Oh, the East, the East! My husband has been almost frantic on the subject. We may all cover our heads and be humble.[40] Verily we have sinned deeply. As to ministers, that there is blame I do not doubt. The Aberdeen element has done its worst, but our misfortune is that nobody is responsible; and that if you tear up Mr. So-and-so and Lord So-and-so limb from limb, as a mild politician recommended the other day, you probably would do a gross injustice against very well-meaning persons. It's the system, the system which is all one gangrene; the most corrupt system in Europe, is it not? Here is my comfort. Apart from the dreadful amount of individual suffering which cries out against us to heaven and earth, this adversity may teach us much, this shock which has struck to the heart of England may awaken us much, and this humiliation will altogether be good for us. We have stood too long on a pedestal talking of our moral superiority, our political superiority, and all our other superiorities, which I have long been sick of hearing recounted. Here's an inferiority proved. Let us understand it and remedy it, and not talk, talk, any more.
[Part of this letter has been cut out]
We heard yesterday from the editor of the 'Examiner,' Mr. Forster, who expects some terrible consequence of present circumstances in England, as far as I can understand. The alliance with France is full of consolation. There seems to be a real heart-union between the peoples. What a grand thing the Napoleon loan is! It has struck the English with admiration.
I heard, too, among other English news, that Walter Savage Landor, who has just kept his eightieth birthday, and is as young and impetuous as ever, has caught the whooping cough by way of an illustrative accident. Kinglake ('E[=o]then') came home from the Crimea (where he went out and fought as an amateur) with fever, which has left one lung diseased. He is better, however....
Dearest Mrs. Martin, dearest friends, be both of you well and strong. Shall we not meet in Paris this early summer?
May God bless you! Your ever affectionate
Florence: February 24, 1855.
The devil (say charitable souls) is not as bad as he is painted, and even I, dearest Mona Nina, am better than I seem. In the first place, let me make haste to say that I never received the letter you sent me to Rome with the information of your family affliction, and that, if I had, it could never have remained an unnoticed letter. I am not so untender, so unsympathising, not so brutal—let us speak out. I lost several letters in Rome, besides a good deal of illusion. I did not like Rome, I think I confessed to you. In the second place, when your last letter reached me—I mean the letter in which you told me to write to you directly—I would have written directly, but was so very unwell that you would not have wished me even to try if, absent in the flesh, you had been present in spirit. I have had a severe attack on the chest—the worst I ever had in Italy—the consequence of exceptionally severe weather—bitter wind and frost together—which quite broke me up with cough and fever at night. Now I am well again, only of course much weakened, and grown thin. I mean to get fat again upon cod's liver oil, in order to appear in England with some degree of decency. You know I'm a lineal descendant of the White Cat, and have seven lives accordingly. Also I have a trick of falling from six-storey windows upon my feet, in the manner of the traditions of my race. Not only I die hard, but I can hardly die. 'Half of it would kill me,' said an admiring friend the other day. 'What strength you must have!' A questionable advantage, except that I have also—a Robert, and a Penini!
Dearest friend, I don't know how to tell you of our fullness of sympathy in your late trials.[41] From a word which reached us from England the other day, there will be, I do trust, some effectual arrangement to relieve your friends from their anxieties about you. Then, there should be an increase of the Government pension by another hundred, that is certain; only the 'should be' lies so far out of sight in the ideal, that nobody in his senses should calculate on its occurrence. As to Law, it's different from Right—particularly in England perhaps—and appeals to Law are disastrous when they cannot be counted on as victorious, always and certainly. Therefore you may be wise in abstaining; you have considered sufficiently, of course. I only hope you are not trammelled in any degree by motives of delicacy which would be preposterous under the actual circumstances. You meantime are as nobly laborious as ever. We have caught hold of fragments in the newspapers from your 'Commonplace Book,' which made us wish for more; and Mr. Kenyon told me of a kind mention of Robert which was very pleasant to me.
How will it be? Shall you be likely to come to Italy before we set out to the north—that is, before the middle of May—or shall we cross on the road, like our letters, or shall we catch you in London, or in Paris at least? Oh, you won't miss the Exhibition in Paris. That seems certain.
I know Florence Nightingale slightly. She came to see me when we were in London last; and I remember her face and her graceful manner, and the flowers she sent me after afterwards. I honor her from my heart. She is an earnest, noble woman, and has fulfilled her woman's duty where many men have failed.
At the same time, I confess myself to be at a loss to see any new position for the sex, or the most imperfect solution of the 'woman's question,' in this step of hers. If a movement at all, it is retrograde, a revival of old virtues! Since the siege of Troy and earlier, we have had princesses binding wounds with their hands; it's strictly the woman's part, and men understand it so, as you will perceive by the general adhesion and approbation on this late occasion of the masculine dignities. Every man is on his knees before ladies carrying lint, calling them 'angelic she's,' whereas, if they stir an inch as thinkers or artists from the beaten line (involving more good to general humanity; than is involved in lint), the very same men would curse the impudence of the very same women and stop there. I can't see on what ground you think you see here the least gain to the 'woman's question,' so called. It's rather the contrary, to my mind, and, any way, the women of England must give the precedence to the sœurs de charité, who have magnificently won it in all matters of this kind. For my own part (and apart from the exceptional miseries of the war), I acknowledge to you that I do not consider the best use to which we can put a gifted and accomplished woman is to make her a hospital nurse. If it is, why then woe to us all who are artists! The woman's question is at an end. The men's 'noes' carry it. For the future I hope you will know your place and keep clear of Raffaelle and criticism; and I shall expect to hear of you as an organiser of the gruel department in the hospital at Greenwich, that is, if you have the luck to percer and distinguish yourself.
Oh, the Crimea! How dismal, how full of despair and horror! The results will, however, be good if we are induced to come down from the English pedestal in Europe of incessant self-glorification, and learn that our close, stifling, corrupt system gives no air nor scope for healthy and effective organisation anywhere. We are oligarchic in all things, from our parliament to our army. Individual interests are admitted as obstacles to the general prosperity. This plague runs through all things with us. It accounts for the fact that, according to the last marriage statistics, thirty per cent, of the male population signed with the mark only. It accounts for the fact that London is at once the largest and ugliest city in Europe. For the rest, if we cannot fight righteous and necessary battles, we must leave our place as a nation, and be satisfied with making pins. Write to me, but don't pay your letters, dear dear friend, and I will tell you why. Through some slip somewhere we have had to pay your two last letters just the same. So don't try it any more. Do you think we grudge postage from you? Tell me if it is true that Harriet Martineau is very ill. What do you hear of her?
May God bless you! With Robert's true love,
Your ever affectionate
The following letter is the first of a few addressed to Mr. Ruskin, which have been made available through the kindness of Mrs. Arthur Severn. The acquaintanceship with Mr. Ruskin dated from the visit of the Brownings to England in 1852 (see vol. ii. p. 87, above); but the occasion of the present correspondence was the recent death of Miss Mitford, which took place on January 10, 1855. Mr. Ruskin had shown much kindness to her during her later years, and after her death had written to Mrs. Browning to tell her of the closing scenes of her friend's life.
Florence: March 17, 1855.
I have your letter, dear Mr. Ruskin. The proof is the pleasure it has given me—yes, and given my husband, which is better. 'When has a letter given me so much pleasure?' he exclaimed, after reading it; 'will you write?' I thank you much—much for thinking of it, and I shall be thankful of anything you can tell me of dearest Miss Mitford. I had a letter from her just before she went, written in so firm a hand, and so vital a spirit, that I could feel little apprehension of never seeing her in the body again. God's will be done. It is better so, I am sure. She seemed to me to see her way clearly, and to have as few troubling doubts in respect to the future life as she had to the imminent end of the present.
Often we have talked and thought of you since the last time we saw you, and, before your letter came, we had ventured to put on the list of expected pleasures connected with our visit to England, fixed for next summer, the pleasure of seeing more of Mr. Ruskin. For the rest, there will be some bitter things too. I do not miss them generally in England, and among them this time will be an empty place where I used always to find a tender and too indulgent friend.
You need not be afraid of my losing a letter of yours. The peril would be mine in that case. But among the advantages of our Florence—the art, the olives, the sunshine, the cypresses, and don't let me forget the Arno and mountains at sunset time—is that of an all but infallible post office. One loses letters at Rome. Here, I think, we have lost one in the course of eight years, and for that loss I hold my correspondent to blame.
How good you are to me! How kind! The soul of a cynic, at its third stage of purification, might feel the value of 'Gold' laid on the binding of a book by the hand of John Ruskin. Much more I, who am apt to get too near that ugly 'sty of Epicurus' sometimes! Indeed you have gratified me deeply. There was 'once on a time,' as is said in the fairy tales, a word dropped by you in one of your books, which I picked up and wore for a crown. Your words of goodwill are of great price to me always, and one of my dear friend Miss Mitford's latest kindnesses to me was copying out and sending to me a sentence from a letter of yours which expressed a favorable feeling towards my writings. She knew well—she who knew me—the value it would have for me, and the courage it would give me for any future work.
With my husband's cordial regards,
I remain most truly yours,
Our American friends, who sent to Dresden in vain for your letter, are here now, but will be in England soon on their way to America, with the hope of trying fate again in another visit to you. Thank you! Also thank you for your inquiry about my health. I have had a rather bad attack on my chest (never very strong) through the weather having been colder than usual here, but now I am very well again—for me.
Florence: April 20, 1855.
My dearest Mrs. Martin,—Having nine lives, as I say, I am alive again, and prosperous—thanking you for wishing to know. People look at me and laugh, because it's a clear case of bulbous root with me—let me pass (being humble) for the onion. I was looking miserable in February, and really could scarcely tumble across the room, and now I am up on my perch again—nay, even out of my cage door. The weather is divine. One feels in one's self why the trees are green. I go out, walk out, have recovered flesh and fire—my very hair curls differently. 'Is I, I?' I say with the metaphysicians. There's something vital about this Florence air, for, though much given to resurrection, I never made such a leap in my life before after illness. Robert and I need to run as well as leap. We have quantities of work to do, and small time to do it in. He is four hours a day engaged in dictating to a friend of ours who transcribes for him, and I am not even ready for transcription—have not transcribed a line of my six or seven thousand. We go to England, or at least to Paris, next month, but it can't be early. Oh, may we meet you! Our little Penini is radiant, and altogether we are all in good spirits. Which is a shame, you will say, considering the state of affairs at Sebastopol. Forgive me. I never, at worst, thought that the great tragedy of the world was going on there. It was tragic, but there are more chronic cruelties and deeper despairs—ay, and more exasperating wrongs. For the rest, we have the most atrocious system in Europe, and we mean to work it out. Oh, you will see. Your committees nibble on, and this and that poisonous berry is pulled off leisurely, while the bush to the root of it remains, and the children eat on unhindered on the other side. I had hoped that there was real feeling among politicians. But no; we are put off with a fast day. There, an end! I begin to think that nothing will do for England but a good revolution, and a 'besom of destruction' used dauntlessly. We are getting up our vainglories again, smoothing our peacock's plumes. We shall be as exemplary as ever by next winter, you will see.
Meanwhile, dearest Mrs. Martin, that you should ask me about 'Armageddon' is most assuredly a sign of the times. You know I pass for being particularly mad myself, and everybody, almost universally, is rather mad, as may be testified by the various letters I have to read about 'visible spirit-hands,' pianos playing themselves, and flesh-and-blood human beings floating about rooms in company with tables and lamps. Dante has pulled down his own picture from the wall of a friend of ours in Florence five times, signifying his pleasure that it should be destroyed at once as unauthentic (our friend burnt it directly, which will encourage me to pull down mine by [word lost]). Savonarola also has said one or two things, and there are gossiping guardian angels, of whom I need not speak. Let me say, though, that nothing has surprised me quite so much as your inquiring about Armageddon, because I am used to think of you as the least in the world of a theorist, and am half afraid of you sometimes, and range the chairs before my speculative dark corners, that you may not think or see 'how very wild that Ba is getting!' Well, now it shall be my turn to be sensible and unbelieving. There's a forced similitude certainly, in the etymology, between the two words; but if it were full and perfect I should be no nearer thinking that the battle of Armageddon could ever signify anything but a great spiritual strife. The terms, taken from a symbolical book, are plainly to my mind symbolical, and Dr. Cumming and a thousand mightier doctors could not talk it out of me, I think. I don't, for the rest, like Dr. Cumming; his books seem to me very narrow. Isn't the tendency with us all to magnify the great events of our own time, just as we diminish the small events? For me, I am heretical in certain things. I expect no renewal of the Jewish kingdom, for instance. And I doubt much whether Christ's 'second coming' will be personal. The end of the world is probably the end of a dispensation. What I expect is, a great development of Christianity in opposition to the churches, and of humanity generally in opposition to the nations, and I look out for this in much quiet hope. Also, and in the meanwhile, the war seems to be just and necessary. There is nothing in it to regret, except the way of conducting it....
Write to me soon again, and tell me as much of both of you as you can put into a letter.
May God bless you always!
With Robert's warm regards, both of you think of me as
Your ever affectionate
Florence: May 13, [1855].
My dearest Madame Braun,—You have classed me and ticketed me before now, I think, as among the ungrateful of the world; yet I am grateful, grateful, grateful! When your book[42] came (how very kind you were to send it to me!) and when I had said so some five times running, in came somebody who was fanatico per Roma, and reverential in proportion for Dr. Braun, who with some sudden appeal to my sensibility—the softer just then that I was only just recovering strength after a sharp winter attack—swept the volume off the table and carried it off out of the house to study the contents at leisure. I expected it back the next week, but it lingered. And I really hadn't the audacity to write to you and say, 'Thank you, but I have looked as yet simply at the title-page.' Well, at last it comes home, and I turn the leaves, examine, read, approve, like Ludovisi and the Belvedere, with a double pleasure of association and become qualified properly to thank you and Dr. Braun from Robert and myself for this gift to us and valuable contribution to archæological literature. I am only sorry I did not get to Rome after the book; it would have helped my pleasure so, holding up the lanthorn in dark places. So much suggestiveness in combination with so much specific information makes a book (or a man) worth knowing.
Of late, other hindrances have come to writing this, in the shape of various labours of Hercules, which fall sometimes to Omphale as well. We go to England in a week or two or three, and we take between us some sixteen thousand lines, eight on one side, eight on the other, which ought to be ready for publication. I have not finished my seventh thousand yet; Robert is at his mark. Then, I have to see that we have shoes and stockings to go in, and that Penini's little trousers are creditably frilled and tucked. Then, about twenty letters lie by me waiting to be answered in time, so as to save me from a mobbing in England. Then there are visits to be paid all round in Florence, to make amends for the sins of the winter; visiting, like almsgiving, being put generally in the place of virtue, when the latter is found too inconvenient. Altogether, my head swims and my heart ticks before the day's done, with positive weariness. For there are Penini's lessons, you are to understand, besides the rest. And 'between the intersections,' cod liver oil to be taken judiciously, in order to appear before my English friends with due decency of corporeal coverture.
Well, now, do tell me, shall you go to England, you? You will see my reasons for being very interested. Oh, I hope you won't be snatched away to Naples, or nailed down at Rome. Railroads open from Marseilles; the Exhibition open at Paris! Surely, surely Dr. Braun will go to Paris to see the Exhibition. His conscience won't let him off. Tell him too, from me, that in London he may see a spirit if he will go for it. I have a letter from a friend who swears to me he has shaken hands with three or four—'softer, more thrilling than any woman's hand'—'tenderly touching'—think of that! The American 'medium' Hume is turning the world upside down in London with this spiritual influx.
Let me remember to tell you. Your paper was in the 'Athenæum.' Therefore, if you were not paid for it, it was the more abominable. Robert saw it with his own eyes, printed. When I heard from you that you had heard nothing, I mentioned the circumstance to Mrs. Jameson in a letter I was writing to her, and I do hope she has not neglected since to give you some information at least. You are aware probably of the excellent effect with which that kind Mrs. Procter has managed a private subscription in behalf of dear Mrs. Jameson, in consequence of which she will be placed in circumstances of ease for the rest of her life. Fanny Kemble nobly gave a hundred pounds towards this good purpose. Mrs. Jameson spoke in her last letter of coming to Italy this summer, and I dare say we shall have the ill luck to lose her, miss her, cross her en route, perhaps.
We hear from dear Mr. Kenyon and from Miss Bayley; each very well and full of animation. If it were not for them, and my dear sisters, and one or two other hands I shall care to clasp (beside the spirits!) I would give much not to go north. Oh, we Italians grow out of the English bark; it won't hold us after a time. Such a happy year I have had this last! I do love Florence so! When Penini says, 'Sono Italiano, voglio essere Italiano,' I agree with him perfectly.
So we shall come back of course, if we live; indeed, we leave this house ready to come back to, meaning, if we can, to let our rooms simply.
Little Penini looks like a rose, and has, besides, the understanding and sweetness of a creature 'a little lower than the angels.' I don't care any less for him than I did, upon the whole.
I hear the Sartoris's think of Paris for next winter, and mean to give up Rome. She has been a good deal secluded, until quite lately, they say, on account of her father's death and brother's worse than death, which may account in part for any backwardness you may have observed. As to her 'not liking Dr. Braun,' do you believe in anybody's not liking Dr. Braun? I don't quite. It's more difficult for me to 'receive' than the notion of the spiritual hand—'tenderly touching.'
Do you know young Leighton[43] of Rome? If so, you will be glad of this wonderful success of his picture,[44] bought by the Queen, and applauded by the Academicians, and he not twenty-five.
The lady who brought your book did not leave her name here, so of course she did not mean to be called on.
Our kindest regards for dear Dr. Braun, and repeated truest thanks to both of you. Among his discoveries and inventions, he will invent some day an Aladdin's lamp, and then you will be suddenly potentates, and vanish in a clap of thunder.
Till then, think of me sometimes, dearest Madame Braun, as I do of you, and of all your great kindness to me at Rome.
Ever your affectionate
Florence: June 2, 1855.
My dear Mr. Ruskin,—I believe I shall rather prove in this letter how my head turns round when I write it, than explain why I didn't write it before—and so you will go on to think me the most insusceptible and least grateful of human beings—no small distinction in our bad obtuse world. Yet the truth is—oh, the truth is, that I am deeply grateful to you and have felt to the quick of my heart the meaning and kindness of your words, the worth of your sympathy and praise. One thing especially which you said, made me thankful that I had been allowed to live to hear it—since even to fancy that anything I had written could be the means of the least good to you, is worth all the trumpet blowing of a vulgar fame. Oh, of course, I do not exaggerate, though your generosity does. I understand the case as it is. We burn straw and it warms us. My verses catch fire from you as you read them, and so you see them in that light of your own. But it is something to be used to such an end by such a man, and I thank you, thank you, and so does my husband, for the deep pleasure you have given us in the words you have written.
And why not say so sooner? Just because I wanted to say so fully, and because I have been crushed into a corner past all elbow-room for doing anything largely and comfortably, by work and fuss and uncertainty of various kinds. Now it isn't any better scarcely, though it is quite fixed now that we are going from Florence to England—no more of the shadow dancing which is so pretty at the opera and so fatiguing in real life. We are coming, and have finished most of our preparations; conducted on a balance of—must we go? may we stay? which is so very inconvenient. If you knew what it is to give up this still dream-life of our Florence, where if one is over-busy ever, the old tapestries on the walls and the pre-Giotto pictures (picked up by my husband for so many pauls) surround us ready to quiet us again—if you knew what it is to give it all up and be put into the mill of a dingy London lodging and ground very small indeed, you wouldn't be angry with us for being sorry to go north—you wouldn't think it unnatural. As for me, I have all sorts of pain in England—everything is against me, except a few things; and yet, while my husband and I groan at one another, strophe and antistrophe (pardon that rag of Greek!) we admit our compensations—that it will be an excellent thing, for instance, to see Mr. Ruskin! Are we likely to undervalue that?
Let me consider how to answer your questions. My poetry—which you are so good to, and which you once thought 'sickly,' you say, and why not? (I have often written sickly poetry, I do not doubt—I have been sickly myself!)—has been called by much harder names, 'affected' for instance, a charge I have never deserved, for I do think, if I may say it of myself, that the desire of speaking or spluttering the real truth out broadly, may be a cause of a good deal of what is called in me careless and awkward expression. My friends took some trouble with me at one time; but though I am not self-willed naturally, as you will find when you know me, I hope, I never could adopt the counsel urged upon me to keep in sight always the stupidest person of my acquaintance in order to clear and judicious forms of composition. Will you set me down as arrogant, if I say that the longer I live in this writing and reading world, the more convinced I am that the mass of readers never receive a poet (you, who are a poet yourself, must surely observe that) without intermediation? The few understand, appreciate, and distribute to the multitude below. Therefore to say a thing faintly, because saying it strongly sounds odd or obscure or unattractive for some reason, to 'careless readers,' does appear to me bad policy as well as bad art. Is not art, like virtue, to be practised for its own sake first? If we sacrifice our ideal to notions of immediate utility, would it not be better for us to write tracts at once?
Of course any remark of yours is to be received and considered with all reverence. Only, be sure you please to say, 'Do it differently to satisfy me, John Ruskin,' and not to satisfy Mr., Mrs., and the Miss and Master Smith of the great majority. The great majority is the majority of the little, you know, who will come over to you if you don't think of them—and if they don't, you will bear it.
Am I pert, do you think? No, don't think it. And the truth is, though you may not see that, that your praise made me feel very humble. Nay, I was quite abashed at the idea of the 'illumination' of my poem; and still I keep winking my eyes at the prospect of so much glory. If you were a woman, I might say, when one feels ugly one pulls down the blinds; but as a man you are superior to the understanding of such a figure, and so I must simply tell you that you honor me over much indeed. My husband is very much pleased, and particularly pleased that you selected 'Catarina,' which is his favourite among my poems for some personal fanciful reasons besides the rest.
But to go back. I said that any remark of yours was to be received by me in all reverence; and truth is a part of reverence, so I shall end by telling you the truth, that I think you quite wrong in your objection to 'nympholept.' Nympholepsy is no more a Greek word than epilepsy, and nobody would or could object to epilepsy or apoplexy as a Greek word. It's a word for a specific disease or mania among the ancients, that mystical passion for an invisible nymph common to a certain class of visionaries. Indeed, I am not the first in referring to it in English literature. De Quincey has done so in prose, for instance, and Lord Byron talks of 'The nympholepsy of a fond despair,' though he never was accused of being overridden by his Greek. Tell me now if I am not justified, I also? We are all nympholepts in running after our ideals—and none more than yourself, indeed!
Our American friend Mr. Jarves wrote to us full of gratitude and gratification on account of your kindness to him, for which we also should thank you. Whether he felt most overjoyed by the clasp of your hand or that of a disembodied spirit, which he swears was as real (under the mediumship of Hume, his compatriot), it was somewhat difficult to distinguish. But all else in England seemed dull and worthless in comparison with those two 'manifestations,' the spirit's and yours!
How very very kind of your mother to think of my child! and how happy I am near the end of my paper, not to be tempted on into 'descriptions' that 'hold the place of sense.' He is six years old, he reads English and Italian, and writes without lines, and shall I send you a poem of his for 'illumination'? His poems are far before mine, the very prattle of the angels, when they stammer at first and are not sure of the pronunciation of e's and i's in the spiritual heavens (see Swedenborg). Really he is a sweet good child, and I am not bearable in my conceit of him, as you see! My thankful regards to your mother, whom I shall hope to meet with you, and do yourself accept as much from us both.
Most truly yours,
We leave Florence next week, and spend at least a week in Paris, 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées.
Florence: June 12, 1855 [postmark].
How kind and tender of you, my dearest Sarianna, to care so much to hear that I am better! I was afraid that Robert had written in the Crimean style about me, for he was depressed and uneasy, poor darling, and looked at things from the blackest point of view. Nevertheless, I have escaped some bad symptoms. No spitting of blood, for instance, no loss of voice, and scarcely a threatening of pain in the side. Also I have not grown thinner than is natural under the circumstances. At Genoa (after our cold journey[45]) I wasted in a few days, and thought much worse of myself than there was reason to do this time.
I can assure you I am now much restored. The cough is decidedly got under, and teases me, for the most part, only in the early morning; the fever is gone, and the nights are quiet. I am able to take animal food again, and shall soon recover my ordinary strength. Certainly it has been a bad attack, and I never suffered anything like it in Italy before. The illness at Genoa was the mere tail of what began in England, and was increased by the Alpine exposure. Our weather has been very severe—wind and frost together—something peculiarly irritating in the air. I am loth to blame my poor Florence, who never treated me so before (and how many winters we have spent here!)—and our friends write from Pisa that the weather was as trying there, while from Rome the account is simply 'detestable weather.' At Naples it is sometimes furiously cold; there's no perfect climate anywhere, that's certain. You have only to choose the least evil. Here for the last week it has been so mild that, if I had been in my usual state of health, I might have gone out, they say; and, of course, I have felt the influence beneficially. One encourages oneself in Italy when it is cold, with the assurance that it can't last. Our misfortune this time has been that it has lasted unusually long. How the Italians manage without fires I cannot make out. So chilly as they are, too, it's a riddle.
You would wonder almost how I could feel the cold in these two rooms opening into each other, and from which I have not stirred since the cold weather began. Robert has kept up the fire in our bedroom throughout the night. Oh, he has been spoiling me so. If it had not been that I feared much to hurt him in having him so disturbed and worried, it would have been a very subtle luxury to me, this being ill and feeling myself dear. Do not set me down as too selfish. May God bless him!...
Robert has been frantic about the Crimea, and 'being disgraced in the face of Europe,' &c. &c. When he is mild he wishes the ministry to be torn to pieces in the streets, limb from limb. I do not doubt that the Aberdeen side of the Cabinet has been greatly to blame, but the system is the root of the whole evil; if they don't tear up the system they may tear up the Aberdeens 'world without end,' and not better the matter; if they do tear up the system, then shall we all have reason to rejoice at these disasters, apart from our sympathy with individual sufferings. More good will have been done by this one great shock to the heart of England than by fifty years' more patching, and pottering, and knocking impotent heads together. What makes me most angry is the ministerial apology. 'It's always so with us for three campaigns,'!!! 'it's our way,' 'it's want of experience,' &c. &c. That's precisely the thing complained of. As to want of experience, if the French have had Algerine experiences, we have had our Indian wars, Chinese wars, Caffre wars, and military and naval expenses exceeding those of France from year to year. If our people had never had to pay for an army, they might sit down quietly under the taunt of wanting experience. But we have soldiers, and soldiers should have military education as well as red coats, and be led by properly qualified officers, instead of Lord Nincompoop's youngest sons. As it is in the army, so it is in the State. Places given away, here and there, to incompetent heads; nobody being responsible, no unity of idea and purpose anywhere—the individual interest always in the way of the general good. There is a noble heart in our people, strong enough if once roused, to work out into light and progression, and correct all these evils. Robert is a good deal struck by the generous tone of the observations of the French press, as contradistinguished from the insolences of the Americans, who really are past enduring just now. Certain of our English friends here in Florence have ceased to associate with them on that ground. I think there's a good deal of jealousy about the French alliance. That may account for something....
Dearest, kindest Sarianna, remember not to think any more about me, except that I love you, that I am your attached
[15] Life and Letters of Robert Browning, by Mrs. Sutherland Orr, p. 216.
[16] The late Earl Lytton.
[17] Auguste Brizieux
[18] Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in 1852.
[19] Mrs. Jameson's Legends of the Madonna.
[20] General Franklin Pierce.
[21] 'Tamerton Church Tower, and other Poems.'
[22] In a letter to Miss Mitford, written four days later than this, Mrs. Browning alludes again to the performance of 'Colombe's Birthday:' 'Yes—Robert's play succeeded, but there could be no "run" for a play of that kind; it was a succès d'estime and something more, which is surprising, perhaps, considering the miserable acting of the men. Miss Faucit was alone in doing us justice.'
[23] A few lines have been cut off the letter at this place.
[24] A letter to the Athenæum on July 2, 1853, giving the result of some experiments in table-turning, the tendency of which was to show that the motion of the table was due to unconscious muscular action on the part of the persons touching the table.
[25] Senatore Villari.
[26] Mr. George Barrett. The omitted passage describes an act of generosity by him to one of his younger brothers.
[27] Hardly a successful horoscope of the future Ambassador at Paris and Viceroy of India.
[28] Afterwards wife of Signor Carlo Botta, an Italian man of letters, with whom she returned to America and lived in New York.
[29] This refers to the death of the infant child of the Storys, with whom Mr. and Mrs. Browning were on intimate terms of friendship, as the previous letters show.
[30] According to Mr. R.B. Browning, this is practically what has happened with Page's portrait of Robert Browning (now in Venice). The surface has become thick and waxy, and the portrait has almost disappeared.
[31] Author of 'IX. Poems, by V.' (1840).
[32] This portrait is now in the possession of Mr. R.B. Browning at Venice.
[33] I.e. 'grandfather,' a name by which Mr. Browning, senior, is frequently referred to in these letters.
[34] 'Hush, hush!'
[35] For the subsequent fate of this picture, see note on p. 148, above.
[36] To Mr. Barrett.
[37] This letter is written in very faint ink.
[38] The news of Inkerman had come only a few days before.
[39] Mrs. Browning's 'Song for the Ragged Schools of London' (Poetical Works, iv. 270) and her husband's 'The Twins' were printed together as a small pamphlet for sale at Miss Arabella Barrett's bazaar. Mrs. Browning's poem had been written before they left Rome.
[40] The horrors of the Crimean winter were now becoming known, which fully accounts for this outburst.
[41] The death of Mrs. Jameson's husband in 1854 had left her in very straitened circumstances, which were ultimately relieved, in part, by a subscription among her friends and the admirers of her works.
[42] Dr. Braun's Ruins and Museums of Rome (1854).
[43] The late Lord Leighton, P.R.A.
[44] The picture of Cimabue's Madonna carried in procession through the streets of Florence. It was exhibited in the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1855, and was bought by the Queen.
[45] In 1852.
About a month after the date of the last letter, Mr. and Mrs. Browning left Italy for the second time. As on the previous occasion (1851-2), their absence extended over two summers and a winter, the latter being spent in Paris, while portions of each summer were given up to visits to England. Each of them was bringing home an important work for publication, Mr. Browning's 'Men and Women,' containing much of his very greatest poetry, being passed through the press in 1855, while Mrs. Browning's 'Aurora Leigh,' although more than half of it had been written before she left Florence, was not ready for printing until the following year. They travelled direct from Florence to London, arriving there apparently in the course of July, and taking up their quarters at 13 Dorset Street. Their stay there was made memorable, as Mrs. Browning records below, by a visit from Tennyson, who read to them, on September 27, his new poem of 'Maud;' and it was while he was thus employed that Rossetti drew a well-known portrait of the Laureate in pen and ink. But in spite of glimpses of Tennyson, Ruskin, Carlyle, Kenyon, and other friends, the visit to England was, on the whole, a painful one to Mrs. Browning. Intercourse with her own family did not run smooth. One sister was living at too great a distance to see her; the other was kept out of her reach, for a considerable part of the time, by her father. In addition, a third member of the Barrett family, her brother Alfred, earned excommunication from his father's house by the unforgivable offence of matrimony. Altogether it was not without a certain feeling of relief that, in the middle of October, Mrs. Browning, with her husband and child, left England for Paris. The whole visit had been so crowded with work and social engagements as to leave little time for correspondence; and the letters for the period are consequently few and short.
To Mrs. Martin
13 Dorset Street, Baker Street:
Tuesday, [July-August 1855].
My dearest Mrs. Martin,—I have waited days and days in the answering of your dear, kind, welcoming letter, and yet I have been very very grateful for it. Thank you. I need such things in England above other places.
For the rest, we could not go to Herefordshire, even if I were rational, which I am not; I could as soon open a coffin as do it: there's the truth. The place is nothing to me, of course, only the string round a faggot burnt or scattered. But if I went there, the thought of one face which never ceases to be present with me (and which I parted from for ever in my poor blind unconsciousness with a pettish word) would rise up, put down all the rest, and prevent my having one moment of ordinary calm intercourse with you, so don't ask me; set it down to mania or obstinacy, but I never could go into that neighbourhood, except to die, which I think sometimes I should like. So you may have me some day when the physicians give me up, but then, you won't, you know, and it wouldn't, any way, be merry visiting.
Foolish to write all this! As if any human being could know thoroughly what he was to me. It must seem so extravagant, and perhaps affected, even to you, who are large-hearted and make allowances. After these years!
And, after all, I might have just said the other truth, that we are at the end of our purse, and can't travel any more, not even to Taunton, where poor Henrietta, who is hindered from coming to me by a like pecuniary straitness, begs so hard that we should go. Also, we are bound to London by business engagements; a book in the press (Robert's two volumes), and proofs coming in at all hours. We have been asked to two or three places at an hour's distance from London, and can't stir; to Knebworth, for instance, where Sir Edward Lytton wants us to go. It would be amusing in some ways; but we are tired. Also Robert's sister is staying with us.
Also, we shall see you in Paris on the way to Pau next November, shall we not? Write and tell me that we shall, and that you are not disgusted with me meanwhile.
Do you know our news? Alfred is just married at the Paris Embassy to Lizzie Barrett.... Of course, he makes the third exile from Wimpole Street, the course of true love running remarkably rough in our house. For the rest, there have been no scenes, I thank God, for dearest Arabel's sake. He had written to my father nine or ten days before the ceremony, received no answer, and followed up the silence rather briskly by another letter to announce his marriage.... I am going to write to him at Marseilles.
You cannot imagine to yourself the unsatisfactory and disheartening turmoil in which we are at present. It's the mad bull and the china shop, and, nota bene, we are the china shop. People want to see if Italy has cut off our noses, or what! A very kind anxiety certainly, but so horribly fatiguing that my heart sinks, and my brain goes round under the process. O my Florence! how much better you are!
Have you heard that Wilson is married to a Florentine who lived once with the Peytons, and is here now with us, a good, tender-hearted man?[46]
I am tolerably well, though to breathe this heavy air always strikes me as difficult; and my little Penini is very well, thank God. I want so much to show him to you. We shall be here till the end of September, if the weather admits of it, then go to Paris for the winter, then return to London, and then—why, that 'then' is too far off to see. Only we talk of Italy in the distance.
My book is not ready for the press yet; and as to writing here, who could produce an epic in the pauses of a summerset? Not that my poem is an epic, I hurry on to say in consideration for dear Mr. Martin's feelings. I flatter myself it's a novel, rather, a sort of novel in verse. Arabel looks well.
What pens! What ink! Do write, and tell me of you both. I love you cordially indeed.
Your ever affectionate
13 Dorset Street: Tuesday, [July-August 1855].
My dearest Mona Nina,—I write to you in the midst of so much fatigue and unsatisfactory turmoil, that I feel I shall scarcely be articulate in what I say. Still, it must be tried, for I can't have you think that I have come to London to forget you, much less to be callous to the influence of this dear affectionate letter of yours. May God bless you! How sorry I am that you should have vexation on the top of more serious hurts to depress you. Indeed, if it were not for the other side of the tapestry, it would seem not at all worth while for us to stand putting in more weary Gobelin stitches (till we turn into goblins) day after day, year after year, in this sad world. For my part, I am ready at melancholy with anybody. The air, mentally or physically considered, is very heavy for me here, and I long for the quiet of my Florence, where somehow it always has gone best with my life. As to England, it affects me so, in body, soul, and circumstances, that if I could not get away soon, I should be provoked, I think, into turning monster and hating the whole island, which shocks you so to hear, that you will be provoked into not loving me, perhaps, and that would really be too hard, after all.
The best news I can give you is that Robert has printed the first half volume of his poems, and that the work looks better than ever in print, as all true work does brought into the light. He has read these proofs to Mr. Fox (of Oldham), who gives an opinion that the poems are at the top of art in their kind. I don't know whether you care for Mr. Fox's opinion, but it's worth more than mine, of course, on the ground of impartiality, to say no otherwise, and it will disappoint me much if you don't confirm both of us presently. The poems, for variety, vitality, and intensity, are quite worthy of the writer, it seems to me, and a clear advance in certain respects on his previous productions.
Has 'Maud' penetrated to you? The winding up is magnificent, full of power, and there are beautiful thrilling bits before you get so far. Still, there is an appearance of labour in the early part; the language is rather encrusted by skill than spontaneously blossoming, and the rhythm is not always happy. The poet seems to aim at more breadth and freedom, which he attains, but at the expense of his characteristic delicious music. People in general appear very unfavourably impressed by this poem, very unjustly, Robert and I think. On some points it is even an advance. The sale is great, nearly five thousand copies already.
Let me see what London news I have to tell you. We spent an evening with Mr. Ruskin, who was gracious and generous, and strengthened all my good impressions. Robert took our friend young Leighton to see him afterwards, and was as kindly received. We met Carlyle at Mr. Forster's, and found him in great force, particularly in the damnatory clauses. Mr. Kinglake we saw twice at the Procters', and once here.... The Procters are very well. How I like Adelaide's face! that's a face worth a drove of beauties! Dear Mrs. Sartoris has just left London, I grieve to say; and so has Mrs. Kemble, who (let me say it quick in a parenthesis) is looking quite magnificent just now, with those gorgeous eyes of hers. Mr. Kenyon, too, has vanished—gone with his brother to the Isle of Wight. The weather has been very uncertain, cloudy, misty, and rainy, with heavy air, ever since we came. Ferdinando keeps saying, 'Povera gente, che deve vivere in questo posto,' and Penini catches it up, and gives himself immense airs, discoursing about Florentine skies and the glories of the Cascine to anyone who will listen. The child is well, thank God, and in great spirits, which is my comfort. I found my dear sister Arabel, too, well, and it is deep yet sad joy to me to look in her precious loving eyes, which never failed me, nor could. Henrietta will be hindered, perhaps, from coming to see me by want of means, poor darling; and the same cause will keep me from going to Taunton. We have a quantity of invitations to go into the country, to the Custs, to the Martins, &c. &c., and (one which rather tempts me) to Knebworth, Sir Edward Lytton having written us the kindest of possible invitations; but none of these things are for us, I see.
Dearest friend, I do hope you won't go to Rome this winter. When you have been to Vienna, come back, and let us have you in Paris. I am glad Lady Elgin liked the book. The history of it was that she asked Robert to get it for her, and he presented it instead.
Our M. Milsand likes you much, he says, and I like you to hear it....
Oh, we read your graceful, spirited letter in the 'Athenæum.' By the way, did you see the absurd exposition of 'Maud' as an allegory? What pure madness, instead of Maudness!
13 Dorset Street: Monday, [August-September 1855].
Day after day, my dearest Mrs. Martin, I have been meaning to write to you, always in vain, and now I hear from Mrs. Ormus Biddulph that you are not quite well. How is this? Shall I hear soon that you are better? I want something to cheer me up a little. The bull is out of the china shop, certainly, but the broken pottery doesn't enjoy itself much the more for that. I have lost my Arabel (my one light in London), who has had to go away to Eastbourne; very vexed at it, dear darling, though she really required change of air. We, for our parts, are under promise to follow her in a week, as it will be on our way to Paris, and not cost us many shillings over the expenses of the direct route. But the days drag themselves out, and there remains so much work (on proof sheets, &c.) to be done here, that I despond of our being able to move as soon as I fain would. I assure you I am stuffed as hard as a cricket ball with the work of every day, and I have waited in vain for a clear hour to write quietly and comfortably to you, in order to say how your letter touched me, dear dear friend. You always understand. Your sympathy stretches beyond points of agreement, which is so rare and so precious, and makes one feel so unspeakably grateful....
London has emptied itself, as you may suppose, by this time. Mrs. Ormus Biddulph was so kind as to wish us to dine with them on Monday (to-day), but we found it absolutely impossible. The few engagements we make we don't keep, and I shall try for the future to avoid perjury. As it is, I have no doubt that various people have set me down as 'full of arrogance and assumption,' at which the gods must laugh, for really, if truths could be known, I feel even morbidly humble just now, and could show my sackcloth with anybody's sackcloth. But it is difficult to keep to the conventions rigidly, and return visits to the hour, and hold engagements to the minute, when one has neither carriage, nor legs, nor time at one's disposal, which is my case. If I don't at once answer (for instance) such a letter as you sent me, I must be a beggar....
May God bless you both, my very dear friends! My husband bids me remember him to you in cordial regard. I long to see you, and to hear (first) that you are well.
Dearest Mrs. Martin's ever attached
13 Dorset Street: Tuesday, [October 1855].
My dearest Mrs. Martin,—I can't go without writing to you, but I am ground down with last things to do on last days, and it must be a word only. Dearest friend, I have waited morning after morning for a clear half-hour, because I didn't like to do your bidding and write briefly, though now, after all, I am reduced to it. We leave England to-morrow, and shall sleep (D.V.) at 102 Rue de Grenelle, Faubourg St. Germain, Paris,—I am afraid in a scarcely convenient apartment, which a zealous friend, in spite of our own expressed opinion, secured for us for the term of six months, because of certain yellow satin furniture which only she could consider 'worthy of us.' We shall probably have to dress on the staircase, but what matter? There's the yellow satin to fall back upon.
If the rooms are not tenable, we must underlet them, or try....
One of the pleasantest things which has happened to us here is the coming down on us of the Laureate, who, being in London for three or four days from the Isle of Wight, spent two of them with us, dined with us, smoked with us, opened his heart to us (and the second bottle of port), and ended by reading 'Maud' through from end to end, and going away at half-past two in the morning. If I had had a heart to spare, certainly he would have won mine. He is captivating with his frankness, confidingness, and unexampled naïveté! Think of his stopping in 'Maud' every now and then—'There's a wonderful touch! That's very tender. How beautiful that is!' Yes, and it was wonderful, tender, beautiful, and he read exquisitely in a voice like an organ, rather music than speech.
War, war! It is terrible certainly. But there are worse plagues, deeper griefs, dreader wounds than the physical. What of the forty thousand wretched women in this city? The silent writhing of them is to me more appalling than the roar of the cannons. Then this war is necessary on our sides. Is that wrong necessary? It is not so clear to me.
Can I write of such questions in the midst of packing?
May God bless you both! Write to me in Paris, and do come soon and find us out.
Robert's love. My love to you both, dearest friends. May God bless you! Your ever affectionate
13 Dorset Street:
Tuesday morning, October 17, 1855 [postmark].
My dear Mr. Ruskin,—I can't express our amount of mortification in being thwarted in the fulfilment of the promise you allowed us to make to ourselves, that we would go down to you once more before leaving England. What with the crush rather than press of circumstances, I have scarcely needed the weather to pin me to the wall. Sometimes my husband could not go with me, sometimes I couldn't go with him, and always we waited for one another in hope, till this last day overtook us. To-morrow (D.V.) we shall be in Paris. Now, will you believe how we have wished and longed to see you beyond these strait tantalising limits?—how you look to us at this moment like the phantasm of a thing dear and desired, just seen and vanishing? What! are you to be ranked among my spiritualities after all? Forgive me that wrong.
Then you had things to say to me, I know, which in your consideration, and through my cowardice, you did not say, but yet will!
Will you write to me, dear Mr. Ruskin, sometimes, or have I disgusted you so wholly that you won't or can't?
Once, I know, somewhat because of shyness and somewhat because of intense apprehension—somewhat, too, through characteristic stupidity (no contradiction this!)—I said I was grateful to you when you had just bade me not. Well, I really couldn't help it. That's all I can say now. Even if your appreciation were perfectly deserved at all points, why, appreciation means sympathy, and sympathy being the best gift nearly which one human creature can give another, I don't understand (I never could) why it does not deserve thanks. I am stupid perhaps, but for my life I never could help being grateful to the people who loved me, even if they happened to say, 'I can't help it! not I!'
As for Mr. Ruskin, he sees often in his own light. That's what I see and feel.
Will you write to me sometimes? I come back to it. Will you, though I am awkward and shy and obstinate now and then, and a wicked spiritualist to wit—a realist in an out-of-the-world sense—accepting matter as a means (no matter for it otherwise!)?
Don't give me up, dear Mr. Ruskin! My husband's truest regards, and farewell from both of us! I would fain be
Your affectionate friend,
Our address in Paris will be, 102 Rue de Grenelle, Faubourg St. Germain.
The house in the Rue de Grenelle, however, did not prove a success, in spite of the consolations of the yellow satin, and after six weeks of discomfort and house-hunting the Brownings moved to 3 Rue de Colisée, which became their home for the next eight months. It was a period, first of illness caused by the unsuitable rooms, and then of hard work for Mrs. Browning, who was engaged in completing 'Aurora Leigh,' while her husband was less profitably employed in the attempt to recast 'Sordello' into a more intelligible form. No such incident as the visits to George Sand marked this stay in Paris, and politics were in a very much less exciting state. The Crimean war was just coming to a close, and public opinion in England was far from satisfied with the conduct of its ally; but on the whole the times were uneventful.
The first letter from Paris has, however, a special interest as containing a very full estimate of the character and genius of Mrs. Browning's dear friend, Miss Mitford. It is addressed to Mr. Ruskin, who had been unceasingly attentive and helpful to Miss Mitford during her declining days.
Paris, 102 Rue de Grenelle, Faubourg St. Germain:
November 5, [1855].
My dear Mr. Ruskin,—I thank you from my heart for your more than interesting letter. You have helped me to see that dear friend of ours, as without you I could not have seen her, in those last affecting days of illness, by the window not only of the house in Berkshire, but of the house of the body and of the material world—an open window through which the light shone, thank God. It would be a comfort to me now if I had had the privilege of giving her a very very little of the great pleasure you certainly gave her (for I know how she enjoyed your visit—she wrote and told me), but I must be satisfied with the thought left to me, that now she regrets nothing, not even great pleasures.
I agree with you in much if not in everything you have written of her. It was a great, warm, outflowing heart, and the head was worthy of the heart. People have observed that she resembled Coleridge in her granite forehead—something, too, in the lower part of the face—however unlike Coleridge in mental characteristics, in his tendency to abstract speculation, or indeed his ideality. There might have been, as you suggest, a somewhat different development elsewhere than in Berkshire—not very different, though—souls don't grow out of the ground.
I agree quite with you that she was stronger and wider in her conversation and letters than in her books. Oh, I have said so a hundred times. The heat of human sympathy seemed to bring out her powerful vitality, rustling all over with laces and flowers. She seemed to think and speak stronger holding a hand—not that she required help or borrowed a word, but that the human magnetism acted on her nature, as it does upon men born to speak. Perhaps if she had been a man with a man's opportunities, she would have spoken rather than written a reputation. Who can say? She hated the act of composition. Did you hear that from her ever?
Her letters were always admirable, but I do most deeply regret that what made one of their greatest charms unfits them for the public—I mean their personal details. Mr. Harness sends to me for letters, and when I bring them up, and with the greatest pain force myself to examine them (all those letters she wrote to me in her warm goodness and affectionateness), I find with wonder and sorrow how only a half-page here and there could be submitted to general readers—could, with any decency, much less delicacy.
But no, her 'judgment' was not 'unerring.' She was too intensely sympathetical not to err often, and in fact it was singular (or seemed so) what faces struck her as most beautiful, and what books as most excellent. If she loved a person, it was enough. She made mistakes one couldn't help smiling at, till one grew serious to adore her for it. And yet when she read a book, provided it wasn't written by a friend, edited by a friend, lent by a friend, or associated with a friend, her judgment could be fine and discriminating on most subjects, especially upon subjects connected with life and society and manners. Shall I confess? She never taught me anything but a very limited admiration of Miss Austen, whose people struck me as wanting souls, even more than is necessary for men and women of the world. The novels are perfect as far as they go—that's certain. Only they don't go far, I think. It may be my fault.
You lay down your finger and stop me, and exclaim that it's my way perhaps to attribute a leaning of the judgment through personal sympathy to people in general—that I do it perhaps to you. No, indeed. I can quite easily believe that you don't either think or say 'the pleasantest things to your friends;' in fact, I am sure you don't. You would say them as soon to your enemies—perhaps sooner. Also, when you began to say pleasant things to me, you hadn't a bit of personal feeling to make a happy prejudice of, and really I can't flatter myself that you have now. What I meant was that you, John Ruskin, not being a critic sal merum as the ancients had it, but half critic, and half poet, may be rather encumbered sometimes by the burning imagination in you, may be apt sometimes, when you turn the light of your countenance on a thing, to see the thing lighted up as a matter of course, just as we, when we carried torches into the Vatican, were not perfectly clear how much we brought to that wonderful Demosthenes, folding the marble round him in its thousand folds—how much we brought, and how much we received. Was it the sculptor or was it the torch-bearer who produced that effect? And like doubts I have had of you, I confess, and not only when you have spoken kindly of me. You don't mistake by your heart, through loving, but you exaggerate by your imagination, through glorifying. There's my thought at least.
But what I meant by 'apprehending too intensely,' dear Mr. Ruskin, don't ask me. Really I have forgotten. I suppose I did mean something, though it was a day of chaos and packing boxes—try to think I did therefore, and let it pass.
You please me—oh, so much—by the words about my husband. When you wrote to praise my poems, of course I had to bear it—I couldn't turn round and say, 'Well, and why don't you praise him, who is worth twenty of me? Praise my second Me, as well as my Me proper, if you please.' One's forced to be rather decent and modest for one's husband as well as for one's self, even if it's harder. I couldn't pull at your coat to read 'Pippa Passes,' for instance. I can't now.
But you have put him on the shelf, so we have both taken courage to send you his new volumes, 'Men and Women,' not that you may say 'pleasant things' of them or think yourself bound to say anything indeed, but that you may accept them as a sign of the esteem and admiration of both of us. I consider them on the whole an advance upon his former poems, and am ready to die at the stake for my faith in these last, even though the discerning public should set it down afterwards as only a 'Heretic's Tragedy.'
Our friend Mr. Jarves came to read a part of your letter to us, confirmatory of doctrines he had heard from us on an earlier day. The idea of your writing the art criticisms of the 'Leader' (!) was so stupendously ludicrous, there was no need of faith in your loyalty to laugh the whole imputation, at first hearing, to uttermost scorn. I must say, in justice to Mr. Jarves, that he never did really believe one word of it, though a good deal ruffled and pained that it should have been believed by anybody. He is full of admiring and grateful feeling for you, and has gone on to Italy in that mind.
As for me, I almost yearn to go too. We have fallen into a pit here in Paris, upon evil days and rooms, an impulsive friend having taken an apartment for us facing the east, insufficiently protected, and with a bedroom wanting, so that we are still waiting, with trunks unpacked, and our child sleeping on the floor, till we can get emancipated anyhow. Then, through the last week's cold, I have not been well—only it will not, I think, be much, as I am better already, and there will be no practical end to the talk of Nice and Pau, which my husband had begun a little. All this has hindered me from following my first impulse of thanking you for your letter immediately.
How beautiful Paris is, and how I agree with you, as we both did with dear Miss Mitford, on the subject of Louis Napoleon. I approve of him exactly because I am a democrat, and not at all for an exceptional reason. I hold that the most democratical government in Europe is out and out the French Government (which doesn't exclude the absolutist element, far from it); but who in England understands this? and that the representative man of France, the incarnate republic, is the man Louis Napoleon? An extraordinary man he is. I never was a Buonapartist, though the legend of the First Napoleon has wrung tears from me before now, and I was very sorry when Louis Napoleon was elected instead of Cavaignac. At the coup d'état I was not sorry. And since then I have believed in him more and more.
So far in sympathy. In regard to the slaves, no, no, no; I belong to a family of West Indian slaveholders, and if I believed in curses, I should be afraid. I can at least thank God that I am not an American. How you look serenely at slavery, I cannot understand, and I distrust your power to explain. Do you indeed?