4904. EBB to Kate Field
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 141–143.
Rome–
Tuesday– [28 May 1861] [1]
Indeed, my ever dear kind Kate, you gave me a great fright with the first page of your letter, .. but from her writing herself to you as “a shade better,” I take heart again, and trust it may be simply an attack of grippe. Isa catches feverish-colds easily. I am glad she has Trotman, & do hope that you will be ministering angel enough to let me have a word before I leave Rome– Only, if it is’nt done spontaneously, dont write because I say this. We shall be gone before a letter of yours could answer me– We go on saturday, creeping along the road by Siena, & expecting earthquakes & banditti as travelling companions.
Would that we could hold a fire in our hand by thinking of a frosty Caucasus [2] —then might we bear the heat here by what you signify of Florence cold– At Rome it is very hot & oppressive– In fact we have overstayed our time. The winter has been mild, & I have had repose, for the most part. Now the necessity for effort which comes with the summer, frightens me– Yet I am better & stronger in body & soul.
My dear Kate, never say that I have “cursed” your country. [3] I only declared the consequence of the evil in her, .. & which has since developped itself in thunder & flame. I feel with more pain than many Americans do, the sorrow of this transition time—but I do know that it is transition, that it is crisis .. & that you will come out of the fire purified, stainless, having had the angel of a great cause walking with you in the furnace. [4] As to England .. a late article in the Post has quieted the worst of my fears [5] .. & in fact the government could scarcely cover itself with dishonor up to a certain point– It has been bad enough, what we have read in the Times & elsewhere, of ignoble selfishness on this subject– And listen to Lord Brougham!– [6]
But we may trust England under her present political regime, for being consistently interested as far as she can & dares– Why blame her? Is it not proved that the Maronites murdered themselves, [7] —& that the Ionians could, but for her tender care,—and that the Suez canal is impossible, because France & the nations might get some good by it? Why talk any more, when these things are evident? For me I have done talking– I only groan. “Have mercy upon us miserable sinners” [8] is my form of the national anthem–
So, Kate, you are learning Latin, & communing with Mr Landor,—and he feels as we all do, that you are very dear & good, & that the more we have of you the better.
Give my love to Mrs Field, she was kind, to stay with Isa–
Oh—your photograph!—how like you!—and how glad we were of it–
And now, goodbye, till we meet next week– Till then, & after,
Very affectionately yours
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
My husband sends his love … if he may.
Publication: Lilian Whiting, Kate Field: a Record (Boston, 1899), pp. 128–129.
Manuscript: Boston Public Library.
1. Dated by EBB’s references to leaving on Saturday; that is, June 1st.
2. Cf. Richard II, I, 3, 294–295.
3. In “A Curse for a Nation.”
4. An allusion to the story of Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and the “fiery furnace” told in Daniel 3:13–28.
5. EBB may have in mind an editorial in The Morning Post of 21 May 1861 that clearly takes the side of the North: “The Southern States by their organic laws declare that slaves are in precisely the same position as ‘working beasts or animals of any kind,’ and utterly incapable of possessing or exercising social or political rights. … It is this system which the South desires to render not only secure and permanent, but to extend to Mexico and Central America. With the advocates of such doctrines, equally repugnant to the laws of God and man, the people of this country can have no sympathy” (p. 4).
6. Perhaps, EBB refers to a short speech that Brougham delivered in the House of Lords on 14 May 1861. Raising the subject of slavery in connection with San Domingo (now the Dominican Republic), he recalled that sixty years ago “he laid it down then that, although their first sympathy was due to the slave, their next fellow-feeling was due to his master, who was possessed of slaves by crimes not of his own committing, they having descended to him from other hands. He repeated the same doctrine now. There were meetings being held in this country which he entirely deprecated … meetings at one of which six or seven weeks ago he had himself promised to preside; but when he found, after what had taken place in the United States, that it was called a meeting on American slavery, he said on no account … would he have anything to do with holding, presiding, or attending a meeting of that description. He strongly recommended all whom his voice might reach to abstain from holding such meetings. At the present moment it could not fail to do great mischief in our relations to America” (The Times, 15 May 1861, p. 6).
8. A refrain in “The Litany,” The Book of Common Prayer.
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