CHAPTER VIII

1852-55

The middle of November found the travellers back again in Florence, and it was nearly three years before they again quitted Italy. No doubt, after the excitement of the _coup d'état_ in Paris, and the subsequent manoeuvres of Louis Napoleon, which culminated in this very month in his exchanging the title of President for that of Emperor, Florence must have seemed very quiet, if not dull. The political movement there was dead; the Grand Duke, restored by Austrian bayonets, had abandoned all pretence at reform and constitutional progress. In Piedmont, Cavour had just been summoned to the head of the administration, but there were no signs as yet of the use he was destined to make of his power. Of politics, therefore, we hear little for the present.

Nor is there much to note at this time in respect of literature. A new edition of Mrs. Browning's poems was called for in 1853; but beyond some minor revisions of detail it did not differ from the edition of 1850. Her husband's play, 'Colombe's Birthday,' was produced at the Haymarket Theatre during April, with Miss Faucit (Lady Martin) in the principal part; but the poet had no share in the production, and his literary activity must have been devoted to the composition of some of the fine poems which subsequently formed the two volumes of 'Men and Women,' which appeared in 1855. Mrs. Browning had also embarked on her longest poem, 'Aurora Leigh,' and speaks of being happily and busily engaged in work; but we hear little of it as yet in her correspondence. Her little son and her Florentine friends and visitors form her principal subjects; and we also see the beginning of a topic which for the next few years occupied a good deal of her attention--namely, Spiritualism.

The temperament of Mrs. Browning had in it a decidedly mystical vein, which predisposed her to believe in any communication between our world and that of the spirits. Hence when a number of people professed to have such communication, she was not merely ready to listen to their claims, but was by temperament inclined to accept them. The immense vogue which spiritualism had during 'the fifties' tended to confirm her belief. It was easy to say that where there was so much smoke there must be fire. And what she believed, she believed strongly and with a perfect conviction that no other view could be right. Just as her faith in Louis Napoleon survived the _coup d'état_, and even Villafranca, so her belief in communications with the spirit world was proof against any exposure of fraud on the part of the mediums. Not that she was guilty of the absurdities which marked many of the devotees of spiritualism. She had a great horror of submitting herself to mesmeric influences. She recognised that very many of the supposed revelations of the spirits were trivial, perhaps false; but to the fact that communications did exist she adhered constantly.

It is not of much interest now to discuss the ethics or the metaphysics of the 'rapping spirits;' but the subject deserves more than a passing mention in the life of Mrs. Browning, because it has been said, and apparently with authority, that 'the only serious difference which ever arose between Mr. Browning and his wife referred to the subject of spiritualism.'[15] It is quite certain that Mr. Browning did not share his wife's belief in spiritualism; a reference to 'Sludge the Medium' is sufficient to establish his position in the matter. But it is easy to make too much of the supposed 'difference.' Certainly it has left no trace in Mrs. Browning's letters which are now extant. There is no sign in them that the divergence of opinion produced the slightest discord in the harmony of their life. No doubt Mr. Browning felt strongly as to the character of some of the persons, whether mediums or their devotees, with whom his wife was brought into contact, and he may have relieved his feelings by strong expressions of his opinion concerning them; but there is no reason to lay stress on this as indicating any serious difference between himself and his wife.

It has seemed necessary to say so much, lest it should be supposed that any of the omissions, which have been made in order to reduce the bulk of the letters within reasonable limits, cover passages in which such a difference is spoken of. In no single instance is this the case. The omissions have been made in the interests of the reader, not in order to affect in any way the representation which the letters give of their writer's feelings and character. With this preface they may be left to tell their own tale.

* * * * *

_To Miss Browning_

Florence: November 14, 1852 [postmark].

My dearest Sarianna,--You can't think how pleased I am to find myself in Florence again in our own house, everything looking exactly as if we had left it yesterday. Scarcely I can believe that we have gone away at all. But Robert has been perfectly demoralised by Paris, and thinks it all as dull as possible after the boulevards: 'no life, no variety.' Oh, of course it _is_ very dead in comparison! but it's a beautiful death, and what with the lovely climate, and the lovely associations, and the sense of repose, I could turn myself on my pillow and sleep on here to the end of my life; only be sure that I _shall do no such thing_. We are going back to Paris; you will have us safe. Peninni had worked himself up to a state of complete agitation on entering Florence, through hearing so much about it. First he kissed me and then Robert again and again, as if his little heart were full. '_Poor Florence_' said he while we passed the bridge. Certainly there never was such a darling since the world began.... I suffered extremely through our unfortunate election of the Mont Cenis route (much more my own fault than Robert's), and was extremely unwell at Genoa, to the extent of almost losing heart and hope, which is a most unusual case with me, but the change from Lyons had been too sudden and severe. At Genoa the weather was so exquisite, so absolutely June weather, that at the end of a week's lying on the sofa, I had rallied again quite, only poor darling Robert was horribly vexed and out of spirits all that time, as was natural. I feel myself, every now and then (and did then), like a weight round his neck, poor darling, though he does not account it so, for his part. Well, but it passed, and we were able to walk about beautiful Genoa the last two days, and visit Andrea Doria's palace and enjoy everything together. Then we came on by a night and day's diligence through a warm air, which made me better and better. By the way, Turin is nearly as cold as Chambéry; you can't believe yourself to be in Italy. Susa, at the foot of the Alps, is warmer. We were all delighted to hear the sound of our dear Italian, and inclined to be charmed with everything; and Peninni fairly expressed the kind of generalisations we were given to, when he observed philosophically, 'In Italy, pussytats don't never _scwatch_, mama.' This was in reply to an objection I had made to a project of his about kissing the head of an enchanting pussy-cat who presented herself in vision to him as we were dining at Turin.... God bless and preserve you. We love you dearly, and talk of you continually--of both of you. Your most affectionate sister,

BA.

Best love to your father.--Peninni.

* * * * *

_To John Kenyon_

Casa Guidi: November 23, 1852.

We flatter ourselves, dearest Mr. Kenyon, that as we think so much of you, you may be thinking a little of us, and will not be sorry--who knows?--to have a few words from us.

November 24.

Just as I was writing, had written, that sentence yesterday, came the letter which contained your notelet. Thank you, thank you, dearest friend, it is very pleasant to have such a sign from your hand across the Alps of kindness and remembrance. As to my sins in the choice of the Mont Cenis route, 'Bradshaw' was full of temptation, and the results to me have so entirely passed away now, that even the wholesome state of repentance is very faded in the colours. What chiefly remains is the sense of wonderful contrast between climate and climate when we found ourselves at Genoa and in June. I can't get rid of the astonishment of it even now. At Turin I had to keep up a fire most of the night in my bedroom, and at Genoa, with all the windows and doors open, we were gasping for breath, languid with the heat, blue burning skies overhead, and not enough stirring air for refreshment. Nothing less, perhaps, would have restored me so soon, and it was delightful to be able during our last two days of our ten days there to stand on Andrea Doria's terrace, and look out on that beautiful bay with its sweep of marble palaces. My 'unconquerable mind' even carried me halfway up the lighthouse for the sake of the 'view,' only there I had to stop ingloriously, and let Robert finish the course alone while I rested on a bench: aspiration is not everything, either in literature or lighthouses, you know, let us be ever so 'insolvent.'

Well, and since we left Turin, everywhere in Italy we have found summer, summer--not a fire have we needed even in Florence. Such mornings, such evenings, such walkings out in the dusk, such sunsets over the Arno! ah, Mr. Kenyon, you in England forget what life is in this out-of-door fresh world, with your cloistral habits and necessities! I assure you I can't help fancying that the winter is over and gone, the past looks so cold and black in the warm light of the present. We have had some rain, but at night, and only thundery frank rains which made the next day warmer, and I have all but lost my cough, and am feeling very well and very happy.

Oh, yes, it made me glad to see our poor darling Florence again; I do love Florence when all's said against it, and when Robert (demoralised by Paris) has said most strongly that the place is dead, and dull, and flat, which it is, I must confess, particularly to our eyes fresh from the palpitating life of the Parisian boulevards, where we could scarcely find our way to Prichard's for the crowd during our last fortnight there. Poor Florence, so dead, as Robert says, and as we both feel, so trodden flat in the dust of the vineyards by these mules of Austria and these asses of the Papacy: good heavens! how long are these things to endure? I do love Florence, when all's said. The very calm, the very dying stillness is expressive and touching. And then our house, our tables, our chairs, our carpets, everything looking rather better for our having been away! Overjoyed I was to feel myself _at home_ again! our Italians so pleased to see us, Wiedeman's nurse rushing in, kissing my lips away almost, and seizing on the child, 'Dio mio, come è bellino! the tears pouring down her cheeks, not able to look, for emotion, at the shawl we had brought her from England. Poor Italians! who can help caring for them, and feeling for them in their utter prostration just now? The unanimity of despair on all sides is an affecting thing, I can assure you. There is no mistake _here_, no possibility of mistake or doubt as to the sentiment of the people towards the actual régime; and if your English newspapers earnestly want to sympathise with an oppressed people, let them speak a little for Tuscany. The most hopeful word we have heard uttered by the Italians is, 'Surely it cannot last.' It is the hope of the agonising.

But our 'carta di soggiorno' was sent to us duly. The government is not over learned in literature, oh no....

And only Robert has seen Mr. Powers yet, for he is in the crisis of removal to a new house and studio, a great improvement on the last, and an excellent sign of prosperity of course. He is to come to us some evening as soon as he can take breath. We have had visits from the attachés at the English embassy here, Mr. Wolf, and Mr. Lytton,[16] Sir E. Bulwer Lytton's son, and I think we shall like the latter, who (a reason for my particular sympathy) is inclined to various sorts of spiritualism, and given to the magic arts. He told me yesterday that several of the American rapping spirits are imported to Knebworth, to his father's great satisfaction. A very young man, as you may suppose, the son is; refined and gentle in manners. Sir Henry Bulwer is absent from Florence just now.

As to our house, it really looks better to my eyes than it used to look. Mr. Lytton wondered yesterday how we could think of leaving it, and so do I, almost. The letting has answered well enough; that is, it has paid all expenses, leaving an advantage to us of a house during _six months_, at our choice to occupy ourselves or let again. Also it might have been let for a year (besides other offers), only our agent expecting us in September, and mistaking our intentions generally, refused to do so. Now I will tell you what our plans are. We shall stay here till we can let our house. If we don't let it we shall continue to occupy it, and put off Rome till the spring, but the probability is that we shall have an offer before the end of December, which will be quite time enough for a Roman winter. In fact, I hear of a fever at Rome and another at Naples, and would rather, on every account, as far as I am concerned, stay a little longer in Florence. I can be cautious, you see, upon some points, and Roman fevers frighten me for our little Wiedeman.

As to your 'science' of 'turning the necessity of travelling into a luxury,' my dearest cousin, do let me say that, like some of the occult sciences, it requires a good deal of gold to work out. Your too generous kindness enabled us to do what we couldn't certainly have done without it, but nothing would justify us, you know, in not considering the cheapest way of doing things notwithstanding. So Bradshaw, as I say, tempted us, and the sight of the short cut in the map (pure delusion those maps are!) beguiled us, and we crossed the 'cold valley' and the 'cold mountain' when we shouldn't have done either, and we have bought experience and paid for it. Never mind! experience is nearly always worth its price. And I have nearly lost my cough, and Robert is dosing me indefatigably with cod's liver oil to do away with my thinness....

Robert's best love, with that of your most

Gratefully affectionate BA.

* * * * *

_To Miss I. Blagden_

[Florence: winter 1852-3.]

[_The beginning of the letter is lost_]

The state of things here in Tuscany is infamous and cruel. The old serpent, the Pope, is wriggling his venom into the heart of all possibilities of free thought and action. It is a dreadful state of things. Austria the hand, the papal power the brain! and no energy in the victim for resistance--only for hatred. They do hate here, I am glad to say.

But we linger at Florence in spite of all. It was delightful to find ourselves in the old nest, still warm, of Casa Guidi, to sit in our own chairs and sleep in our own beds; and here we shall stay as late perhaps as March, if we don't re-let our house before. Then we go to Rome and Naples. You can't think how we have caught up our ancient traditions just where we left them, and relapsed into our former soundless, stirless hermit life. Robert has not passed an evening from home since we came--just as if we had never known Paris. People come sometimes to have tea and talk with us, but that's all; a few intelligent and interesting persons sometimes, such as Mr. Tennyson (the poet's brother) and Mr. Lytton (the novelist's son) and Mr. Stuart, the lecturer on Shakespeare, whom once I named to you, I fancy. Mr. Tennyson married an Italian, and has four children. He has much of the atmosphere poetic about him, a dreamy, speculative, shy man, reminding us of his brother in certain respects; good and pure-minded. I like him. Young Mr. Lytton is very young, as you may suppose, with all sorts of high aspirations--and visionary enough to suit _me_, which is saying much--and affectionate, with an apparent liking to us both, which is engaging to us, of course. We have seen the Trollopes once, the younger ones, but the elder Mrs. Trollope was visible neither at that time nor since....

I sit here reading Dumas' 'last,' notwithstanding. Dumas is astonishing; he never _will_ write himself out; there's no dust on his shoes after all this running; his last books are better than his first.

Do your American friends write ever to you about the rapping spirits? I hear and would hear much of them. It is said that at least fifteen thousand persons in America, of all classes and society, are _mediums_, as the term is. Most curious these phenomena.

[_The end of the letter is lost_]

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

Casa Guidi, Florence: February [1853].

I had just heard of your accident from Arabel, my much loved friend, and was on the point of writing to you when your letter came. To say that I was shocked and grieved to hear such news of you, is useless indeed; you will feel how I have felt about it. May God bless and restore you, and make me very thankful, as certainly I must be in such a case....

The comfort to me in your letter is the apparent good spirits you write in, and the cheerful, active intentions you have of work for the delight of us all. I clap my hands, and welcome the new volumes. Dearest friend, I do wish I had heard about the French poetry in Paris, for there I could have got at books and answered some of your questions. The truth is, I don't know as much about French modern poetry as I ought to do in the way of _métier_. The French essential poetry seems to me to flow out into prose works, into their school of romances, and to be least poetical when dyked up into rhythm. Mdme. Valmore I never read, but she is esteemed highly, I think, for a certain _naïveté_, and happy surprises in the thought and feeling, _des mots charmants_. I wanted to get her books in Paris, and missed them somehow; there was so much to think of in Paris. Alfred de Musset's poems I read, collected in a single volume; it is the only edition I ever met with. The French value him extremely for his _music_; and there is much in him otherwise to appreciate, I think; very beautiful things indeed. He is best to my mind when he is most lyrical, and when he says things in a breath. His elaborate poems are defective. One or two Spanish ballads of his seem to me perfect, really. He has great power in the introduction of familiar and conventional images without disturbing the ideal--a good power for these days. The worst is that the moral atmosphere is _bad_, and that, though I am not, as you know, the very least bit of a prude (not enough perhaps), some of his poems must be admitted to be most offensive. Get St. Beuve's poems, they have much beauty in them you will grant at once. Then there is a Breton[17] poet whose name Robert and I have both of us been ungrateful enough to forget--we have turned our brains over and over and can't find the name anyhow--and who, indeed, deserves to be remembered, who writes some fresh and charmingly simple idyllic poems, one called, I think, 'Primel et Nola.' By that clue you may hunt him out perhaps in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes.' There's no strong imagination, understand--nothing of that sort! but you have a sweet, fresh, cool sylvan feeling with him, rare among Frenchmen of his class. Edgar Quinet has more positive genius. He is a man of grand, extravagant conceptions. Do you know the 'Ahasuerus'?

I wonder if the Empress pleases you as well as the Emperor. For my part, I approve altogether, and none the less that he has offended Austria by the mode of announcement. Every cut of the whip in the face of Austria is an especial compliment to me--or, _so I feel it_. Let him head the democracy and do his duty to the world, and use to the utmost his great opportunities. Mr. Cobden and the Peace Society are pleasing me infinitely just now in making head against the immorality (that's the word) of the English press. The tone taken up towards France is immoral in the highest degree, and the invasion cry would be idiotic if it were not something worse. The Empress, I heard the other day from good authority, is 'charming and good at heart.' She was educated 'at a respectable school at Bristol' (Miss Rogers's, Royal Crescent, Clifton), and is very 'English,' which doesn't prevent her from shooting with pistols, leaping gates, driving 'four-in-hand,' and upsetting the carriage when the frolic requires it, as brave as a lion and as true as a dog. Her complexion is like marble, white, pale and pure; her hair light, rather 'sandy,' they say, and she powders it with gold dust for effect; but there is less physical and more intellectual beauty than is generally attributed to her. She is a woman of 'very decided opinions.' I like all that, don't you? and I liked her letter to the Préfet, as everybody must. Ah, if the English press were in earnest in the cause of liberty, there would be something to say for our poor trampled-down Italy--much to say, I mean. Under my eyes is a people really oppressed, really groaning its heart out. But these things are spoken of with measure.

We are reading Lamartine and Proudhon on '48. We have plenty of French books here; only the poets are to seek--the moderns. Do you catch sight of Moore in diary and letters? Robert, who has had glimpses of him, says the 'flunkeyism' is quite humiliating. It is strange that you have not heard more of the rapping spirits. They are worth hearing of were it only in the point of view of the physiognomy of the times, as a sign of hallucination and credulity, if not more. Fifteen thousand persons in all ranks of society, and all degrees of education, are said to be _mediums_, that is _seers_, or rather hearers and recipients, perhaps. Oh, I can't tell you all about it; but the details are most curious. I understand that Dickens has caught a wandering spirit in London and showed him up victoriously in 'Household Words' as neither more nor less than the 'cracking of toe joints;' but it is absurd to try to adapt such an explanation to cases in general. You know I am rather a visionary, and inclined to knock round at all the doors of the present world to try to get out, so that I listen with interest to every goblin story of the kind, and, indeed, I hear enough of them just now.

We heard nothing, however, from the American Minister, Mr. Marsh, and his wife, who have just come from Constantinople in consequence of the change of Presidency, and who passed an evening with us a few days ago. She is pretty and interesting, a great invalid and almost blind, yet she has lately been to Jerusalem, and insisted on being carried to the top of Mount Horeb. After which I certainly should have the courage to attempt the journey myself, if we had money enough. Going to the Holy Land has been a favorite dream of Robert's and mine ever since we were married, and some day you will wonder why I don't write, and hear suddenly that I am lost in the desert. You will wonder, too, at our wandering madness, by the way, more than at any rapping spirit extant; we have 'a spirit in our feet,' as Shelley says in his lovely Eastern song--and our child is as bad as either of us. He says, 'I _tuite_ tired of _Flolence_. I want to go to _Brome_,' which is worse than either of us. I never am tired of Florence. Robert has had an application from Miss Faucit (now Mrs. Martin) to bring out his 'Colombe's Birthday' at the Haymarket.

[_The remainder of this letter is missing_]

* * * * *

_To Miss I. Blagden_

Florence: March 3, 1853.

My dearest Isa, ... You have seen in the papers that Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer has had an accident in the arm, which keeps him away from the House of Commons, and even from the Haymarket, where they are acting his play ('Not so bad as we seem') with some success. Well, here is a curious thing about it. Mr. Lytton told us some time ago, that, by several clairvoyantes, without knowledge or connection with one another, an impending accident had been announced to him, 'not fatal, but serious.' Mr. Lytton said, 'I have been very uneasy about it, and nervous as every letter arrived, but nearly three months having passed, I began to think they must have made a mistake--only it is curious that they all should _all_ make a mistake of the same kind precisely.' When after this we saw the accident in the paper, it was effective, as you may suppose!

Profane or not, I am resolved on getting as near to a solution of the spirit question as I can, and I don't believe in the least risk of profanity, seeing that whatever is, must be permitted; and that the contemplation of whatever is, must be permitted also, where the intentions are pure and reverent. I can discern no more danger in psychology than in mineralogy, only intensely a greater interest. As to the spirits, I care less about what they are capable of communicating, than of the fact of there being communications. I certainly wouldn't set about building a system of theology out of their oracles. God forbid. They seem abundantly foolish, one must admit. There is probably, however, a mixture of good spirits and bad, foolish and wise, of the lower orders perhaps, in both kinds....

Isa, you and I must try to make head against the strong-minded women, though really you half frighten me prospectively....

---- ----, one of the strong-minded, we just escaped with life from in London, and again in Paris. In Rome she has us! What makes me talk so ill-naturedly is the information I have since received, that she has put everybody unfortunate enough to be caught, into a book, and published them at full length, in American fashion. Now I do confess to the greatest horror of being caught, stuck through with a pin, and beautifully preserved with other butterflies and beetles, even in the album of a Corinna in yellow silk. I detest that particular sort of victimisation....

We are invited to go to Constantinople this summer, to visit the American Minister there. There's a temptation for you!

God bless you, dearest Isa. I shall be delighted to see you again, and so will Robert! I always feel (I say to him sometimes) that you love me a little, and that I may rest on you. Your ever affectionate friend,

ELIZABETH B. BROWNING.

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

Florence: March 15, [1853].

... The spring has surprised us here just as we were beginning to murmur at the cold. Think of somebody advising me the other day not to send out my child without a double-lined parasol! There's a precaution for March! The sun is powerful--we are rejoicing in our Italian climate. Oh, that I could cut out just a mantle of it to wrap myself in, and so go and see you. Your house is dry, you say. Is the room you occupy airy as well as warm? Because being confined to a small room, with you who are so used to liberty and out of door life, must be depressing to the vital energies. Do you read much? No, no, you ought not to think of the press, of course, till you are strong. Ah--if you should get to London to see our play, how glad I should be! We, too, talk of London, but somewhat mistily, and not so early in the summer. Mr. and Mrs. Marsh--he is the American Minister at Constantinople--have been staying in Florence, and passing some evenings with us. They tempt us with an invitation to Constantinople this summer, which would be irresistible if we had the money for the voyage, perhaps, so perhaps it is as well that we have not. Enough for us that we are going to Rome and to Naples, then northward. I am busy in the meanwhile with various things, a new poem, and revising for a third edition which is called for by the gracious public. Robert too is busy with another book. Then I am helping to make frocks for my child, reading Proudhon (and Swedenborg) and in deep meditation on the nature of the rapping spirits, upon whom, I understand, a fellow dramatist of yours, Henry Spicer (I think you once mentioned him to me as such), has just written a book entitled, 'The Mystery of the Age.' A happy winter it has been to me altogether. We have had so much repose, and at the same time so much interest in life, also I have been so well, that I shall be sorry when we go out of harbour again with the spring breezes. We like Mr. Tennyson extremely, and he is a constant visitor of ours: the poet's elder brother. By the way, the new edition of the Ode on the Duke of Wellington seems to contain wonderful strokes of improvement. Have you seen it? As to Alexandre Dumas, Fils, I hope it is not true that he is in any scrape from the cause you mention. He is very clever, and I have a feeling for him for his father's sake as well as because he presents a rare instance of intellectual heirship. Didn't I tell you of the prodigious success of his drama of the 'Dame aux Camélias,' which ran about a hundred nights last year, and is running again? how there were caricatures on the boulevards, showing the public of the pit holding up umbrellas to protect themselves from the tears rained down by the public of the boxes? how the President of the Republic went to see, and sent a bracelet to the first actress, and how the English newspapers called him immoral for it? how I went to see, myself, and cried so that I was ill for two days and how my aunt called _me_ immoral for it? I was properly lectured, I assure you. She 'quite wondered how Mr. Browning could allow such a thing,' not comprehending that Mr. Browning never, or scarcely ever, does think of restraining his wife from anything she much pleases to do. The play was too painful, that was the worst of it, but I maintain it is a highly moral play, rightly considered, and the acting was most certainly most exquisite on the part of all the performers. Not that Alexandre Dumas, Fils, excels generally in morals (in his books, I mean), but he is really a promising writer as to cleverness, and when he has learnt a little more art he will take no low rank as a novelist. Robert has just been reading a tale of his called 'Diane de Lys,' and throws it down with--'You must read that, Ba--it is clever--only outrageous as to the morals.' Just what I should expect from Alexandre Dumas, Fils. I have a tenderness for the whole family, you see.

You don't say a word to me of Mrs. Beecher Stowe. How did her book[18] impress you? No woman ever had such a success, such a fame; no man ever had, in a single book. For my part I rejoice greatly in it. It is an individual glory full of healthy influence and benediction to the world.

[_The remainder of this letter is missing_]

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Jameson_

Casa Guidi, Florence: March 17, [1853].

Thank you--how to thank you enough--for the too kind present of the 'Madonna,'[19] dearest Mona Nina. I will not wait to read it through--we have only _looked_ through it, which is different; but there is enough seen so beautiful as to deserve the world's thanks, to say nothing of ours, and there are personal reasons besides why _we_ should thank you. Have you not quoted us, have you not sent us the book? Surely, good reasons.

But now, be still better to me, and write and say how you are. I want to know that you are quite well; if you can tell me so, do. You have told me of a new book, which is excellent news, and I hear from another quarter that it will consist of your 'Readings' and 'Remarks,' a sort of book most likely to penetrate widely and be popular in a good sense. Would it not be well to bring out such a work volume by volume at intervals? Is it this you are contemplating?...

Robert and I have had a very happy winter in Florence; let me, any way, answer for myself. I have been well, and we have been quiet and occupied; reading books, doing work, playing with Wiedeman; and with nothing from without to vex us much. At the end of it all, we go to Rome certainly; but we have taken on this apartment for another year, which Robert decided on to please me, and because it was reasonable on the whole. We have been meditating Socialism and mysticism of very various kinds, deep in Louis Blanc and Proudhon, deeper in the German spiritualists, added to which, I have by no means given up my French novels and my rapping spirits, of whom our American guests bring us relays of witnesses. So we don't absolutely moulder here in the intellect, only Robert (and indeed I have too) has tender recollections of 'that blaze of life in Paris,' and we both mean to go back to it presently. No place like Paris for living in. Here, one sleeps, 'perchance to dream,' and praises the pillow.

We had a letter from our friend M. Milsand yesterday; you see he does not forget us--no, indeed. In speaking of the state of things in France, which I had asked him to do, he says, he is not sanguine (he never _is_ sanguine, I must tell you, about anything), though entirely dissentient from _la presse Anglaise_. He considers on the whole that the _status_ is as good as can be desired, as a _stable foundation for the development of future institutions_. It is in that point of view that he regards the situation. So do I. As to the English press, I, who am not 'Anglomane' like our friend, I call it plainly either maniacal or immoral, let it choose the epithet. The invasion cry, for instance, I really can't qualify it; I can't comprehend it with motives all good and fair. I throw it over to you to analyse.

With regard to the sudden death of French literature, you all exaggerate that like the rest. If you look into even the 'Revue des Deux Mondes' for the year 1852, you will see that a few books are still published. _Pazienza._ Things will turn up better than you suppose. Newspapers breathe heavily just now, that's undeniable; but for book literature the government _never has_ touched it with a finger. I ascertained _that_ as a fact when I was in Paris.

None of you in England understand what the crisis has been in France; and how critical measures have been necessary. Lamartine's work on the revolution of '48 is one of the best apologies for Louis Napoleon; and, if you want another, take Louis Blanc's work on the same.

Isn't it a shame that nobody comes from the north to the south, after a hundred oaths? I hear nothing of dear Mr. Kenyon. I hear nothing from you of _your_ coming. You won't come, any of you....

I am much relieved by hearing that Mazzini is gone from Italy, whatever Lord Malmesbury may say of it. Every day I expected to be told that he was taken at Milan and shot. A noble man, though incompetent, I think, to his own aspiration; but a man who personally has my sympathies always. The state of things here is cruel, the people are one groan. God deliver us all, I must pray, and by almost any means.

As to your Ministry, I don't expect very much from it. Lord Aberdeen, 'put on' to Lord John, is using the drag uphill. They will do just as little as they can, be certain.

Think of my submitting at last to the conjugal will and cod's liver oil--yes, and think of its doing me good. The cough was nearly, if not quite, gone because of the climate, before I took the oil, but it does me good by making me gain in flesh. I am much less thin, and very well, and dearest Robert triumphant.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Jameson_

Florence: April 12, [1853].

The comfort is, my ever loved friend, that here is spring--summer, as translated into Italy--if fine weather is to set you up again. I shall be very thankful to have better news of you; to hear of your being out of that room and loosened into some happy condition of liberty. It seems unnatural to think of you in one room. _That_ seems fitter for _me_, doesn't it? And the rooms in England are so low and small, that they put double bars on one's captivity. May God bring you out with the chestnut trees and elms! It's very sad meanwhile.

Comfort yourself, dear friend! Admire Louis Napoleon. He's an extraordinary man beyond all doubt; and that he has achieved great good for France, _I_ do not in the least doubt. I was only telling you that I had not finished my pedestal for him--wait a little. Because, you see, for my part, I don't go over to the system of 'mild despotisms,' no, indeed. I am a democrat to the bone of me. It is simply as a democratical ruler, and by grace of the people, that I accept him, and he must justify himself by more deeds to his position before he glorifies himself before _me_. That's what I mean to say. A mild despot in France, let him be the Archangel Gabriel, unless he hold the kingdom in perpetuity, what is the consequence? A successor like the Archangel Lucifer, perhaps. Then, for the press, where there is thought, there must be discussion or conspiracy. Are you aware of the amount of readers in France? Take away the 'Times' newspaper, and the blow falls on a handful of readers, on a section of what may be called the aristocracy. But everybody reads in France. Every fiacre driver who waits for you at a shop door, beguiles the time with a newspaper. It is on that account that the influence of the press is dangerous, you will say. Precisely so; but also, on that account too, it is necessary. No; I hold, myself, that he will give more breathing room to France, as circumstances admit of it. Else, there will be convulsion. You will see. We shall see. And Louis Napoleon, who is wise, _foresees_, I cannot doubt.

Not read Mrs. Stowe's book! But you _must_. Her book is quite a sign of the times and has otherwise and intrinsically considerable power. For myself, I rejoice in the success, both as a woman and a human being. Oh, and is it possible that you think a woman has no business with questions like the question of slavery? Then she had better use a pen no more. She had better subside into slavery and concubinage herself, I think, as in the times of old, shut herself up with the Penelopes in the 'women's apartment,' and take no rank among thinkers and speakers. Certainly you are not in earnest in these things. A difficult question--yes! All virtue is difficult. England found it difficult. France found it difficult. But we did not make ourselves an arm-chair of our sins. As for America, I honor America in much; but I would not be an American for the world while she wears that shameful scar upon her brow. The address of the new President[20] exasperates me. Observe, I am an abolitionist, not to the fanatical degree, because I hold that compensation should be given by the North to the South, as in England. The States should unite in buying off this national disgrace.

The Americans are very kind and earnest, and I like them all the better for their warm feeling towards you. Is Longfellow agreeable in his personal relations? We knew his brother, I think I told you, in Paris. I suppose Mr. Field has been liberal to Thackeray, and yet Thackeray does not except him in certain observations on American publishers. We shall have an arrangement made of some sort, it appears. Mr. Forster wants me to add some new poems to my new edition, in order to secure the copyright under the new law. But as the law does not act backwards, I don't see how new poems would save me. They would just sweep out the new poems--that's all. One or two lyrics could not be made an object, and in those two thick volumes, nearly bursting with their present contents, there would not be room for many additions. No, I shall add nothing. I have revised the edition very carefully, and made everything better. It vexed me to see how much there was to do. Positively, even rhymes left unrhymed in 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship.' You don't write so carelessly, not you, and the reward is that you haven't so much trouble in your new editions. I see your book advertised in a stray number of the 'Athenæum' lent to me by Mr. Tennyson--Frederick. He lent it to me because I wanted to see the article on the new poet, Alexander Smith, who appears so applauded everywhere. He has the poet's _stuff_ in him, one may see from the extracts. Do you know him? And Coventry Patmore--have you heard anything of _his_ book,[21] of which appears an advertisement?

Ah, yes; how unfortunate that you should have parted with your copyrights! It's a bad plan always, except in the case of novels which have their day, and no day after.

The poem I am about will fill a volume when done. It is the novel or romance I have been hankering after so long, written in blank verse, in the autobiographical form; the heroine, an artist woman--not a painter, mind. It is intensely modern, crammed from the times (not the 'Times' newspaper) as far as my strength will allow. Perhaps you won't like it, perhaps you will. Who knows? who dares hope?

I am beginning to be anxious about 'Colombe's Birthday.' I care much more about it than Robert does. He says that nobody will mistake it for _his_ speculation, it's Mr. Buckstone's affair altogether. True; but I should like it to succeed, being Robert's play notwithstanding. But the play is subtle and refined for pits and galleries. I am nervous about it. On the other hand, those theatrical people ought to know; and what in the world made them select it if it is not likely to answer their purpose? By the way, a dreadful rumour reaches us of its having been '_prepared for the stage by the author_.' Don't believe a word of it. Robert just said 'yes' when they wrote to ask him, and not a line of communication has passed since. He has prepared nothing at all, suggested nothing, modified nothing. He referred them to his new edition; and that was the whole.

We see a great deal of Mr. Tennyson. Robert is very fond of him, and so am I. He too writes poems, and prints them, though not for the public. They are better and stronger than Charles Tennyson's, and he has the poetical temperament in everything. Did I tell you that he had married an Italian, and had children from twelve years old downwards? He is intensely English nevertheless, as expatriated Englishmen generally are. I always tell Robert that his patriotism grows and deepens in exact proportion as he goes away from England. As for me, it is not so with me. I am very cosmopolitan, and am considerably tired of the self-deification of the English nation at the expense of all others. We have some noble advantages over the rest of the world, but it is not all advantage. The shameful details of bribery, for instance, prove what I have continually maintained, the non-representativeness of our 'representative system;' and, socially speaking, we are much behindhand with most foreign peoples. Let us be proud in the right place, I say, and not in the wrong. 'We see too a good deal of young Lytton, Sir Edward's only son, an interesting young man, with various sorts of good, and aspiration to good, in him. You see we are not at Rome yet. Do write to me. Speak of yourself particularly. God bless you, dearest friend. Believe that I think of you and love you most faithfully.

BA.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Martin_

Florence: April 21, 1853.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--I am in consternation and vexation on receiving your letter. What you must have thought of me all this time! Of course I never saw the letters which went to Rome. Letters sent to Poste restante, Rome, are generally lost, even if you are a Roman: and we are no Romans, alas! nor likely to become such, it seems to me. There's a fatality about Rome to us. I waited for you to write, and then waited on foolishly for the settlement of our own plans, after I had ascertained that you were not in Devonshire, but in France as usual. Now, I can't help writing, though I have written a letter already which must have crossed yours--a long letter--so that you will have more than enough of me this time.

It's comfort and pleasure after all to have a good account of you both, my very dear friends, even though one knows by it that you have been sending one 'al diavolo' for weeks or months. Forgive me, do. I feel guilty somehow to the extreme degree, that four letters should have been written to me, even though I received none of them, because I ought to have written at least one letter in that time.

Your politics would be my politics on most points; we should run together more than halfway, if we could stand side by side, in spite of all your vindictiveness to N. III. My hero--say you? Well, I have more belief in him than you have. And what is curious, and would be unaccountable, I suppose, to English politicians in general, the Italian democrats of the lower classes, the popular clubs in Florence, are clinging to him as their one hope. Ah, here's oppression! here's a people trodden down! You should come here and see. It is enough to turn the depths of the heart bitter. The will of the people forced, their instinctive affections despised, their liberty of thought spied into, their national life ignored altogether. Robert keeps saying, 'How long, O Lord, how long?' Such things cannot last, surely. Oh, this brutal Austria!

I myself expect help from Louis Napoleon, though scarcely in the way that the clubs are said to do. When I talk of a club, of course I mean a secret combination of men--young men who meet to read forbidden newspapers and talk forbidden subjects. He won't help the Mazzinians, but he will do something for Italy, you will see. The Cardinals feel it, and that's why they won't let the Pope go to Paris. We shall see. I seem to catch sight of the grey of dawn even in the French Government papers, and am full of hope.

As to Mazzini, he is a noble man and an unwise man. Unfortunately the epithets are compatible. Kossuth is neither very noble nor very wise. I have heard and _felt_ a great deal of harm of him. The truth is not in him. And when a patriot lies like a Jesuit, what are we to say?

For England--do you approve of the fleet staying on at Malta? We are prepared to do nothing which costs us a halfpenny for a less gain than three farthings--always excepting the glorious national defences, which have their end too, though not the one generally attributed....

God bless you, my dear, dear friends! Care in your thoughts for us all!

Your ever affectionate BA.

* * * * *

_To John Kenyon_

Casa Guidi: May 16 [1853].

My dearest Mr. Kenyon,--You are to be thanked and loved as ever, and what can we say more? This: Do be good to us by a supererogatory virtue and write to us. You can't know how pleasant it is to be _en rapport_ with you, though by holding such a fringe of a garment as a scrap of letter is. We don't see you, we don't hear you! 'Rap' to us with the end of your pen, like the benign spirit you are, and let me (who am credulous) believe that you care for us and think kindly of us in the midst of your brilliant London gossipry, and that you don't disdain the talk of us, dark ultramontanists as we are. You are good to us in so many ways, that it's a reason for being good in another way besides. At least, to reason so is one of the foolishnesses of my gratitude.

On the whole, I am satisfied with regard to 'Colombe.' I never expected a theatrical success, properly and vulgarly so called; and the play has taken rank, to judge by the various criticisms, in the right way, as a true poet's work: the defects of the acting drama seemed recognised as the qualities of the poem. It was impossible all that subtle tracery of thought and feeling should be painted out clear red and ochre with a house-painter's brush, and lose nothing of its effect.[22] A play that runs nowadays has generally four legs to run with--something of the beast to keep it going. The human biped with the 'os divinior' is slower than a racehorse even. What I hope is, that the poetical appreciation of 'Colombe' will give an impulse to the sale of the poems, which will be more acceptable to us than the other kind of success....

Yes, dearest Mr. Kenyon, we mean, if we can, to go to Rome in the autumn. It is very wrong of you not to come too, and the reasons you give against it are by no means conclusive. My opinion is that, whatever the term of your natural life may be, you would probably have an additional ten years fastened on to it by coming to the Continent, and so I tease you and tease you, as is natural to such an opinion. People twirl now in their arm-chairs, and the vitality in them kindles as they rush along. Remember how pleased you were when you were at Como! Don't draw a chalk circle round you and fancy you can't move. Even tables and chairs have taken to move lately, and hats spin round without a giddy head in them. Is this a time to stand still, even in the garden at Wimbledon? 'I speak to a wise man; judge what I say.'

We tried the table experiment in this room a few days since, by-the-bye, and failed; but we were impatient, and Robert was playing Mephistopheles, as Mr. Lytton said, and there was little chance of success under the circumstances. It has been done several times in Florence, and the fact of the possibility seems to have passed among 'attested facts.' There was a placard on the wall yesterday about a pamphlet purporting to be an account of these and similar phenomena 'scoperte a Livorno,' referring to 'oggetti semoventi' and other wonders. You can't even look at a wall without a touch of the subject. The _circoli_ at Florence are as revolutionary as ever, only tilting over tables instead of States, alas! From the Legation to the English chemist's, people are 'serving tables' (in spite of the Apostle) everywhere. When people gather round a table it isn't to play whist. So good, you say. You can believe in table-moving, because _that_ may be 'electricity;' but you can't believe in the 'rapping spirits,' with the history of whom these movements are undeniably connected, because it's 'a jump.' Well, but you will jump when the time comes for jumping, and when the evidence is strong enough. I know you; you are strong enough and true enough to jump at anything, without being afraid. The tables jump, observe--and _you_ may jump. Meanwhile, if you were to hear what we heard only the evening before last from a cultivated woman with truthful, tearful eyes, whose sister is a medium, and whose mother believes herself to be in daily communion with her eldest daughter, dead years ago--if you were to hear what we hear from nearly all the Americans who come to us, their personal experiences, irrespectively of paid mediums, I wonder if you would admit the possibility of your even jumping! Robert, who won't believe, he says, till he sees and hears with his own senses--Robert, who is a sceptic--observed of himself the other day, that we had received as much evidence of these spirits as of the existence of the town of Washington. But then of course he would add--and you would, reasonably enough--that in a matter of this kind (where you have to jump) you require more evidence, double the evidence, to what you require for the existence of Washington. That's true.

[_Incomplete_]

* * * * *

_To Miss E.F. Haworth_

Florence: June [1853].

My dearest Fanny,--I hope you will write to me as if I deserved it. You see, my first word is to avert the consequences of my sin instead of repenting of it in the proper and effectual way. The truth is, that ever since I received your letter we have been looking out for 'messengers' from the Legation, so as to save you postage; while the Embassy people have been regularly forgetting us whenever there has been an opportunity. By the way, I catch up that word of 'postage' to beg you _never to think of it_ when inclined in charity to write to us. If you knew what a sublunary thing--oh, far below any visible moon!--postage is to us exiles! Too glad we are to get a letter and pay for it. So write to me _directly_, dear Fanny, when you think enough of us for that, and write at length, and tell us of yourself first, swirling off into Pope's circles--'your country first and then the human race'--and, indeed, we get little news from home on the subjects which especially interest us. My sister sends me heaps of near things, but she is not in the magnetic circles, nor in the literary, nor even in the gossiping. Be good to us, _you_ who stand near the fountains of life! Every cup of cold water is worth a ducat here.

To wait to a second page without thanking you for your kindness and sympathy about 'Colombe' does not do justice to the grateful sense I had of both at the time, and have now. We were _very_ glad to have your opinion and impressions. Most of our friends took for granted that we had supernatural communications on the subject, and did not send us a word. Mrs. Duncan Stewart was one of the kind exceptions (with yourself and one or two more), and I write to thank her. It was very pleasant to hear what you said, dear Fanny. Certainly, says the author, you are right, and Helen Faucit wrong, in the particular reading you refer to; but she seems to have been right in so much, that we should only remember our grateful thoughts of her in general.

Now what am I to say about my illustrations--that is, your illustrations of my poems? To thank you again and again first. To be eager next to see what is done. To be sure it is good, and surer still that _you_ are good for spending your strength on me. See how it is. When you wrote to me, a new edition was in the press; yes, and I was expecting every day to hear it was out again. But it would not have done, I suppose, to have used illustrations for that sort of edition; it would have raised the price (already too high) beyond the public. But there will be time always for such arrangements--when it so pleases Mr. Chapman, I suppose. Do tell me more of what you have done.

We did not go to Rome last winter, in spite of the spirits of the sun who declared from Lord Stanhope's crystal ball, you remember, that we should. And we don't go to England till next summer, because we must see Rome next winter, and must lie _perdus_ in Italy meantime. I have had a happy winter in Florence, recovered my lost advantages in point of health, been busy and tranquil, had plenty of books and talk, and seen my child grow rosier and prettier (said aside) every day. Robert and I are talking of going up to the monasteries beyond Vallombrosa for a day or two, on mule-back through forests and mountains. We have had an excursion to Prato (less difficult) already, and we keep various dreams in our heads to be acted out on occasion. Our favorite friend here is a brother of Alfred Tennyson's, himself a poet, but most admirable to me for his simplicity and truth. Robert is very fond of him. Then we like Powers--of the 'Greek Slave'--Swedenborgian and spiritualist; and Mr. Lytton, Sir Edward's son, who is with us often, and always a welcome visitor. All these confederate friends are ranged with me on the believing side with regard to the phenomena, and Robert has to keep us at bay as he best can. Oh, do tell me what you can. Your account deeply interested me. We have heard many more intimate personal relations from Americans who brush us with their garments as they pass through Florence, and I should like to talk these things over with you. Paid mediums, as paid clairvoyants in general, excite a prejudice; yet, perhaps, not reasonably. The curious fact in this movement is, however, the degree in which it works within private families in America. Has anything of the kind appeared in England? And has the motion of the tables ever taken the form of alphabetical expression, which has been the case in America? I had a letter from Athens the other day, mentioning that 'nothing was talked of there except moving tables and spiritual manifestations.' (The writer was not a believer.) Even here, from the priest to the Mazzinian, they are making circles. An engraving of a spinning table at a shop window bears this motto: '_E pur si muove!_' That's adroit for Galileo's land, isn't it? Now mind you tell me whatever you hear and see. How does Mrs. Crowe decide? By the way, I was glad to observe by the papers that she has had a dramatic success.

Your Alexander Smith has noble stuff in him. It's undeniable, indeed. It strikes us, however, that he has more imagery than verity, more colour than form. He will learn to be less arbitrary in the use of his figures--of which the opulence is so striking--and attain, as he ripens, more clearness of outline and depth of intention. Meanwhile none but a poet could write this, and this, and this.

Your faithfully affectionate E.B.B., properly speaking BA.

July 3.

This was written ever so long since. Here we are in July; but I won't write it over again. The 'tables' are speaking alphabetically and intelligently in Paris; they knock with their legs on the floor, establishing (what was clear enough before to _me_) the connection between the table-moving and 'rapping spirits.' Sarianna--who is of the unbelieving of temperaments, as you know--wrote a most curious account to me the other day of a séance at which she had been present, composed simply of one or two of our own honest friends and of a young friend of theirs, a young lady....[23] She says that she 'was not as much impressed as she would have been,' 'but I am bound to tell the truth, that I _do not think it possible that any tricks could have been played_.'

This from Sarianna is equal to the same testimony--from Mr. Chorley, say!

We are planning a retreat into the mountains--into Giotto's country, the Casentino--where we are to find a villa for almost nothing, and shall have our letters sent daily from Florence, together with books and newspapers. I look forward to it with joy. We promise one another to be industrious _à faire frémir_, so as to make the pleasure lawful. Little Penini walks about, talking of 'mine villa,' anxiously hoping that 'some boys' may not have pulled all the flowers before he gets there. He boasts, with considerable complacency, that 'a table in Pallis says I am four years,' though the fact doesn't strike him as extraordinary.

Do you ever see Mr. Kenyon? I congratulate you on your friend's 'Coeur de Lion.' _That_ has given you pleasure.

* * * * *

The summer 'retreat' from Florence this year was not to the Casentino after all, but to the Baths of Lucca, which they had already visited in 1849. During their stay there, which lasted from July to October, Mr. Browning is said to have composed 'In a Balcony.'

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

Florence: July 15, 1853.

... We have taken a villa at the Baths of Lucca, after a little holy fear of the company there; but the scenery, the coolness, and the convenience altogether prevail, and we have taken our villa for three months or rather more, and go to it next week with a stiff resolve of not calling nor being called upon. You remember perhaps that we were there four years ago, just after the birth of our child. The mountains are wonderful in beauty, and we mean to buy our holiday by doing some work.

Yesterday evening we had the American Minister at the Court of Turin here, and it was delightful to hear him talk about Piedmont, its progress in civilisation and the comprehension of liberty, and the honesty and resolution of the King. It is the only hope of Italy, that Piedmont! God prosper the hope. Besides this diplomatical dignitary and his wife, we had two American gentlemen of more than average intelligence, who related wonderful things of the 'spiritual manifestations' (so called), incontestable things, inexplicable things. You will have seen Faraday's letter.[24] I wish to reverence men of science, but they often will not let me. If _I_ know certain facts on this subject, Faraday _ought_ to have known them before he expressed an opinion on it. His statement does not meet the facts of the case--it is a statement which applies simply to various amateur operations without touching on the essential phenomena, such as the moving of tables untouched by a finger.

Our visitor last night, to say nothing of other witnesses, has repeatedly seen this done with his eyes--in private houses, for instance, where there could be no machinery--and he himself and his brother have held by the legs of a table to prevent the motion--the medium sitting some yards away--and that table has been wrenched from their grasp and lifted into the air. My husband's sister, who has admirable sense and excessive scepticism on all matters of the kind, was present the other day at the house of a friend of ours in Paris, where an English young lady was medium, and where the table expressed itself intelligently by knocking, with its leg, responses according to the alphabet. For instance, the age of my child was asked, and the leg knocked four times. Sarianna was 'not impressed,' she says, but, 'being bound to speak the truth, she does not _think it possible that any trick could have been used_.' To hear her say so was like hearing Mr. Chorley say so; all her prejudices were against it strongly. Mr. Spicer's book on the subject is flippant and a little vulgar, but the honesty and accuracy of it have been attested to me by Americans oftener than once. By the way, he speaks in it of your interesting 'Recollections,' and quotes you upon the possibility of making a ghost story better by the telling--in reference to Washington.

Mr. Tennyson is going to England for a few months, so that our Florence party is breaking up, you see. He has printed a few copies of his poems, and is likely to publish them if he meets with encouragement in England, I suppose. They are full of imagery, encompassed with poetical atmosphere, and very melodious. On the other hand, there is vagueness and too much personification. It's the smell of a rose rather than a rose--very sweet, notwithstanding. His poems are far superior to Charles Tennyson's, bear in mind. As for the poet, we quite love him, Robert and I do. What Swedenborg calls 'selfhood,' the _proprium_, is not in him.

Oh yes! I confess to loving Florence and to having associated with it the idea of _home_. My child was born here, and here I have been very happy and _well_. Yet we shall not live in Florence--we are steady to our Paris plan. We must visit Rome next winter, and in the spring we shall go to Paris _viâ_ London; you may rely on us for next summer. I think it too probable that I may not be able to bear two successive winters in the North; but in that case it will be easy to take a flight for a few winter months into Italy, and we shall regard Paris, where Robert's father and sister are waiting for us, as our fixed place of residence. As to the distance between Paris and London, it's a mere step now. We are to have war, I suppose. I would not believe it for a long while, but the Czar seems to be struck with madness--mad in good earnest. Under these circumstances I hope our Ministry will act with decision and honesty--but I distrust Lord Aberdeen. There is evidently, or has been, a division in the Cabinet, and perhaps Lord Palmerston is not the strongest. Louis Napoleon has acted excellently in this conjuncture--with integrity and boldness--don't you think so? Dear Mr. Kenyon has his brother and sister with him, to his great joy. Robert pretended he would not give me your last letter. Little Wiedeman threw his arms round my neck (taking the play-cruelty for earnest) and exclaimed, 'Never mind, mine darling Ba! You'll have it.' He always calls me Ba at coaxing times. Such a darling that child is, indeed!

God bless you! Do write soon and tell me in detail of yourself.

Our united love, but mine the closest!

Your ever most affectionate E.B.B.

* * * * *

_To Miss I. Blagden_

Casa Tolomei, Alia Villa, Bagni di Lucca: July 26, [1853].

I deserve another scold for this other silence, dearest Isa. Scold as softly as you can! We have been in uncertainty about leaving Florence--where to go for the summer--and I did not like to write till I could tell you where to write to _me_. Now we are 'fixed,' as our American friends would say. We have taken this house for three months--a larger house than we need. We have a row of plane trees before the door in which the cicale sing all day, and the beautiful mountains stand close around, keeping us fresh with shadows. Penini thinks he is in Eden--_at least he doesn't think otherwise_. We have a garden and an arbour, and the fireflies light us up at nights. With all this, I am sorry for Florence. Florence was horribly hot, and pleasant notwithstanding. We hated cutting the knot of friends we had there--bachelor friends, Isa, who came to us for coffee and smoking! I was gracious and permitted the cigar (as you were not present), and there were quantities of talk, controversy, and confidences evening after evening. One of our very favourite friends, Frederick Tennyson, is gone to England, or was to have gone, for three months. Mr. Lytton had a reception on the terrace of his villa at Bellosguardo the evening before our last in Florence, and we were all bachelors together there, and I made tea, and we ate strawberries and cream and talked spiritualism through one of the pleasantest two hours that I remember. Such a view! Florence dissolving in the purple of the hills; and the stars looking on. Mr. Tennyson was there, Mr. Powers, and M. Villari[25], an accomplished Sicilian, besides our young host and ourselves. How we 'set down' Faraday for his 'arrogant and insolent letter,' and what stories we told, and what miracles we swore to! Oh, we are believers here, Isa, except Robert, who persists in wearing a coat of respectable scepticism--so considered--though it is much out of elbows and ragged about the skirts. If I am right, you will none of you be able to disbelieve much longer--a, new law, or a new development of law, is making way everywhere. We have heard much--more than I can tell you in a letter. Imposture is absolutely out of the question, to speak generally; and unless you explain the phenomena by 'a personality unconsciously projected' (which requires explanation of itself), you must admit the spirit theory. As to the simpler forms of the manifestation (it is all one manifestation), the 'turning-tables,' I was convinced long before Faraday's letter that _many_ of the amateur performances were from involuntary muscular action--but what then? These are only imitations of actual phenomena. Faraday's letter does not meet the common fact of tables being moved and lifted without the touch of a finger. It is a most arrogant letter and singularly inconclusive. Tell me any facts you may hear. Mr. Kinney, the American Minister at the Court of Turin, had arrived at Florence a few days before we quitted it, and he and his wife helped us to spend our last evening at Casa Guidi. He is cultivated and high-minded. I like him much; and none the less that he brings hopeful accounts of the state of Piedmont, of the progress of the people, and good persistency of the King. It makes one's heart beat with the sense that all is not over with our poor Italy.

I am glad you like Frederick Tennyson's poems. They are full of _atmospherical_ poetry, and very melodious. The poet is still better than the poems--so truthful, so direct, such a reliable Christian man. Robert and I quite love him. We very much appreciate, too, young Lytton, your old friend. He is noble in many ways, I think, and affectionate. Moreover, he has an incontestable _faculty_ in poetry, and I expect great things from him as he ripens into life and experience. Meanwhile he has just privately printed a drama called 'Clytemnestra,' too ambitious because after Æschylus, but full of promise indeed. We are hoping that he will come down and see us in the course of our rustication at the Baths, and occupy our spare bedroom....

As to Mr. ----, his Hebrew was Chinese to _you_, do you say? But, dear, he is strong in veritable Chinese besides! And one evening he nearly assassinated me with the analysis, chapter by chapter, of a Japanese novel. Mr. Lytton, who happened to be a witness, swore that I grew paler and paler, and not with sympathy for the heroine. He is a miraculously vain man--which rather amused me--and, for the rest, is full of information--yes, and of kindness, I think. He gave me a little black profile of you which gives the air of your head, and is so far valuable to me. As to myself, indeed, he has rather flattered me than otherwise--I don't complain, I assure you. How could I complain of a man who compares me to Isaiah, under any circumstances?...

God bless you! Robert's love with that of

Your ever affectionate and faithful BA.

* * * * *

_To Mr. Chorley_

Casa Tolomei (Alia Villa), Bagni di Lucca: August 10, [1853].

My dear Mr. Chorley,--I can't bear that you should intimate by half a word that you are 'a creature to be eaten'--viz. not to have your share in friendship and confidence. Now, if you fancy that we, for instance, don't affectionately regard you, you are very wrong, and I am very right for feeling inclined to upbraid you. I take the pen from Robert--he would take it if I did not. We scramble a little for the pen which is to tell you this--which is to say it again and again, and be dull in the reiteration, rather than not instruct you properly, as we teach our child to do--D O G, dog; D O G, dog; D O G, dog. Says Robert, 'What a slow business!' Yet he's a quick child; and you too must be quick and comprehending, or we shall take it to heart sadly. Often I think, and we say to one another, that we belied ourselves to you in England. If you knew how, at that time, Robert was vexed and worn!--why, he was not the same even to _me_! He seemed to himself to be slipping out of waistcoats and friends at once--so worn and teased he was! But then and now believe that he loved and loves you. Set him down as a friend--as somebody to 'rest on' after all; and don't fancy that because we are away here in the wilderness (which blossoms as a rose, to one of us at least) we may not be full of affectionate thoughts and feelings towards you in your different sort of life in London. So sorry we are--I especially, for I think I understand the grief especially--about the household troubles which you hint at and Mr. Kenyon gave us a key to. I quite understand how a whole life may seem rumpled up and creased--torn for the moment; only you will live it smooth again, dear Mr. Chorley--take courage. You have time and strength and good aims, and human beings have been happy with much less. I understate your advantages on purpose, you see. I heard you talked of in Florence when Miss Cushman, in the quarter of an hour she gave us at Casa Guidi, told us of the oath she had in heaven to bring out your play and make it a triumph. How she praised the play, and you! Twice I have spoken with her--once on a balcony on the boulevard, when together we saw Louis Napoleon enter Paris in immediate face of the empire, and that once in Florence. I like the 'manly soul' in her face and manners. Manly, not masculine--an excellent distinction of Mrs. Jameson's. By the way, we hear wonderful things of the portrait painted of Miss Cushman at Rome by Mr. Page the artist, called 'the American Titian' by the Americans....

There I stop, not to 'fret' you beyond measure. Besides, now that you Czars of the 'Athenæum' have set your Faradays on us, ukase and knout, what Pole, in the deepest of the brain, would dare to have a thought on the subject? Now that Professor Faraday has 'condescended,' as the 'Literary Gazette' affectingly puts it (and the condescension is sufficiently obvious in the letter--'how we stoop!')--now that Professor Faraday has condescended to explain the whole question--which had offered some difficulty, it is admitted, to 'hundreds of intelligent men, including five or six eminent men of science,' in Paris, and, we may add, to thousands of unintelligent men elsewhere, including the eminent correspondent of the 'Literary Gazette'--let us all be silent for evermore. For my part, I won't say that Lord Bacon would have explained any question to a child even without feeling it to be an act of condescension. I won't hint under my breath that Lord Bacon reverenced every _fact_ as a footstep of Deity, and stooped to pick up every rough, ungainly stone of a fact, though it were likely to tear and deform the smooth wallet of a theory. I, for my part, belong, you know, not to the 'eminent men of science,' nor even to the 'intelligent men,' but simply to the women, children (and poets?), and if we happen to see with our eyes a table lifted from the floor without the touch of a finger or foot, let no dog of us bark--much less a puppy-dog! The famous letter holds us gagged. What it does not hold is the facts; but, _en revanche_, the writer and his abettors know the secret of being invincible--which is, not to fight. My child proposed a donkey-race yesterday, the condition being that he should ride first. Somebody, told me once that when Miss Martineau has spoken eloquently on one side of a question, she drops her ear-trumpet to give the opportunity to her adversary. Most controversies, to do justice to the world, are conducted on the same plan and terms.

What I do venture however to say is that it's _not_ all over in Paris because of Faraday's letter. _Ask Lamartine._ What I hear and what the 'Literary Gazette' hears from Paris is by no means the same thing. I hear Hebrew while the 'Gazette' hears Dutch--a miracle befitting the subject, or what was once considered to be the subject (I beg Professor Faraday's pardon), before it was annihilated.

How pert women can be, can't they, Mr. Chorley? particularly when they are safe among the mountains, shut in with a row of seven plane-trees joined at top. I won't go on to offer myself as 'spiritual correspondent to the "Athenæum,"' though I have a modest conviction that it might increase your sale considerably. Ah, tread us down! put us out! You will have some trouble with us yet. The opposition Czar of St. Petersburg supports us, be it known, and Louis Napoleon comes to us for oracles. The King of Holland is going mad gently in our favour--quite absorbed, says an informant. But I won't quote kings. It is giving oneself too great a disadvantage.

We stayed in Florence till it was oven-heat, and then we came here, where it was fire-heat for a short time, though with cool nights comparatively, by means of which we lived, comparatively too. Now it is cool by day and night. You know these beautiful hills, the green rushing river which keeps them apart, the chestnut woods, the sheep-walks and goat-walks, the villages on the peaks of the mountains like wild eagles; the fresh, unworn, uncivilised, world-before-the-flood look of everything? If you don't know it, you ought to know it. Come and know it--do! We have a spare bedroom which opens its door of itself at the thought of you, and if you can trust yourself so far from home, try for our sakes. Come and look in our faces and learn us more by heart, and see whether we are not two friends. I am so very sorry for your increased anxiety about your sister. I scarcely know how to cheer you, or, rather, to attempt such a thing, but it did strike me that she was full of life when I saw her. It may be better with her than your fears, after all. If you would come to us, you would be here in two hours from Leghorn; and there's a telegraph at Leghorn--at Florence. Think of it, do. The Storys are at the top of the hill; you know Mr. and Mrs. Story. She and I go backward and forward on donkeyback to tea-drinking and gossiping at one another's houses, and our husbands hold the reins. Also Robert and I make excursions, he walking as slowly as he can to keep up with my donkey. When the donkey trots we are more equal. The other day we were walking, and I, attracted by a picturesque sort of ladder-bridge of loose planks thrown across the river, ventured on it, without thinking of venturing. Robert held my hand. When we were in the middle the bridge swayed, rocked backwards and forwards, and it was difficult for either of us to keep footing. A gallant colonel who was following us went down upon his hands and knees and crept. In the meantime a peasant was assuring our admiring friends that the river was deep at that spot, and that four persons had been lost from the bridge. I was so sick with fright that I could scarcely stand when all was over, never having contemplated an heroic act. 'Why, what a courageous creature you are!' said our friends. So reputations are made, Mr. Chorley.

Yes, we are doing a little work, both of us. Robert is working at a volume of lyrics, of which I have seen but a few, and those seemed to me as fine as anything he has done. We neither of us show our work to one another till it is finished. An artist must, I fancy, either find or _make_ a solitude to work in, if it is to be good work at all. This for the consolation of bachelors!

I am glad you like Mr. Powers's paper. You would have 'fretted' me terribly if you had not, for I liked it myself, knowing it to be an earnest opinion and expressive of the man. I had a very interesting letter from him the other day. He is devout in his art, and the simplest of men otherwise....

Now, I will ask you to write to us. It is _you_ who give us up, indeed. Will your sister accept our true regards and sympathies? I shall persist in hoping to see her a little stronger next spring--or summer, rather. May God bless you! I will set myself down, and Robert with me, as

Faithfully and affectionately yours, ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

Casa Tolomei, Alia Villa, Bagni di Lucca: August 20 and 21, 1853.

... We are enjoying the mountains here, riding the donkeys in the footsteps of the sheep, and eating strawberries and milk by basins full. The strawberries succeed one another, generation after generation, throughout the summer, through growing on different aspects of the hills. If a tree is felled in the forests strawberries spring up just as mushrooms might, and the peasants sell them for just nothing. Our little Penini is wild with happiness; he asks in his prayers that God would 'mate him dood and tate him on a dontey,' (make him good and take him on a donkey), so resuming all aspiration for spiritual and worldly prosperity. Then our friends, Mr. and Mrs. Story, help the mountains to please us a good deal. He is the son of Judge Story, the biographer of his father, and, for himself, sculptor and poet; and she a sympathetic, graceful woman, fresh and innocent in face and thought. We go backwards and forwards to tea and talk at one another's houses. Last night they were our visitors, and your name came in among the Household Gods to make us as agreeable as might be. We were considering your expectations about Mr. Hawthorne. 'All right,' says Mr. Story, '_except the rare half hours_' (of eloquence). He represents Mr. Hawthorne as not silent only by shyness, but by nature and inaptitude. He is a man, it seems, who talks wholly and exclusively with the pen, and who does not open out socially with his most intimate friends any more than with strangers. It isn't his _way_ to converse. That has been a characteristic of some men of genius before him, you know, but you will be nevertheless disappointed, very surely. Also, Mr. Story does not imagine that you will get anything from him on the subject of the 'manifestations.' You have read the 'Blithedale Romance,' and are aware of his opinion expressed there? He evidently recognised them as a sort of scurvy spirits, good to be slighted, because of their disreputableness. By the way, I heard read the other day a very interesting letter from Paris, from Mr. Appleton, Longfellow's brother-in-law, who is said to be a man of considerable ability, and who is giving himself wholly just now to the investigation of this spirit-subject, termed by him the 'sublimest conundrum ever given to the world for guessing.' He appears still in doubt whether the intelligence is external, or whether the phenomena are not produced by an _unconscious projection in the medium of a second personality, accompanied with clairvoyance, and attended by physical manifestations_. This seems to me to double the difficulty; yet the idea is entertained as a doubtful sort of hypothesis by such men as Sir Edward Lytton and others. _Imposture_ is absolutely out of the question, be certain, as an ultimate solution, and a greater proof of credulity can scarcely be given than a belief in imposture as things are at present. But I was going to tell you Mr. Appleton has a young American friend in Paris, who, 'besides being a very sweet girl,' says he, 'is a strong medium.' By Lamartine's desire he took her to the poet's house; 'all the phenomena were reproduced, and everybody present convinced,' Lamartine himself 'in ecstasies.' Among other spirits came Henry Clay, who said, 'J'aime Lamartine.' We shall have it in the next volume of biography. Louis Napoleon gets oracles from the 'raps,' and it is said that the Czar does the same,--your Emperor, certainly,--and the King of Holland is allowing the subject to absorb him. 'Dying out! dying out!' Our accounts from New York are very different, but unbelieving persons are apt to stop their ears and exclaim, 'We hear nothing now.' On one occasion the Hebrew Professor at New York was addressed in Hebrew to his astonishment.

Well, I don't believe, with all my credulity, in poets being perfected at universities. What can be more absurd than this proposition of 'finishing' Alexander Smith at Oxford or Cambridge? We don't know how to deal with literary genius in England, certainly. We are apt to treat poets (when we condescend to treat them at all) as over-masculine papas do babies; and Monckton Milnes was accused of only touching his in order to poke out its eyes, for instance. Why not put this new poet in a public library? There are such situations even among us, and something of the kind was done for Patmore. The very judgment Tennyson gave of him, _in the very words_, we had given here--'fancy, not imagination.' Also, imagery in excess; thought in deficiency. Still, the new poet is a true poet, and the defects obvious in him may be summed up in _youth_ simply. Let us wait and see. I have read him only in extracts, such as the reviews give, and such as a friend helped me to by good-natured MS. It is extraordinary to me that with his amount of development, as far as I understand it, he has met with so much rapid recognition. Tell me if you have read 'Queechy,' the American book--novel--by Elizabeth Wetherell? I think it very clever and characteristic. Mrs. Beecher Stowe scarcely exceeds it, after all the trumpets. We are about to have a visit from Mr. Lytton, Sir Edward's only son--only child now. Did I tell you that he was a poet--yes, and of an unquestionable faculty? I expect much from him one day, when he shakes himself clear of the poetical influences of the age, which he will have strength to do presently. He thinks as well as sees, and that is good....

Oh yes! I like Mr. Kingsley. I am glad he spoke kindly of _us_, because really I like him and admire him. Few people have struck me as much as he did last year in England. 'Manly,' do you say? But I am not very fond of praising men by calling them _manly_. I hate and detest a masculine man. _Humanly_ bold, brave, true, direct, Mr. Kingsley is--a moral cordiality and an original intellect uniting in him. I did not see _her_ and the children, but I hope we shall be in better fortune next time.

Since I began this letter the Storys and ourselves have had a grand donkey-excursion to a village called Benabbia, and the cross above it on the mountain-peak. We returned in the dark, and were in some danger of tumbling down various precipices; but the scenery was exquisite--past speaking of for beauty. Oh those jagged mountains, rolled together like pre-Adamite beasts, and setting their teeth against the sky! It was wonderful. You may as well guess at a lion by a lady's lapdog as at Nature by what you see in England. All honour to England, lanes and meadowland, notwithstanding; to the great trees above all. Will you write to me sooner? Will you give me the details of yourself? Will you love me?

Your most affectionate BA.

* * * * *

_To Miss E.F. Haworth_

Casa Tolomei, Alia Villa, Bagni di Lucca: August 30, [1853].

Dearest Fanny,--On your principle that 'there's too much to say,' I ought not to think of writing to you these three months; you have pleased me and made me grateful to such an extremity by your most pretty and graceful illustrative outlines. The death-bed I admire particularly; the attitudes are very expressive, and the open window helps the sentiment. What am I to say for your kindness in holding a torch of this kind (perfumed for the 'nobilities') between the wind and my poems? Thank you, thank you. And when that's said, I ought to stop short and beg you, dear Fanny, not to waste yourself in more labour of this kind, seeing that I am accursed and that nothing is to be done with my books and me, as far as my public is concerned. Why not get up a book of your own, a collection of 'outlines' illustrative of everybody's poems, which would stand well on its own feet and make a circle for itself? Think of _that_ rather. For my part, there's nothing to be done with me, as I said; that is, there's nothing to be done with my publishers, who just do as they like with my books, and don't like to do much good for _me_ with them, whatever they may do for themselves. I am misanthropical in respect to the booksellers. They manage one as they please, and not at all to please one. I have no more to say to the fate of my books than you have--and not much more to pocket. This third edition, for instance, which should have been out four or five months ago, they are keeping, I suppose, for the millennium, encouraged probably by the spiritual manifestations; and _my_ personal manifestations meanwhile have as much weight with them as facts have with Faraday, or the theory of fair play with the London 'Athenæum.' I am sick of it all, indeed. I look down on it all as the epicurean gods do on the world without putting out a finger to save an empire; perhaps because they can't. Long live the ----, who are kings of us. It's the best thing possible, I conclude, in this best of possible social economies, though for ourselves individually it may not be a very good thing; not precisely what we should choose. Think of the separate book of outlines. Seriously, Robert and I recommend you to consider it. You might make a book for drawing-room tables which would be generally acceptable if not too expensive. And Mr. Spicer is bringing me more? How kind of you. And when is he coming? Scarcely could anyone come as a stranger whom I desire more to see, and I do hope he will bring me facts and fantasies too on the great subject which is interesting me so deeply. His book of 'Sights and Sounds' we have read, but the new book has not penetrated to us. 'Sights and Sounds' is very curious, and the authenticity of its facts has been confirmed to me by various testimonies, but the author is too clever for his position; I mean too full of flash and wit. There's an air of levity, and of effective writing, without which the book would have been more impressive and convincing; don't you think so? And here we get to the heart of most of the difficulties of the subject. Why do we make no quicker advances, do you say? Why are our communications chiefly trivial? Why, but because we ourselves are trivial, and don't bring serious souls and concentrated attentions and holy aspirations to the spirits who are waiting for these things? Spirit comes to spirit by affinity, says Swedenborg; but our cousinship is not with the high and noble. We try experiments from curiosity, just as children play with the loadstone; our ducks swim, but they don't get beyond that, and _won't_, unless we do better. _To_ prove what I say, consider what you say yourself, that you couldn't manage to draw the same persons together again (these very persons being persuaded of the verity of the spiritual communications they were in reach of) on account of the difficulties of the London season. Difficulties of the London season! The inconsequence of human nature is more wonderful to me than the ingress of any spirits could be. This instance is scarcely credible....

I had a letter the other day from Mr. Chorley, and he was chivalrous enough (I call it real chivalry in his state of opinion) to deliver to me a message from Mr. Westland Marston, whom he met at Folkestone, and who kindly proposes to write a full account to me of his own spiritual experiences, having heard from you that they were likely to interest me; I mean that I was interested in the whole subject. Will you tell him from me that I shall be most thankful for anything he will vouchsafe to write to me, and will you give him my address? I don't know where to find him, and Mr. Chorley is on the Continent wandering. I have seen nothing for myself, but I am a believer upon testimony; and a stream of Americans running through Florence, and generally making way to us, the testimony has been various and strong. Interested in the subject! Who can be uninterested in the subject? Even Robert is interested, who professes to be a sceptic, an infidel indeed (though I can swear to having seen him considerably shaken more than once), and who promises never to believe till he has experience by his own senses. Isn't it hard on me that I can't draw a spirit into our circle and convince him? He would give much, he says, to find it true....

Here an end. Write soon and write much.

Your ever affectionate E.B.B. (called BA).

Our child was gathering box leaves in a hedge the other day (wherever we have a hedge, it's box, I would have you to understand), and pulled a yellow flower by mistake. Down he flung it as if it stung him. 'Ah, brutto! Colore Tedesco!' Think of that baby!

* * * * *

_To Mr. Westwood_

Casa Tolomei, Alia Villa, Bagni di Lucca: September [1853].

As to Patmore's new volume of poems, my husband and I had the pleasure of reading in MS. the poem which gives its title to the book. He has a great deal of thought and poetry in him. Alexander Smith I know by copious extracts in reviews, and by some MSS. once sent to us by friends and readers. Judging from those he must be set down as a true poet in opulence of imagery, but defective, so far (he is said to be very young) in the intellectual part of poetry. His images are flowers thrown to him by the gods, beautiful and fragrant, but having no root either in Enna or Olympus. There's no unity and holding together, no reality properly so called, no thinking of any kind. I hear that Alfred Tennyson says of him: 'He has fancy without imagination.' Still, it is difficult to say at the dawn what may be written at noon. Certainly he is very rich and full of colour; nothing is more surprising to me than his favourable reception with the critics. I should have thought that his very merits would be against him.

If you can read novels, and you have too much sense not to be fond of them, read 'Villette.' The scene of the greater part of it is in Belgium, and I think it a strong book. 'Ruth,' too, by Mrs. Gaskell, the author of 'Mary Barton,' has pleased me very much. Do you know the French novels? there's passion and power for you, if you like such things. Balzac convinced me that the French language was malleable into poetry. We are behindhand here in books, and elderly ones seem young to us. For instance, we have not caught sight yet of 'Moore's Life,' the extracts from which are unpropitious, I think. I had a fancy, I cannot tell you how it grew, that Moore, though an artificial, therefore inferior, poet, was a most brilliant letter-writer. His letters are disappointing, and his mean clinging to the aristocracy still more so.

I wish you could suddenly walk into this valley, which seems to have been made by the flashing scimitar of the river that cuts through the mountain. Ah! you in England, and in Belgium still less, do not know what scenery is, what Nature is when she is natural. You could as soon guess at a tiger from the cat on the hearthstone. You do not know; but, being a poet, you can dream. You have divine insights, as we all have, of heaven, all of us with whom the mortal mind does not cake and obstruct into cecity. No, no, no. I protest against anything I have not reprinted. The Prometheus poems bear the mark of their time, which was one of greenness and immaturity. Indeed, the responsibility for what I _acknowledge_ in print is hard enough to bear. Don't put another stick on the overloaded--_ass_, shall I say candidly?

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Martin_

Bagni di Lucca: October 5, [1853].

My dearest Mrs. Martin, I am delighted to have your letter at last, and should have come upon you like a storm in a day or two if you hadn't written, for really I began to be low in patience. Also, after having spent the summer here, we were about to turn our faces to Florence again, and it was necessary to my own satisfaction to let you know of our plans for the winter. To begin with those, then, we go to Florence, as I said, from hence, and after a week or two, or three or four as it may be, the briefer time if we let our house, we proceed to Rome for some months. You see we _must_ visit Rome before we go northwards, and northwards we _must_ go in the spring, so that the logic of events seems to secure Rome to us this time; otherwise I should still doubt of our going there, so often have we been on the verge and caught back....

So you think that he[26] is looking 'less young than formerly,' and that 'we should all learn to hear and make such remarks with equanimity.' Now, once for all, let me tell you--confess to you--I never, if I live to be a hundred, should learn that learning. Death has the luminous side when we know how to look; but the rust of time, the touch of age, is hideous and revolting to me, and I never see it, by even a line's breadth, in the face of any I love, without pain and recoil of nature. I have a worse than womanly weakness about that class of subjects. Death is a face-to-face intimacy; age, a thickening of the mortal mask between souls. So I hate it; put it far from me. Why talk of age, when it's just an appearance, an accident, when we are all young in soul and heart? We don't say, one to another, 'You are freckled in the forehead to-day,' or 'There's a yellow shade in your complexion.' Leave those disagreeable trifles. I, for my part, never felt younger. Did _you_, I wonder? To be sure not. Also, I have a gift in my eyes, I think, for scarcely ever does it strike me that anybody is altered, except my child, for instance, who certainly is larger than when he was born. When I went to England after five years' absence, everybody (save one) appeared to me younger than I was used to conceive of them, and of course I took for granted that I appeared to them in the same light. Be sure that it is highly moral to be young as long as possible. Women who throw up the game early (or even late) and wear dresses 'suitable to their years' (that is, as hideous as possible), are a disgrace to their sex, aren't they now? And women and men with statistical memories, who are always quoting centuries and the years thereof ('Do you remember in '20?' _As if anybody could_), are the pests of society. And, in short, and for my part, whatever honours of authorship may ever befall me, I hope I may be safe from the epithet which distinguishes the Venerable Bede.

Now, if I had written this from Paris, you would have cried out upon the frivolity I had picked up. Who would imagine that I had just finished a summer of mountain solitude, succeeding a winter's meditation on Swedenborg's philosophy, and that such fruit was of it all? By the way, tell me how it was that Paris did harm to Moore? Mentally, was it, and morally, or in the matter of the body? I have not seen the biography yet. Italy keeps us behind in new books. But the extracts given in newspapers displease me through the ignoble tone of 'doing honour to the lord,' which is anything but religious. Also, the letters seem somewhat less brilliant than I expected from Moore; but it must be, after all, a most entertaining book. Tell me if you have read Mrs. Gaskell's 'Ruth.' That's a novel which I much admire. It is strong and healthy at once, teaching a moral frightfully wanted in English society. Such an interesting letter I had from Mrs. Gaskell a few days ago simple, worthy of 'Ruth.' By the way, 'Ruth' is a great advance on 'Mary Barton,' don't you think so? 'Villette,' too (Jane Eyre's), is very powerful.

Since we have been here we have had for a visitor (drawing the advantage from our spare room) Mr. Lytton, Sir Edward's only son, who is attaché at the Florence Legation at this time. He lost nothing from the test of house-intimacy with either of us--gained, in fact, much. Full of all sorts of good and nobleness he really is, and gifted with high faculties and given to the highest aspirations--not vulgar ambitions, understand--he will never be a great diplomatist, nor fancy himself an inch taller for being master of Knebworth.[27] Then he is somewhat dreamy and unpractical, we must confess; he won't do for drawing carts under any sort of discipline. Such a summer we have enjoyed here, free from burning heats and mosquitos--the two drawbacks of Italy--and in the heart of the most enchanting scenery. Mountains not too grand for exquisite verdure, and just kept from touching by the silver finger of a stream. I have been donkey-riding, and so has Wiedeman. I even went (to prove to you how well I am) the great excursion to Prato Fiorito, six miles there and six miles back, perpendicularly up and down. Oh, it almost slew me of course! I could not stir for days after. But who wouldn't see heaven and die? Such a vision of divine scenery, such as, in England, the best dreamers do not dream of! As we came near home I said to Mr. Lytton, who was on horseback, 'I am dying. How are you?' To which he answered, 'I thought a quarter of an hour ago I could not keep up to the end, but now I feel better.' This from a young man just one-and-twenty! He is delicate, to be sure, but still you may imagine that the day's work was not commonly fatiguing. The guides had to lead the horses and donkeys. It was like going up and down a wall, without the smoothness. No road except in the beds of torrents. Robert pretended to be not tired, but, of course (as sensible people say of the turning tables), nobody believed a word of it. It was altogether a supernatural pretension, and very impertinent in these enlightened days.

Mr. and Mrs. Story were of our party. He is the son of Judge Story and full of all sorts of various talent. And she is one of those cultivated and graceful American women who take away the reproach of the national want of refinement. We have seen much of them throughout the summer. There has been a close communion of tea-drinking between the houses, and as we are all going to Rome together, this pleasure is not a past one....

We still point to Paris. Ah! you disapprove of Paris, I see, but we must try the experiment. What I am afraid of is simply the climate. I doubt whether I shall stand two winters running as far north as Paris, but if I _can't_, we must come south again. Then I love Italy. Oh! if it were not for the distance between Italy and England, we should definitively settle here at once. We shall be in England, by the way, next summer for pleasure and business, having, or about to have, two books to see through the press. Not _prose_, Mr. Martin. I'm lost--devoted to the infernal gods of rhyming. 'It's my fate,' as a popular poet said when going to be married....

(We go on Monday. Write to Florence for the next month.)

* * * * *

_To Miss Browning_

[Florence: autumn, 1853.]

My dearest Sarianna,--I shall not be able to write very much to-day, for Robert is in haste, and we are both overwhelmed with different engagements, the worst of which have been forced on me _maritally_ rather than artistically by the portrait-sittings he of course has told you of. His own portrait, by Mr. Reade, I must be glad about, seeing that though it by no means gives his best expression, the face is _there_, and it will be the best work extant on the same subject. I only wish that the artist had been satisfied with it, or taken my Penini in the second place instead of me, who am not wanted in canvas for art's sake, or for any other sake in the world. When gone from hence, may nobody think of me again, except when one or two may think perhaps how I loved them....

Do you think much of the war? I hope all will be done on the part of the two western Powers honestly and directly; and then, may the best that can, come out of the worst that must be. The poor Italians catch like men in an agony at all these floating straws. We hear that the new Austrian Commandant has received instructions to hold no intercourse with members of the English and French Legations till further orders are received.

We have lived a disturbed life lately; too much coming and going even with agreeable people. There has been no time for work. In Rome it must be different, or we shall get on poorly with our books, I think. Robert seems, however, by his account, to be in an advanced state already....

[_Incomplete._]

* * * * *

_To Miss I. Blagden_

Casa Guidi: Saturday [about October, 1853].

My dearest Isa,-- ... I was very sorry on returning from Lucca to find only Mr. Thompson's note and yours; but though we missed him at Florence we shall see him at Rome, I hope. There was also a card from Miss Lynch,[28] an American poetess (one of the ninety-and-nine muses), with a note of introduction from England. Do you hear of her at Rome? The 'Ninth Street' printed on her card leaves me in the infinite as far as conjectures of where she is go.

So pleased I am to get back to Florence, and so little inclined to tumble out of my nest again; yet we _shall go to Rome_ if some new obstacle does not arise. We have had no glimpse of the Tassinaris; they seem to have vanished from the scene. Florence is full of great people, so called, from England, and the _real sommités_ are coming, such as Alfred Tennyson, and, with an interval, Dickens and Thackeray. The two latter go to Rome for the winter, I understand.

Do you say _Edward Lytton_? But he isn't Edward Lytton now--he is Robert. The two Edwards clashed inconveniently, and now he doesn't sign an Edward even by an initial; he has renounced the name, and is a Robert for evermore. I am glad to tell you that although he is delicate and excitable there seems to me no tendency to disease of any kind. Indeed, he is looking particularly well just now. He is full of sensibility, both intellectually and morally, which is scarcely favorable to health and long life; but in the long run, if people can run, they get over such a disadvantage. At this time he is about to publish a collection of poems. I think highly of his capabilities; and he is a great favorite with both of us for various excellent reasons. Did I tell you of his passing a fortnight with us at Lucca, and how sorry we were to lose him at last? Sir Edward either has just brought out, or is bringing out, a volume of poems of his own, called 'Cornflowers' (referring to the harvest time of maturity in which he produces them), and chiefly of a metaphysical character. His son, who has seen the manuscript, thinks them the best of his poems. 'My Novel' is certainly excellent. Did I tell you that I had seized and read it?

I shall get at Swedenborg in Rome, and get on with my readings. There are deep truths in him, I cannot doubt, though I can't receive _everything_, which may be my fault. I would fain speak with a wise humility. We will talk on these things and the spirits. How that last subject attracts me! It strikes me that we are on the verge of great developments of the spiritual nature, and that in a philosophical point of view (apart from ulterior ends) the facts are worthy of all admiration and meditation. If a spiritual influx, it is _mixed_--good and evil together. The fact of there being a mixture of evil justifies Swedenborg's philosophy (does it not?) without concluding against the movement generally. We were at the Pergola the other night, and heard the 'Trovatore,' Verdi's new work. Very passionate and dramatic, surely. The Storys are here on their way back to Rome. Oh, I mean to convert you, Isa! Is it true that the fever at Rome is still raging? Give my love to your dear invalid, who must be comforting you so much with her improvement. Penini is in a chronic state of packing up his desk to go to '_Bome_.' Robert's love with mine as ever. I can't write either legibly or otherwise than stupidly on this detestable paper, having never learnt to skate. Are we giving you too much trouble, dearest, kind Isa?

Your affectionate friend E.B.B.

* * * * *

After a few weeks only at Florence the Brownings moved on to Rome and there (at No. 43 Via Bocca di Leone) they passed the winter. Both were now actively engaged on their new volumes of poetry--Mr. Browning on his 'Men and Women,' Mrs. Browning on 'Aurora Leigh,' both of which were, however, still far from completion.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Jameson_

Via Bocca di Leone, Rome: December 21, 1853.

My dearest Mona Nina,--I have been longer than I thought to be in Rome without writing to you, especially when I have a letter of yours for which to thank you. My fancy was to wait till I had seen Gerardine in her own home, and then to write to you, but I have called on her three times, and the three Fates have been at it each time to prevent my getting in. Still, we have met _here_, and I would rather not wait any longer for whatever might be added to what I have seen and know already....

Ah, dearest friend! you have heard how our first step into Rome was a fall, not into a catacomb but a fresh grave[29], and how everything here has been slurred and blurred to us, and distorted from the grand antique associations. I protest to you I doubt whether I shall get over it, and whether I ever shall feel that this is Rome. The first day at the bed's head of that convulsed and dying child; and the next two, three, four weeks in great anxiety about his little sister, who was all but given up by the physicians; the English nurse horribly ill of the same fever, and another case in this house. It was not only sympathy. I was selfishly and intensely frightened for my own treasures; I wished myself at the end of the world with Robert and Penini twenty times a day. Rome has been very peculiarly unhealthy; and I heard a Monsignore observe the other morning that there would not be much truce to the fever till March came. Still, I begin to take breath again and be reasonable. Penini's cheeks are red as apples, and if we avoid the sun, and the wind, and the damp, and, above all if God takes care of us, we shall do excellently. _I_, of course, am in a flourishing condition; walk out nearly every day and scarcely cough at all. Which isn't enough for me, you see. Dear friend, we have not set foot in the Vatican. Oh, barbarians!

But we have seen Mrs. Kemble, and I am as enchanted as I ought to be, and even, perhaps, a little more. She has been very kind and gracious to me; she was to have spent an evening with us three days since, but something intervened. I am much impressed by her as well as attracted to her. What a voice, what eyes, what eyelids full of utterance!

Then we have had various visits from Mr. Thackeray and his daughters. 'She writes to me of Thackeray instead of Raffael, and she is at Rome'! But she _isn't_ at Rome. There's the sadness of it. We got to Gibson's studio, which is close by, and saw his coloured Venus. I don't like her. She has come out of her cloud of the ideal, and to my eyes is not too decent. Then in the long and slender throat, in the turn of it, and the setting on of the head, you have rather a grisette than a goddess. 'Tis over pretty and _petite_, the colour adding, of course, to this effect. Crawford's studio (the American sculptor) was far more interesting to me than Gibson's. By the way, Mr. Page's portrait of Miss Cushman is really something wonderful--soul and body together. You can show nothing like it in England, take for granted. Indeed, the American artists consider themselves a little aggrieved when you call it as good as a Titian. '_Did_ Titian ever produce anything like it?' said an admirer in my hearing. Critics wonder whether the colour will _stand_. It is a theory of this artist that time does not _tone_, and that Titian's pictures were painted as we see them. The consequence of which is that his (Page's) pictures are undertoned in the first instance, and if they change at all will turn black[30]. May all Boston rather turn black, which it may do one of these days by an eruption from the South, when 'Uncle Tomison' gets strong enough.

We have been to St. Peter's; we have stood in the Forum and seen the Coliseum. Penini says: 'The sun has tome out. I think God knows I want to go out to walk, and _so_ He has sent the sun out.' There's a child who has faith enough to put us all to shame. A vision of angels wouldn't startle him in the least. When his poor little friend died, and we had to tell him, he inquired, fixing on me those earnest blue eyes, 'Did papa _see_ the angels when they took away Joe?' And when I answered 'No' (for I never try to deceive him by picturesque fictions, I should not dare, I tell him simply what I believe myself), 'Then did Joe _go up_ by himself?' In a moment there was a burst of cries and sobs. The other day he asked me if I thought _Joe had seen the Dute of Wellyton_. He has a medal of the Duke of Wellington, which put the name into his head. By-the-bye, Robert yesterday, in a burst of national vanity, informed the child that this was the man who beat Napoleon. 'Then I sint he a velly naughty man. What! he beat Napoleon _wiz a stit_?' (with a stick). Imagine how I laughed, and how Robert himself couldn't help laughing. So, the seraphs judge our glories!

If you have seen Sir David Brewster lately I should like to know whether he has had more experience concerning the tables, and has modified his conclusions in any respect. I myself am convinced as I can be of any fact, that there is an _external intelligence_; the little I have seen is conclusive to me. And this makes me more anxious that the subject should be examined with common fairness by learned persons. Only the learned won't learn--that's the worst of them. Their hands are too full to gather simples. It seems to me a new development of law in the human constitution, which has worked before in exceptional cases, but now works in general.

Dearest friend, I do not speak of your own anxious watch and tender grief, but think of them deeply. Believe that I love you always and in all truth.

Your E.B.B.

* * * * *

_To Miss E.F. Haworth_

[Rome:] 43 Bocca di Leone: December 27, [1853].

My dearest Fanny,--I can't judge of your 'obstacles,' of course, but as to your being snowed up on the road or otherwise impeded between Rome and Cività (Castellana or Vecchia), there's certainly not room for even a dream of it. There has been beautiful weather here ever since we came, except for exacting invalids. I, for instance, have been kept in the house for a fortnight or more (till Christmas Day, when I was able to get to St. Peter's) by tramontana; but there has been sun on _most_ days of cold, and nothing has been _severe_ as cold. The hard weather came in November, before we arrived. I was out yesterday, and may be to-day, perhaps. 'Judge ye!'...

You bid me write. But to what end, if you are here on New Year's Day? There's not time for a letter.

And at first I intended not to write, till beginning to consider how, as you are not actually of the race of Medes and Persians, you might possibly so modify your plans as to be able to receive these lines. Oh, a provoking person or persons you are, since you and Ellen Heaton are plural henceforth! No, I won't include her. _You_ are _singular_, by your own confession, on this occasion. And, instead of Christmas solemnisations, I shall take to reading the Commination Service over you if you stay any longer at Florence because of the impracticable, snowed-up roads around Rome. You really might as well object to coming on account of the heat!...

I thank you very much for meaning to bring my goods for me. I wish I could have seen your pictures before they took to themselves golden wings and fled away. Is it true, really, that you think to exhibit in London Penini's portrait at the piano, as Sophie Eckley tells me? I shall like to hear that you succeed in that.

I see _her_ every day almost, if not quite. Nobody is like her. And there are quantities of people here to choose from. I have not taken heart and 'an evening for reception' yet, but we have had '_squeezes_' of more or less stringency. Miss Ogle is here--and her family, of course, for she is young--the author of 'A Lost Love,' that very pretty book; and she is natural and pleasing. Do you know Lady Oswald, and her daughter and son? She is Lady Elgin's sister-in-law, and brought a letter to me from Lady Augusta Bruce. Then the Marshalls found us out through Mr. De Vere (_her_ cousin), and in the name of Alfred Tennyson (their intimate friend). Mrs. Marshall was a Miss Spring Rice, and is very refined in all senses. Refinement expresses the whole woman. Yes, there are some nice people here--nice people; it's the word. Nobody as near to me as Mr. Page, whom we often see, I am happy to say, and who has just presented the world (only _that_ is generally said of the lady) with a _son_, and is on the point of presenting said world with a Venus. _Will_ you come to see? I wonder....

I want you here to see a portrait taken of me in chalks by Miss Fox. I said 'No' to her in London, which was my sole reason for saying 'Yes' to her in Rome, when she asked me for a patient--or victim. She draws well, and has been very successful with the hair at least. For the likeness you shall judge for yourself. She comes here for an hour in the morning to execute me, and I'm as well as can be expected under it....

May God bless you, dearest Fanny. What Christmas wishes warm from the heart by heartfuls I throw at you! And say to Ellen Heaton, with cordial love, that I thank her much for her kind letter, and remember her in all affectionate wishes made for friends. I shall write to Mr. Ruskin. _Don't_ get this letter, I say.

Your E.B.B.

Robert's love, and _Penini's_. If 'Fanny' strikes you, 'Madame Bovary' will thunder-strike you.

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

43 Via di Leone, Rome: January 7, 18[54].

It is long, my ever dearest Miss Mitford, since I wrote to you last, but since we came to Rome we have had troubles, out of the deep pit of which I was unwilling to write to you, lest the shadows of it should cleave as blots to my pen. Then one day followed another, and one day's work was laid on another's shoulders. Well, we are all well, to begin with, and have been well; our troubles came to us through sympathy entirely. A most exquisite journey of eight days we had from Florence to Rome, seeing the great monastery and triple church of Assisi and the wonderful Terni by the way--that passion of the waters which makes the human heart seem so still. In the highest spirits we entered Rome, Robert and Penini singing actually; for the child was radiant and flushed with the continual change of air and scene, and he had an excellent scheme about 'tissing the Pope's foot,' to prevent his taking away 'mine gun,' somebody having told him that such dangerous weapons were not allowed by the Roman police. You remember my telling you of our friends the Storys--how they and their two children helped to make the summer go pleasantly at the baths of Lucca? They had taken an apartment for us in Rome, so that we arrived in comfort to lighted fires and lamps as if coming home, and we had a glimpse of their smiling faces that evening. In the morning, before breakfast, little Edith was brought over to us by the manservant with a message--'The boy was in convulsions; there was danger.' We hurried to the house, of course, leaving Edith with Wilson. Too true! All that first day was spent beside a death-bed; for the child never rallied, never opened his eyes in consciousness, and by eight in the evening he was gone. In the meanwhile, Edith was taken ill at our house--could not be moved, said the physicians. We had no room for her, but a friend of the Storys on the floor immediately below--Mr. Page, the artist--took her in and put her to bed. Gastric fever, with a tendency to the brain, and within two days her life was almost despaired of; exactly the same malady as her brother's. Also the English nurse was apparently dying at the Storys' house, and Emma Page, the artist's youngest daughter, sickened with the same symptoms. Now you will not wonder that, after the first absorbing flow of sympathy, I fell into a selfish human panic about my child. Oh, I 'lost my head,' said Robert; and if I _could_ have caught him up in my arms and run to the ends of the world, the hooting after me of all Rome could not have stopped me. I wished--how I wished!--for the wings of a dove, or any unclean bird, to fly away with him to be at peace. But there was no possibility but to stay; also the physicians assured me solemnly that there was no contagion possible, otherwise I would have at least sent him from us to another house. To pass over this dreary time, I will tell you at once that the three patients recovered; only in poor little Edith's case Roman fever followed the gastric, and has persisted so, ever since, in periodical recurrence, that she is very pale and thin. Roman fever is not dangerous to life--simple fever and ague--but it is exhausting if not cut off, and the quinine fails sometimes. For three or four days now she has been free from the symptoms, and we are beginning to hope. Now you will understand at once what ghastly flakes of death have changed the sense of Rome to me. The first day by a death-bed! The first drive out to the cemetery, where poor little Joe is laid close to Shelley's heart (_Cor cordium_, says the epitaph), and where the mother insisted on going when she and I went out in the carriage together. I am horribly weak about such things. I can't look on the earth-side of death; I flinch from corpses and graves, and never meet a common funeral without a sort of horror. When I look deathwards I look _over_ death, and upwards, or I can't look that way at all. So that it was a struggle with me to sit upright in that carriage in which the poor stricken mother sate so calmly--not to drop from the seat, which would have been worse than absurd of me. Well, all this has blackened Rome to me. I can't think about the Cæsars in the old strain of thought; the antique words get muddled and blurred with warm dashes of modern, every-day tears and fresh grave-clay. Rome is spoiled to me--there's the truth. Still, one lives through one's associations when not too strong, and I have arrived at almost enjoying some things--the climate, for instance, which, though perilous to the general health, agrees particularly with me, and the sight of the blue sky floating like a sea-tide through the great gaps and rifts of ruins. We read in the papers of a tremendously cold winter in England and elsewhere, while I am able on most days to walk out as in an English summer, and while we are all forced to take precautions against the sun. Also Robert is well, and our child has not dropped a single rose-leaf from his radiant cheeks. We are very comfortably settled in rooms turned to the sun, and do work and play by turns--having almost too many visitors--hear excellent music at Mrs. Sartoris's (Adelaide Kemble) once or twice a week, and have Fanny Kemble to come and talk to us with the doors shut, we three together. This is pleasant. I like her decidedly. If anybody wants small-talk by handfuls of glittering dust swept out of salons, here's Mr. Thackeray besides; and if anybody wants a snow-man to match Southey's snow-woman (see 'Thalaba'), here's Mr. Lockhart, who, in complexion, hair, conversation, and manners, might have been made out of one of your English '_drifts_'--'sixteen feet deep in some places,' says Galignani. Also, here's your friend _V._--Mrs. Archer Clive.[31] We were at her house the other evening. She seems good-natured, but what a very peculiar person as to looks, and even voice and general bearing; and what a peculiar unconsciousness of peculiarity. I do not know her much. I go out very little in the evening, both from fear of the night air and from disinclination to stir. Mr. Page, our neighbour downstairs, pleases me much, and you ought to know more of him in England, for his portraits are like Titian's--flesh, blood, and soul. I never saw such portraits from a living hand. He professes to have discovered secrets, and plainly _knows_ them, from his wonderful effects of colour on canvas--not merely in words. His portrait of Miss Cushman is a miracle. Gibson's famous painted Venus is very pretty--that's my criticism. Yes, I will say besides that I have seldom, if ever, seen so indecent a statue. The colouring with an approximation to flesh tints produces that effect, to my apprehension. I don't like this statue colouring--no, not at all. Dearest Miss Mitford, will you write to me? I don't ask for a long letter, but a letter--a letter. And I entreat you not to _prepay_. Among other disadvantages, that prepaying tendency of yours may lose me a letter one day. I want much to hear how you are bearing the winter--how you are. Give me details about your dear self.

[_The remainder of this letter is missing_]

* * * * *

_To Mr. Westwood_

43 Via Bocca di Leone, Rome: February 2, [1854].

Thank you, my dear Mr. Westwood, for your kind defence of me against the stupid, blind, cur-dog backbiting of the American writer. I will tell you. Three weeks ago I had a letter from my brother, apprising me of what had been said, and pressing on me the propriety of a contradiction in form. Said I in reply: 'When you marry a wife, George, take her from the class of those who have never printed a book, if this thing vexes you. A woman in a crowd can't help the pushing up against her of dirty coats; happy if somebody in boots does not tread upon her toes! Words to that effect, I said. I really could not do the American the honour of sitting down at the table with him to say: 'Sir, you are considerably mistaken.' He was not only mistaken, you see, but so stupid and self-willed in his mistake, so determined to make a system of it, but he was too disreputable to set right. Also of the tendency of one's writings one's readers are the best judges. I don't profess to write a religious commentary on my writings. I am content to stand by the obvious meaning of what I have written, according to the common sense of the general reader.

The tendency of my writings to Swedenborgianism has been observed by others, though I had read Swedenborg, when I wrote most of them, as little as the American editor of 'Robert Hall' can have done, and less can't be certainly. Otherwise, the said editor would have known that the central doctrine of Swedenborgianism being the Godhead of Jesus Christ, no Unitarian, liberal or unliberal, could have produced works Swedenborgian in character, and that William and Mary Howitt being Unitarian (which I believe they are) couldn't have a tendency at the same time to Swedenborgianism, unless it should be possible for them to be bolt upright with a leaning to the floor. I speak to a wise man. Judge what I say. For my own part I have thought freely on most subjects, and upon the state of the Churches among others, but never at any point of my life, and now, thank God, least of all, have I felt myself drawn towards Unitarian opinions. I should throw up revelation altogether if I ceased to recognise Christ as divine. Sectarianism I do not like, even in the form of a State Church, and the Athanasian way of stating opinions, between a scholastic paradox and a curse, is particularly distasteful to me. But I hold to Christ's invisible Church as referred to in Scripture, and to the Saviour's humanity and divinity as they seem to me conspicuous in Scripture, and so you have done me justice and the American has done me injustice....

Well, I have seen your Mrs. Brotherton, only once, though, because she can't come to see me at all, and lives too far for me to go in the winter weather. I shall see more of her presently, I hope, and in the meantime she is very generous to me, and sends me violets, and notes that are better, and we have a great sympathy on the spiritual subjects which set you so in a passion. What do I say? She sends me Greek (of which she does not know a single character), written by her, or rather _through_ her; mystical Greek, from a spirit-world, produced by her hands, she herself not knowing what she writes. The character is beautifully written, and the separate words are generally correct--such words as 'Christ,' 'God,' 'tears,' 'blood,' 'tempest,' 'sea,' 'thunder,' 'calm,' 'morning,' 'sun,' 'joy.' No grammatical construction hitherto, but a significant sort of grouping of the separate words, as if the meaning were struggling out into coherence. My idea is that she is being exercised in the language, in the _character_, in order to fuller expression hereafter. Well, you would have us snowed upon with poppies till we sleep and forget these things. I, on the contrary, would have our eyes wide open, our senses 'all attentive,' our souls lifted in reverential expectation. Every _fact_ is a word of God, and I call it irreligious to say, 'I will deny this because it displeases me.' 'I will look away from that because it will do me harm.' Why be afraid of the _truth_? God is in the truth, and He is called also Love. The evil results of certain experiences of this class result mainly from the superstitions and distorted views held by most people concerning the spiritual world. We have to learn--we in the body--that Death does not teach all things. Death is simply an accident. Foolish Jack Smith who died on Monday, is on Tuesday still foolish Jack Smith. If people who on Monday scorned his opinions prudently, will on Tuesday receive his least words as oracles, they very naturally may go mad, or at least do something as foolish as their inspirer is. Also, it is no argument against any subject, that it drives people mad who suffer themselves to be absorbed in it. That would be an argument against all religion, and all love, by your leave. Ask the Commissioners of Lunacy; knock at the door of mad-houses in general, and inquire what two causes act almost universally in filling them. Answer--love and religion. The common objection of the degradation of knocking with the leg of the table, and the ridicule of the position for a spirit, &c., &c., I don't enter into at all. Twice I have been present at table-experiments, and each time I was deeply impressed--impressed, there's the word for it! The panting and shivering of that dead dumb wood, the human emotion conveyed through it--by what? had to me a greater significance than the St. Peter's of this Rome. O poet! do you not know that poetry is not confined to the clipped alleys, no, nor to the blue tops of 'Parnassus hill'? Poetry is where we live and have our being--wherever God works and man understands. Hein! ... if you are in a dungeon and a friend knocks through the outer wall, spelling out by knocks the words you comprehend; you don't think the worse of the friend standing in the sun who remembers you. He is not degraded by it, you rather think. Now apply this. Certainly, there is a reaction from the materialism of the age, and this is certainly well, in my mind, but then there is something more than this, more than a mere human reaction, I believe. I have not the power of writing myself at all, though I have felt the pencil turn in my hand--a peculiar spiral motion like the turning of the tables, and independent of volition, but the power is not with me strong enough to make words or letters even.

We see a good deal of Fanny Kemble, a noble creature, and hear her sister sing--Mrs. Sartoris. Do admit a little society. It is good for soul and body, and on the Continent it is easy to get a handful of society without paying too dear for it. That, I think, is an advantage of Continental life.

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

43 Via Bocca di Leone, Rome: March 19, 1854.

My dearest Miss Mitford,--Your letter made my heart ache. It is sad, sad indeed, that you should have had this renewed cold just as you appeared to be rallying a little from previous shocks, and I know how depressing and enfeebling a malady the influenza is. It's the vulture finishing the work of the wolf. I pray God that, having battled through this last attack, you may be gradually strengthened and relieved by the incoming of the spring (though an English spring makes one shiver to think of generally), and with the summer come out into the garden, to sit in a chair and be shone upon, dear, dear friend. I shall be in England then, and get down to see you this time, and I tenderly hold to the dear hope of seeing you smile again, and hearing you talk in the old way....

We see a good deal of the Kembles here, and like them both, especially the Fanny, who is looking magnificent still, with her black hair and radiant smile. A very noble creature, indeed. Somewhat unelastic, unpliant to the eye, attached to the old modes of thought and convention, but noble in quality and defects; I like her much. She thinks me credulous and full of dreams, but does not despise me for that reason, which is good and tolerant of her, and pleasant, too, for I should not be quite easy under her contempt. Mrs. Sartoris is genial and generous, her milk has had time to stand to cream, in her happy family relations. The Sartoris's house has the best society at Rome, and exquisite music, of course. We met Lockhart there, and my husband sees a good deal of him--more than I do, because of the access of cold weather lately which has kept me at home chiefly. Robert went down to the seaside in a day's excursion with him and the Sartoris's; and, I hear, found favor in his sight. Said the critic: 'I like Browning, he isn't at all like a damned literary man.' That's a compliment, I believe, according to your dictionary. It made me laugh and think of you directly. I am afraid Lockhart's health is in a bad state; he looks very ill, and every now and then his strength seems to fail. Robert has been sitting for his picture to Fisher, the English artist, who painted Mr. Kenyon and Landor; you remember those pictures in Mr. Kenyon's house? Landor's was praised much by Southey. Well, he has painted Robert, and it is an admirable likeness.[32] The expression is an exceptional expression, but highly characteristic; it is one of Fisher's best works. Now he is about our Wiedeman, and if he succeeds as well in painting angels as men, will do something beautiful with that seraphic face. You are to understand that these works are done by the artist _for_ the artist. Oh, we couldn't afford to have such a luxury as a portrait done for us. But I am pleased to have a good likeness of each of my treasures _extant_ in the possession of somebody. Robert's will, of course, be eminently saleable, and Wiedeman's too, perhaps, for the beauty's sake, with those blue far-reaching eyes, and that innocent angel face emplumed in the golden ringlets! Somebody told me yesterday that she never had known, in a long experience of children, so attractive a child. He is so full of sweetness and vivacity together, of imagination and grace. A poetical child really, and in the best sense. Such a piece of innocence and simplicity with it all, too! A child you couldn't lie to if you tried. I had a fit of remorse for telling him the history of Jack and the Beanstalk, when he turned his earnest eyes up to me at the end and said, 'I think, if Jack went up so high, he must have seen God.'

To see those two works through the press must be a fatigue to you in your present weak state, dearest friend, and I keep wishing vainly I could be of use to you in the matter of the proof sheets. I might, you know, if I were in England. I do some work myself, but doubt much whether I shall be ready for the printers by July; no, indeed, it is clear I shall not. If Robert is, it will be well. Doesn't it surprise you that Alexander Smith should be already in a third edition? I can't make it out for my part. I 'give it up' as is my way with riddles. He is both too bad and too good to explain this phenomenon, which is harder to me than any implied in the turning tables or involuntary writing. By the way, a lady whom I know here _writes Greek_ without knowing or having ever known a single letter of it. The unbelievers writhe under it.

Oh, I have been reading poor Haydon's biography. There is tragedy! The pain of it one can hardly shake off. Surely, surely, wrong was done somewhere, when the worst is admitted of Haydon. For himself, looking forward beyond the grave, I seem to understand that all things when most bitter worked ultimate good to him, for that sublime arrogance of his would have been fatal perhaps to the moral nature if developed further by success. But for the nation we had our duties, and we should not suffer our teachers and originators to sink thus. It is a book written in blood of the heart. Poor Haydon!

May God bless you, my dear friend! I think of you and love you dearly, Robert's love, put to mine, and Penini's love put to Robert's. I give away Penini's love as I please just now.

Your ever affectionate E.B.B.

Send my bulletins; only _two lines_ if you will.

* * * * *

_To Miss Browning_

[Rome: about March, 1854.]

My dearest Sarianna,--We are all well, and so is the weather, which is diviner. We sit with the windows wide open, and find it almost too warm, and to-day Robert and I have been wandering under the trees of the Pincio and looking to the Monte Marino pine. Let the best come, I don't like Rome, I never shall; and as they have put into the English newspapers that I don't, I might as well acknowledge the barbarism. Very glad I shall be to see you and Paris, even though my beloved Florence shall be left behind. Dearest Sarianna, after a short rest at Paris, we go on to London for the printing of Robert's book (mine won't be ready till later in the year), and for the sight of some dear English faces while the weather shall admit of it, before we settle for the winter in France. Well, you will go with us to England, won't you? The dear nonno[33] will spare you to go with us? It will do you good, and it will do us good, certainly.

I quite agree with you that there's no situation like the Champs Elysées--really, there is scarcely anything like it in Europe, if you put away Venice--for a situation in a city.

The worst of the Champs Elysées is that it is out of the way, and expensive on the point of carriages when you can't walk far. People tell you, too, that the air is sharper at the end of the avenue; yet the sun is so brilliant as to make amends for the disadvantage, if it exists. Then you pay more for houses on account of the concourse of English. And what if I object a little to the English besides? If I do, the desirableness of the pure air and free walking for Penini counterbalances them.

The Thackeray girls have had the scarlatina at Naples, and have been very desolate, I fear, without a female servant or friend near them. They probably were indisposed towards Naples by their own illness (which was slight, however; the scarlet fever is always slight in Italy they say), and by their father's more serious attack, for I have heard very different accounts of the Neapolitan weather. Still, it has been an abnormal winter everywhere, and there are cold winds on that coast on certain months of the year always. Lockhart has gone away with the Duke of Wellington, who was in deep consideration how he should manage his funeral on the road. Robert was present when the question was mooted on the Duke's last evening. _Should_ he send the body to England or bury it? Would it be delicate to ask Lockhart which he preferred? Somebody said: 'Suppose you were to ask what he would do with your body if you died yourself.' I am afraid poor Lockhart is really in a dangerous state of health, and that it would have been better if he had had something tenderer and more considerate than a dukedom travelling with him under his circumstances. He called upon us, and took a great fancy to Robert, I understand, as being 'not at all like a damned literary man.'

Penini is overwhelmed with attentions and gifts of all kinds, and generally acknowledged as the king of the children here. Mrs. Page, the wife of the distinguished American artist, gave a party in honor of him the other day. There was an immense cake inscribed '_Penini_' in sugar; and he sat at the head of the table and did the honors. You never saw a child so changed in point of shyness. He will go anywhere with anybody, and talk, and want none of us to back him. Wilson is only instructed not to come till it is 'velly late' to fetch him away. He talks to Fanny Kemble, who 'dashes' most people. 'I not aflaid of nossing,' says he, in his eloquent English. Mr. Fisher's cartoon of him is very pretty, but doesn't do him justice in the delicacy of the lower part of the face. Yet I can't complain of Mr. Fisher after the admirable likeness he has painted of Robert. It is really _satisfying_ to me. You will see it in London. Oh, how cruel it is that we can't buy it, Sarianna; I have a sort of hope that Mr. Kenyon may--but zitto, zitto![34] Arabel will be very grateful to you for the drawings....

[_Endorsed by Miss Browning_, '_Part of a letter_']

* * * * *

The plans, thus confidently spoken of, for a visit to Paris and London in the summer of this year, did not attain fulfilment. The Brownings left Rome for Florence about the end of May, intending to stay there only a few weeks; but their arrangements were altered by letters received from England, and ultimately they remained in Florence until the summer of the following year. Whether for this reason, or because the poems were not, after all, ready for press, the printing of Mr. Browning's new volumes ('Men and Women') was also postponed, and they did not appear until 1855; while 'Aurora Leigh' was still a long way from completion.

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

Rome: May 10, 1854.

My ever dearest Miss Mitford,--Your letter pained me to a degree which I will not pain you by expressing farther. Now, I do not write to press for another letter. On the contrary, I _entreat_ you not to attempt to write a word to me with your own hand, until you can do so without effort and suffering. In the meanwhile, would it be impossible for K. to send me in one line some account of you? I don't mean to tease, but I should be very glad and thankful to have news of you though in the briefest manner, and if a letter were addressed to me at Poste Restante, Florence, it would reach me, as we rest there on our road to Paris and London. In any case I shall see you this summer, if it shall please God; and stay with you the half hour you allow, and kiss your dear hands and feel again, I hope, the brightness of your smile. As the green summer comes on you must be the better surely; if you can bear to lie out under the trees, the general health will rally and the local injury correct itself. You must have a strong, energetic vitality; and, after all, spinal disorders do not usually attack life, though they disable and overthrow. The pain you endure is the terrible thing. Has a local application of chloroform been ever tried? I catch at straws, perhaps, with my unlearned hands, but it's the instinct of affection. While you suffer, my dear friend, the world is applauding you. I catch sight of stray advertisements and fragmentary notices of 'Atherton,' which seems to have been received everywhere with deserved claps of hands. This will not be comfort to you, perhaps; but you will feel the satisfaction which every workman feels in successful work. I think the edition of plays and poems has not yet appeared, and I suppose there will be nothing in _that_ which can be new to us. 'Atherton' I thirst for, but the cup will be dry, I dare say, till I get to England, for new books even at Florence take waiting for far beyond all necessary bounds. We shall not stay long in Tuscany. We want to be in England late in June or very early in July, and some days belong to Paris as we pass, since Robert's family are resident there. To leave Rome will fill me with barbarian complacency. I don't pretend to have a rag of sentiment about Rome. It's a palimpsest Rome--a watering-place written over the antique--and I haven't taken to it as a poet should, I suppose; only let us speak the truth, above all things. I am strongly a creature of association, and the associations of the place have not been personally favorable to me. Among the rest my child, the light of my eyes, has been more unwell lately than I ever saw him in his life, and we were forced three times to call in a physician. The malady was not serious, it was just the result of the climate, relaxation of the stomach, &c., but the end is that he is looking a delicate, pale, little creature, he who was radiant with all the roses and stars of infancy but two months ago. The pleasantest days in Rome we have spent with the Kembles--the two sisters--who are charming and excellent, both of them, in different ways; and certainly they have given us some exquisite hours on the Campagna, upon picnic excursions, they and certain of their friends--for instance, M. Ampère, the member of the French Institute, who is witty and agreeable; M. Gorze, the Austrian Minister, also an agreeable man; and Mr. Lyons, the son of Sir Edmund, &c. The talk was almost too brilliant for the sentiment of the scenery, but it harmonised entirely with the mayonnaise and champagne. I should mention, too, Miss Hosmer (but she is better than a talker), the young American sculptress, who is a great pet of mine and of Robert's, and who emancipates the eccentric life of a perfectly 'emancipated female' from all shadow of blame by the purity of hers. She lives here all alone (at twenty-two); dines and breakfasts at the _cafés_ precisely as a young man would; works from six o'clock in the morning till night, as a great artist must, and this with an absence of pretension and simplicity of manners which accord rather with the childish dimples in her rosy cheeks than with her broad forehead and high aims. The Archer Clives have been to Naples, but have returned for a time. Mr. Lockhart, who went to England with the Duke of Wellington (the same prepared to bury him on the road), writes to Mrs. Sartoris that he has grown much better under the influence of the native beef and beer. To do him justice he looked, when here, innocent of the recollection even of either. I wonder if you have seen Mrs. Howe's poems, lately out, called 'Passion Flowers.' They were sent to me by an American friend but were intercepted _en route_, so that I have not set eyes on them yet, but one or two persons, not particularly reliable as critics, have praised them to me. She is the wife of Dr. Howe, the deaf and dumb philanthropist, and herself neither deaf nor dumb (very much the contrary) I understand--a handsome woman and brilliant in society. I gossip on to you, dearest dear Miss Mitford, as if you were in gossiping humour. Believe that my tender thoughts, deeper than any said, are with you always.

Robert's love with that of your attached BA.

We go on the 22nd of this month. You have seen Mr. Chorley's book, I daresay, which I should like much to see.

* * * * *

_To Miss Browning_

Casa Guidi: Thursday, [end of May 1854].

My dearest Sarianna,--I am delighted to say that we have arrived, and see our dear Florence, the queen of Italy, after all. On the road I said to Penini, 'Make a poem about Florence.' Without a moment's hesitation he began, 'Florence is more pretty of all. Florence is a beauty. Florence was born first, and then Rome was born. And Paris was born after.' Penini is always _en verve_. He's always ready to make a poem on any subject, and doesn't ask you to wait while he clears his voice. The darling will soon get over the effect of that poisonous Roman air, I do trust, though it is humiliating to hear our Florentines wailing over the loss of bloom and dimples; it doesn't console me that his amount of growth is properly acknowledged. Well, good milk and good air will do their work in a little time with God's blessing, and a most voracious appetite is developed already, I am glad to say. Even in the journey he revived, the blue marks under the darling eyes fading gradually away, and now he looks decidedly better, though unlike himself of two months ago. You are to understand that the child is perfectly well, and that the delicate look is traceable distinctly and only to the attacks he had in Rome during the last few weeks. Throughout the winter he was radiant, as I used to tell you, and the confessed king of the whole host of his contemporaries and country-babies....

_The Kembles_ were our gain in Rome. I appreciate and admire both of them. They fail in nothing as you see them nearer. Noble and upright women, whose social brilliancy is their least distinction! Mrs. Sartoris is the more tender and tolerant, the more loveable and sympathetical, perhaps, to me. I should like you to know them both. Then there is that dear Mr. Page. Yes, and Harriet Hosmer, the young American sculptress, who is an immense favorite with us both.

A comfort is that Robert is considered here to be looking better than he ever was known to look. And this notwithstanding the greyness of his beard, which indeed is, in my own mind, very becoming to him, the argentine touch giving a character of elevation and thought to the whole physiognomy. This greyness was suddenly developed; let me tell you how. He was in a state of bilious irritability on the morning of his arrival in Rome from exposure to the sun or some such cause, and in a fit of suicidal impatience shaved away his whole beard, whiskers and all! I _cried_ when I saw him, I was so horror-struck. I might have gone into hysterics and still been reasonable; for no human being was ever so disfigured by so simple an act. Of course I said, when I recovered breath and voice, that everything was at an end between him and me if he didn't let it all grow again directly, and (upon the further advice of his looking-glass) he yielded the point, and the beard grew. But it grew _white_, which was the just punishment of the gods--our sins leave their traces.

Well, poor darling, Robert won't shock you after all, you can't choose but be satisfied with his looks. M. de Monclar swore to me that he was not changed for the intermediate years.

Robert talks of money, of waiting for _that_, among other hindrances to setting out directly. Not _my_ fault, be certain, Sarianna! We seem to have a prospect of letting our house for a year, which, if the thing happens, will give us a lift.

We spent yesterday evening with Lytton at his villa, meeting there Mr. and Mrs. Walpole, Frederick Tennyson, and young Norton (Mrs. Norton's son), who married the Capri girl. She was not present, I am sorry to say. We walked home to the song of nightingales by starlight and firefly-light. Florence looks to us more beautiful than ever after Rome. I love the very stones of it, to say nothing of the cypresses and river.

Robert says, 'Are you nearly done?' I am done. Give Penini's love and mine to the dear nonno, and tell him (and yourself, dear) how delighted we shall be [to] have you both. You are prepared to go to England, I hope. By the way, the weather there is said to be murderous through bitter winds, but it must soften as the season advances. May God bless you! I am yours in truest love.

BA.

We had a very pleasant vettura journey, Robert will have told you.

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

Florence: June 6, 1854.

Yes, dearest friend, I had your few lines which Arabel sent to me. I had them on the very day I had posted my letter to you, and I need not say how deeply it moved me that you should have thought of giving me that pleasure of Mr. Ruskin's kind word at the expense of what I knew to be so much pain to yourself....

We mean to stay at Florence a week or two longer and then go northward. I love Florence, the place looks exquisitely beautiful in its garden-ground of vineyards and olive trees, sung round by the nightingales day and night, nay, sung _into_ by the nightingales, for as you walk along the streets in the evening the song trickles down into them till you stop to listen. Such nights we have between starlight and firefly-light, and the nightingales singing! I would willingly stay here, if it were not that we are constrained by duty and love to go, and at some day not distant, I daresay we shall come back 'for good and all' as people say, seeing that if you take one thing with another, there is no place in the world like Florence, I am persuaded, for a place to live in. Cheap, tranquil, cheerful, beautiful, within the limit of civilisation yet out of the crush of it. I have not seen the Trollopes yet; but we have spent two delicious evenings at villas on the outside the gates, one with young Lytton, Sir Edward's son, of whom I have told you, I think. I like him, we both do, from the bottom of our hearts. Then our friend Frederick Tennyson, the new poet, we are delighted to see again. Have you caught sight of his poems? If you have, tell me your thought. Mrs. Howe's I have read since I wrote last. Some of them are good--many of the thoughts striking, and all of a certain elevation. Of poetry, however, strictly speaking, there is not much; and there's a large proportion of conventional stuff in the volume. She must be a clever woman. Of the ordinary impotencies and prettinesses of female poets she does not partake, but she can't take rank with poets in the good meaning of the word, I think, so as to stand without leaning. Also there is some bad taste and affectation in the dressing of her personality. I dare say Mr. Fields will bring you her book. Talking of American literature, with the publishers on the back of it, we think of offering the proofs of our new works to any publisher over the water who will pay us properly for the advantage of bringing out a volume in America simultaneously with the publication in England. We have heard that such a proposal will be acceptable, and mean to try it. The words you sent to me from Mr. Ruskin gave me great pleasure indeed, as how should they not from such a man? I like him personally, too, besides my admiration for him as a writer, and I was deeply gratified in every way to have his approbation. His 'Seven Lamps' I have not read yet. Books come out slowly to Italy. It's our disadvantage, as you know. Ruskin and art go together. I must tell you how Rome made me some amends after all. Page, the American artist, painted a picture of Robert like an Italian, and then presented it to me like a prince. It is a wonderful picture, the colouring so absolutely _Venetian_ that artists can't (for the most part) keep their temper when they look at it, and the breath of the likeness is literal.[35] Mr. Page has _secrets_ in the art--certainly nobody else paints like him--and his nature, I must say, is equal to his genius and worthy of it. Dearest Miss Mitford, the 'Athenæum' is always as frigid as Mont Blanc; it can't be expected to grow warmer for looking over your green valleys and still waters. It wouldn't be Alpine if it did. They think it a point of duty in that journal to shake hands with one finger. I dare say when Mr. Chorley sits down to write an article he puts his feet in cold water as a preliminary. Still, I oughtn't to be impertinent. He has been very good-natured to _me_, and it isn't his fault if I'm not Poet Laureate at this writing, and engaged in cursing the Czar in Pindarics very prettily. 'Atherton,' meanwhile, wants nobody to praise it, I am sure. How glad I shall be to seize and read it, and how I thank you for the gift! May God bless and keep you! I may hear again if you write soon to Florence, but don't pain yourself for the world, I entreat you. I shall see you before long, I think.

Your ever affectionate E.B.B.

Robert's love.

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

Florence: July 20, [1854].

My dearest Miss Mitford,--I this moment receive your little note. It makes me very sad and apprehensive about you, and I would give all this bright sunshine for weeks for one explanatory word which might make me more easy. Arabel speaks of receiving your books--I suppose 'Atherton'--and of having heard from yourself a very bad account of your state of health. Are you worse, my beloved friend? I have been waiting to hear the solution of our own plans (dependent upon letters from England) in order to write to you; and when I found our journey to London was definitively rendered impossible till next spring, I deferred writing yet again, it was so painful to me to say to you that our meeting could not take place this year. Now, I receive your little note and write at once to say how sad _that_ makes me. It is the first time that the expression of your love, my beloved friend, has made me sad, and I start as from an omen. On the other hand, the character you write in is so firm and like yourself, that I do hope and trust you are not sensibly worse. Let me hear by a word, if possible, that the change of weather has done you some little good. I understand there has scarcely been any summer in England, and this must necessarily have been adverse to you. A gleam of fine weather would revive you by God's help. Oh, that I could look in your face and say, 'God bless you!' as I feel it. May God bless you, my dear, dear friend.

Our reason for not going to England has not been from caprice, but a cross in money matters. A ship was to have brought us in something, and brought us in nothing instead, with a discount; the consequence of which is that we are transfixed at Florence, and unable even to 'fly to the mountains' as a refuge from the summer heat. It has been a great disappointment to us all, and to our respective families, my poor darling Arabel especially; but we can only be patient, and I take comfort in the obvious fact that my Penini is quite well and almost as rosy as ever in spite of the excessive Florence heat. One of the worst thoughts I have is about _you_. I had longed so to see you this summer, and had calculated with such certainty upon doing so. I would have gone to England for that single reason if I could, but I can't; we can't stir, really. That we should be able to sit quietly still at Florence and eat our bread and maccaroni is the utmost of our possibilities this summer.

Mrs. Trollope has gone to the Baths of Lucca, and thus I have not seen her. She will be very interested about you, of course. How many hang their hearts upon your sickbed, dearest Miss Mitford! Yes, and their prayers too.

The other day, by an accident, an old number of the 'Athenæum' fell into my hands, and I read for the second time Mr. Chorley's criticism upon 'Atherton.' It is evidently written in a hurried manner, and is quite inadequate as a notice of the book; but, do you know, I am of opinion that if you considered it more closely you would lose your impression of its being depreciatory and cold. He says that the _only fault_ of the work is its _shortness_; a rare piece of praise to be given to a work nowadays. You see, your reputation is at the height; neither he nor another could _help_ you; such books as yours make their own way. The 'Athenæum' doesn't give full critiques of Dickens, for instance, and it is arctical in general temperature. I thought I would say this to you. Certainly I _do know_ that Mr. Chorley highly regards you in every capacity--as writer and as woman--and in the manner in which he named you to me in his last letter there was no chill of sentiment nor recoil of opinion. So do not admit a doubt of _him_; he is a sure and affectionate friend, and absolutely high-minded and reliable; of an intact and even chivalrous delicacy. I say it, lest you might have need of him and be scrupulous (from your late feeling) about making him useful. It is horrible to doubt of one's friends; oh, I know _that_, and would save you from it.

We had a letter from Paris two days ago from one of the noblest and most intellectual men in the country, M. Milsand, a writer in the 'Deux Mondes.' He complains of a stagnation in the imaginative literature, but adds that he is consoled for everything by the 'state of politics.' Your Napoleon is doing you credit, his very enemies must confess.

As for me, I can't write to-day. Your little precious, melancholy note hangs round the neck of my heart like a stone. Arabel simply says she is afraid from what you have written to her that you must be very ill; she does not tell me what you wrote to her--perhaps for fear of paining me--and now I am pained by the silence beyond measure.

Robert's love and warmest wishes for you. He appreciates your kind word to him. And I, what am I to say? I love you from a very sad and grateful heart, looking backwards and forwards--and _upwards_ to pray God's love down on you!

Your ever affectionate E.B.B., rather BA.

Precious the books will be to me. I hope not to wait to read them till they reach me, as there is a bookseller here who will be sure to have them. Thank you, thank you.

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

Florence: September 4, 1854.

Five minutes do not pass, my beloved friend, since reading this dear letter which has wrung from me tender and sorrowful tears, and answering it thus. Pray for you? I do not wait that you should bid me. May the divine love in the face of our Lord Jesus Christ shine upon you day and night, and make all our human loves strike you as cold and dull in comparison with that ineffable tenderness! As to wandering prayers, I cannot believe that it is of consequence whether this poor breath of ours wanders or does not wander. If we have strength to throw ourselves upon Him for everything, for prayer, as well as for the ends of prayer, it is enough, and He will prove it to be enough presently. I have been when I could not pray at all. And then God's face seemed so close upon me that there was no need of prayer, any more than if I were near _you_, as I yearn to be, as I ought to be, there would be need for this letter. Oh, be sure that He means well by us by what we suffer, and it is when we suffer that He often makes the meaning clearer. You know how that brilliant, witty, true poet Heine, who was an atheist (as much as a man can pretend to be), has made a public profession of a change of opinion which was pathetic to my eyes and heart the other day as I read it. He has joined no church, but simply (to use his own words) has 'returned home to God like the prodigal son after a long tending of the swine.' It is delightful to go home to God, even after a tending of the sheep. Poor Heine has lived a sort of living death for years, quite deprived of his limbs, and suffering tortures to boot, I understand. It is not because we are brought low that we must die, my dearest friend. I hope--I do not say 'hope' for _you_ so much as for _me_ and for the many who hang their hearts on your life--I hope that you may survive all these terrible sufferings and weaknesses, and I take my comfort from your letter, from the firmness and beauty of the manuscript; I who know how weak hands will shudder and reel along the paper. Surely there is strength for more life in that hand. Now I stoop to kiss it in my thought. Feel my kiss on the dear hand, dear, dear friend.

A previous letter of yours pained me much because I seemed to have given you the painful trouble in it of describing your state, your weakness. Ah, I _knew_ what that state was, and it was _therefore_ that the slip of paper which came with 'Atherton' seemed to me so ominous! By the way, I shall see 'Atherton' before long, I dare say. The 'German Library' in our street is to have a 'box of new books' almost directly, and in it surely must be 'Atherton,' and you shall hear my thoughts of the book as soon as I catch sight of it. Then you have sent me the Dramas. Thank you, thank you; they will be precious. I saw the article in the 'Athenæum' with joy and triumph, and knew Mr. Chorley by the 'Roman hand.' In the 'Illustrated News' also, Robert (not I) read an enthusiastic notice. He fell upon it at the reading-room where I never go on account of my _she_-dom, women in Florence being supposed not--

(_Part of this letter is missing_)

Think of me who am far, yet near in love and thought. Love me with that strong heart of yours. May God bless it, bless it!

I am ever your attached E.B.B., rather BA.

I have had a sad letter from poor Haydon's daughter. She has fifty-six pounds a year, and can scarcely live on it in England, and inquires if she could live in any family in Florence. I fear to recommend her to come so far on such means. Robert's love. _May God bless you and keep you! Love me._

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

Florence: October 19, 1854.

I will try not to be overjoyed, my dear, dearest Miss Mitford, but, indeed, it is difficult to refrain from catching at hope with both hands. If the general health will but rally, there is nothing fatal about a spine disease. May God bless you, give you the best blessing in earth and heaven, as the God of the living in both places. We ought not to be selfish, nor stupid, so as to be afraid of leaving you in His hands. What is beautiful and joyful to observe is the patience and self-possession with which you endure even the most painful manifestation of His will; and that, while you lose none of that interest in the things of our mortal life which is characteristic of your sympathetic nature, you are content, just as if you felt none, to let the world go, according to the decision of God. May you be more and more confirmed and elevated and at rest--being the Lord's, whether absent from the body or present in it! For my own part, I have been long convinced that what we call death is a mere incident in life--perhaps scarcely a greater one than the occurrence of puberty, or the revolution which comes with any new emotion or influx of new knowledge. I am heterodox about sepulchres, and believe that no _part of us_ will ever lie in a grave. I don't think much of my nail-parings--do you?--not even of the nail of my thumb when I cut off what Penini calls the 'gift-mark' on it. I believe that the body of flesh is a mere husk which drops off at death, while the spiritual body (see St. Paul) emerges in glorious resurrection at once. Swedenborg says, some persons do not immediately realise that they have passed death, and this seems to me highly probable. It is curious that Maurice, Mr. Kingsley's friend, about whom so much lately has been written and quarrelled (and who _has_ made certain great mistakes, I think), takes this precise view of the resurrection, with an apparent unconsciousness of what Swedenborg has stated upon the subject, and that, I, too, long before I knew Swedenborg, or heard the name of Maurice, came to the same conclusions. I wonder if Mr. Kingsley agrees with us. I dare say he does, upon the whole--for the ordinary doctrine seems to me as little taught by Scripture as it can be reconciled with philosophical probabilities. I believe in an active, _human_ life, beyond death as before it, an uninterrupted human life. I believe in no waiting in the grave, and in no vague effluence of spirit in a formless vapour. But you'll be tired with 'what I believe.'

I have been to the other side of Florence to call on Mrs. Trollope, on purpose that I might talk to her of you, but she was not at home, though she has returned from the Baths of Lucca. From what I hear, she appears to be well, and has recommenced her 'public mornings,' which we shrink away from. She 'receives' every Saturday morning in the most heterogeneous way possible. It must be amusing to anybody not overwhelmed by it, and people say that she snatches up 'characters' for her 'so many volumes a year' out of the diversities of masks presented to her on these occasions. Oh, our Florence! In vain do I cry out for 'Atherton.' The most active circulating library 'hasn't got it yet,' they say. I must still wait. Meanwhile, of course, I am delighted with all your successes, and your books won't spoil by keeping like certain other books. So I may wait.

How young children unfold like flowers, and how pleasant it is to watch them! I congratulate you upon yours--your baby-girl must be a dear forward little thing. But I wish I could show you my Penini, with his drooping golden ringlets and seraphic smile, and his talk about angels--you would like him, I know. Your girl-baby has avenged my name for me, and now, if you heard my Penini say in the midst of a coaxing fit--'O, my sweetest little mama, my darling, _dearlest_, little Ba,' you would admit that 'Ba' must have a music in it, to my ears at least. The love of two generations is poured out to me in that name--and the stream seems to run (in one instance) when alas! the fountain is dry. I do not refer to the dead who live still.

Ah, dearest friend, you feel how I must have felt about the accident in Wimpole Street.[36] I can scarcely talk to you about it. There will be permanent lameness, Arabel says, according to the medical opinion, though the general health was not for a moment affected. But permanent lameness! That is sad, for a person of active habits. I ventured to write a little note--which was not returned, I thank God--or read, I dare say; but of course there was no result. I never even expected it, as matters have been. I must tell you that our pecuniary affairs are promising better results for next year, and that we shall not, in all probability, be tied up from going to England. For the rest--if I understand you--oh no! My husband has a family likeness to Lucifer in being proud. Besides, it's not necessary. When literary people are treated in England as in some other countries, in that case and that time we may come in for our share in the pensions given by the people, without holding out our hands. Now think of Carlyle--unpensioned! Why, if we sate here in rags, we wouldn't press in for an obolus before Belisarius. Mrs. Sartoris has been here on her way to Rome, spending most of her time with us--singing passionately and talking eloquently. She is really charming. May God bless and keep you and love you, beloved friend! Love your own affectionate

BA.

May it be Robert's love?

* * * * *

_To Miss Browning_

[Florence:] November 11, 1854 [postmark].

My dearest Sarianna,--I shall be writing my good deeds in water to-day with this mere pretence at inks.[37] We are all well, though it is much too cold for me--a horrible tramontana which would create a cough under the ribs of death, and sets me coughing a little in the morning. I am afraid it's to be a hard winter again this year--or harder than last year's. We began fires on the last day of October, after the most splendid stretch of spring, summer, and autumn I ever remember. We have translated our room into winter--sent off the piano towards the windows, and packed tables, chairs, and sofas as near to the hearth as possible.

What a time of anxiety this war time is![38] I do thank God that _we_ have no reasons for its being a personal agony, through having anyone very precious at the post of danger. I have two first cousins there, a Hedley, and Paget Butler, Sir Thomas's son. I understand that the gloom in England from the actual bereavements is great; that the frequency of deep mourning strikes the eye; that even the shops are filled chiefly with black; and that it has become a sort of _mode_ to wear black or grey, without family losses, and from the mere force of sympathy.

My poor father is still unable to stir from the house, and he has been unwell through a bilious attack, the consequence of want of exercise. Nothing can induce him to go out in a carriage, because he 'never did in his life drive out for mere amusement,' he says. There's what Mr. Kenyon calls 'the Barrett obstinacy,' and it makes me uneasy as to the effect of it in this instance upon the general health of the patient. Poor darling Arabel seems to me much out of spirits--'out of humour,' _she_ calls it, dear thing--oppressed by the gloom of the house, and looking back yearningly to the time when she had sisters to talk to. Oh Sarianna, I wish we were all together to have a good gossip or groaning, with a laugh at the end!...

Your ever affectionate sister, BA.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Martin_

Florence: November 1854.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--You make me wait and I make you wait for letters. It is bad of us both--and remember, _worse of you_, seeing that you left two long letters of mine unanswered for months. I felt as if I had fallen down an _oubliette_, and I was about to utter the loud shrieks befitting the occasion, when you wrote at last. Don't treat me so another time; I want to know your plans for the winter, since the winter is upon us. Next summer, if it pleases God, we shall certainly meet somewhere--say Paris, say London. We shall have money for it, which we had not this year; and now the disappointment's over, I don't care. The heat at Florence was very bearable, and our child grew into his roses lost at Rome, and we have lived a very tranquil and happy six months on our own sofas and chairs, among our own nightingales and fireflies. There's an inclination in me to turn round with my Penini and say, 'I'm an Italian.' Certainly both light and love seem stronger with me at Florence than elsewhere....

The war! The alliance is the consolation; the necessity is the justification. For the rest, one shuts one's eyes and ears--the rest is too horrible. What do you mean by fearing that the war itself may not be all the evil of the war? I expect, on the contrary, a freer political atmosphere after this thunder. Louis Napoleon is behaving very tolerably well, won't you admit, after all? And I don't look to a treason at the end as certain of his enemies do, who are reduced to a 'wait, wait, and you'll see.' There's a friend of mine here, a traditional anti-Gallican, and very lively in his politics until the last few months. He can't speak now or lift up his eyelids, and I am too magnanimous in opposition to talk of anything else in his presence except Verdi's last opera, which magnanimity he appreciates, though he has no ear. About a month ago he came suddenly to life again. 'Have you heard the news? Napoleon is suspected of making a secret treaty with Russia.' The next morning he was as dead as ever--poor man! It's a desperate case for him.

Are you not happy--_you_--in this fast union between England and France? Some of our English friends, coming to Italy through France, say that the general feeling towards England, and the affectionate greetings and sympathies lavished upon them as Englishmen by the French everywhere, are quite strange and touching. 'In two or three years,' said a Frenchman on a railroad, 'French and English, we shall make only one nation.' Are you very curious about the subject of gossip just now between Lord Palmerston and Louis Napoleon? We hear from somebody in Paris, whose _métier_ it is to know everything, that it refers to the readjustment of affairs in Italy. May God grant it! The Italians have been hanging their whole hope's weight upon Louis Napoleon ever since he came to power, and if he does now what he can for them I shall be proud of my _protégé_--oh, and so glad! Robert and I clapped our hands yesterday when we heard this; we couldn't refrain, though our informant was reactionary and in a deep state of conservative melancholy. 'Awful things were to be expected about Italy,' quotha!

Now do be good, and write and tell me what your plans are for the winter. We shall remain here till May, and then, if God pleases, go north--to Paris and London. Robert and I are at work on our books. I have taken to ass's milk to counteract the tramontana, and he is in the twenty-first and I in the twenty-second volume of Alexandre Dumas's 'Memoirs.' The book is _un peu hasardé_ occasionally, as might be expected, but extremely interesting, and I really must recommend it to your attention for the winter if you don't know it already.

We have seen a good deal of Mrs. Sartoris lately on her way to Rome (Adelaide Kemble)--eloquent in talk and song, a most brilliant woman, and noble. She must be saddened since then, poor thing, by her father's death. Tell me if it is true that Harriet Martineau has seceded again from her atheism? We heard so the other day. Dearest Mrs. Martin, do write to me; and do, both of you, remember me, and think of both of us kindly. With Robert's true regards,

I am your as ever affectionate BA.

Tell me dear Mr. Martin's mind upon politics--in the Austrian and Prussian question, for instance. We have no fears, in spite of Dr. Cumming and the prophets generally, of ultimate results.

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

Florence: December 11, 1854.

I should have written long ago, my dearest Miss Mitford, to try to say half the pleasure and gratitude your letter made for me, but I have been worried and anxious about the illnesses, not exactly in my family but nearly as touching to me, and hanging upon posts from England in a painful way inevitable to these great distances....

I understand that literature is going on flaggingly in England just now, on account of nobody caring to read anything but telegraphic messages. So Thackeray told somebody, only he might refer chiefly to the fortunes of the 'Newcomes,' who are not strong enough to resist the Czar. The book is said to be defective in story. Certainly the subject of the war is very absorbing; we are all here in a state of tremblement about it. Dr. Harding has a son at Sebastopol, who has had already three horses killed under him. What hideous carnage! The allies are plainly numerically too weak, and the two governments are much blamed for not reinforcing long ago. I am discontented about Austria. I don't like handshaking with Austria; I would rather be picking her pocket of her Italian provinces; and, while upon such civil terms, how _can_ we? Yet somebody, who professes to know everything, told somebody at Paris, who professes to tell everything, that Louis Napoleon and Lord Palmerston talked much the other day about what is to be done for Italy; and here in Italy we have long been all opening our mouths like so many young thrushes in a nest, expecting some 'worme small' from your Emperor. Now, if there's an Austrian alliance instead!...

Do you hear from Mr. Kingsley? and, if so, how is his wife? I am reading now Mrs. Stowe's 'Sunny Memories,' and like the naturalness and simplicity of the book much, in spite of the provincialism of the tone of mind and education, and the really wretched writing. It's quite wonderful that a woman who has written a book to make the world ring should write so abominably....

Do you hear often from Mr. Chorley? Mr. Kenyon complains of never seeing him. He seems to have withdrawn a good deal, perhaps into closer occupations, who knows? Aubrey de Vere told a friend of ours in Paris the other day that Mr. Patmore was engaged on a poem which 'was to be the love poem of the age,' parts of which he, Aubrey de Vere, had seen. Last week I was vexed by the sight of Mrs. Trollope's card, brought in because we were at dinner. I should have liked to have seen her for the sake of the opportunity of talking of _you_.

Do you know the engravings in the 'Story without an End'? The picture of the 'child' is just my Penini. Some one was observing it the other day, and I thought I would tell you, that you might image him to yourself. Think of his sobbing and screaming lately because of the Evangelist John being sent to Patmos. 'Just like poor Robinson Crusoe' said he. I scarcely knew whether to laugh or cry, I was so astonished at this crisis of emotion.

Robert's love will be put in. May God bless you and keep you, and love you better than we all.

Your ever affectionate BA.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Martin_

Casa Guidi: February 13, [1855].

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--How am I to thank you for this most beautiful shawl, looking fresh from Galatea's flocks, and woven by something finer than her fingers? You are too good and kind, and I shall wrap myself in this piece of affectionateness on your part with very pleasant feelings. Thank you, thank you. I only wish I could have seen you (though more or less dimly, it would have been a satisfaction) in the face of your friend who was so kind as to bring the parcel to me. But I have been very unwell, and was actually in bed when he called; unwell with the worst attack on the chest I ever suffered from in Italy. Oh, I should have written to you long since if it had not been for this. For a month past or more I have been ill. Now, indeed, I consider myself convalescent; the exhausting cough and night fever are gone, I may say, the pulse quiet, and, though considerably weakened and pulled down, that will be gradually remedied as long as this genial mildness of the weather lasts. You were quite right in supposing us struck here by the cold of which you complained even at Pau. Not only here but at Pisa there has been snow and frost, together with a bitter wind which my precaution of keeping steadily to two rooms opening one into another could not defend me from. My poor Robert has been horribly vexed about me, of course, and indeed suffered physically at one time through sleepless nights, diversified by such pastimes as keeping fires alight and warming coffee, &c. &c. Except for love's sake it wouldn't be worth while to live on at the expense of doing so much harm, but you needn't exhort--I don't give it up. I mean to live on and be well.

In the meantime, in generous exchange for your miraculous shawl, I send you back sixpence worth of rhymes. They were written for Arabel's Ragged School bazaar last spring (she wanted our names), and would not be worth your accepting but for the fact of their not being purchaseable anywhere.[39] A few copies were sent out to us lately. Half I draw back my hand as I give you this little pamphlet, because I seem to hear dear Mr. Martin's sardonic laughter at my phrase about the Czar. 'If she wink, &c.' Well, I don't generally sympathise with the boasting mania of my countrymen, but it's so much in the blood that, even with _me_, it exceeds now and then, you observe. Ask him to be as gentle with me as possible.

Oh, the East, the East! My husband has been almost frantic on the subject. We may all cover our heads and be humble.[40] Verily we have sinned deeply. As to ministers, that there is blame I do not doubt. The Aberdeen element has done its worst, but our misfortune is that nobody is responsible; and that if you tear up Mr. So-and-so and Lord So-and-so limb from limb, as a mild politician recommended the other day, you probably would do a gross injustice against very well-meaning persons. It's the system, the system which is all one gangrene; the most corrupt system in Europe, is it not? Here is my comfort. Apart from the dreadful amount of individual suffering which cries out against us to heaven and earth, this adversity may teach us much, this shock which has struck to the heart of England may awaken us much, and this humiliation will altogether be good for us. We have stood too long on a pedestal talking of our moral superiority, our political superiority, and all our other superiorities, which I have long been sick of hearing recounted. Here's an inferiority proved. Let us understand it and remedy it, and not talk, talk, any more.

[_Part of this letter has been cut out_]

We heard yesterday from the editor of the 'Examiner,' Mr. Forster, who expects some terrible consequence of present circumstances in England, as far as I can understand. The alliance with France is full of consolation. There seems to be a real heart-union between the peoples. What a grand thing the Napoleon loan is! It has struck the English with admiration.

I heard, too, among other English news, that Walter Savage Landor, who has just kept his eightieth birthday, and is as young and impetuous as ever, has caught the whooping cough by way of an illustrative accident. Kinglake ('E[=o]then') came home from the Crimea (where he went out and fought as an amateur) with fever, which has left one lung diseased. He is better, however....

Dearest Mrs. Martin, dearest friends, be both of you well and strong. Shall we not meet in Paris this early summer?

May God bless you! Your ever affectionate

BA.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Jameson_

Florence: February 24, 1855.

The devil (say charitable souls) is not as bad as he is painted, and even I, dearest Mona Nina, am better than I seem. In the first place, let me make haste to say that I _never received_ the letter you sent me to Rome with the information of your family affliction, and that, if I had, it could never have remained an unnoticed letter. I am not so untender, so unsympathising, not so brutal--let us speak out. I lost several letters in Rome, besides a good deal of illusion. I did not like Rome, I think I confessed to you. In the second place, when your last letter reached me--I mean the letter in which you told me to write to you directly--I _would_ have written directly, but was so very unwell that you would not have wished me even to try if, absent in the flesh, you had been present in spirit. I have had a severe attack on the chest--the worst I ever had in Italy--the consequence of exceptionally severe weather--bitter wind and frost together--which quite broke me up with cough and fever at night. Now I am well again, only of course much weakened, and grown thin. I mean to get fat again upon cod's liver oil, in order to appear in England with some degree of decency. You know I'm a lineal descendant of the White Cat, and have seven lives accordingly. Also I have a trick of falling from six-storey windows upon my feet, in the manner of the traditions of my race. Not only I die hard, but I can hardly die. 'Half of it would kill _me_,' said an admiring friend the other day. 'What strength you must have!' A questionable advantage, except that I have also--a Robert, and a Penini!

Dearest friend, I don't know how to tell you of our fullness of sympathy in your late trials.[41] From a word which reached us from England the other day, there will be, I do trust, some effectual arrangement to relieve your friends from their anxieties about you. Then, there should be an increase of the Government pension by another hundred, that is certain; only the 'should be' lies so far out of sight in the ideal, that nobody in his senses should calculate on its occurrence. As to Law, it's different from Right--particularly in England perhaps--and appeals to Law are disastrous when they cannot be counted on as victorious, always and certainly. Therefore you may be wise in abstaining; you have considered sufficiently, of course. I only hope you are not trammelled in any degree by motives of delicacy which would be preposterous under the actual circumstances. You meantime are as nobly laborious as ever. We have caught hold of fragments in the newspapers from your 'Commonplace Book,' which made us wish for more; and Mr. Kenyon told me of a kind mention of Robert which was very pleasant to me.

How will it be? Shall you be likely to come to Italy before we set out to the north--that is, before the middle of May--or shall we cross on the road, like our letters, or shall we catch you in London, or in Paris at least? Oh, you won't miss the Exhibition in Paris. That seems certain.

I know Florence Nightingale slightly. She came to see me when we were in London last; and I remember her face and her graceful manner, and the flowers she sent me after afterwards. I honor her from my heart. She is an earnest, noble woman, and has fulfilled her woman's duty where many men have failed.

At the same time, I confess myself to be at a loss to see any new position for the sex, or the most imperfect solution of the 'woman's question,' in this step of hers. If a movement at all, it is retrograde, a revival of old virtues! Since the siege of Troy and earlier, we have had princesses binding wounds with their hands; it's strictly the woman's part, and men understand it so, as you will perceive by the general adhesion and approbation on this late occasion of the masculine dignities. Every man is on his knees before ladies carrying lint, calling them 'angelic she's,' whereas, if they stir an inch as thinkers or artists from the beaten line (involving more good to general humanity; than is involved in lint), the very same men would curse the impudence of the very same women and stop there. I can't see on what ground you think you see here the least gain to the 'woman's question,' so called. It's rather _the contrary_, to my mind, and, any way, the women of England must give the precedence to the _soeurs de charité_, who have magnificently won it in all matters of this kind. For my own part (and apart from the exceptional miseries of the war), I acknowledge to you that I do not consider the best use to which we can put a gifted and accomplished woman is to _make her a hospital nurse_. If it is, why then woe to us all who are artists! The woman's question is at an end. The men's 'noes' carry it. For the future I hope you will know your place and keep clear of Raffaelle and criticism; and I shall expect to hear of you as an organiser of the gruel department in the hospital at Greenwich, that is, if you have the luck to _percer_ and distinguish yourself.

Oh, the Crimea! How dismal, how full of despair and horror! The results will, however, be good if we are induced to come down from the English pedestal in Europe of incessant self-glorification, and learn that our close, stifling, corrupt system gives no air nor scope for healthy and effective organisation anywhere. We are oligarchic in all things, from our parliament to our army. Individual interests are admitted as obstacles to the general prosperity. This plague runs through all things with us. It accounts for the fact that, according to the last marriage statistics, thirty per cent, of the male population signed with the _mark_ only. It accounts for the fact that London is at once the largest and ugliest city in Europe. For the rest, if we cannot fight righteous and necessary battles, we must leave our place as a nation, and be satisfied with making pins. Write to me, but don't pay your letters, dear dear friend, and I will tell you why. Through some slip somewhere we have had to pay your two last letters just the same. So don't try it any more. Do you think we grudge postage from you? Tell me if it is true that Harriet Martineau is very ill. What do you hear of her?

May God bless you! With Robert's true love,

Your ever affectionate BA.

* * * * *

The following letter is the first of a few addressed to Mr. Ruskin, which have been made available through the kindness of Mrs. Arthur Severn. The acquaintanceship with Mr. Ruskin dated from the visit of the Brownings to England in 1852 (see vol. ii. p. 87, above); but the occasion of the present correspondence was the recent death of Miss Mitford, which took place on January 10, 1855. Mr. Ruskin had shown much kindness to her during her later years, and after her death had written to Mrs. Browning to tell her of the closing scenes of her friend's life.

* * * * *

_To Mr. Ruskin_

Florence: March 17, 1855.

I have your letter, dear Mr. Ruskin. The proof is the pleasure it has given me--yes, and given my husband, which is better. 'When has a letter given me so much pleasure?' he exclaimed, after reading it; 'will you write?' I thank you much--much for thinking of it, and I shall be thankful of anything you can tell me of dearest Miss Mitford. I had a letter from her just before she went, written in so firm a hand, and so vital a spirit, that I could feel little apprehension of never seeing her in the body again. God's will be done. It is better so, I am sure. She seemed to me to see her way clearly, and to have as few troubling doubts in respect to the future life as she had to the imminent end of the present.

Often we have talked and thought of you since the last time we saw you, and, before your letter came, we had ventured to put on the list of expected pleasures connected with our visit to England, fixed for next summer, the pleasure of seeing more of Mr. Ruskin. For the rest, there will be some bitter things too. I do not miss them generally in England, and among them this time will be an empty place where I used always to find a tender and too indulgent friend.

You need not be afraid of my losing a letter of yours. The peril would be mine in that case. But among the advantages of our Florence--the art, the olives, the sunshine, the cypresses, and don't let me forget the Arno and mountains at sunset time--is that of an all but infallible post office. One loses letters at Rome. Here, I think, we have lost _one_ in the course of eight years, and for that loss I hold my correspondent to blame.

How good you are to me! How kind! The soul of a cynic, at its third stage of purification, might feel the value of 'Gold' laid on the binding of a book by the hand of John Ruskin. Much more I, who am apt to get too near that ugly 'sty of Epicurus' sometimes! Indeed you have gratified me deeply. There was 'once on a time,' as is said in the fairy tales, a word dropped by you in one of your books, which I picked up and wore for a crown. Your words of goodwill are of great price to me always, and one of my dear friend Miss Mitford's latest kindnesses to me was copying out and sending to me a sentence from a letter of yours which expressed a favorable feeling towards my writings. She knew well--she who knew me--the value it would have for me, and the courage it would give me for any future work.

With my husband's cordial regards,

I remain most truly yours, ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

Our American friends, who sent to Dresden in vain for your letter, are here now, but will be in England soon on their way to America, with the hope of trying fate again in another visit to you. Thank you! Also thank you for your inquiry about my health. I have had a rather bad attack on my chest (never very strong) through the weather having been colder than usual here, but now I am very well again--for _me_.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Martin_

Florence: April 20, 1855.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Having nine lives, as I say, I am alive again, and prosperous--thanking you for wishing to know. People look at me and laugh, because it's a clear case of bulbous root with me--let me pass (being humble) for the onion. I was looking miserable in February, and really could scarcely tumble across the room, and now I am up on my perch again--nay, even out of my cage door. The weather is divine. One feels in one's self why the trees are green. I go out, walk out, have recovered flesh and fire--my very hair curls differently. '_Is I, I?_' I say with the metaphysicians. There's something vital about this Florence air, for, though much given to resurrection, I never made such a leap in my life before after illness. Robert and I need to run as well as leap. We have quantities of work to do, and small time to do it in. He is four hours a day engaged in dictating to a friend of ours who transcribes for him, and I am not even ready for transcription--have not transcribed a line of my six or seven thousand. We go to England, or at least to Paris, next month, but it can't be early. Oh, may we meet you! Our little Penini is radiant, and altogether we are all in good spirits. Which is a shame, you will say, considering the state of affairs at Sebastopol. Forgive me. I never, at worst, thought that the great tragedy of the world was going on _there_. It was tragic, but there are more chronic cruelties and deeper despairs--ay, and more exasperating wrongs. For the rest, we have the most atrocious system in Europe, and we mean to work it out. Oh, you will see. Your committees nibble on, and this and that poisonous berry is pulled off leisurely, while the bush to the root of it remains, and the children eat on unhindered on the other side. I had hoped that there was real feeling among politicians. But no; we are put off with a fast day. There, an end! I begin to think that nothing will do for England but a good revolution, and a 'besom of destruction' used dauntlessly. We are getting up our vainglories again, smoothing our peacock's plumes. We shall be as exemplary as ever by next winter, you will see.

Meanwhile, dearest Mrs. Martin, that _you_ should ask me about 'Armageddon' is most assuredly a sign of the times. You know I pass for being particularly mad myself, and everybody, almost universally, is rather mad, as may be testified by the various letters I have to read about 'visible spirit-hands,' pianos playing themselves, and flesh-and-blood human beings floating about rooms in company with tables and lamps. Dante has pulled down his own picture from the wall of a friend of ours in Florence five times, signifying his pleasure that it should be destroyed at once as unauthentic (our friend burnt it directly, which will encourage me to pull down mine by [_word lost_]). Savonarola also has said one or two things, and there are gossiping guardian angels, of whom I need not speak. Let me say, though, that nothing has surprised me quite so much as _your_ inquiring about Armageddon, because I am used to think of you as the least in the world of a theorist, and am half afraid of you sometimes, and range the chairs before my speculative dark corners, that you may not think or see 'how very wild that Ba is getting!' Well, now it shall be my turn to be sensible and unbelieving. There's a forced similitude certainly, in the etymology, between the two words; but if it were full and perfect I should be no nearer thinking that the battle of Armageddon could ever signify anything but a great spiritual strife. The terms, taken from a symbolical book, are plainly to my mind symbolical, and Dr. Cumming and a thousand mightier doctors could not talk it out of me, I think. I don't, for the rest, like Dr. Cumming; his books seem to me very narrow. Isn't the tendency with us all to magnify the great events of our own time, just as we diminish the small events? For me, I am heretical in certain things. I expect _no_ renewal of the Jewish kingdom, for instance. And I doubt much whether Christ's 'second coming' will be personal. The end of the world is probably the end of a dispensation. What I expect is, a great development of Christianity in opposition to the churches, and of humanity generally in opposition to the nations, and I look out for this in much quiet hope. Also, and in the meanwhile, the war seems to be just and necessary. There is nothing in it to regret, except the way of conducting it....

Write to me soon again, and tell me as much of both of you as you can put into a letter.

May God bless you always!

With Robert's warm regards, both of you think of me as

Your ever affectionate BA.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Braun_

Florence: May 13, [1855].

My dearest Madame Braun,--You have classed me and ticketed me before now, I think, as among the ungrateful of the world; yet I am grateful, grateful, grateful! When your book[42] came (how very kind you were to send it to me!) and when I had said so some five times running, in came somebody who was _fanatico per Roma_, and reverential in proportion for Dr. Braun, who with some sudden appeal to my sensibility--the softer just then that I was only just recovering strength after a sharp winter attack--swept the volume off the table and carried it off out of the house to study the contents at leisure. I expected it back the next week, but it lingered. And I really hadn't the audacity to write to you and say, 'Thank you, but I have looked as yet simply at the title-page.' Well, at last it comes home, and I turn the leaves, examine, read, approve, like Ludovisi and the Belvedere, with a double pleasure of association and become _qualified_ properly to thank you and Dr. Braun from Robert and myself for this gift to us and valuable contribution to archæological literature. I am only sorry I did not get to Rome after the book; it would have helped my pleasure so, holding up the lanthorn in dark places. So much suggestiveness in combination with so much specific information makes a book (or a man) worth knowing.

Of late, other hindrances have come to writing this, in the shape of various labours of Hercules, which fall sometimes to Omphale as well. We go to England in a week or two or three, and we take between us some sixteen thousand lines, eight on one side, eight on the other, which ought to be ready for publication. I have not finished my seventh thousand yet; Robert is at his mark. Then, I have to see that we have shoes and stockings to go in, and that Penini's little trousers are creditably frilled and tucked. Then, about twenty letters lie by me waiting to be answered in time, so as to save me from a mobbing in England. Then there are visits to be paid all round in Florence, to make amends for the sins of the winter; visiting, like almsgiving, being put generally in the place of virtue, when the latter is found too inconvenient. Altogether, my head swims and my heart ticks before the day's done, with positive weariness. For there are Penini's lessons, you are to understand, besides the rest. And 'between the intersections,' cod liver oil to be taken judiciously, in order to appear before my English friends with due decency of corporeal coverture.

Well, now, do tell me, _shall_ you go to England, _you_? You will see my reasons for being very interested. Oh, I hope you won't be snatched away to Naples, or nailed down at Rome. Railroads open from Marseilles; the Exhibition open at Paris! Surely, surely Dr. Braun will go to Paris to see the Exhibition. His conscience won't let him off. Tell him too, _from me_, that in London he may _see a spirit_ if he will go for it. I have a letter from a friend who swears to me he has shaken hands with three or four--'softer, more thrilling than any woman's hand'--'tenderly touching'--think of that! The American 'medium' Hume is turning the world upside down in London with this spiritual influx.

Let me remember to tell you. Your paper _was in the_ '_Athenæum_.' Therefore, if you were not paid for it, it was the more abominable. Robert saw it with his own eyes, printed. When I heard from you that you had heard nothing, I mentioned the circumstance to Mrs. Jameson in a letter I was writing to her, and I do hope she has not neglected since to give you some information at least. You are aware probably of the excellent effect with which that kind Mrs. Procter has managed a private subscription in behalf of dear Mrs. Jameson, in consequence of which she will be placed in circumstances of ease for the rest of her life. Fanny Kemble nobly gave a hundred pounds towards this good purpose. Mrs. Jameson spoke in her last letter of coming to Italy this summer, and I dare say we shall have the ill luck to lose her, miss her, cross her _en route_, perhaps.

We hear from dear Mr. Kenyon and from Miss Bayley; each very well and full of animation. If it were not for them, and my dear sisters, and one or two other hands I shall care to clasp (beside the spirits!) I would give much not to go north. Oh, we Italians grow out of the English bark; it won't hold us after a time. Such a happy year I have had this last! I do love Florence so! When Penini says, 'Sono Italiano, voglio essere Italiano,' I agree with him perfectly.

So we shall come back of course, if we live; indeed, we leave this house ready to come back to, meaning, if we can, to let our rooms simply.

Little Penini looks like a rose, and has, besides, the understanding and sweetness of a creature 'a little lower than the angels.' I don't care any less for him than I did, upon the whole.

I hear the Sartoris's think of Paris for next winter, and mean to give up Rome. She has been a good deal secluded, until quite lately, they say, on account of her father's death and brother's worse than death, which may account in part for any backwardness you may have observed. As to her 'not liking Dr. Braun,' do _you_ believe in anybody's not liking Dr. Braun? _I_ don't quite. It's more difficult for me to 'receive' than the notion of the spiritual hand--'tenderly touching.'

Do you know young Leighton[43] of Rome? If so, you will be glad of this wonderful success of his picture,[44] bought by the Queen, and applauded by the Academicians, and he not twenty-five.

The lady who brought your book did not leave her name here, so of course she did not _mean_ to be called on.

Our kindest regards for dear Dr. Braun, and repeated truest thanks to both of you. Among his discoveries and inventions, he will invent some day an Aladdin's lamp, and then you will be suddenly potentates, and vanish in a clap of thunder.

Till then, think of me sometimes, dearest Madame Braun, as I do of _you_, and of all your great kindness to me at Rome.

Ever your affectionate ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

* * * * *

_To Mr. Ruskin_

Florence: June 2, 1855.

My dear Mr. Ruskin,--I believe I shall rather prove in this letter how my head turns round when I write it, than explain why I didn't write it before--and so you will go on to think me the most insusceptible and least grateful of human beings--no small distinction in our bad obtuse world. Yet the truth is--oh, the truth is, that I am deeply grateful to you and have felt to the quick of my heart the meaning and kindness of your words, the worth of your sympathy and praise. One thing especially which you said, made me thankful that I had been allowed to live to hear it--since even to fancy that anything I had written could be the means of the least good to _you_, is worth all the trumpet blowing of a vulgar fame. Oh, of course, I do not exaggerate, though your generosity does. I understand the case as it is. We burn straw and it warms us. My verses catch fire from you as you read them, and so you see them in that light of your own. But it is something to be used to such an end by such a man, and I thank you, thank you, and so does my husband, for the deep pleasure you have given us in the words you have written.

And why not say so sooner? Just because I wanted to say so fully, and because I have been crushed into a corner past all elbow-room for doing anything largely and comfortably, by work and fuss and uncertainty of various kinds. Now it isn't any better scarcely, though it is quite fixed now that we are going from Florence to England--no more of the shadow dancing which is so pretty at the opera and so fatiguing in real life. We are coming, and have finished most of our preparations; conducted on a balance of--must we go? _may_ we stay? which is so very inconvenient. If you knew what it is to give up this still dream-life of our Florence, where if one is over-busy ever, the old tapestries on the walls and the pre-Giotto pictures (picked up by my husband for so many pauls) surround us ready to quiet us again--if you knew what it is to give it all up and be put into the mill of a dingy London lodging and ground very small indeed, you wouldn't be angry with us for being sorry to go north--you wouldn't think it unnatural. As for me, I have all sorts of pain in England--everything is against me, except a few things; and yet, while my husband and I groan at one another, strophe and antistrophe (pardon that rag of Greek!) we admit our compensations--that it will be an excellent thing, for instance, to see Mr. Ruskin! Are we likely to undervalue that?

Let me consider how to answer your questions. My poetry--which you are so good to, and which you once thought 'sickly,' you say, and why not? (I have often written sickly poetry, I do not doubt--I have been sickly myself!)--has been called by much harder names, 'affected' for instance, a charge I have never deserved, for I do think, if I may say it of myself, that the desire of speaking or _spluttering_ the real truth out broadly, may be a cause of a good deal of what is called in me careless and awkward expression. My friends took some trouble with me at one time; but though I am not self-willed naturally, as you will find when you know me, I hope, I never could adopt the counsel urged upon me to keep in sight always the stupidest person of my acquaintance in order to clear and judicious forms of composition. Will you set me down as arrogant, if I say that the longer I live in this writing and reading world, the more convinced I am that the mass of readers _never_ receive a poet (you, who are a poet yourself, must surely observe that) without intermediation? The few understand, appreciate, and distribute to the multitude below. Therefore to say a thing faintly, because saying it strongly sounds odd or obscure or unattractive for some reason, to 'careless readers,' does appear to me bad policy as well as bad art. Is not art, like virtue, to be practised for its own sake first? If we sacrifice our ideal to notions of immediate utility, would it not be better for us to write tracts at once?

Of course any remark of yours is to be received and considered with all reverence. Only, be sure you please to say, 'Do it differently to satisfy _me_, John Ruskin,' and not to satisfy Mr., Mrs., and the Miss and Master Smith of the great majority. The great majority is the majority of the little, you know, who will come over to you if you don't think of them--and if they don't, you will bear it.

Am I pert, do you think? No, _don't_ think it. And the truth is, though you may not see that, that your praise made me feel very humble. Nay, I was quite _abashed_ at the idea of the 'illumination' of my poem; and still I keep winking my eyes at the prospect of so much glory. If you were a woman, I might say, when one feels ugly one pulls down the blinds; but as a man you are superior to the understanding of such a figure, and so I must simply tell you that you honor me over much indeed. My husband is very much pleased, and particularly pleased that you selected 'Catarina,' which is his favourite among my poems for some personal fanciful reasons besides the rest.

But to go back. I said that any remark of yours was to be received by me in all reverence; and truth is a part of reverence, so I shall end by telling you the truth, that I think you quite wrong in your objection to 'nympholept.' Nympholepsy is no more a Greek word than epilepsy, and nobody would or could object to epilepsy or apoplexy as a Greek word. It's a word for a specific disease or mania among the ancients, that mystical passion for an invisible nymph common to a certain class of visionaries. Indeed, I am not the first in referring to it in English literature. De Quincey has done so in prose, for instance, and Lord Byron talks of 'The nympholepsy of a fond despair,' though _he_ never was accused of being overridden by his Greek. Tell me now if I am not justified, I also? We are all nympholepts in running after our ideals--and none more than yourself, indeed!

Our American friend Mr. Jarves wrote to us full of gratitude and gratification on account of your kindness to him, for which we also should thank you. Whether he felt most overjoyed by the clasp of your hand or that of a disembodied spirit, which he swears was as real (under the mediumship of Hume, his compatriot), it was somewhat difficult to distinguish. But all else in England seemed dull and worthless in comparison with those two 'manifestations,' the spirit's and yours!

How very very kind of your mother to think of my child! and how happy I am near the end of my paper, not to be tempted on into 'descriptions' that 'hold the place of sense.' He is six years old, he reads English and Italian, and writes without lines, and shall I send you a poem of his for 'illumination'? His poems are far before mine, the very prattle of the angels, when they stammer at first and are not sure of the pronunciation of _e_'s and _i_'s in the spiritual heavens (see Swedenborg). Really he is a sweet good child, and I am not bearable in my conceit of him, as you see! My thankful regards to your mother, whom I shall hope to meet with you, and do yourself accept as much from us both.

Most truly yours, ELIZABETH B. BROWNING.

We leave Florence next week, and spend at least a week in Paris, 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées.

* * * * *

_To Miss Browning_

Florence: June 12, 1855 [postmark].

How kind and tender of you, my dearest Sarianna, to care so much to hear that I am better! I was afraid that Robert had written in the Crimean style about me, for he was depressed and uneasy, poor darling, and looked at things from the blackest point of view. Nevertheless, I have escaped some bad symptoms. No spitting of blood, for instance, no loss of voice, and scarcely a threatening of pain in the side. Also I have not grown thinner than is natural under the circumstances. At Genoa (after our cold journey[45]) I _wasted_ in a few days, and thought much worse of myself than there was reason to do this time.

I can assure you I am now much restored. The cough is decidedly got under, and teases me, for the most part, only in the early morning; the fever is gone, and the nights are quiet. I am able to take animal food again, and shall soon recover my ordinary strength. Certainly it has been a bad attack, and I never suffered anything like it in Italy before. The illness at Genoa was the mere _tail_ of what began in England, and was increased by the Alpine exposure. Our weather has been very severe--wind and frost together--something peculiarly irritating in the air. I am loth to blame my poor Florence, who never treated me so before (and how many winters we have spent here!)--and our friends write from Pisa that the weather was as trying there, while from Rome the account is simply 'detestable weather.' At Naples it is sometimes furiously cold; there's no perfect climate anywhere, that's certain. You have only to choose the least evil. Here for the last week it has been so mild that, if I had been in my usual state of health, I might have gone out, they say; and, of course, I have felt the influence beneficially. One encourages oneself in Italy when it is cold, with the assurance that it can't last. Our misfortune this time has been that it has lasted unusually long. How the Italians manage without fires I cannot make out. So chilly as they are, too, it's a riddle.

You would wonder almost how I could feel the cold in these two rooms opening into each other, and from which I have not stirred since the cold weather began. Robert has kept up the fire in our bedroom throughout the night. Oh, he has been spoiling me so. If it had not been that I feared much to hurt him in having him so disturbed and worried, it would have been a very subtle luxury to me, this being ill and feeling myself dear. Do not set me down as too selfish. May God bless him!...

Robert has been frantic about the Crimea, and 'being disgraced in the face of Europe,' &c. &c. When he is mild he wishes the ministry to be torn to pieces in the streets, limb from limb. I do not doubt that the Aberdeen side of the Cabinet has been greatly to blame, but the system is the root of the whole evil; if they don't tear up the system they may tear up the Aberdeens 'world without end,' and not better the matter; if they do tear up the system, then shall we all have reason to rejoice at these disasters, apart from our sympathy with individual sufferings. More good will have been done by this one great shock to the heart of England than by fifty years' more patching, and pottering, and knocking impotent heads together. What makes me most angry is the ministerial apology. 'It's always so with us for three campaigns,'!!! 'it's our way,' 'it's want of experience,' &c. &c. That's precisely the thing complained of. As to want of experience, if the French have had Algerine experiences, we have had our Indian wars, Chinese wars, Caffre wars, and military and naval expenses _exceeding_ those of France from year to year. If our people had never had to pay for an army, they might sit down quietly under the taunt of wanting experience. But we have soldiers, and soldiers should have military education as well as red coats, and be led by properly qualified officers, instead of Lord Nincompoop's youngest sons. As it is in the army, so it is in the State. Places given away, here and there, to incompetent heads; nobody being responsible, no unity of idea and purpose anywhere--the individual interest always in the way of the general good. There is a noble heart in our people, strong enough if once roused, to work out into light and progression, and correct all these evils. Robert is a good deal struck by the generous tone of the observations of the French press, as contradistinguished from the insolences of the Americans, who really are past enduring just now. Certain of our English friends here in Florence have ceased to associate with them on that ground. I think there's a good deal of jealousy about the French alliance. That may account for something....

Dearest, kindest Sarianna, remember not to think any more about me, except that I love you, that I am your attached

BA.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] _Life and Letters of Robert Browning_, by Mrs. Sutherland Orr, p. 216.

[16] The late Earl Lytton.

[17] Auguste Brizieux

[18] _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, published in 1852.

[19] Mrs. Jameson's _Legends of the Madonna_.

[20] General Franklin Pierce.

[21] 'Tamerton Church Tower, and other Poems.'

[22] In a letter to Miss Mitford, written four days later than this, Mrs. Browning alludes again to the performance of 'Colombe's Birthday:' 'Yes--Robert's play succeeded, but there could be no "run" for a play of that kind; it was a _succès d'estime_ and something more, which is surprising, perhaps, considering the miserable acting of the men. Miss Faucit was alone in doing us justice.'

[23] A few lines have been cut off the letter at this place.

[24] A letter to the _Athenæum_ on July 2, 1853, giving the result of some experiments in table-turning, the tendency of which was to show that the motion of the table was due to unconscious muscular action on the part of the persons touching the table.

[25] Senatore Villari.

[26] Mr. George Barrett. The omitted passage describes an act of generosity by him to one of his younger brothers.

[27] Hardly a successful horoscope of the future Ambassador at Paris and Viceroy of India.

[28] Afterwards wife of Signor Carlo Botta, an Italian man of letters, with whom she returned to America and lived in New York.

[29] This refers to the death of the infant child of the Storys, with whom Mr. and Mrs. Browning were on intimate terms of friendship, as the previous letters show.

[30] According to Mr. R.B. Browning, this is practically what has happened with Page's portrait of Robert Browning (now in Venice). The surface has become thick and waxy, and the portrait has almost disappeared.

[31] Author of 'IX. Poems, by V.' (1840).

[32] This portrait is now in the possession of Mr. R.B. Browning at Venice.

[33] _I.e._ 'grandfather,' a name by which Mr. Browning, senior, is frequently referred to in these letters.

[34] 'Hush, hush!'

[35] For the subsequent fate of this picture, see note on p. 148, above. [Transcriber's note: Reference is to Footnote [30].]

[36] To Mr. Barrett.

[37] This letter is written in very faint ink.

[38] The news of Inkerman had come only a few days before.

[39] Mrs. Browning's 'Song for the Ragged Schools of London' (_Poetical Works_, iv. 270) and her husband's 'The Twins' were printed together as a small pamphlet for sale at Miss Arabella Barrett's bazaar. Mrs. Browning's poem had been written before they left Rome.

[40] The horrors of the Crimean winter were now becoming known, which fully accounts for this outburst.

[41] The death of Mrs. Jameson's husband in 1854 had left her in very straitened circumstances, which were ultimately relieved, in part, by a subscription among her friends and the admirers of her works.

[42] Dr. Braun's _Ruins and Museums of Rome_ (1854).

[43] The late Lord Leighton, P.R.A.

[44] The picture of Cimabue's Madonna carried in procession through the streets of Florence. It was exhibited in the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1855, and was bought by the Queen.

[45] In 1852.