Affectionately yours and gratefully,
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

_To Miss Mitford_

[Paris],138 Avenue des Ch.-Elysées:
May 9, [1852].

I began a long letter to you in the impulse left by yours upon me, and
then destroyed it by accident. That hindered me from writing as soon as
I should have done, for indeed I am anxious to have other news of you,
my dearest dear Miss Mitford, and to know, if possible, that you are a
little better.... Tell me everything. Why, you looked really well last
summer; and I want to see you looking well this summer, for we shall
probably be in London in June--more's the pity, perhaps! The gladness I
have in England is so leavened through and through with sadness that I
incline to do with it as one does with the black bread of the monks of
Vallombrosa, only pretend to eat it and drop it slyly under the table.
If it were not for some ties I would say 'Farewell, England,' and never
set foot on it again. There's always an east wind for _me_ in England,
whether the sun shines or not--the moral east wind which is colder than
any other. But how dull to go on talking of the weather: _Sia come
vuole_, as we say in Italy.

To-morrow is the great _fête_ of your Louis Napoleon, the distribution
of the eagles. We have done our possible and impossible to get tickets,
because I had taken strongly into my head to want to go, and because
Robert, who didn't care for it himself, cared for it for me; but here's
the eleventh hour and our prospects remain gloomy. We did not apply
sufficiently soon, I am afraid, and the name of the applicants has been
legion. It will be a grand sight, and full of significances.
Nevertheless, the empire won't come _so_; you will have to wait a little
for the Empire. Who were your financial authorities who praised Louis
Napoleon? and do the same approve of the late measure about the three
per cents.? I am so absolutely _bête_ upon such subjects that I don't
even _pretend_ to be intelligent; but I heard yesterday from a direct
source that Rothschild expressed a high admiration of the President's
financial ability. A friend of that master in Israel said it to our
friend Lady Elgin. Commerce is reviving, money is pouring in, confidence
is being restored on all sides. Even the Press palpitates again--ah, but
I wish it were a little freer of the corset. This Government is not
after my heart after all. I only tolerate what appear to me the
necessities of an exceptional situation. The masses are satisfied and
hopeful, and the President stronger and stronger--not by the sword, may
it please the English Press, but by the democracy.

I am delighted to see that the French Government has protested against
the reactionary iniquities of the Tuscan Grand Duke, and every day I
expect eagerly some helping hand to be stretched out to Rome. I have
looked for this from the very first, and certainly it is significant
that the Prince of Canino, the late President of the Roman Republic,
should be in favour at the Elysée. Pio Nono's time is but short, I
fancy--that is, reforms will be forced upon him.

When George Sand had audience with the President, he was very kind; did
I tell you that? At the last he said: 'Vous verrez, vous serez contente
de moi.' To which she answered, 'Et vous, vous serez content de moi.' It
was repeated to me as to the great dishonour of Madame Sand, and as a
proof that she could not resist the influence of power and was a bad
republican. I, on the contrary, thought the story quite honourable to
both parties. It was for the sake of her _rouge_ friends that she
approached the President at all, and she has used the hand he stretched
out to her only on behalf of persons in prison and distress. The same,
being delivered, call her gratefully a recreant.

Victor Cousin and Villemain refuse to take the oath, and lose their
situations in the Academy accordingly; but they retire on pensions, and
it's their own fault of course. Michelet and Quinet should have an
equivalent, I think, for what they have lost; they are worthy, as poets,
orators, dreamers, speculative thinkers--as anything, in fact, but
instructors of youth.

No, there is a brochure, or a little book somewhere, pretending to be a
memoir of Balzac, but I have not seen it. Some time before his death he
had bought a country place, and there was a fruit tree in the garden--I
think a walnut tree--about which he delighted himself in making various
financial calculations after the manner of César Birotteau. He built the
house himself, and when it was finished there was just one defect--it
wanted a staircase. They had to put in the staircase afterwards. The
picture gallery, however, had been seen to from the first, and the great
writer had chalked on the walls, 'Mon Raffaelle,' 'Mon Corrège,' 'Mon
Titien,' 'Mon Léonard de Vinci,' the pictures being yet unattained. He
is said to have been a little loth to spend money, and to have liked to
dine magnificently at the restaurant at the expense of his friends,
forgetting to pay for his own share of the entertainment. For the rest,
the 'idée fixe' of the man was to be rich one day, and he threw his
subtle imagination and vital poetry into pounds, shillings, and pence
with such force that he worked the base element into spiritual
splendours. Oh! to think of our having missed seeing that man. It is
painful. A little book is published of his 'thoughts and maxims,' the
sweepings of his desk I suppose; broken notes, probably, which would
have been wrought up into some noble works, if he had lived. Some of
these are very striking.

Lamartine has not yet paid us the promised visit. Just as we were
beginning to feel vexed we heard that the intermediate friend who was to
have brought him had been caught up by the Government and sent off to
Saint-Germain to 'faire le mort,' on pain of being sent farther. I mean
Eugène Belleton. If he talked in many places as he talked in this room,
I can't be very much surprised, but I am really very sorry. He is one of
those amiable domestic men who delight in talking 'battle, murder, and
sudden death.'

[_The end of this letter is wanting_]

_To Miss Mulock_

[Paris], 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:
June 2, [1852].

My husband went directly to Rue Vivienne and came back without the book.
We waited and waited, but at last it reached us, and we have read it,
and since then I have let some days go by through having been unwell.
You seemed to let me sit still in my chair and do nothing; you did not
call too loud. So was it with most other things in the universe. Now,
having awakened from my somnolency, recovered from 'La Grippe' (or what
mortal Londoners call the influenza), the first person and first book I
think of must naturally be you and yours.

So I thank you much, much, for the book. It has interested me, dear Miss
Mulock, as a book should, and I am delighted to recognise everywhere
undeniable talent and faculty, combined with high and pure aspiration. A
clever book, a graceful book, and with the moral grace besides--thank
you. Many must have thanked you as well as myself.

At the same time, precisely because I feel particularly obliged to you,
I mean to tell you the truth. Your hero is heroic from his own point of
view--accepting his own view of the situation, which I, for one, cannot
accept, do you know, for I am of opinion that both you and he are rather
conventional on the subject of his marriage. I don't in the least
understand, at this moment, why he should not have married in the first
volume; no, not in the least. It was a matter of income, he would tell
me, and of keeping two establishments; and I would answer that it ought
rather to have been a matter of faith in God and in the value of God's
gifts, the greatest of which is love. I am romantic about love--oh, much
more than you are, though older than you. A man's life does not develop
rightly without it, and what is called an 'improvident marriage' often
appears to me a noble, righteous, and prudent act. Your Ninian was a man
before he was a brother. I hold that he had no right to sacrifice a
great spiritual good of his own to the worldly good of his family,
however he made it out. He should have said: 'God gives me this gift, He
will find me energy to work for it and suffer for it. We will all live
together, struggle together if it is necessary, a little more poorly, a
little more laboriously, but keeping true to the best aims of life, all
of us.'

That's what _my_ Ninian would have said. I don't like to see noble
Ninians crushed flat under family Juggernauts, from whatever heroic
motives--not I. Do you forgive me for being so candid?

I must tell you that Mrs. Jameson, who is staying in this house, read
your book in England and mentioned it to me as a good book, 'very
gracefully written,' before I read it, quite irrespectively, too, of my
dedication, which was absent from the copy she saw at Brighton. It was
mentioned as one of the novels which had pleased her most lately.

I shall like to show you my child, as you like children, and as I am
vain--oh, past endurance vain, about him. You won't understand a word he
says, though, for he speaks three languages at once, and most of the
syllables of each wrong side foremost.

No, don't call me a Bonapartist. I am not a Bonapartist indeed. But I am
a Democrat and singularly (in these days) consequent about universal
suffrage. Also, facts in England have been much mis-stated; but there's
no room for politics to-day.

When I thank you, remember that my husband thanks you. We both hope to
see you before this month shall be quite at an end, and then you will
know me better, I hope; and though I shall lose a great deal by your
knowing me, of course, yet you won't, _after that_, make such mistakes
as you 'confess' in this note which I have just read over again. Did I
think you 'sentimental'? Won't you rather think _me_ sentimental to-day?
Through it all,

Your affectionate
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

_To Mrs. Martin_

[Paris], 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:
June 16, [1852].

My first word must be to thank you, my dearest kind friend, for your
affectionate words to me and mine, which always, from you, sink deeply.
It was, on my part, great gratification to see you and talk to you and
hear you talk, and, above all, perhaps, to feel that you loved me still
a little. May God bless you both! And may we meet again and again in
Paris and elsewhere; in London this summer to begin with! As the
Italians would say in relation to any like pleasure: 'Sarebbe una
_benedizione_.'

We are waiting for the English weather to be reported endurable in order
to set out. Mrs. Streatfield, who has been in England these twelve days,
writes to certify that it is past the force of a Parisian imagination to
imagine the state of the skies and the atmosphere; yet, even in Paris,
we have been moaning the last four days, because really, since then, we
have gone back to April, and a rather cool April, with alternate showers
and sunshine--a crisis, however, which does not call for fires, nor
inflict much harm on me. It was the thunder, we think, that upset the
summer.

You seem to have had a sort of inkling about my brittleness when you
were here. It was the beginning of a bad attack of cough and pain in the
side, the consequence of which was that I turned suddenly into the
likeness of a ghost and frightened Robert from his design of going to
England. About that I am by no means regretful; he was not wanted, as
the event proved abundantly. The worst was that he was annoyed by the
number of judicious observers and miserable comforters who told him I
was horribly changed and ought to be taken back to Italy forthwith. I
knew it was nothing but an accidental attack, and that the results would
pass away, as they did. I kept quiet, applied mustard poultices, and am
now looking again (tell dear Mr. Martin) 'as if I had shammed.' So all
these misfortunes are strictly historical, you are to understand.
To-night we are going to Ary Scheffer's to hear music and to see ever so
many celebrities. Oh, and let me remember to tell you that M. Thierry,
the blind historian, has sent us a message by his physician to ask us to
go to see him, and as a matter of course we go. Madame Viardot, the
prima donna, and Leonard, the first violin player at the Conservatoire,
are to be at M. Scheffer's.

After all, you are too right. The less amused I am, clearly the better
for me. I should live ever so many years more by being shut up in a
hermitage, if it were warm and dry. More's the pity, when one wants to
see and hear as I do. The only sort of excitement and fatigue which does
me no harm, but good, is _travelling_. The effect of the continual
change of air is to pour in oil as the lamp burns; so I explain the
extraordinary manner in which I bear the fatigue of being
four-and-twenty hours together in a diligence, for instance, which many
strong women would feel too much for them.

All this talking of myself when I want to talk of you and to tell you
how touched I was by the praises of your winning little Letitia!
Enclosed is a note to Chapman & Hall which will put her 'bearer' (if she
can find one in London) in possession of the two volumes in question. I
shall like her to have them, and she must try to find my love, as the
King of France did the poison (a 'most unsavoury simile,' certainly),
between the leaves. I send with them, in any case, my best love. Ah, so
sorry I am that she has suffered from the weather you have had. She is a
most interesting child, and of a nature which is rare....

Robert's warm regards, with those of your

Ever affectionate and grateful
BA.

Madame Viardot is George Sand's heroine Consuelo. You know that
beautiful book.

With the last days of June the long stay in Paris came to an end, and
the Brownings paid their second visit to London. Their residence on this
occasion was at 58 Welbeck Street ('very respectable rooms this time,
and at a moderate price'), and here they stayed until the beginning of
November. Neither husband nor wife seems to have written much poetry
during this year, either in Paris or in London.

_To Miss Mitford_

[London], 58 Welbeck Street: Saturday,
[June-July 1852].

 ... We saw your book in Paris, the Galignani edition, and I read it all
except the one thing I had not courage to read. Thank you, thank you. We
are both of us grateful to you for your most generous and heartwarm
intentions to us. As to the book, it's a book made to go east and west;
it's a popular book with flowers from the 'village' laid freshly and
brightly between the critical leaves. I don't always agree with you. I
think, for instance, that Mary Anne Browne should never be compared to
George Sand in 'passion,' and I can't grant to you that your extracts
from her poems bear you out to even one fiftieth degree in such an
opinion. I agree with you just as little with regard to Dr. Holmes and
certain others. But to _have_ your opinion is always a delightful thing,
and 'it is characteristic of your generosity,' to say the least, we say
to ourselves when we are 'dissidents' most.

I am writing in the extremest haste, just a word to announce our arrival
in England. We are in very comfortable rooms in 58 Welbeck Street, and
my sister Henrietta is some twenty doors away. To-morrow Robert and I
are going to Wimbledon for a day to dear Mr. Kenyon, who looks radiantly
well and has Mr. Landor for a companion just now. Imagine the uproar and
turmoil of our first days in London, and believe that I think of you
faithfully and tenderly through all. I am overjoyed to see my sisters,
who look well on the whole ... and they and everybody assure me that I
show a very satisfactory face to my country, as far as improved looks
go.

What nonsense one writes when one has but a moment to write in. I find
people talking about the 'facts in the "Times"' touching Louis Napoleon.
Facts in the 'Times'!

The heat is _stifling_. Do send one word to say how you are, and love me
always as I love you.

Your most affectionate
BA.

_To Miss Mitford_

58 Welbeck Street: Friday, July 31, 1852 [postmark].

I want to hear about you again, dear, dearest Miss Mitford, and I can't
hear. Will you send me a line or a word.... I mean to go down to see you
one day, but certainly we must account it right not to tire you while
you are weak, and not to spoil our enjoyment by forestalling it. Two
months are full of days; we can afford to wait. Meantime let us have a
little gossip such as the gods allow of.

Dear Mr. Kenyon has not yet gone to Scotland, though his intentions
still stand north. He passed an evening with us some evenings ago, and
was brilliant and charming (the two things together), and good and
affectionate at the same time. Mr. Landor was staying with him (perhaps
I told you that), and went away into Worcestershire, assuring me, when
he took leave of me, that he would never enter London again. A week
passes, and lo! Mr. Kenyon expects him again. Resolutions are not always
irrevocable, you observe.

I must tell you what Landor said about Louis Napoleon. You are aware
that he loathed the first Napoleon and that he hates the French nation;
also, he detests the present state of French affairs, and has foamed
over in the 'Examiner' 'in prose and rhyme' on the subject of them.
Nevertheless, he who calls 'the Emperor' 'an infernal fool' expresses
himself to this effect about the President: 'I always knew him to be a
man of wonderful genius. I knew him intimately, and I was persuaded of
what was in him. When people have said to me, "How can you like to waste
your time with so trifling a man?" I have answered: "If all your Houses
of Parliament, putting their heads together, could make a head equal to
this trifling man's head it would be well for England."

It was quite unexpected to me to hear Mr. Landor talk so.

He, Mr. Landor, is looking as young as ever, as full of life and
passionate energy.

Did Mr. Horne write to you before he went to Australia? Did I speak to
you about his going? Did you see the letter which he put into the papers
as a farewell to England? I think of it all sadly.

Mazzini came to see us the other day, with that pale spiritual face of
his, and those intense eyes full of melancholy illusions. I was
thinking, while he sate there, on what Italian turf he would lie at last
with a bullet in his heart, or perhaps with a knife in his back, for to
one of those ends it will surely come. Mrs. Carlyle came with him. She
is a great favorite of mine: full of thought, and feeling, and
character, it seems to me.

London is emptying itself, and the relief will be great in a certain
way; for one gets exhausted sometimes. Let me remember whom I have seen.
Mrs. Newton Crosland, who spoke of you very warmly; Miss Mulock, who
wrote 'The Ogilvies' (that series of novels), and is interesting,
gentle, and young, and seems to have worked half her life in spite of
youth; Mr. Field we have not seen, only heard of; Miss ----, no--but I
am to see her, I understand, and that she is an American Corinna in
yellow silk, but pretty. We drove out to Kensington with Monckton Milnes
and his wife, and I like her; she is quiet and kind, and seems to have
accomplishments, and we are to meet Fanny Kemble at the Procters some
day next week. Many good faces, but the best wanting. Ah, I wish Lord
Stanhope, who shows the spirits of the sun in a crystal ball, could show
us _that_! Have you heard of the crystal ball?[14] We went to meet it
and the seer the other morning, with sundry of the believers and
unbelievers--among the latter, chief among the latter, Mr. Chorley, who
was highly indignant and greatly scandalised, particularly on account of
the combination sought to be established by the lady of the house
between lobster salad and Oremus, spirit of the sun. For my part, I
endured both luncheon and spiritual phenomena with great equanimity. It
was very curious altogether to my mind, as a sign of the times, if in no
other respect of philosophy. But I love the marvellous. Write a word to
me, I beseech you, and love me and think of me, as I love and think of
you. God bless you. Robert's love.

Your ever affectionate
BA.

_To Mrs. Jameson_

58 Welbeck Street: Tuesday, [July-October 1852].

Dearest Monna Nina,--Here are the verses. I did them all because that
was easiest to me, but of course you will extract the two you want.

It has struck me besides that you might care to see this old ballad
which I find among my papers from one of the Percy or other antiquarian
Society books, and which I transcribed years ago, modernising slightly
in order to make out some sort of rhythm as I went on. I did this
because the original poem impressed me deeply with its pathos. I wish I
could send you the antique literal poem, but I haven't it, nor know
where to find it; still, I don't think I quite spoilt it with the very
slight changes ventured by me in the transcription.

God bless you. Let us meet on Wednesday. Robert's best love, with that
of your ever affectionate

BA.

    STABAT MATER

    Mother full of lamentation,
    Near that cross she wept her passion,
      Whereon hung her child and Lord.
    Through her spirit worn and wailing,
    Tortured by the stroke and failing,
      Passed and pierced the prophet's sword.

    Oh, sad, sore, above all other,
    Was that ever blessed mother
      Of the sole-begotten one;
    She who mourned and moaned and trembled
    While she measured, nor dissembled,
      Such despairs of such a son!

    Where's the man could hold from weeping,
    If Christ's mother he saw keeping
      Watch with mother-heart undone?
    Who could hold from grief, to view her,
    Tender mother true and pure,
      Agonising with her Son?

    For her people's sins she saw Him
    Down the bitter deep withdraw Him
      'Neath the scourge and through the dole!
    Her sweet Son she contemplated
    Nailed to death, and desolated,
      While He breathed away His soul.

    E.B.B.

    BALLAD--_Beginning of Edward II.'s Reign_

    'Stand up, mother, under cross,
    Smile to help thy Son at loss.
      Blythe, O mother, try to be!'
    'Son, how can I blythely stand,
    Seeing here Thy foot and hand
      Nailèd to the cruel tree?'

    'Mother, cease thy weeping blind.
    I die here for all mankind,
      Not for guilt that I have done.'
    'Son, I feel Thy deathly smart.
    The sword pierces through my heart,
      Prophesied by Simeon.'

    'Mother, mercy! let me die,
    Adam out of hell to buy,
      And his kin who are accurst.'
    'Son, what use have I for breath?
    Sorrow wasteth me to death--
      Let my dying come the first.'

    'Mother, pity on thy Son!
    Bloody tears be running down
      Worse to bear than death to meet!'
    'Son, how can I cease from weeping?
    Bloody streams I see a-creeping
      From Thine heart against my feet.'

    'Mother, now I tell thee, I!
    Better is it one should die
      Than all men to hell should go.'
    'Son, I see Thy body hang
    Foot and hand in piercèd pang.
      Who can wonder at my woe?'

    'Mother, now I will thee tell,
    If I live, thou goest to hell--
      I must die here for thy sake.'
    'Son, Thou art so mild and kind,
    Nature, knowledge have enjoined
      I, for Thee, this wail must make.'

    'Mother, ponder now this thing:
    Sorrow childbirth still must bring,
      Sorrow 'tis to have a son!'
    'Ay, still sorrow, I can tell!
    Mete it by the pain of hell,
      Since more sorrow can be none.'

    'Mother, pity mother's care!
    Now as mother dost thou fare,
      Though of maids the purest known.'
    'Son, Thou help at every need
    All those who before me plead--
      Maid, wife--woman, everyone.'

    'Mother, here I cannot dwell.
    Time is that I pass to hell,
      And the third day rise again.'
    'Son, I would depart with Thee.
    Lo! Thy wounds are slaying me.
      Death has no such sorrow--none.'

    When He rose, then fell her sorrow.
    Sprang her bliss on the third morrow.
      A blythe mother wert thou so!
    Lady, for that selfsame bliss,
    Pray thy Son who peerless is,
      Be our shield against our foe.

    Blessed be thou, full of bliss!
    Let us not heaven's safety miss,
      Never! through thy sweet Son's might.
    Jesus, for that selfsame blood
    Which Thou sheddest upon rood,
      Bring us to the heavenly light.

_To Mrs. Martin_

58 Welbeck Street: Thursday, [September 2, 1852].

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--Your letters always make me glad to see them,
but this time the pleasure was tempered by an undeniable pain in the
conscience. Oh, I ought to have written long and long ago. I have
another letter of yours unanswered. Also, there was a proposition in it
to Robert of a tempting character, and he put off the 'no'--the
ungracious-sounding 'no'--as long as he could. He would have liked to
have seen Mrs. Flood, as well as you; she is a favorite with us both.
But he finds it impossible to leave London. We have had no less than
eight invitations into the country, and we are forced to keep to London,
in spite of all 'babbling about' and from 'green fields.' Once we went
to Farnham, and spent two days with Mr. and Mrs. Paine there in that
lovely heathy country, and met Mr. Kingsley, the 'Christian Socialist,'
author of 'Alton Locke,' 'Yeast,' &c. It is only two hours from town (or
less) by railroad, and we took our child with us and Flush, and had a
breath of fresh air which ought to have done us good, but didn't. Few
men have impressed me more agreeably than Mr. Kingsley. He is original
and earnest, and full of a genial and almost tender kindliness which is
delightful to me. Wild and theoretical in many ways he is of course, but
I believe he could not be otherwise than good and noble, let him say or
dream what he will. You are not to confound this visit of ours to
Farnham with the 'sanitary reform' picnic (!) to the same place, at
which the newspapers say we were present. We were _invited_--that is
true--but did not go, nor thought of it. I am not up to picnics--nor
_down_ to some of the company perhaps; who knows? Don't think me grown,
too, suddenly scornful, without being sure of the particulars....

Mr. Tennyson has a little son, and wrote me such three happy notes on
the occasion that I really never liked him so well before. I do like men
who are not ashamed to be happy beside a cradle. Monckton Milnes had a
brilliant christening luncheon, and his baby was made to sweep in India
muslin and Brussels lace among a very large circle of admiring guests.
Think of my vanity turning my head completely and admitting of my taking
Wiedeman there (because of an express invitation). He behaved like an
angel, everybody said, and looked very pretty, I said myself; only he
disgraced us all at last by refusing to kiss the baby, on the ground of
his being 'troppo grande.' He has learnt quantities of English words,
and is in consequence more unintelligible than ever. Poor darling! I am
in pain about him to-day. Wilson goes to spend a fortnight with her
mother, and I don't know how I shall be comforter enough. There will be
great wailing and gnashing of teeth certainly, and I shall be in prison
for the next two weeks, and have to do all the washing and dressing
myself....

Your ever affectionate
BA.

_To Miss Mitford_

58 Welbeck Street:
Saturday, September 14, 1852 [postmark].

My dearest Miss Mitford,--I am tied and bound beyond redemption for the
next fortnight at least, therefore the hope of seeing you must be for
_afterwards_. I dare say you think that a child can be stowed away like
other goods; but I do assure you that my child, though quite capable of
being amused by his aunts for a certain number of half-hours, would
break his little heart if I left him for a whole day while he had not
Wilson. When she is here, he is contented. In her absence he is
sceptical about happiness, and suspicious of complete desolation. Every
now and then he says to me, 'Will mama' (saying it in his pretty,
broken, unquotable language) 'go away and leave Peninni all alone?' He
won't let a human being touch him. I wash and dress him, and have him to
sleep with me, and Robert is the only other helper he will allow of.
'There's spoiling of a child!' say you. But he is so good and tender and
sensitive that we can't go beyond a certain line. For instance, I was
quite frightened about the effect of Wilson's leaving him. We managed to
prepare him as well as we could, and when he found she was actually
gone, the passion of grief I had feared was just escaped. He struggled
with himself, the eyes full of tears, and the lips quivering, but there
was not any screaming and crying such as made me cry last year on a like
occasion. He had made up his mind.

You see I can't go to you just now, whatever temptations you hold out.
Wait--oh, we must wait. And whenever I do go to you, you will see Robert
at the same time. He will like to see _you_; and besides, he would as
soon trust me to travel to Reading alone as I trust Peninni to be alone
here. I believe he thinks I should drop off my head and leave it under
the seat of the rail-carriage if he didn't take care of it....

I ought to have told you that Mr. Kingsley (one of the reasons why I
liked him) spoke warmly and admiringly of you. Yes, I ought to have told
you that--his praise is worth having. Of course I have heard much of Mr.
Harness from Mr. Kenyon and you, as well as from my own husband. But
there is no use in measuring temptations; I am a female St. Anthony, and
_won't_ be overcome. The Talfourds wanted me to dine with them on
Monday. Robert goes alone. You don't mention Mr. Chorley. Didn't he find
his way to you?

Mr. Patmore told us that Tennyson was writing a poem on Arthur--_not_ an
epic, a collection of poems, ballad and otherwise, united by the
subject, after the manner of 'In Memoriam,' but in different measures.
The work will be full of beauty, whatever it is, I don't doubt.

I am reading more Dumas. He never flags. I _must_ see Dumas when I go
again to Paris, and it will be easy, as we know his friend Jadin.

Did you read Mrs. Norton's last book--the novel, which seems to be so
much praised? Tell me what it is, in your mind....

I will write no more, that you may have the answer to my kind
proposition as soon as possible. _After the fortnight._

God bless you.

Your ever affectionate
E.B.B.

_To Miss Mitford_

58 Welbeck Street: Tuesday, [September 1852].

Alas, no; I cannot go to you before the Saturday you name, nor for some
days after, dearest friend. It is simply impossible. Wilson has not come
back, nor will till the end of next week, and though I can get away from
my child for two or three hours at once during the daytime, for the
whole day I could not go. What would become of him, poor darling?...

And I can't go to you this week, nor next week, probably. How vexatious!
My comfort is that you seem to be better--much, much better--and that
you have courage to think of the pony carriages and the Kingsleys of the
earth. That man impressed me much, interested me much. The more you see
of him, the more you will like him, is my prophecy. He has a volume of
poems, I hear, close upon publication, and Robert and I are looking
forward to it eagerly.

Mr. Ruskin has been to see us (did I tell you that?)... We went to
Denmark Hill yesterday by agreement, to see the Turners--which, by the
way, are divine. I like Mr. Ruskin much, and so does Robert. Very
gentle, yet earnest--refined and truthful. I like him very much. We
count him among the valuable acquaintances made this year in England....

Mr. Kenyon has come back, and most other people are gone away; but he is
worth more than most other people, so the advantage remains to the
scale. I am delighted that you should have your dear friend Mr. Harness
with you, and, for my own part, I do feel grateful to him for the good
he has evidently done you. Oh, continue to be better! Don't overtire
yourself--don't use improvidently the new strength. Remember the winter,
and be wise; and let me see you, before it comes, looking as bright and
well as I thought you last year. God bless you always.

Love your ever affectionate
BA.

Robert's love.

_To Miss Mitford_

London: Friday, [October 6, 1852].

My dearest Miss Mitford,--I am quite in pain to have to write a farewell
to you after all. As soon as Wilson had returned--and she stayed away
much longer than last year--we found ourselves pushed to the edge of our
time for remaining in England, and the accumulation of business to be
done before we could go pressed on us. I am almost mad with the amount
of things to be done, as it is; but I should have put the visit to you
at the head of them, and swept all the rest on one side for a day, if it
hadn't been for the detestable weather, and my horrible cough which
combines with it. When Wilson came back she found me coughing in my old
way, and it has been without intermission up to now, or rather waxing
worse and worse. To have gone down to you and inflicted the noise of it
on you would have simply made you nervous, while the risk to myself
would have been very great indeed. Still, I have waited and waited,
feeling it scarcely possible to write to you to say, 'I am not coming
this year.' Ah, I am so very sorry and disappointed! I hoped against
hope for a break in the weather, and an improvement in myself; now we
must go, and there is no hope. For about a fortnight I have been a
prisoner in the house. This climate won't let me live, there's the
truth. So we are going on Monday. We go to Paris for a week or two, and
then to Florence, and then to Rome, and then to Naples; but we shall be
back next year, if God pleases, and then I shall seize an early summer
day to run down straight to you and find you stronger, if God blesses me
so far. Think of me and love me a little meanwhile. I shall do it by
you. And do, _do_--since there is no time to hear from you in
London--send a fragment of a note to Arabel for me, that I may have it
in Paris before we set out on our long Italian journey. Let me have the
comfort of knowing exactly how you are before we set out. As for me, I
expect to be better on crossing the Channel. How people manage to live
and enjoy life in this fog and cold is inexplicable to me. I understand
the system of the American rapping spirits considerably better....

The Tennysons in their kindest words pressed us to be present at their
child's christening, which took place last Tuesday, but I could not go;
it was not possible. Robert went alone, therefore, and nursed the baby
for ten or twelve minutes, to its obvious contentment, he flatters
himself. It was christened Hallam Tennyson. Mr. Hallam was the
godfather, and present in his vocation. That was touching, wasn't it? I
hear that the Laureate talks vehemently against the French President and
the French; but for the rest he is genial and good, and has been quite
affectionate to us....

So I go without seeing you. Grieved I am. Love me to make amends.

Robert's love goes with me.

Your ever affectionate
BA.

_To John Kenyon_

[Paris,] Hôtel de la Ville-l'Évêque, Rue Ville-l'Évêque:
Thursday, [November 1852].

My dearest Mr. Kenyon,--I cannot do better to-day than keep my promise
to you about writing. We have done our business in Paris, but we linger
from the inglorious reason that we, experienced travellers as we are,
actually left a desk behind us in Bentinck Street, and must get it
before we go farther. Meanwhile, it's rather dangerous to let the charm
of Paris work--the honey will be clogging our feet very soon, and make
it difficult to go away. What an attractive place this is, to be sure!
How the sun shines, how the blue sky spreads, how the life lives, and
how kind the people are on all sides! If we were going anywhere but to
Italy, and if I were a little less plainly mortal with this disagreeable
cough of mine, I would gladly stay and see in the Empire with M.
Proudhon in the tail of it, and sit as a watcher over whatever things
shall be this year and next spring at Paris. As it is, we have been very
fortunate, as usual, in being present in a balcony on the boulevard, the
best place possible for seeing the grandest spectacle in the world, the
reception of Louis Napoleon last Saturday. The day was brilliant, and
the sweep of sunshine over the streaming multitude, and all the military
and civil pomp, made it difficult to distinguish between the light and
life. The sunshine seemed literally to push back the houses to make room
for the crowd, and the wide boulevards looked wider than ever. If you
had cursed the sentiment of the day ever so, you would have had eyes for
its picturesqueness, I think, so I wish you had been there to see.
Louis Napoleon showed his usual tact and courage by riding on horseback
quite alone, at least ten paces between himself and his nearest escort,
which of course had a striking effect, taking the French on their weak
side, and startling even Miss Cushman (who had been murmuring
displeasure into my ear for an hour) into an exclamation of 'That's
fine, I must say.' Little Wiedeman was in a state of ecstasy, and has
been recounting ever since how he called '"Vive Napoléon!" _molto molto
duro_,' meaning _very loud_ (his Italian is not very much more correct,
you know, than his other languages), and how Napoleon took off his hat
to him directly. I don't see the English papers, but I conclude you are
all furious. You must make up your minds to it nevertheless--the Empire
is certain, and the feeling of all but unanimity (whatever the motive)
throughout France obvious enough. Smooth down the lion's mane of the
'Examiner,' and hint that roaring over a desert is a vain thing. As to
Victor Hugo's book, the very enemies of the present state of affairs
object to it that _he lies_ simply. There is not enough truth in it for
an invective to rest on, still less for an argument. It's an
inarticulate cry of a bird of prey, wild and strong irrational, and not
a book at all. For my part I did wave my handkerchief for the new
Emperor, but I bore the show very well, and said to myself, 'God bless
the people!' as the man who, to my apprehension, represents the
democracy, went past. A very intelligent Frenchman, caught in the crowd
and forced to grope his way slowly along, told me that the expression of
opinion everywhere was curiously the same, not a dissenting mutter did
he hear. Strange, strange, all this! For the drama of history we must
look to France, for startling situations, for the 'points' which thrill
you to the bone....

May God bless you meantime! Take care of yourself for the sake of us all
who love you, none indeed more affectionately and gratefully than

R.B. and E.B.B.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The Holy Scriptures.

[2] Miss Haworth was a friend of Mr. Browning from very early days, and
was commemorated by him in 'Sordello' under the name of 'Eyebright' (see
Mrs. Orr's _Life_, p. 86). Her acquaintance with Mrs. Browning began
with this visit to London, and ripened into a warm friendship. One
subject of interest which they had in common was mesmerism, with the
attendant mysteries of spiritualism and Swedenborgianism; and references
to these are frequent in Mrs. Browning's letters to her.

[3] So spelt in the earlier letters, but subsequently modified to
'Penini.'

[4] Miss Mitford had lately moved into her new home at Swallowfield,
about three miles from the old cottage at Three Mile Cross, commemorated
in 'Our Village.'

[5] The article was by M. Joseph Milsand, and led to the formation of
the warm friendship between him and Mr. Browning which lasted until the
death of the former in 1886.

[6] The May edict restricted the franchise to electors who had resided
three years in the same district. In October Louis Napoleon proposed to
repeal it, and the refusal of the Assembly no doubt strengthened his
hold on the democracy.

[7] The _coup d'état_ took place in the early morning of December 2.

[8] The constitution of 1848.

[9] The point was rather whether they had the _power_.

[10] Miss Mitford's _Recollections of a Literary Life_ contained a
chapter relating to Robert and Elizabeth Browning, in which, with the
best intentions in the world, she told the story of the drowning of
Edward Barrett, and of the gloom cast by it on his sister's life. It was
this revival of the greatest sorrow of her life that so upset Mrs.
Browning.

[11] No doubt M. Milsand was the writer in question.

[12] The (forged) _Letters of Shelley_, to which Mr. Browning wrote an
introduction, dealing rather with Shelley in general than with the
letters.

[13] 'Lines to Elizabeth Barrett Browning on her Later Sonnets', printed
in the _Athenæum_ for February 15, 1851. The allusion to the voice which
called 'Dinah' must refer to something in Miss Mulock's letter. Dinah
was Miss Mulock's Christian name.

[14] In another letter, written about the same date to Mrs. Martin, Mrs.
Browning says: 'Perhaps you never heard of the crystal ball. The
original ball was bought by Lady Blessington from an "Egyptian
magician," and resold at her sale. She never could understand the use of
it, but others have looked deeper, or with purer eyes, it is said; and
now there is an optician in London who makes and sells these balls, and
speaks of a "great demand," though they are expensive. "Many persons,"
said Lord Stanhope, "use the balls, without the moral courage to confess
it." No doubt they did.

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