4901. EBB to Arabella Moulton-Barrett
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 134–138.
Rome. 126. Via Felice.
Saturday [25 May 1861] [1]
Ever beloved Arabel I thank God, & you dear, for the relief of your letter. One says nothing about some anxieties, & my poor sore soul has turned & turned on its pillow in silent calculations that Storm must have left England rather nearer three months ago than two,—that there were frightful winds afterwards, & that the David Lyon was a tub. Well—God has been very good to us, & your news is three times, blessed. Then there is good news of poor dear Sette, besides.
Dearest Arabel, let me hurry to say one word. Put out of your mind what I wrote about the Strattens. I have brooded over it since—it was wrong, selfish, unkind, uncalled for. Nobody will interfere with us after all & evidently. Robert will have a clear road. As for me, even if you share yourself with me & others, I shall be grateful for my share. I am in a morbid sort of state, hating the idea of an old friend, an old association, the face of anyone who ever looked at me in my “previous state of being”– If it went on much longer perhaps I should be afraid of seeing you [2] .. & then you might take me & lock me up in a madhouse, you know, & there an end. Robert cried aloud at the first breath,—thinking perhaps that he would be called up & set to his catechism, &, for various wild practises, taken in hand … who knows? There was in fact a “gêne” [3] on the surface of the proposition to both of us– But I tell him that I shall write to undo what I did, and he approves me entirely. Therefore you have full licence for any number of Strattens– There is no one whom I would wound with more reluctance, you are aware—& I agree with what you dont say, .. that Mr Browning would get more sympathy & comfort from dear Mr Stratten than from the whole assembly of us put together, heretics & sinners as we are. As to my Swedenborgianism I shall have to use it as a cushion to sit on & hide at the same time … (what do you think?) but this can be done perfectly, & the ears of my soul shall be open to all the teaching their dulness can receive, [4] —only I have grown in eccentricities you know, since the old chapel days—& what Miss Bayley calls my “terrible orthodoxy” [5] would be terrible heresy at Paddington chapel– I think I have heard of Mr Stratten himself’s observing that the types of Christianity were changing & Christians like Lady Huntington [6] growing obsolete. If I heard right, it is an admission. In fact there is a great shaking of dry bones, [7] in the churches as in the nations, & I shall like to hear Mr Stratten’s view of these things & towards what point they are tending– It is afflicting to observe how many devout souls are suffering in the storm of the crisis. Inspiration & spiritual causation are denied everywhere. For instance .. I tell you this in confidence, Arabel—dont let it be talked of.– I have the saddest letter from Ruskin. [8] His religious friends, he says, throw him off– (Small religion must they have, say I–) But he seems dropping into materialism with the profoundest melancholy & regret, loving what he loses, yet unable to hold it. The thinkers of the day should look to our foundations, for the danger is imminent– And to put down books like “Essays & Reviews” [9] is to do worse than nothing. They cant be put down. They must be reasoned into their place. There is truth—the only dangerous kind of truth … half-truth.
Would’nt Thun [10] be a long way for us to go? I must confess to you my darling Arabel, that Robert is very averse to my leaving Italy at all .. thinks I am not strong enough .. that it would be a risk &c &c– He even said the other day, that, if it were necessary, he would rather go alone. Now, as for me, I have loathed the very idea of going—but having taken up the idea & turned it round & round for months, I am of opinion that I ought to go, & that I shall probably be equal to it. If Robert went alone he wd be wretched—& if he did’nt take Peni, he wd be only half welcome to poor Mr Browning. Then you see Robert always gets frightened of journeys[,] hates the fuss of them, & exaggerates the effort in his previous fancy– Then it’s true, that I am not encouraging– I have been in nobody’s house since we came to Rome, am tired by a drive, & go to bed at eight oclock, feeling that the day had been long– In fact I am not strong. Still, I am doing more, & look quite different, it seems to me, & feel considerably stronger in all ways– We must come back early if we go,—but there will be no risk, I think, in going– Therefore unless I have a restive husband at last, I shall certainly do it. Sarianna says that Fontainbleau cant be damp—do enquire about places. Geneva is very expensive, I fear, as well as very hot. The sea might be good for all of us—but Sarianna thinks there is no railroad yet– I bow my head to you in geography, my darling Arabel, but, according to my traditions, the Rhine & Germany bound France to the east, & not any manner of sea. I think the sea is to the west north & south. On the west, I supposed those Rhenish provinces which Napoleon is to sieze by & bye. Now mind .. not a word to the Strattens .. I mean, against their going with you. I should be so grieved either to annoy them, or to diminish your pleasure in coming– For the rest, my darling—I was a seer, long ago, in objecting to Delamere Terrace. I knew it would prevent your coming to Italy, & it has done so. I should really yet have thought that you were not called on to beef up your whole establishment there, .. & that you might have engaged a girl to attend to Minny, & shut & open the windows, & blow away the dust. See how we leave our house at Florence, & how everybody in Rome leaves his or hers for half of every year. I dare say one of my brothers would be delighted to accept your liabilities, even—but, there .. I wont teaze you .. no, not even for your own health’s sake. Teazing is good for nobody I very well know. And you who deserve everything from us all .. “She’s a diamond,” said Storm to me in his farewell note .. should be spared vexing words from us at least.
I meant to have sent the photograph you asked for but I have not had it taken yet. Today I have been to the dentist’s,—on monday I shall go to the photographer—one operation about as bad as the other. Pen also is to be photographed on his poney. [11] We leave Rome on the first of June– Some friends of ours who went last week met a band of robbers (in chains happily—just taken!) and two earthquakes. The whole country has been stirred up with earthquakes. We shall go the Sienna road, & sleep one more night on it than usual to spare the poney & me. Then we shall arrange matters at Florence, & Robert will see that I can travel without falling to pieces. Hans Christian Andersen is here but is going away. He came to see me, kissed my hands, & seemed to have a vocation for general embraces. In return I have written some verses .. as he prayed for my autograph, .. & have sent them to Thackeray– [12] By the way I never told you Arabel of the schism between me & the Cornhill. Did’nt I tell you of a poem I sent last autumn?– [13] Well—he wrote to tell me this spring that it was too improper to put in,—that his magazine was for babes & sucklings, [14] —& that the English public which could bear plain words on sunday, could’nt & would’nt on monday, .. & that therefore, though my moral was the highest & purest &c &c, .. & though he recognized me as &c &c—. A very pretty note. Even Robert who began by swearing that I never shd write another line for him, softened before the note. I sate down & answered it .. agreed that it was impossible to turn anyone out of a room for indecent behaviour in a more gracious & conciliatory way, .. admitted that things spoken on Mount Sinai might be offensive on Cornhill, .. but ventured to ask whether the sunday mood, which bore with the “plain word”, was’nt a higher mood than the monday’s which cheated across the country. Some other things I said besides, civil yet earnest,—& to prove myself not sulky, sent him another poem on the spot– [15] He might be right from his own point of view—& I not wrong from mine. He was very kind in his note, anyhow. I was not angry in the least—it simply struck me as funny that a man like Thackeray should object to me on such grounds! Also, I did think to myself, that if the Cornhill was for “babes & sucklings”, somebody should get up another magazine for the instruction of the Volunteers. Dont you think so.
Peni had seen Andersen before I did—met him at a ‘Matinée d’enfants’ [16] at the Storys—where he read a bit of one of his tales in English,—& where Robert, by the way, read with great applause his (Robert’s) poem of the Pied Piper. [17] Pen was describing Andersen to me. “You must’nt think, mama, that he’s pretty. He’s not pretty. He even may be said to be like his own ugly duck” .. (with great gravity.) “Only his mind has developped into a swan.” That was’nt bad of Pen,—was it– He gets on better at lessons again. His abbé is very, very kind, & teaches well– Pen begins to read Latin satisfactorily. The abbé told him that it would be well for him to go to France to get rid of the Italian accent he spoke French with. Said Pen in some dissatisfaction, .. “I assure you, mama, the abbé does’nt pay me a great many compliments,—not to me personally!”
I do hope & trust that dear Harry & Amelia may not be disappointed again. Rest .. the recumbent position .. is the safest resource, I believe. I shall be so very, very glad for them if all ends well. [18] And Occy’s babe– [19] Has it light hair & blue eyes? So our dear dear little Altham has gone home again. [20] You see I put him at the last—but I had him in my mind all the letter through. I understand things you dont say, Arabel. I wish you had Mary– I wish you had Mary. Does Surtees write often to you, & how? I dont like that sort of woman for the children, [21] even though they may be happy with her.—— Here I will stop–
Whenever you write to dear Bummy, tell her that I love her & think of her. Does she seem pretty well? [22] It is hot here. We shall not stay long at Florence, if we go on to France. Mr Story has made an admirable bust of Robert & we are to have it– Of course we pay for its being turned into marble. I am well, mind. Robert’s best love & Pen’s. Understand about the Strattens—and love your own Ba–
Love to dear Minny–
Direct to Florence.
Address: Angleterre– / Miss Moulton Barrett / 7. Delamere Terrace / Harrow Road / London.
Publication: EBB-AB, II, 531–536.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. Date provided by a London postmark of 29 May 1861, a Wednesday.
2. Underscored three times.
3. “Constraint,” or “discomfort.”
4. Cf. Hebrews 5:11.
5. In a letter sent to Sarah Bayley the previous June, EBB wrote: “It amuses me when you talk of my ‘orthodoxy’– Among our friends, it is rather I than Robert, who pass for ‘heterodox’ and wild in my opinions, & subversive of traditions” (letter 4694).
6. Selina Hastings (née Shirley, 1707–91), Countess of Huntingdon (see letter 2411, note 1).
7. An allusion to Ezekiel’s prophecy over the dry bones; cf. Ezekiel 37:1–7, but especially verses 4 and 7: “O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. … So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to bone.”
9. Essays and Reviews (1860); see letter 4819, note 7.
10. On the Aare river, 15 miles S.S.E. of Bern.
11. A photograph of Pen astride his pony is reproduced facing page 177.
13. “Lord Walter’s Wife”; see letters 4865 and 4878.
14. Cf. Psalm 8:2 and Matthew 21:16. See letter 4865.
15. “Little Mattie.”
16. “Afternoon party for children.”
18. Evidently, Henry’s wife, Amelia Moulton-Barrett, had previously suffered a miscarriage. She was safely delivered of a son, Harry Peyton Moulton-Barrett, on 6 January 1862.
19. Charles Graham Moulton-Barrett (1860–1925).
21. Presumably a reference to Miss Lewis, the Cook children’s governess; see letter 4766, note 7.
22. Bummy had been staying with Arabella (see letter 4890, note 5).
___________________
