SD2133. Ellen Twisleton to Mary Parkman
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 25, 343 (in part).
Florence.
Friday. Jan. 22. 1858.
Dearest Mary, I have not had anything from home since my last, as Millney mildly warned me would be the case …
I feel mean to be seeing Mrs Browning, & always wish you were in my shoes, when I do. We spent Sunday evening there, & shall do the same tomorrow, & again the Sunday after, & I have seen her twice besides. She is always the same frail, delicate woman, with a soft voice, & softer eyes, & every now & then straightening herself up with some intense idea, wh. she expresses in very strong & clear language. Robert Browning is a tremendous talker, I should say,—but talks very cleverly, putting a great deal of stuff into his conversation; else, his loud voice & incessant continuance, would be slightly wearing. I think he does it, partly to relieve her; & I think no two people ever suited so exactly as they do. Her boy has grown & developed very much, & is a fine looking child, with an expression peculiarly frank, open, & pure, & has his mother’s expressive eyes. He writes, at lengths, in a manuscript book entitled “my poems & stories,” but my “poems,” are all blank verse. He is eight now, & I long to put him and Harry together. He looks eminently
“Like a child that never knew but love
Whom words of wrath (would) surprise.[”]
I see in her how much of a student she is, & extraordinary in mind as in feeling; but I don’t think she is a very reasoning woman, withal, not a logician; & he does not string her up to bear the world’s tone, but rather shelters her from it, it seems. She is so intensely sensitive & delicate, that it is fortunate. She told me, the other day, that her idea was that infidelity was extinguished, really didn’t exist, substantively; which, to me, who dine with it, ask it to dinner, see it publish books, fill university chairs, & rule in the intellectual high places of England, sounded unwitting of the world. She said Tennyson told her when she saw him last, that “if he didn’t believe in another life, he would put his wife & children into any boat, & then tip it over!” It seems odd that their child was christened not in the English church, here, but the Scotch. She certainly was a strong churchwoman, & from his writings, I can’t think he defines any firm creed to himself. So I am slightly puzzled. But this fact is the sole & all sufficient foundation for Fanny Perkins, to say that “Mr Browning is a rigid Presbyterian,” wh. is a good sample of her stories. …
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Harvard University.
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