SD1663. Ellen Twisleton to Mary Parkman
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 369–370 (in part).
Hôtel Meurice, Paris
Sunday, June 5th, 1853.
Dear, darling Mary—
Blessèd for ever be private opportunities & the Powell-Mason family from generation to generation! …
Edward & I were both of us much pleased with our extra week at Florence, as it gave us an opportunity of continuing our hardly formed acquaintance with the Brownings. I saw her 3 times, at length, at her own house, & once for a little while, in our room; she is, except Mrs Carlyle, altogether the most interesting lady I have seen, but she is a different person, & the interest is different from what I expected to find. I am sure she has altered since she was married, that is since she wrote & published the poetry, by which you & I know her—& she is not the least the person, half saint, half sibyl, that one would expect from that. The change is natural, when one considers that that was written during a life of great privation, & great actual suffering, & that since her marriage this has not only been removed, but a great deal of positive & varied enjoyment been added—but I think you would have been, at first, almost as much surprised as I was, to hear her say that she greatly preferred Dumas to Walter Scott, & Paris to any other place to live in,—to hear a perfect enthusiasm for George Sand, & an active contrariety to England & the English, in many ways. One certainly would think, from her writings, that the moral & religious element was as strong in her as the intellectual,—but in her conversation she seems ready to excuse anything, for the sake of mental gifts, & the very faults which her own writings & her husbands are so singularly free from, & thereby made so delightful, she overlooks in other people. And in all this she quite goes beyond Mr Browning—she excuses & admires Louis Napoleon, while he says he can never forgive a man for breaking so many oaths—she is strong against Puseyism, fervent against the arrangements of London society, & in short, there was hardly a subject of conversation, upon which she did not say something, which jarred upon my previous idea of her. In her private relations, I should say she was as happy a woman as ever lived; her husband’s affection for her, & hers for him, shine out in the most lovely manner, constantly—her child is a little “angioletto” in appearance, & she perfectly adores him—& told me that he never had needed to be corrected, since he was born, & he is five years old. She talks with great animation & freshness—she has excellent, well-bred manners; & also very affectionate & expressive ones, & that one would have expected. Her eyes are the happiest eyes one almost ever looked into—& seem as if they could never have guided the pen which wrote “the lost bower.” She attracted me extremely, as much perhaps as if she had realized my ideal of her, but I can hardly express to you how different from that she was, though she still remains a most interesting & a most loveable person. In her conversation, one sees most of the woman who wrote the two sonnets to George Sand, & the verses to Napoleon,—& her face looks as if she had truly found, that
“Love, as strong as Death, retrieved as well.–”
Mr Browning, Edward saw so much more of than I did, that I shall leave him to describe him to you. He liked him extremely, & I can answer to it that his manner to his wife is a poem in itself. Their ménage is apparently regulated by the higher law– I admired a carved bookcase, they had, & she said it did not look well then, for as they had been meaning to go to Rome from week to week, all winter, they had never put up their books! But it would be no matter if people dined & slept on their books, & then looked as they do, through the day. They are thinking somewhat of coming to live in Paris, to which I should not object, as I should be much more likely to see them, occasionally, & I should be glad if I might see them about twice a week, for the remainder of my mortal existence. They evidently spend no money on anything but books, & such “low living & high thinking,” it is delightful to see. …
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Harvard University.
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