SD2066. Bessie Rayner Parkes to Elizabeth Parkes
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 257 (in part).
Rome.
April 21, 1857.
My dearest Mother,
I am afraid I was a very bad child in not answering your first request to write to Melbourne, but the fact was that when I got to Rome and began, after the first few days to get a glimpse of all there was to learn, my faculties became, so to speak, overturned, and all mixed up together, and I wrote neither letters nor journal nor a line for print. I got yours of the 12th enclosing Ellen Cantelos note, yesterday, and forthwith proceed to answer it. I am very grieved to hear that my Aunt thinks they will have to go earlier, and that there should be any doubt of Aunt Sarah getting back to town in time to see her; surely a great boy like Willie who is not actually ill ought to be left for such an occasion as that; Uncle Robert ought to continue to take her place and let the business go; if he does not I shall think it scandalous. As to my plans, Mrs. Jameson has given up Naples, on account of the warm weather, so I see no chance of going there. She will however travel before long to Florence by Perugia and I shall go with her. Miss Hays went to Florence yesterday, to Isa Blagden, she went by Sienna, and Miss Cushman follows in a few days by sea, with Margaret Gill; as the latter knocked up in the Holy Week, and could not bear a long carriage or diligence journey. Mathew and I spent 3 delightful days in the mountains last week; at Albano and Frascati. We went on to Tivoli, but there it rained so, and the inn looked so damp and dirty that we returned to Rome, after wandering through the Villa D’Este. This Villa struck me forcibly; I have always longed to see it, since an oil sketch by Cooke in the winter Sketches some years ago, and I found it quite as beautiful as my imagination of it. The damp misty day did not injure its peculiar desolate beauty at all. Next week, after staying a few days in Florence, Miss Cushman takes Margaret to Venice, and Mathew goes straight to Paris to meet Emily Ely, and I think they will go down to Malvern together as Mathew has been suffering terribly from neuralgia lately, and is even afraid of sciatica, which she would be a very bad subject for, with her excitable temperament. These are the movements of that party.
I saw Mrs. Braun yesterday; she is getting her house in order previous to letting it and coming to England for the winter; but she is very much averse to leaving Rome permanently, and seems half afraid of Miss Bayley’s holding her with a strong hand. She has a lovely apartment, looking down from the Tarpeian Rock over the whole of ancient Rome; she has her work and her society here, and tho’ she implies that her income will be very small, still as Dr. Braun’s widow she has a distinct and good social position of her own, which she would not have if she came to live in Miss Bayley’s house in England. I tell her that unless she conceives herself bound to Miss Bayley by some tie of gratitude or duty, I cannot conceive why she should hesitate and think of leaving a position where she has all she wants, for one which she has no sort of inclination for. She is busy finishing work connected with her husband’s antiquarian books, and seems very disinclined to sink into “Anne Thompson” again. Miss Bayley, she says, never liked her marriage, and always seems to regard her as an unfortunate exile, which she does not feel herself to be. She would much rather stay in the house where her husband lived and died, and occupy herself with his legacies of work, than return. How funny people are in the things they will tell one; I never expected all this from a person who seemed so hard as Miss Thompson did to me. If she comes back to Rome she would very willingly receive me at any time into her house. For £6 a month, board and lodging; and on the speculation of my becoming a rich woman as a penny a liner, I may be very glad to come again some time; for I like Rome dearly; the place suits me so well; tho’ just to-day it seems as if the glory of Ichabod had departed with Mathew!
I forget whether I told you that the April number of the Art Journal has an engraving of Hatty Hosmer’s Cenci, which is gone to the R. Academy. I want you and Cousin Elizabeth to get it. Hatty has interested me exceedingly. She is only 26, and has been here 5 years as Gibson’s pupil; but I forgot you must have seen all her story in the 2d article in the D. News, which was reprinted in the Waverley. I like her very much; much better than Barbara did, who saw all Rome and Romans a tort et a travers. She is the funniest little creature; not at all coarse, rough or slangy, but like a little boy. I have never seen anything so innocent as Hatty, nor so very queer. There is much energy and spirit in a pair of splendid grey eyes, her face is that of an arch faun, and her conversation is generally conducted on the principle of “So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie.” She lives with an old French lady, but conducts herself in all respects exactly as she chooses, being not only tolerated, but actually adopted by the married ladies in Rome, and by all sorts of grandees also. She has short curled hair like mine, and usually swept back from a very broad brow, wears a black hat and little feather everywhere, concerts and all, seeming quite ignorant of bonnets; manages her petticoats with a certain extraordinary ease suggestive of trousers,—but the finishing and funniest point of all is a very tiny waist, and this, strangely for a sculptor, seems Hatty’s weak point, for all her jackets fit quite tight and neat, and when she has a velvet sculptor’s cap on her curly hair and sticks her little hands into her little pockets, the whole effect is irresistibly whimsical. You must not fancy there is any touch of vulgarity in all this; the grain is extremely fine; Puck cut out of a diamond could not be more dainty.
I saw the Coliseum by a subdued moonlight; I started with Miss Cushman etc. the night being very brilliant, but before we got there it had clouded over and did not really become bright again. I have seen many palaces and churches, pictures and statues, but nothing delights me so much as the ruins and all statues or memorials connected with Roman history; especially certain very early substructions lately discovered under the Capitol by Canina, inclusive of a flight of stairs which were blocked up by Temple of Vespasian built against the entrance, and which therefore refer to republican times. Mathew took me to the Via Appia on the mournfullest of misty afternoons where we prowled and poked about the tombs like 2 Ghouls. Then I have had 2 rides on horseback into the Campagna. To-day I am going with Miss C. to St. Angelo and the Quirinal and afterwards to the Villa Albani with Mrs. Jameson. I manage to see things very well, but knowing the utter impossibility of seeing a tithe of Rome in the time I have this spring I have not worried over it, but tried to get as full and poetical an impression of the whole as I can. The surrounding country impresses me exceedingly. Heart cannot imagine how lovely it is in this fine spring weather—you really ought to come here with me some spring, since my Father will not come in the Autumn, for I imagine it is quite different externally and socially at this time of the year. I mean to spend most of the money you very kindly give me in photographs of which there are many and splendid specimens which will be very interesting in England.
Mrs. Gaskill has left Rome and gone with her 2 daughters to Florence. Great interest is expressed here about her life of Charlotte Bronte, and none of the reviews have yet come out to us. I certainly have a most intense sympathy with the Bronte mind; perhaps quite as much with Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” as with the elder sister’s. Books come with difficulty to Rome unless they happen to get reprinted into the Tauchnitz edition. I have just begun Corinne which I want to read while here,—what a wonderfully subtle book it is, even in the first few pages. I am very sorry Miss Lucy Field is writing another novel, for I do not think she puts her clear vigorous mind into what she writes, nor her own genuine experience. Mrs. Parker’s baby has distressed me very much, as it must be little Danniel Arthur for whom I got a pair of queer little red shoes at Tunis, and thought how amused his mother would be at them. He was a fine little child, very like Frank in the face, quite absurdly so.
I am sorry you see spots in Aurora Leigh; I think it would be impossible to treat the fermenting chaos of modern life in any other than a chaotic manner. I mean that the book represents to me life as I see it, just as Shakespeare’s plays give the real thing, and their very incongruities make them not only more natural, but capable of meeting the sympathies of successive ages. In all art there is this double possibility. It may either be roundly perfect like the Cid or irregularly comprehensive like Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet; there is something of the same antagonisms between Michael Angelo’s blotched, sketched, chopped creations and Raphael’s perfect conceptions, so I had almost said between the exceedingly absurd and vital Roman Catholic faith, and exceedingly rational Unitarians with no vitality at all. Peter and John. Mrs. Browning’s poetry has always seemed to me more of an inspiration than an art; she seems to struggle with the Spirits, and what she says widens out at every reading like india rubber. I do not believe she always knows the whole meaning of what she herself says, and this is akin to my idea of inspiration.
I certainly shall not get near Zurich on my return. I want to come by Paris, and to know what you would think of Emma coming over to meet me for a fortnight. She has never seen Paris, nor any foreign city, and I fear never will except with me, for Frank never takes her about, and she has a very dull life, poor darling. My Father does not like being burdened with another lady in his vacation, and as we could be at Miss Lecomte’s for /30 a week each, and she can manage her own expenses, I thought it a good opportunity this spring for her. I told her I should write you about it, and as you will probably see her you can speak to her about it and say if there is any reason against it. I am anxious about the very little change she gets, and her life is very worrying, and she so good and true in it, like a jewel as she is. I only wish this for the pleasure I should have in giving her pleasure, as I should otherwise come straight home from Italy.
I am very vexed about E.C.’s picture, but she seems to take it very well. I hope she will manage to come up to town, and I want her to try at the Bir’m Ex. this Autumn. That little picture Mrs. Jameson bought was beautiful in its way, and I am sure she has the making of an artist, tho’ when she tries on a large scale her very pains make her stiff. I sent another paper to the National Mag; the Marriage of the Princess Monitapla Pacha. I have heard nothing of it. Mr. Hastings is very ugly and illtempered looking, but I think the main expression is good. You need not have quaked to read of Bar and me separate! Algeria is very safe and civilised; nothing worse than the monkeys came, and they danced round her on their hind legs, and were very conjugally affectionate to each other, which I did not put in the Waverley. I heard from Bar 2 days ago; they return, as a family, the end of May, but I do not know if Barbara stays to paint or not. I have heard nothing of Willie and Georgie More, and do not know when they marry; what a couple of children they do seem to think about; I seem to see Willie in his immense turn-down collar, advising me to teach my Grandmother to suck eggs, as if it were yesterday!
I have pretty well come to the end of my gossip and my paper, and will take this at once to the post, not to lose a day. How dear Italian postage is! Quite dreffle. Give my kind love to all my friends, and specially to dearest Aunt and Uncle, and believe me to remain, my dearest Mother, ever your affectionate
Bessi.
I acknowledged the letter of credit the day after I got it.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Girton College.
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