My dearest Mrs. Martin,—It seemed long to me that you had not written, and it seems long to me now that I have not answered the kind letter which came at last. Then Henrietta told me of your being unwell at the moment of her mad excursion into Herefordshire. Altogether I want to speak to you and hear from you, and shall be easier and gladder when both are done. Do forgive my sins and write directly, and tell me everything about both of you, and how you are in spirits and health, and whether you really make up your minds to see more danger in the stormy influences of the Continent in the moral point of view than in those of England in the physical. For my part I hold to my original class of fear, and would rather face two or three revolutions than an east wind of an English winter. If I were you I would go to Pau as usual and take poor Abd-el-Kader's place (my husband is furious about the treatment of Abd-el-Kader, so I hear a good deal about him[183]), or I would go to Italy and try
Florence, where really democratic ministries roar as gently as sucking doves, particularly when they are safe in place. We have listened to dreadful rumours—Florence was to have been sacked several times by the Livornese; the Grand Duke went so far as to send away his family to Siena, and we had 'Morte a Fiorentini!' chalked up on the walls. Still, somehow or other, the peace has been kept in Florentine fashion; it has rained once or twice, which is always enough here to moderate the most revolutionary when they wear their best surtouts, and I look forward to an unbroken tranquillity just as I used to do, even though the windows of the Ridolfi Palace (the ambassador in London) were smashed the other evening a few yards from ours. Perhaps a gentle and affectionate approach to contempt for our Florentines mixes a little with this feeling of security, but what then? They are an amiable, refined, graceful people, with much of the artistic temperament as distinguished from that of men of genius—effeminate, no, rather feminine in a better sense—of a fancy easily turned into impulse, but with no strenuous and determinate strength in them. What they comprehend best in the 'Italian League' is probably a league to wear silk velvet and each a feather in his hat, to carry flags and cry vivas, and keep a grand festa day in the piazzas. Better and happier in this than in stabbing prime ministers, or hanging up their dead bodies to shoot at; and not much more childish than these French patriots and republicans, who crown their great deeds by electing to the presidency such a man as Prince Louis Napoleon, simply because 'C'est le neveu de son oncle!'[184] A curious precedent for a president, certainly; but, oh heavens and earth, what curious things abroad everywhere just now, inclusive of the sea serpent! I agree with you that much of all is very melancholy and disheartening, though holding fast by my hope and belief that good will be the end, as it always is God's end to man's frenzies, and that all we observe is but the fermentation necessary to the new wine, which presently we shall drink pure. Meanwhile, the saddest thing is the impossibility (which I, for one, feel) to sympathise, to go along with, the people to whom and to whose cause all my natural sympathies yearn. The word 'Liberty' ceases to make me thrill, as at something great and unmistakable, as, for instance, the other great words Truth, and Justice; do. The salt has lost its savour, the meaning has escaped from the term; we know nothing of what people will do when they aspire to Liberty. The holiness of liberty is desecrated by the sign of the ass's hoof. Fixed principles, either of opinion or action, seem clearly gone out of the world. The principle of Destruction is in the place of the principle of Re-integration, or of Radical Reform, as we called it in England. I look all round and can sympathise nowhere. The rulers hold by rottenness, and the people leap into the abyss, and nobody knows why this is, or why that is. As to France, my tears (which I really couldn't help at the time of the expulsion of poor Louis Philippe and his family, not being very strong just then) are justified, it appears, though my husband thought them foolish (and so did I), and though we both began by an adhesion to the Republic in the cordial manner. But, just see, the Republic was a 'man in an iron mask' or helmet, and turns out a military dictatorship, a throttling of the press, a starving of the finances, and an election of Louis Napoleon to be President. Louis Philippe was better than all this, take him at worst, and at worst he did not deserve the mud and stones cast at him, which I have always maintained and maintain still. England might have got up ('happy country') more crying grievances than France at the moment of outbreak; but what makes outbreaks now-a-days is not 'the cause, my soul,' but the stuff of the people. You are huckaback on the other side of the Channel, and you wear out the poor Irish linen, let the justice of the case be what it may. Politics enough and too much, surely, especially now when they are depressing to you, and more or less to everybody.... We are still in the slow agonies of furnishing our apartment. You see, being the poorest and most prudent of possible poets, we had to solve the problem of taking our furniture out of our year's income (proceeds of poems and the like), and of not getting into debt. Oh, I take no credit to myself; I was always in debt in my little way ('small im morals,' as Dr. Bowring might call it) before I married, but Robert, though a poet and dramatist by profession, being descended from the blood of all the Puritans, and educated by the strictest of dissenters, has a sort of horror about the dreadful fact of owing five shillings five days, which I call quite morbid in its degree and extent, and which is altogether unpoetical according to the traditions of the world. So we have been dragging in by inches our chairs and tables throughout the summer, and by no means look finished and furnished at this late moment, the slow Italians coming at the heels of our slowest intentions with the putting up of our curtains, which begin to be necessary in this November tramontana. Yet in a month or three weeks we shall look quite comfortable—before Christmas; and in the meantime we heap up the pine wood and feel perfectly warm with these thick palace walls between us and the outside air. Also my husband's new edition is on the edge of coming out, and we have had an application from Mr. Phelps, of Sadler's Wells, for leave to act his 'Blot on the 'Scutcheon,' which, if it doesn't succeed, its public can have neither hearts nor intellects (that being an impartial opinion), and which, if it succeeds, will be of pecuniary advantage to us. Look out in the papers.... My love and my husband's go to you, our dear friends. Let me be always
Your affectionate and grateful
BA.
While Italy shows herself so politically demoralised, and the blood of poor Russia smokes from the ground, the ground seems to care no more for it than the newspapers, or anybody else.
Such a jar of flowers we have to keep December. White roses, as in June.
... You are wondering, perhaps, how we are so fool-hardy as to keep on furnishing rooms in the midst of 'anarchy,' the Pope a fugitive, and the crowned heads packing up. Ah, but we have faith in the softness of our Florentines, who must be well spurred up to the leap before they do any harm. These things look worse at a distance than they do near, although, seen far and near, nothing can be worse than the evidence of demoralisation of people, governors, and journalists, in the sympathy given everywhere to the assassination of poor Rossi.[185] If Rossi
was retrocessive, he was at least a constitutional minister, and constitutional means of opposing him were open to all, but Italy understands nothing constitutional; liberty is a fair word and a watchword, nothing more; an idea it is not in the minds of any. The poor Pope I deeply pity; he is a weak man with the noblest and most disinterested intentions. His faithful flock have nearly broken his heart by the murder of his two personal friends, Rossi and Palma, and the threat, which they sent him by embassy, of murdering every man, woman, and child in the Quirinal, with the exception of his Holiness, unless he accepted their terms. He should have gone out to them and so died, but having missed that opportunity, nothing remained but flight. He was a mere Pope hostage as long as he stayed in Rome. Curious, the 'intervention of the French,' so long desired by the Italians, and vouchsafed so.[186] The Florentines open their eyes in mute astonishment, and some of them 'won't read the journals any more.' The boldest say softly that the Romans are sure not to bear it. And what is to happen in France? Why, what a world we have just now.... Father Prout is gone to Rome for a fortnight, has stayed three weeks, and day by day we expect him back again. I don't understand how the Prout papers should have hurt him ecclesiastically, but that he should be known for their writer is not astonishing, as the secret was never, I believe, attempted to be kept. We have been, at least I have been, a little anxious lately about the fate of the 'Blot on the 'Scutcheon,' which Mr. Phelps applied for my husband's permission to revive at Sadler's. Of course, putting the request was a mere form, as he had every right to act the play, and there was nothing to answer but one thing. Only it made one anxious—made me anxious—till we heard the result, and we, both of us, are very grateful to dear Mr. Chorley, who not only made it his business to be at the theatre the first night, but, before he slept, sat down like a true friend to give us the story of the result, and never, he says, was a more complete and legitimate success. The play went straight to the heart of the audience, it seems, and we hear of its continuance on the stage from the papers. So far, so well. You may remember, or may not have heard, how Macready brought it out and put his foot on it in the flash of a quarrel between manager and author, and Phelps, knowing the whole secret and feeling the power of the play, determined on making a revival of it on his own theatre, which was wise, as the event proves. Mr. Chorley called his acting really 'fine.' I see the second edition of the 'Poetical Works' advertised at last in the 'Athenaeum,' and conclude it to be coming out directly. Also my second edition is called for, only nothing is yet arranged on that point. We have had a most interesting letter from Mr. Home, giving terrible accounts, to be sure, of the submersion of all literature in England and France since the French Revolution, but noble and instructive proof of individual wave-riding energy, such as I have always admired in him. He and his wife, he says, live chiefly on the produce of their garden, and keep a cheerful heart for the rest; even the 'Institutes' expect gratuitous lectures, so that the sweat of the brain seems less productive than the sweat of the brow. I am glad that Mr. Serjeant Talfourd and his wife spoke affectionately of my husband, for he is attached to both of them.... My Flush has grown to be passionately fond of grapes, devouring bunch after bunch, and looking so fat and well that we attribute some virtue to them. When he goes to England he will be as much in a strait as an Italian who related to us his adventures in London; he had had a long walk in the heat, and catching sight of grapes hanging up in a grocer's shop, he stopped short to have a pennyworth, as he said inwardly to himself. Down he sat and made out a Tuscan luncheon in purple bunches. At last, taking out his purse to look for the halfpence: 'Fifteen shillings, sir, if you please,' said the shopman. Now do write soon, and speak particularly of your health, and take care of it and don't be too complaisant to visitors. May God bless you, my very dear friend! Think of me as
Ever your affectionate and grateful
E.B.B.
CHAPTER VI
1849-1851
There is here a pause of two months in the correspondence of Mrs. Browning, during which the happiness of her already happy life was crowned by the birth, on March 9, 1849, of her son, Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning.[187] How great a part this child henceforward played in her life will be shown abundantly by the letters that follow. Some passages referring to the child's growth, progress, and performances have been omitted, partly in the necessary reduction of the bulk of the correspondence, and partly because too much of one subject may weary the reader. But enough has been left to show that, in the case of Mrs. Browning (and of her husband likewise), the parent was by no means lost in the poet. There is little in what she says which might not equally be said, and is in substance said, by hundreds of happy mothers in every age; but it would be a suppression of one essential part of her nature, and an injury to the pleasant picture which the whole life of this poet pair presents, if her enthusiasms over her child were omitted or seriously curtailed. Biographers are fond of elaborating the details in which the lives of poets have not conformed to the standard of the moral virtues; let us at least recognise that, in the case of Robert and Elizabeth Browning, the moral and the intellectual virtues flourished side by side, each contributing its share to the completeness of the whole character.
The joy of this firstborn's birth was, however, very quickly dimmed by the news of the death, only a few days later, of Mr. Browning's mother, to whom he was devotedly attached. Her death was very sudden, and the shock of the reaction completely prostrated him for a long time. The following letters from Mrs. Browning tell how he felt this loss.
I do indeed from the bottom of my heart pity you and grieve with you, my dearest Sarianna. I may grieve with you as well as for you; for I too have lost. Believe that, though I never saw her face; I loved that pure and tender spirit (tender to me even at this distance), and that she will be dear and sacred to me to the end of my own life.
Dearest Sarianna, I thank you for your consideration and admirable self-control in writing those letters. I do thank and bless you. If the news had come unbroken by such precaution to my poor darling Robert, it would have nearly killed him, I think. As it is, he has been able to cry from the first, and I am able to tell you that though dreadfully affected, of course, for you know his passionate love for her, he is better and calmer now—much better. He and I dwell on the hope that you and your dear father will come to us at once. Come—dear, dear Sarianna—I will at least love you as you deserve—you and him—if I can do no more. If you would comfort Robert, come.
No day has passed since our marriage that he has not fondly talked of her. I know how deep in his dear heart her memory lies. God comfort you, my dearest Sarianna. The blessing of blessed duties heroically fulfilled must be With you. May the blessing of the Blessed in heaven be added to the rest!
Robert stops me. My dear love to your father.
Your ever attached sister, BA.
You will have comfort in hearing, my dearest Sarianna, that Robert is better on the whole than when I wrote last, though still very much depressed. I wish I could get him to go somewhere or do something—at any rate God's comforts are falling like dew on all this affliction, and must in time make it look a green memory to you both. Continually he thinks of you and of his father—believe how continually and tenderly he thinks of you. Dearest Sarianna, I feel so in the quick of my heart how you must feel, that I scarcely have courage to entreat you to go out and take the necessary air and exercise, and yet that is a duty, clear as other duties, and to be discharged like others by you, as fully, and with as little shrinking of the will. If your health should suffer, what grief upon grief to those who grieve already! And besides, we who have to live are not to lie down under the burden. There will be time enough for lying down presently, very soon; and in the meanwhile there is plenty of God's work to do with the body and with the soul, and we have to do it as cheerfully as we can. Dearest Sarianna, you can look behind and before, on blessed memories and holy hopes—love is as full for you as ever in the old relation, even though her life in the world is cut off. There is no drop of bitterness in all this flood of sorrow. In the midst of the great anguish which God has given, you have to thank Him for some blessing with every pang as it comes. Never was a more beautiful, serene, assuring death than this we are all in tears for—for, believe me, my very dear sister, I have mourned with you, knowing what we all have lost, I who never saw her nor shall see her until a few years shall bring us all together to the place where none mourn nor are parted. Sarianna, will it not be possible, do you think, for you and your father to come here, if only for a few months? Then you might decide on the future upon more knowledge than you have now. It would be comfort and joy to Robert and me if we could all of us live together henceforward. Think what you would like, and how you would best like it. Your living on even through this summer at that house, I, who have well known the agony of such bindings to the rack, do protest against. Dearest Sarianna, it is not good or right either for you or for your dear father. For Robert to go back to that house unless it were to do one of you some good, think how it would be with him! Tell us now (for he yearns towards you—we both do), what is the best way of bringing us all together, so as to do every one of us some good? If Florence is too far off, is there any other place where we could meet and arrange for the future? Could not your dear father's leave of absence be extended this summer, out of consideration of what has happened, and would he not be so enabled to travel with you and meet us somewhere? We will do anything. For my part, I am full of anxiety; and for Robert, you may guess what his is, you who know him. Very bitter has it been to me to have interposed unconsciously as I have done and deprived him of her last words and kisses—very bitter—and nothing could be so consolatory to me as to give him back to you at least. So think for me, dearest Sarianna—think for your father and yourself, think for Robert—and remember that Robert and I will do anything which shall appear possible to you. May God bless you, both of you! Give my true love to your father. Feeling for you and with you always and most tenderly, I am your affectionate sister, BA.
I am writing to you, at last, you will say, ever dearest Miss Mitford; but, except once to Wimpole Street, this is the first packet of letters which goes from me since my confinement. You will have heard how our joy turned suddenly into deep sorrow by the death of my husband's mother. An unsuspected disease (ossification of the heart) terminated in a fatal way, and she lay in the insensibility precursive of the grave's, when the letter, written in such gladness by my poor husband, and announcing the birth of his child, reached her address. 'It would have made her heart bound,' said her daughter to us. Poor, tender heart, the last throb was too near. The medical men would not allow the news to be communicated. The next joy she felt was to be in heaven itself. My husband has been in the deepest anguish, and indeed, except for the courageous consideration of his sister, who wrote two letters of preparation saying that 'she was not well,' and she 'was very ill,' when in fact all was over, I am frightened to think what the result would have been to him. He has loved his mother as such passionate natures only can love, and I never saw a man so bowed down in an extremity of sorrow—never. Even now the depression is great, and sometimes when I leave him alone a little and return to the room, I find him in tears. I do earnestly wish to change the scene and air; but where to go? England looks terrible now. He says it would break his heart to see his mother's roses over the wall, and the place where she used to lay her scissors and gloves. Which I understand so thoroughly that I can't say, 'Let us go to England.' We must wait and see what his father and sister will choose to do or choose us to do, for of course a duty plainly seen would draw us anywhere. My own dearest sisters will be painfully disappointed by any change of plan, only they are too good and kind not to understand the difficulty, not to see the motive. So do you, I am certain. It has been very very painful altogether, this drawing together of life and death. Robert was too enraptured at my safety, and with his little son, and the sudden reaction was terrible. You see how natural that was. How kind of you to write that note to him full of affectionate expressions towards me! Thank you, dearest friend. He had begged my sisters to let you know of my welfare, and I hope they did; and now it is my turn to know of you, and so I do entreat you not to delay, but to let me hear exactly how you are and what your plans are for the summer. Do you think of Paris seriously? Am I not a sceptic about your voyages round the world? It's about the only thing that I don't thoroughly believe you can do. But (not to be impertinent) I want to hear so much! I want first and chiefly to hear of your health; and occupations next, and next your plans for the summer. Louis Napoleon is astonishing the world, you see, by his firmness and courage; and though really I don't make out the aim and end of his French republicans in going to Rome to extinguish the republic there, I wait before I swear at him for it till my information becomes fuller. If they have at Rome such a republic as we have had in Florence, without a public, imposed by a few bawlers and brawlers on many mutes and cowards, why, the sooner it goes to pieces the better, of course. Probably the French Government acts upon information. In any case, if the Romans are in earnest they may resist eight thousand men. We shall see. My faith in every species of Italian is, however, nearly tired out. I don't believe they are men at all, much less heroes and patriots. Since I wrote last to you, I think we have had two revolutions here at Florence, Grand Duke out, Grand Duke in.[188] The bells in the church opposite rang for both. They first planted a tree of liberty close to our door, and, then they pulled it down. The same tune, sung under the windows, did for 'Viva la republica!' and 'Viva Leopoldo!' The genuine popular feeling is certainly for the Grand Duke ('O, santissima madre di Dio!' said our nurse, clasping her hands, 'how the people do love him!'); only nobody would run the risk of a pin's prick to save the ducal throne. If the Leghornese, who put up Guerazzi on its ruins, had not refused to pay at certain Florentine cafés, we shouldn't have had revolution the second, and all this shooting in the street! Dr. Harding, who was coming to see me, had time to get behind a stable door, just before there was a fall against it of four shot corpses; and Robert barely managed to get home across the bridges. He had been out walking in the city, apprehending nothing, when the storm gathered and broke. Sad and humiliating it all has been, and the author of 'Vanity Fair' might turn it to better uses for a chapter. By the way, we have just been reading 'Vanity Fair.' Very clever, very effective, but cruel to human nature. A painful book, and not the pain that purifies and exalts. Partial truths after all, and those not wholesome. But I certainly had no idea that Mr. Thackeray had intellectual force for such a book; the power is considerable. For Balzac, Balzac may have gone out of the world as far as we are concerned. Isn't it hard on us? exiles from Balzac! The bookseller here, having despaired of the republic and the Grand Duchy both, I suppose, and taking for granted on the whole that the world must be coming shortly to an end, doesn't give us the sign of a new book. We ought to, be done with such vanities. There! and almost I have done my paper without a single word to you of the baby! Ah, you won't believe that I forgot him even if I pretend, so I won't. He is a lovely, fat, strong child, with double chins and rosy cheeks, and a great wide chest, undeniable lungs, I can assure you. Dr. Harding called him 'a robust child' the other day, and 'a more beautiful child he never saw.' I never saw a child half as beautiful, for my part.... Dear Mr. Chorley has written the kindest letter to my husband. I much regard him indeed. May God bless you. Let me ever be (with Robert's thanks and warm remembrance)
Your most affectionate
BA.
Flush's jealousy of the baby would amuse you. For a whole fortnight he fell into deep melancholy and was proof against all attentions lavished on him. Now he begins to be consoled a little and even condescends to patronise the cradle.
Robert gives me this blank, and three minutes to write across it. Thank you, my very dear Sarianna, for all your kindness and affection. I understand what I have lost. I know the worth of a tenderness such as you speak of, and I feel that for the sake of my love for Robert she was ready out of the fullness of her heart to love me also. It has been bitter to me that I have unconsciously deprived him of the personal face-to-face shining out of her angelic nature for more than two years, but she has forgiven me, and we shall all meet, when it pleases God, before His throne. In the meanwhile, my dearest Sarianna, we are thinking much of you, and neither of us can bear the thought of your living on where you are. If you could imagine the relief it would be to us—to me as well as to Robert—to be told frankly what we ought to do, where we ought to go, to please you best—you and your dearest father—you would think the whole matter over and use plain words in the speaking of it. Robert naturally shrinks from the idea of going to New Cross under the circumstances of dreary change, and for his sake England has grown suddenly to me a land of clouds. Still, to see you and his father, and to be some little comfort to you both, would be the best consolation to him, I am very sure; and so, dearest Sarianna, think of us and speak to us. Could not your father get a long vacation? Could we not meet somewhere? Think how we best may comfort ourselves by comforting you. Never think of us, Sarianna, as apart from you—as if our interest or our pleasure could be apart from yours. The child is so like Robert that I can believe in the other likeness, and may the inner nature indeed, as you say, be after that pure image! He is so fat and rosy and strong that almost I am sceptical of his being my child. I suppose he is, after all. May God bless you, both of you. I am ashamed to send all these letters, but Robert makes me. He is better, but still much depressed sometimes, and over your letters he drops heavy tears. Then he treasures them up and reads them again and again. Better, however, on the whole, he is certainly. Poor little babe, who was too much rejoiced over at first, fell away by a most natural recoil (even I felt it to be most natural) from all that triumph, but Robert is still very fond of him, and goes to see him bathed every morning, and walks up and down on the terrace with him in his arms. If your dear father can toss and rock babies as Robert can, he will be a nurse in great favour.
Dearest Sarianna, take care of yourself, and do walk out. No grief in the world was ever freer from the corroding drop of bitterness—was ever sweeter, holier, and more hopeful than this of yours must be. Love is for you on both sides of the grave, and the blossoms of love meet over it. May God's love, too, bless you!
Your ever affectionate sister,
BA.
My dearest Mrs. Martin,—At last I come to thank you for all your kindness, all your goodness, all your sympathy for both of us. Robert would have written to you in the first instance (for we both thought of you) if we had not agreed that you would hear as quickly from Henrietta, we not knowing your direct address. Also your welcome little note should have had an immediate acknowledgment from him if he had not been so depressed at that time that I was glad to ask him to wait till I should be ready to write myself. In fact, he has suffered most acutely from the affliction you have since of course heard of; and just because he was too happy when the child was born, the pain was overwhelming afterwards. That is easy to understand, I think. While he was full of joy for the child, his mother was dying at a distance, and the very thought of accepting that new affection for the old became a thing to recoil from—do you not see? So far from suffering less through the particular combination of circumstances, as some people seemed to fancy he would, he suffered much more, I am certain, and very naturally. Even now he is looking very unwell—thinner and paler than usual, and his spirits, which used to be so good, have not rallied. I long to get him away from Florence somewhere—where, I can't fix my wishes; our English plans seem flat on the ground for the present, that is one sad certainty. My dearest sisters will be very grieved if we don't go to England, and yet how can I even try to persuade my husband back into the scene of old associations where he would feel so much pain? Do I not know what I myself should suffer in some places? And he loved his mother with all his power of loving, which is deeper and more passionate than love is with common men. She hearts of men are generally strong in proportion to their heads. Well, I am not to send you such a dull letter though, after waiting so long, and after receiving so much to speak thankfully of. My child you never would believe to be my child, from the evidence of his immense cheeks and chins—for pray don't suppose that he has only one chin. People call him a lovely child, and if I were to call him the same it wouldn't be very extraordinary, only I assure you 'a robust child' I may tell you that he is with a sufficient modesty, and also that Wilson says he is universally admired in various tongues when she and the nurse go out with him to the Cascine—'What a beautiful baby!' and 'Che bel bambino!' He has had a very stormy entrance upon life, poor little fellow; and when he was just three days old, a grand festa round the liberty tree planted at our door, attended with military music, civic dancing and singing, and the firing of cannons and guns from morning to night, made him start in his cradle, and threw my careful nurse into paroxysms of devotion before the 'Vergine Santissima' that I mightn't have a fever in consequence. Since then the tree of liberty has come down with a crash and we have had another festa as noisy on that occasion. Revolution and counter-revolution, Guerazzi[189] and Leopold, sacking of Florence and entrance of the Austrian army—we live through everything, you see, and baby grows fat indiscriminately. For my part, I am altogether blasée about revolutions and invasions. Don't think it want of feeling in me, or want of sympathy with 'the people,' but really I can't help a certain political latitudinarianism from creeping over me in relation to this Tuscany. You ought to be here to understand what I mean and how I think. Oh heavens! how ignoble it all has been and is! A revolution made by boys and vivas, and unmade by boys and vivas—no, there was blood shed in the unmaking—some horror and terror, but not as much patriotism and truth as could lift up the blood from the kennel. The counter-revolution was strictly counter, observe. I mean, that if the Leghornese troops here bad paid their debts at the Florentine coffee houses, the Florentines would have let their beloved Grand Duke stay on at Gaeta to the end of the world. The Grand Duke, too, whose part I have been taking hitherto (because he did seem to me a good man, more sinned against than sinning)—the Grand Duke I give up from henceforth, seeing that he has done this base thing of taking again his Austrian titles in his proclamations coincidently with the approach of the Austrians. Of Rome, knowing nothing, I don't like to speak. If a republic in earnest is established there, Louis Napoleon should not try to set his foot on it. Dearest Mrs. Martin, how you mistake me about France, and how too lightly I must have spoken. If you knew how I admire the French as a nation! Robert always calls them 'my beloved French.' Their very faults appear to me to arise from an excess of ideality land aspiration; but I was vexed rather at their selection of Louis Napoleon—a selection since justified by the firmness and apparent integrity of the man. His reputation in England, you will admit, did not promise the conclusion. Will he be emperor, do you imagine? And shall I ever have done talking politics? I would far rather talk of you, after all. Henrietta tells me of your looking well, but of your not being strong yet. Now do, for once, have a fit of egotism and tell me a little about yourself.... Surely I ought especially to thank you, dearest kind friend, for your goodness in writing to—, of which Henrietta very properly told me. I never shall forget this and other proofs of your affection for me, and shall remember them with warm gratitude always. As to—, I have held out both [my] hands, and my husband's hands in mine, again and again to him; he cannot possibly, in the secret place of his heart, expect more from either of us. My husband would have written to him in the first place, but for the obstacles raised by himself and others, and now what could Robert write and say except the bare repetition of what I have said over and over for him and myself? It is exactly an excuse—not more and not less. Just before I was ill I sent my last messages, because, with certain hazards before me, my heart turned to them naturally. I might as well have turned to a rock.—has been by far the kindest, and has written to me two or three little notes, and one since the birth of our child. I love them all far too well to be proud, and my husband loves me too well not to wish to be friends with every one of them; we have neither of us any stupid feeling about 'keeping up our dignity.' Yes, I had a letter from—some time ago, in which something was said of Robert's being careless of reconciliation. I answered it most explicitly and affectionately, with every possible assurance from Robert, and offering them from himself the affection of a brother. Not a word in answer! To my poor dearest papa I have written very lately, and as my letter has not, after a week, been sent back, I catch at the hope of his being moved a little. If he neither sends it back nor replies severely, I shall take courage to write to him again after a while. It will be an immense gain to get him only to read my letters. My father and my brothers hold quite different positions, of course, and though he has acted sternly towards me, I, knowing his peculiarities, do not feel embittered and astonished and disappointed as in the other cases. Absolutely happy my marriage has been—never could there be a happier marriage (as there are no marriages in heaven); but dear Henrietta is quite wrong in fancying, or seeming to fancy, that this quarrel with my family has given or gives me slight pain. Old affections are not so easily trodden out of me, indeed, and while I live unreconciled to them, there must be a void and drawback. Do write to me and tell me of both of you, my very dear friends. Don't fancy that we are not anxious for brave Venice and Sicily, and that we don't hate this Austrian invasion. But Tuscany has acted a vile part altogether—so vile, that I am sceptical about the Romans. We expect daily the Austrians in Florence, and have made up our minds to be very kind. May God bless you! Do write, and mention your health particularly, as I am anxious about it. I am quite well myself, and, as ever,
Your affectionate
BA.
Don't you both like Macaulay's History? We are delighted just now with it.
I must say to my dearest Sarianna how delighted we are at the thought of seeing her in Florence. I wish it had been before the autumn, but since autumn is decided for we must be content to reap our golden harvest at the time for such things. Certainly the summer heat of Florence is terrible enough—only we should have carried you with us into the shade somewhere to the sea or to the mountains—and Robert has, of course, told you of our Spezzia plan. The 'fatling of the flock' has been sheared closely of his long petticoats. Did he tell you that? And you can't think how funny the little creature looks without his train, his wise baby face appearing to approve of the whole arrangement. He talks to himself now and smiles at everybody, and admired my roses so much the other day that he wanted to eat them; having a sublime transcendental notion about the mouth being the receptacle of all beauty and glory in this world. Tell your dear father that certainly he is a 'sweet baby,' there's no denying it. We lay him down on the floor to let him kick at ease, and he makes violent efforts to get up by himself, and Wilson declares that the least encouragement would set him walking. Robert's nursing does not mend his spirits much. I shall be very glad to get him away from Florence; he has suffered too much here to rally as I long to see him do, because, dearest Sarianna, we have to live after all; and to live rightly we must turn our faces forward and press forward and not look backward morbidly for the footsteps in the dust of those beloved ones who travelled with us but yesterday. They themselves are not behind but before, and we carry with us our tenderness living and undiminished towards them, to be completed when the round of this life is complete for us also. Dearest Sarianna, why do I say such things, but because I have known what grief is? Oh, and how I could have compounded with you, grief for grief, mine for yours, for I had no last words nor gestures, Sarianna. God keep you from such a helpless bitter agony as mine then was. Dear Sarianna, you will think of us and of Florence, my dear sister, and remember how you have made us a promise and have to keep it. May God bless you and comfort you. We think of you and love you continually, and I am always your most affectionate
BA.
In July the move from Florence, of which Mrs. Browning speaks in the above letter, was effected, the place ultimately chosen for escape from the summer heat in the valley of the Arno being the Bagni di Lucca. Here three months were spent, as the following letters describe. By this time the struggle for Italian liberty had ended in failure everywhere. The battle of Novara, on March 23, had prostrated Piedmont, and caused the abdication of its king, Charles Albert. The Tuscan Republic had come and gone, and the Grand Duke had re-entered his capital under the protection of Austrian bayonets. Sicily had been reduced to subjection to the Bourbons of Naples. On July 2 the French entered Rome, bringing back the Pope cured of his leanings to reform and constitutional government; on the 24th, Venice, after an heroic resistance, capitulated to the Austrians. The struggle was over for the time; the longing for liberty becomes, of necessity, silent; and we hear little, for a space, of Italian politics. For the moment it might seem justifiable to despair of the republic.
At last, you will say, dearest friend. The truth is, I have not been forgetting you (how far from that!) but wandering in search of cool air and a cool bough among all the olive trees to build our summer nest on. My husband has been suffering beyond what one could shut one's eyes to in consequence of the great mental shock of last March—loss of appetite, loss of sleep, looks quite worn and altered. His spirits never rallied except with an effort, and every letter from New Cross threw him back into deep depressions. I was very anxious, and feared much that the end of it all (the intense heat of Florence assisting) would be a nervous fever or something similar. And I had the greatest difficulty in persuading him to leave Florence for a month or two—he who generally delights so in travelling, had no mind for change or movement. I had to say and swear that baby and I couldn't bear the heat, and that we must and would go away. Ce que femme veut, if the latter is at all reasonable, or the former persevering. At last I gained the victory. It was agreed that we two should go on an exploring journey to find out where we could have most shadow at least expense; and we left our child with his nurse and Wilson while we were absent. We went along the coast to Spezzia, saw Carrara with the white marble mountains, passed through the olive forests and the vineyards, avenues of acacia trees, chestnut woods, glorious surprises of most exquisite scenery. I say olive forests advisedly; the olive grows like a forest tree in those regions, shading the ground with tents of silvery network. The olive near Florence is but a shrub in comparison, and I have learnt to despise a little, too, the Florentine vine, which does not swing such portcullises of massive dewy green from one tree to another as along the whole road where we travelled. Beautiful, indeed, it was. Spezzia wheels the blue sea into the arms of the wooded mountains, and we had a glance at Shelley's house at Lerici. It was melancholy to me, of course. I was not sorry that the lodgings we inquired about were far above our means. We returned on our steps (after two days in the dirtiest of possible inns), saw Seravezza, a village in the mountains, where rock, river, and wood enticed us to stay, and the inhabitants drove us off by their unreasonable prices. It is curious, but just in proportion to the want of civilisation the prices rise in Italy. If you haven't cups and saucers you are made to pay for plate. Well, so finding no rest for the sole of our feet, I persuaded Robert to go to the Baths of Lucca, only to see them. We were to proceed afterwards to San Marcello or some safer wilderness. We had both of us, but he chiefly, the strongest prejudice against these Baths of Lucca, taking them for a sort of wasp's nest of scandal and gaming, and expecting to find everything trodden flat by the Continental English; yet I wanted to see the place, because it is a place to see after all. So we came, and were so charmed by the exquisite beauty of the scenery, by the coolness of the climate and the absence of our countrymen, political troubles serving admirably our private requirements, that we made an offer for rooms on the spot, and returned to Florence for baby and the rest of our establishment without further delay. Here we are, then; we have been here more than a fortnight. We have taken an apartment for the season—four months—paying twelve pounds for the whole term, and hoping to be able to stay till the end of October. The living is cheaper than even at Florence, so that there has been no extravagance in coming here. In fact, Florence is scarcely tenable during the summer from the excessive heat by day and night, even if there were no particular motive for leaving it. We have taken a sort of eagle's nest in this place, the highest house of the highest of the three villages which are called the Bagni di Lucca, and which lie at the heart of a hundred mountains sung to continually by a rushing mountain stream. The sound of the river and of the cicala is all the noise we hear. Austrian drums and carriage wheels cannot vex us; God be thanked for it; the silence is full of joy and consolation. I think my husband's spirits are better already and his appetite improved. Certainly little babe's great cheeks are growing rosier and rosier. He is out all day when the sun is not too strong, and Wilson will have it that he is prettier than the whole population of babies here. He fixes his blue eyes on everybody and smiles universal benevolence, rather too indiscriminately it might be if it were not for Flush. But certainly, on the whole he prefers Flush. He pulls his ears and rides on him, and Flush, though his dignity does not approve of being used as a pony, only protests by turning his head round to kiss the little bare dimpled feet. A merrier, sweeter-tempered child there can't be than our baby, and people wonder at his being so forward at four months old and think there must be a mistake in his age. He is so strong that when I put out two fingers and he has seized them in his fists he can draw himself up on his feet, but we discourage this forwardness, which is not desirable, say the learned. Children of friends of mine at ten months and a year can't do so much. Is it not curious that my child should be remarkable for strength and fatness? He has a beaming, thinking little face, too; oh, I wish you could see it. Then my own strength has wonderfully improved, just as my medical friends prophesied; and it seems like a dream when I find myself able to climb the hills with Robert and help him to lose himself in the forests. I have been growing stronger and stronger, and where it is to stop I can't tell, really; I can do as much, or more, now than at any point of my life since I arrived at woman's estate. The air of this place seems to penetrate the heart and not the lungs only; it draws you, raises you, excites you. Mountain air without its keenness, sheathed in Italian sunshine, think what that must be! And the beauty and the solitude—for with a few paces we get free of the habitations of men—all is delightful to me. What is peculiarly beautiful and wonderful is the variety of the shapes of the mountains. They are a multitude, and yet there is no likeness. None, except where the golden mist comes and transfigures them into one glory. For the rest, the mountain there wrapt in the chestnut forest is not like that bare peak which tilts against the sky, nor like that serpent twine of another which seems to move and coil in the moving coiling shadow. Oh, I wish you were here. You would enjoy the shade of the chestnut trees, and the sound of the waterfalls, and at nights seem to be living among the stars; the fireflies are so thick, you would like that too. We have subscribed to a French library where there are scarcely any new books. I have read Bernard's 'Gentilhomme Campagnard' (see how arriérés we are in French literature!), and thought it the dullest and worst of his books. I wish I could see the 'Memoirs of Louis Napoleon,' but there is no chance of such good fortune. All this egotism has been written with a heart full of thoughts of you and anxieties for you. Do write to me directly and say first how your precious health is, and then that you have ceased to suffer pain for your friends.... But your dear self chiefly—how are you, my dearest Miss Mitford? I do long so for good news of you. On our arrival here Mr. Lever called on us. A most cordial vivacious manner, a glowing countenance, with the animal spirits somewhat predominant over the intellect, yet the intellect by no means in default; you can't help being surprised into being pleased with him, whatever your previous inclination may be. Natural too, and a gentleman past mistake. His eldest daughter is nearly grown up, and his youngest six months old. He has children of every sort of intermediate age almost, but he himself is young enough still. Not the slightest Irish accent. He seems to have spent nearly his whole life on the Continent and by no means to be tired of it. Ah, dearest Miss Mitford, hearts feel differently, adjust themselves differently before the prick of sorrow, and I confess I agree with Robert. There are places stained with the blood of my heart for ever, and where I could not bear to stand again. If duty called him to New Cross it would be otherwise, but his sister is rather inclined to come to us, I think, for a few weeks in the autumn perhaps. Only these are scarcely times for plans concerning foreign travel. It is something to talk of. It has been a great disappointment to me the not going to England this year, but I could not run the risk of the bitter pain to him. May God bless you from all pain! Love me and write to me, who am ever and ever your affectionate E.B.B.