6070. RB to Jane Wills-Sandford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 328–330.
19. Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace,
June 3. ’68.
My dear Friend,
All your letters used to walk into our house at Florence, bringing somehow more of the personality of the writer with them than any other letters, dear as they might be. And this letter [1] comes and takes a chair by me, rather than lies on my desk. It is very good & dear of you to write and wish to be written to,—also to care about & remember so much of me and mine. So, let us talk,—I will take & answer your questions as they come,—or reply to observations that are in the nature of questions. Yes, I suppose the lease of my house is up, [2] but I have not thought of new arrangements yet; Pen is not even matriculated at Balliol yet; he is 19: but at that college, where the requirements are very high, there is little good in entering at an earlier age. He will reside, I hope, in October next. It was my plan to prolong his education, there being no reason for sending him into the world earlier than will comport with three pleasant University years—which ought to be a great draught of cool water before taking the hot dusty road. He has been however at Oxford this long time, studying under the superintendence of Professor Jowett, Tutor of Balliol: he has rooms in the Town and a private Tutor, and behaves very satisfactorily and rationally in this initiatory stage of College life: he has many friends, and seems generally liked. His great love is for boating, in which he is allowed to excel: his health is good & his strength considerable, but he is a little fellow, not perhaps so tall as myself: he was expected to be taller. He keeps up his music in a good degree, considering the demands on his time: and still speaks Italian & French fluently. Come, with this shall go his last photograph [3] to you,—what has become of Pen with the long curls? Always call him “Pen”, please, you and a few more of old lovers and friends! I saw him last week at Oxford: I don’t know whether you heard that the University made me an M.A. last year “by diploma”—a very unusual compliment to anybody not originally educated there, and said to have been last conferred on the D. of Wellington: it makes you free of all the priveleges of the University, which no honorary degree such as D.C.L. can do: in consequence of this, I was, a few months after, elected Hon. Fellow of Balliol, (“in defiance of every precedent”!) I shall have rooms there—and give them to Pen, retaining one for myself,—and thus be able to supervise and understand his proceedings just as if he were here. It is a charming thing to go to Oxford on a Saturday, as I did last week, dine with calm clever learned “Fellows” in your own College, spent [sic] a quiet Sunday in the wonderful old place, and return next morning: And to whom return but my Sister?—this is a second “answer.” After the death of my Father, I persuaded her to come and live with me, and she did so, and so, I hope, will long do. This house is quite large enough for our needs. She walks much, sees a few friends, is in good health on the whole,—though still with interrupted sleep & occasional indisposition. We went in the autumn of that ’66, no longer to dear old Pornic, but to a new place for us, Croisic,—have you not read of it in Balzac’s “Béatrix?” We liked it so much, that we returned thither last year, staying two months as before. It is a wild little promontory; with an ancient town,—close by is Guérande a charming old little city, with ruined battlements and towers, and a primitive people, Breton to the backbone; and between lies Batz a strange burg, inhabited by old Saxon colonists, who preserve the dress and manners of their progenitors: they live by collecting the salt which is caused by the evaporation of the sea water collected in low squares—what brewers would call backs—all over the land,—all is poor, all so primitive, all so attractive to me: the sea is rough but gloriously fresh and invigorating: I have taken to swimming—(a late accomplishment!)—swim every day, sometimes for half an hour without touching ground: Pen swims like a duck. We live in an ancient large & lordly house, waited on by a Breton woman,—and find the two months lapse imperceptibly: I read Greek and write my poem. But I fear there will be no more of these good things, for this autumn Pen is to accompany Mr Jowett to Scotland, and I am quite undecided what do [sic, for to] do for a holiday. You must know that my poem is done—in above 20,000 lines! At this moment, it is in the Publisher’s hands, and when he lets me into his secrets, I shall be able to see if his plans allow any project of mine,—but I should hardly have the heart to go to Croisic without Pen: to the sea, however, I ought to betake myself if possible, as I am a little tired with the last seven or eight months work. If things go smoothly at the year’s end,—Pen in College, and my book done with,—I shall undoubtedly regain my liberty to a greater degree than since this many a day. And if I travel, do you suppose I will not come and see you face to face as of old in Florence and Paris? But meanwhile any “permanent address”, even better than at the “Athenæum”, will be here: your own, [4] I shall not lose, don’t fear! My hopes are to breathe more freely, as I say, abroad: but the probabilities are that Pen will always be tethered to me, and pluck me by the leg should I get to any distance: better so! I have got used to London these seven years, no otherwise than as one breaks oneself into bearing a drug: people have been extraordinarily kind and attentive to me, and, so far as social consideration goes, I get far more than I can enjoy: but my inmost life won’t find an “outing” before I am in the “Land of Souls”. This prevents my compassionating you, dear Jane Sandford,—may I dare call you so?—in your wanderings and perpetual miss of a “home,”—you seem sufficiently at home in those blue skies, warm seas,—and now, green hills: what are you likely to get better in this world? True, you are “far from strong in any way,”—that is sad to hear: but strength would hardly come to you if the winds and the sea don’t bring it,—so it seems to me. What I like best here is—friends, the few first rate people in England, whom I have every opportunity of seeing, and who are as worthy as winds & seas, after all: then, the music—which one gets very easily and in perfection of its kind. I was at Rubinstein’s Poecital, as he styles it, a few days ago, [5] and shall not lose what I gained there, this long while to come. He played fourteen pieces by memory,—all wonderfully: among others, that last Sonata of Beethoven, the 111th [6] —in which I grow reconciled to death,—one’s very soul is lifted heavenward in those final aspirings, the fervid “shakes” which were invented to lift one thither: I had thought this years ago,—long before poor Mrs Hallé, [7] the last time I saw her, told me that she made her husband play it to her for that purpose: she died a few weeks afterward. How I remember his playing it to me & Ba for the first time; [8] no one had played it in England before. What a letter is this! Goodbye, dearest friend,—do write to me whenever the impulse bids you: it will be good for yours ever
affectionately R Browning.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
3. One of four photographs taken at Paris in April 1866. They are reproduced facing p. 176.
4. See the end of letter 6046.
5. On 30 May “at three o’clock, in the Hanover-Square Rooms” (The Daily Telegraph, 30 May 1868, p. 1).
6. Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111 (1822).
7. Marie Désirée Hallé (née Smith, 1816–66)—see letter 3829, note 12—died on 28 April 1866 at Manchester.
8. On 31 July 1855 in London at the home of the Sartorises (see letter 3590).
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