860, and March 1861.
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