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

May God bless you always!

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

Your ever affectionate BA.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Braun

Florence: May 13, [1855].

My dearest Madame Braun,—You have classed me and ticketed me before now, I think, as among the ungrateful of the world; yet I am grateful, grateful, grateful! When your book[42] came (how very kind you were to send it to me!) and when I had said so some five times running, in came somebody who was fanatico per Roma, and reverential in proportion for Dr. Braun, who with some sudden appeal to my sensibility—the softer just then that I was only just recovering strength after a sharp winter attack—swept the volume off the table and carried it off out of the house to study the contents at leisure. I expected it back the next week, but it lingered. And I really hadn't the audacity to write to you and say, 'Thank you, but I have looked as yet simply at the title-page.' Well, at last it comes home, and I turn the leaves, examine, read, approve, like Ludovisi and the Belvedere, with a double pleasure of association and become qualified properly to thank you and Dr. Braun from Robert and myself for this gift to us and valuable contribution to archaeological 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 'Athenaeum.' Therefore, if you were not paid for it, it was the more abominable. Robert saw it with his own eyes, printed. When I heard from you that you had heard nothing, I mentioned the circumstance to Mrs. Jameson in a letter I was writing to her, and I do hope she has not neglected since to give you some information at least. You are aware probably of the excellent effect with which that kind Mrs. Procter has managed a private subscription in behalf of dear Mrs. Jameson, in consequence of which she will be placed in circumstances of ease for the rest of her life. Fanny Kemble nobly gave a hundred pounds towards this good purpose. Mrs. Jameson spoke in her last letter of coming to Italy this summer, and I dare say we shall have the ill luck to lose her, miss her, cross her en route, perhaps.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ever your affectionate ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

* * * * *

To Mr. Ruskin

Florence: June 2, 1855.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most truly yours, ELIZABETH B. BROWNING.

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

* * * * *

To Miss Browning

Florence: June 12, 1855 [postmark].

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

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

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

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

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

BA.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] Life and Letters of Robert Browning, by Mrs. Sutherland Orr, p. 216.

[16] The late Earl Lytton.

[17] Auguste Brizieux

[18] Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in 1852.

[19] Mrs. Jameson's Legends of the Madonna.

[20] General Franklin Pierce.

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

[22] In a letter to Miss Mitford, written four days later than this, Mrs. Browning alludes again to the performance of 'Colombe's Birthday:' 'Yes—Robert's play succeeded, but there could be no "run" for a play of that kind; it was a succes 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 Athenaeum on July 2, 1853, giving the result of some experiments in table-turning, the tendency of which was to show that the motion of the table was due to unconscious muscular action on the part of the persons touching the table.

[25] Senatore Villari.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[34] 'Hush, hush!'

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

[36] To Mr. Barrett.

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

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

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

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

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

[42] Dr. Braun's Ruins and Museums of Rome (1854).

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

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

[45] In 1852.



CHAPTER IX

1855-1859

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 BA.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Jameson

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 'Athenaeum.' By the way, did you see the absurd exposition of 'Maud' as an allegory? What pure madness, instead of Maudness!

* * * * *

To Mrs. Martin

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 BA.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Martin

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 naivete! 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

BA.

* * * * *

To Mr. Ruskin

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, ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

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 Colisee, 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.

* * * * *

To Mr. Ruskin

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'etat 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?

Dear Mr. Ruskin, do let us hear from you sometimes. It is such a great gift, a letter of yours. Then remember that I am a spirit in prison all the winter, not able to stir out. Up to this time we have lived perdus from all our acquaintances because of our misfortunes. With my husband's cordial regards, I remain most truly yours always,

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

The publishers are directed to send you the volumes on their publication.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Jameson

[Paris] 3 Rue du Colisee, Avenue des Champs-Elysees: Saturday, December 17, 1855 [postmark].

How pleasant, dearest Mona Nina, to hear you, though the voice sounds far! Try and come back to us soon, and let us talk, or listen, rather, to your talking. Why shouldn't I, too, have a sister of charity, like others? I appeal to you.

Still, I have only good to tell you of myself. I am better through the better weather and through our arrival in this apartment, where, as Robert says, we are as pleased as if we had never lived in a house before. Well, I assure you the rooms are perfect in comfort and convenience; not large, but warm, and of a number and arrangement which exclude all fault-finding. Clean, carpeted; no glitter, nothing very pretty—not even the clocks—but with sofas and chairs suited to lollers such as one of us, and altogether what I mean whenever I say that an 'apartment' on the Continent is twenty times more really 'comfortable' than any of your small houses in England. Robert has a room to himself too. It's perfect. I hop about from one side to the other, like a bird in a new cage. The feathers are draggled and rough, though. I am not strong, though the cough is quieter without the least doubt.

And this time also I shall not die, perhaps. Indeed, I do think not.

That darling Robert carried me into the carriage, swathed past possible breathing, over face and respirator in woollen shawls. No, he wouldn't set me down even to walk up the fiacre steps, but shoved me in upside down, in a struggling bundle—I struggling for breath—he accounting to the concierge for 'his murdered man' (rather woman) in a way which threw me into fits of laughter afterwards to remember. 'Elle se porte tres bien! elle se porte extremement bien. Ce n'est rien que les poumons.' Nothing but lungs! No air in them, which was the worst! Think how the concierge must have wondered ever since about 'cet original d'Anglais,' and the peculiar way of treating wives when they are in excellent health. 'Sacre.'

Kind Madame Mohl was here to-day, asking about you; and the Aides, male and female, whom we did not see, being at dinner; and dear Lady Elgin came to the door in her wheel-chair.

We keep Penini (in a bed this time) in our bedroom. He was so pathetic about it, we would not lose him.

Write to us, keep writing to us, till you come. I think much of you, wish much for you, and feel much with you. May God bless you, my dear dear friend! The frost broke up on Thursday, and it is raining warmly to-day; but I can't believe in the possibility of the cold penetrating much into this house under worse circumstances; and I shall be bold, and try hard to begin writing next week.

Oh! George Sand. How magnificent that eighteenth volume is; I mean the volume which concludes with the views upon the sexes! After all, and through all, if her hands are ever so defiled, that woman has a clean soul.

On the magnetic subjects, too, her 'je ne sais' is worthy of her. And yet, more is to be known I am sure, than she knows.

I read this book so eagerly and earnestly that I seem to burn it up before me. Really there are great things in it.

And to hear people talking it over coldly, pulling it leaf from leaf!

Robert quite joins with me at last. He is intensely interested, and full of admiration.

Now do write. With our united love, we are ever yours, be certain!

R.B. and E.B.B.

Remember not to agree to do the etching. Pray be careful not to involve the precious eyes too much. How easy it would be to etch them out! Frightfully easy.

* * * * *

To Miss E.F. Haworth

[Paris] 3: Rue du Colisee: Monday, January 29, 1856 [postmark].

Dearest Fanny,—I can't get over it that you should fancy I meant to 'banter' you.[47] If I wrote lightly, it was partly that you wrote lightly, and partly perhaps because at bottom I wasn't light at all. When one feels out of spirits, it's the most natural thing possible to be extravagantly gay; now, isn't it?

And now believe me with what truth and earnestness of heart I am interested in all that concerns you; and this is every woman's chief concern, of course, this great fact of love and marriage. My advice is, be sure of him first, and of yourself chiefly. For the rest I would marry ('if I were a woman,' I was going to say), though the whole world spouted fire in my face. Marriage is a personal matter, be sure, and the nearest and wisest can't judge for you. If you can make up two hundred a year between you, or less even, there is no pecuniary obstacle in my eyes. People may live very cheaply and very happily if they are happy otherwise.

As for me, my only way was to cut the knot—because it was an untieable knot—and because my fingers generally are not strong at untieing. What do you mean by Mr. Kenyon's backing me? Nobody backed me except the north wind which blew us vehemently out of England. Mr. Kenyon knew no more of the affair than you did, though he was very kind afterwards and took my part. And as to money, there was (and is) little enough. It was a case of pure madness (for people of the world), just like table-moving and spirit-rapping and the 'hands'!

But you, my dear friend, I do earnestly entreat you to consider if you are sure of principles, sentiment—and of yourself. Because, whether you know it or not, you are happily situated now as far as exterior circumstances are concerned. They are not worth much, but they have their worth. They give you liberty to follow your own devices, to think the beautiful and feel the noble; to live out, in short, your individual life, which it is so hard to do in marriage, even where you marry worthily.

I say this probably 'as one who beateth the air;' yet you must consider that I who say it, and who say it emphatically, consider a happy marriage as the happiest state, and that all pecuniary reasons against love are both ineffectual and stupid.

Flippancy, flippancy, of course. London would be better (for your friends) as a residence for you, than Wittemberg can be; and for that, and no other account, I could be sorry that you did not settle so.

Well, never mind! The description sounds excellently; almost over-romantic, though. Is there steadiness, do you think, and depth, and reliableness altogether? What impression does he make among those who have known him longest? Dearest Fanny, do nothing in haste.

Now I am going to tell you something which has vexed me, and continues to vex me. The clock. If you knew Robert, you never would have asked him. He has a sort of mania about shops, and won't buy his own gloves. He bought a pair of boots the other day (because I went down on my knees to ask him, and the water was running in through his soles), and he will not soon get over it. Without exaggeration, he would rather leap down among the lions after your glove, as the knight of old, than walk into a shop for you. If I could but go out, there would be no difficulties; but I am shut up in my winter prison, in spite of the extraordinarily mild weather, through having suffered so much in the beginning of the winter. I asked Sarianna; she also shrinks from the responsibility; is afraid of not pleasing you, &c. The end of it all is that Mrs. Haworth will think us all very disobliging barbarians, and that really I am vexed. Why not ask Mrs. Cochrane to get the thing for you? You can but ask, at any rate.

I am very anxious just now about dear Mr. Kenyon, who has been alarmingly ill, and is only better, I fear. Miss Bayley wrote to tell me, and added that he was going to Cowes when he could move, which pleases me; for only change of air and liberation from London air can complete his convalescence.

For the rest, I am busy beyond description; but never too much so, mind, dear Fanny, to be glad to get your letters. Write soon. Your ever affectionate

E.B.B.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Martin

[Paris]: 3 Rue du Colisee: February 21, [1856].

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—I should have answered your note days ago! If you saw how I am in a plague of industry just now, and not a moment unspotted!—how, for instance, I kept an 'Examiner' newspaper (sent to us from London) three days on the table before I could read it,—you would make an allowance for me. It's a sort of furia! I must get over so much writing, or I shall be too late for the summer's printing. If it isn't done by June, what will become of me? I shall go back to Italy in disgrace, and considerably poorer than I need be, which is of more practical consequence. So I fag. Then there's an hour and a half in the morning for Penini's lessons. We breakfast at nine, and receive nobody till past four. This will all prove to you two things, dearest friend—first (I hope) that I'm pardonable for making you wait a few days longer than should have been, and secondly that I'm tolerably well. Yes, indeed. Since our arrival in this house, after just the first, when there was some frost, we have had such a miraculous mildness under the name of winter, that I rallied as a matter of course, and for the last month there has been no return of the spitting of blood, and no extravagance of cough. I have persisted with cod's liver oil, and I look by no means ill, people assure me, and so I may assure you. But I am not very strong, and was a good deal tired after a two hours' drive which I ventured on a week ago in the Bois de Boulogne. The small rooms, and deficiency of air resulting from them, make a long shutting up a more serious thing than I find it in Florence in our acres of apartment. But it is easy to mend strength when only strength is to be mended, and I, for one, get strong again easily. I only hope that the cold is not returning. The air was sharp yesterday and is to-day; but it's February, and the spring is at the doors, and we may hope with reason....

What do you say of the peace as a final peace? You are not at least vexed, as so many English are, that we can't fight a little for glory to reinstate our reputation. You'll excuse that. Still, I can't help feeling disappointed in the peace—chiefly, perhaps, because I hoped too much from the war. Will nothing be done after all for Italy? nothing for Poland?

You want books. Read About's 'Tolla.' He is a new writer, and his book is exquisite as a transcript of Italian manners. Then read Octave Feuillet. There is much in him.

Will there be war with America, dear Mr. Martin? Never will I believe it till I hear the cannons.

Talking of what we should believe, it appears that Mrs. Trollope has thrown over Hume[48] from some failure in his moral character in Florence. I have had many letters on the subject. I have no doubt that the young man, who is weak and vain, and was exposed to gross flatteries from the various unwise coteries at Florence who took him up, deserves to be thrown over. But his mediumship is undisproved, as far as I can understand. It is simply a physical faculty—he is quite an electric wire. At Florence everybody is quarrelling with everybody on the subject. I thought I would tell you.

Penini, the pet, is radiant, and learning French triumphantly. May God bless you! Write to me, dearest Mrs. Martin, and tell me of both of you. Robert's love.

Your ever, ever affectionate BA.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Jameson

[Paris]: 3 Rue du Colisee: February 28, 1856 [postmark].

My dearest Mona Nina,—Three letters, one on the top of another, and I don't answer. Shame on me. How I have thought of you, to make up! And you write to apologise to us, from a dreamy mystical apprehension that we may peradventure have lost eightpence on your account! Well, it would have been awful if we had. And so Providence interposed with a special miracle, and obliged the officials to accept the actual penny stamp for the fourpenny stamp you meant to put, and we paid just nothing for the terrible letter! Take heart, therefore, in future, before all hypothetical misfortunes. That's the moral of the tale....

My dear friend, how shall I pull you and make you come to Paris? Madame de Triqueti was here the other day, and spoke of you, and swore she wouldn't help to take rooms for you, unless you came near her. As to the two rooms you speak of, I am sure you might have what rooms you pleased now, in this neighbourhood. What would you give? Our present apartment is comfort itself, and except some cold days a short time after you went away, we have really had no winter. The miraculous warmth has saved me, for I was so felled in that Rue de Grenelle, I should scarcely have had force against an ordinary cold season. Little Penini has been blossoming like a rose all the time. Such a darling, idle, distracted child he is, not keeping his attention for three minutes together for the hour and a half I teach him, and when I upbraid him for it, throwing himself upon me like a dog, kissing my cheeks and head and hands. 'O you little pet, dive me one chance more! I will really be dood,' and learning everything by magnetism, getting on in seven weeks, for instance, to read French quite surprisingly. He has written a poem on the war and the peace, called 'Soldiers going and coming,' which Robert and I thought so remarkable that I sent it to Mr. Forster. Oh, such a darling, that child is! I expect the wings to grow presently.

As for my poem (far below Penini's), I work on steadily and have put in order and transcribed five books, containing in all above six thousand lines ready for the press. I have another book to put together and transcribe, and then must begin the composition part of one or two more books, I suppose. I must be ready for printing by the time we go to England, in June. Robert too is much occupied with 'Sordello,'[49] and we neither of us receive anybody till past four o'clock. I mean that when you have read my new book, you put away all my other poems or most of them, and know me only by the new. Oh, I am so anxious to make it good. I have put much of myself in it—I mean to say, of my soul, my thoughts, emotions, opinions; in other respects, there is not a personal line, of course. It's a sort of poetic art-novel. If it's a failure, there will be the comfort of having made a worthy effort, of having done it as well as I could. Write soon to me, and love us both constantly, as we do you.

Your ever affectionate BA.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Jameson

[Paris]: May 2, 1856 [postmark].

My dearest Mona Nina,—It's very pleasant always to get letters from you, and such kind dear letters, showing that you haven't broken the tether-strings in search of 'pastures new,' weary of our cropped grass.

As for news, you have most of the persons upon whom you care for gossip in your hand now—Mrs. Sartoris, Madame Viardot, Lady Monson, and the Ristori herself. Robert went to see her twice, because Lady Monson led him by the hand kindly, and was charmed; thought the Medee very fine, but won't join in the cry about miraculous genius and Rachel out-Racheled. He thinks that as far as the highest and largest development of sensibility can go, she is very great; but that for those grand and sudden apercus which have distinguished actors—such as Kean, for instance—he does not acknowledge them in her. You have heard perhaps how Dickens and others, Macready among the rest, depreciated her. Dickens went so far as to say, I understand, that no English audience would tolerate her defects; which will be put to the proof presently. By the way, you had better not quote Macready on this subject, as he expressed himself unwilling to be quoted on it....

So now we are well again,[50] thank God; and if Robert will but take regular exercise, he will keep so, I hope. As to Penini, he is radiant, and even I have been out walking twice, though a good deal weaker for the winter. More open air, and much more, is necessary to set me growing again, but I shall grow; and meantime I have been working, and am working, at so close a rate that if I lose a day I am lost, which is too close a rate, and makes one feel rather nervous. We see nobody till after four meantime. I have finished (not transcribed) the last book but one, and am now in the very last book, which must be finished with the last days of May. Then the first fortnight of June will be occupied with the transcription of these two last books, and I shall carry the completed work with me to England on the 16th if it please God. Oh, I do hope you won't be disappointed with it—much! Some things you will like certainly, because of the boldness and veracity of them, and others you may; I can't be so sure. Robert speaks well of the poetry—encourages me much. But then he has seen only six of the eight books yet.

He just now has taken to drawing, and after thirteen days' application has produced some quite startling copies of heads. I am very glad. He can't rest from serious work in light literature, as I can; it wearies him, and there are hours which are on his hands, which is bad both for them and for him. The secret of life is in full occupation, isn't it? This world is not tenable on other terms. So while I lie on the sofa and rest in a novel, Robert has a resource in his drawing; and really, with all his feeling and knowledge of art, some of the mechanical trick of it can't be out of place.

To-night he is going to Madame Mohl, who is well and as vivacious as ever. When Monckton Milnes was in Paris he dined with him in company with Mignet, Cavour, George Sand, and an empty chair in which Lamartine was expected to sit. George Sand had an ivy wreath round her head, and looked like herself; But Lady Monson will talk to you of her, better than I can. Now, mind you ask Lady Monson.

As to this Government, I only entreat you not to believe any of the mendacious reports set afloat here by a most unworthy Opposition, and carried out by the English 'Athenaeum' and other prints. Surely a cause must be bad which is supported by such bad means. In the first place, Beranger did not write the verses attributed to him. The internal evidence was sufficient—for Victor Hugo is his personal enemy—to say nothing of the poetry. Then it would be wise, I think, in considering this question, and in taking for granted that the 'literature and talent' of the country are against the Government, to analyse the antecedents and character of the persons who do stand out, persons implicated in former Governments, or favored by former Governments, and whose vanity and prejudices are necessarily contrary to a new order. These persons, either in themselves or their friends, have all been tried in action and found wanting. They have all lost the confidence of the French people, either by their misconduct or their ill-fortune. They are all cast aside as broken instruments. Under these circumstances they think it desirable to break themselves into the lock, to prevent the turning of another key; they consider it noble and patriotic to stand aside and revile and throw mud, in order to hinder the action of those who are acting for the country. In my mind, it is quite otherwise; in my mind and in many other minds—Robert's, for instance! and he began with a most intense hatred of this Government, as you well know. But he does not shut his eyes to all that is noble and admirable going on, on all sides. At last he is sick of the Opposition, he admits. In respect to literature, nothing can be more mendacious than to say there are restraints upon literature. Books of freer opinion are printed now than would ever have been permitted under Louis Philippe, as was reproached against Napoleon by an enemy the other day—books of free opinion, even licentious opinion, on religion and philosophy. There is restraint in the newspapers only. That the 'Athenaeum' should venture to say that in consequence of the suppression of books compositors are thrown out of work and forced to become transcribers of verses like Beranger's (which are not Beranger's) is so stupendous a falsehood in the face of statistics which prove a yearly increase in the amount of books printed that I quite lose my breath, you see, in speaking of it.

The Government is steadily solving, or attempting to solve, that difficult modern problem of possible Socialism which has been knocking at all our heads and hearts so long. That is its vexation. It is a Government for the 'bus people, the first settled and serious Government that ever attempted their case. Its action is worth all the pedantry of the doctrinaires and the middling morals of the juste milieu; and I, who am a Democrat, will stand by it as long as I can stand, which isn't very long just now, as I told you.

Dearest Mona Nina, I am so uneasy about dear Mr. Kenyon, who has been ill again—is ill, I fear. He is in London—more's the pity! and Miss Bayley is with him. He gives me sad thoughts.

Do write of yourself. Don't you be sad, dearest friend. Oh, I do wish you could have come, and let us love you and talk to you—but on the 16th of June, at any rate.

Your ever affectionate BA.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Jameson

[Paris]: Monday, May 6, 1856 [postmark].

My dearest Mona Nina,—Your letter makes me feel very uncomfortable. We are in real difficulty about our dear friend Mr. Kenyon, the impulse being, of course, that Robert should go at once, and then the fear coming that it might be an annoyance, an intrusion, something the farthest from what it should be at all. If you had been more explicit—you—and we could know what was in your mind when you 'ask' Robert to come, my dear friend, then it would be all easier. If we could but know whether anything passed between you and Miss Bayley on this subject, or whether it is entirely out of your own head that you wish Robert to come. I thought about it yesterday, till I went to bed at eight o'clock with headache. Shall I tell you something in your ear? It is easier for a rich man to enter, after all, into the kingdom of heaven than into the full advantages of real human tenderness. Robert would give much at this moment to be allowed to go to dearest Mr. Kenyon, sit up with him, hold his hand, speak a good loving word to him. This would be privilege to him and to me; and love and gratitude on our parts justified us in asking to be allowed to do it. Twice we have asked. The first time a very kind but decided negative was returned to us on the part of our friend. Yesterday we again asked. Yesterday I wrote to say that it would be consolation to us if Robert might go—if we might say so without 'teasing.' To-morrow, in the case of Miss Bayley sending a consent, even on her own part, Robert will set off instantly; but without an encouraging word from her—my dear friend, do you not see that it might really vex dearest Mr. Kenyon? Observe, we have no more right of intruding than you would have if you forced your way upstairs. It's a wretched world, where we can't express an honest affection honestly without half appearing indelicate to ourselves; nothing proves more how the dirt of the world is up to our chins, and I think I had my headache yesterday really and absolutely from simple disgust.

You see, Robert might go to stay till Mr. Edward Kenyon arrives—if it were only till then. I still hope and pray that our dearest friend may rally, to recover at least a tolerable degree of health. He has certain good symptoms; and some of the bad ones, such as the wandering, &c., are constitutional with him under the least fever. You may suppose what painful anxiety we are in about him. Oh, he has been always so good to me—so true, sympathising, and generous a friend!

I shall always have a peculiar feeling to that dear kind Miss Bayley for what she has been to him these latter months.

Now I can't write any more just now. Leighton has been cut up unmercifully by the critics, but bears on, Robert says, not without courage. That you should say 'his picture looked well' was comfort in the general gloom, though even you don't give anything yet that can be called an opinion. Mrs. Sartoris will be much vexed by it all, I am sure.

May God bless you! Write to me. Robert's love with that of

Your ever affectionate BA.

Did you observe a portrait of Robert by Page? Where have they hung it, and how does it strike you?

* * * * *

To Miss E.F. Haworth

[Paris]: 3 Rue du Colisee: Saturday, June 17, 1856 [postmark].

My dearest Fanny,—I was just going to write to you to beg you to apply to Chapman for Robert's book, when he came to stop me with the newspaper. Thank you, my dearest Fanny, for having thought of me when you had so much weary thought; it was very touching to me that you should. And I am vexed to have missed two days before I told you this—the first by an accident, and the second (to-day) by its being a blank post-day; but you will know by your heart how deeply I have felt and feel for you. May God bless you and love you! If I were as He to comfort, you should be strong and calm at this moment. But what are we to one another in this world? How weak, how far, we all feel in moments like these.

Still, I should like to know that you had some friend near you, to hold your hand and look in your face and be silent, as those are silent who know and feel. When you can write again, tell me how it is with you in this respect, and in others.

So sudden, so sudden! Yet bereavements like these are always sudden to the soul, more or less. All blows must needs be sudden. May your health not suffer, dear Fanny. We shall be in London in about a week after the 16th, for we are delayed through my not having finished my poem, which nobody will finish reading perhaps. We go to Mr. Kenyon's house in Devonshire Place, kindly offered to us for the summer. Shall we find you, I wonder, in London?

Yes; there are terrible costs in this world. We get knowledge by losing what we hoped for, and liberty by losing what we loved. But this world is a fragment—or, rather, a segment—and it will be rounded presently, to the completer satisfaction. Not to doubt that is the greatest blessing it gives now. Death is as vain as life; the common impression of it, as false and as absurd. A mere change of circumstances. What more? And how near these spirits are, how conscious, how full of active energy and tender reminiscence and interest, who shall dare to doubt? For myself, I do not doubt at all. If I did, I should be sitting here inexpressibly sad—for myself, not you....

Robert unites with me in affectionate sympathy, and Sarianna was here last night, talking feelingly about you. You shall have Robert's book when we get to England. Think how much I think of you.

Your ever affectionate BA.

Mr. Kenyon has been very ill, and is still in a state occasioning anxiety. He is at the Isle of Wight.

* * * * *

At the end of June the Brownings came back to London, for what was, as it proved, Mrs. Browning's last visit to England. Mr. Kenyon had lent them his house in London, at 39 Devonshire Place, he himself being in the Isle of Wight; but a shadow was thrown over the whole of this visit by the serious and ultimately fatal illness of this dear friend. It was partly in order to see him, and partly because Miss Arabel Barrett had been sent out of town by her father almost as soon as her sister reached Devonshire Place, that about the beginning of September they made an expedition to the Isle of Wight, staying first at Ventnor with Miss Barrett, and subsequently at West Cowes with Mr. Kenyon. All the while Mrs. Browning was actively engaged in seeing 'Aurora Leigh' through the press, and the poem was published just about the time they left England. The letters during this visit are few and mostly unimportant, but the following are of interest.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Jameson

39 Devonshire Place: Friday morning [July-August 1856].

My dearest Mona Nina, my dear friend,—I am so grieved, so humiliated. If it is possible to forgive me, do.

I received your note, delayed answering it because I fancied Robert might learn to accept your kindness about the box after a day's consideration, and so forgot everything bodily, taking one day for another, as is my way lately, in this great crush of too much to do and think of. When I was persuaded to go yesterday morning for the first and last time to the Royal Academy, on the point of closing, I went in like an idiot—that is, an innocent—never once thinking of what I was running the risk of losing; and when I returned and found you gone, you were lost and I in despair. So much in despair that I did not hope once you might come again, and out I went after dinner to see the Edward Kenyons in Beaumont Street, like an innocent—that is, an idiot—and so lost you again. You may forgive me—it is possible—but to forgive myself! it is more difficult. Try not quite to give me up for it. Your note gave me so much pleasure. I wished so to see you! For the future I mean to write down engagements in a text-hand, and set them up somewhere in sight; but if I broke through twenty others as shamefully, it would not be with as much real grief to myself as in this fault to my dearest Mona Nina. Do come soon, out of mercy—and magnanimity!

Your ever affectionate BA.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Martin

3 Parade, West Cowes: September 9, 1856 [postmark].

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—Your letter has followed us. We have been in the south of the island, at Ventnor, with Arabel, and are now in the north with Mr. Kenyon. We came off from London at a day's notice, the Wimpole Street people being sent away abruptly (in consequence, plainly, of our arrival becoming known), and Arabel bringing her praying eyes to bear on Robert, who agreed to go with her and stay for a fortnight. So we have had a happy sorrowful two weeks together, between meeting and parting; and then came here, where our invalid friend called us. Poor Arabel is in low spirits—very—and aggrieved with being sent away from town; but the fresh air and repose will do her good, in spite of herself, though she swears they won't (in the tone of saying they shan't). She is not by any means strong, and overworks herself in London with schools and Refuges, and societies—does the work of a horse, and isn't a horse. Last winter she was quite unwell, as you heard. In spite of which, I did not think her looking ill when I saw her first; and now she looks well, I think—quite as well as she ever does. But she wants a new moral atmosphere—a little society. She is thrown too entirely on her own resources, and her own resources are of somewhat a gloomy character. This is all wrong. It has been partly necessary and a little her fault, at one time. I would give my right hand to take her to Italy; but if I gave right and left, it would not be found possible. My father has remained in London, and may not go to Ventnor for the next week or two, says a letter from Arabel this morning.... The very day he heard of our being in Devonshire Place he gave orders that his family should go away. I wrote afterwards, but my letter, as usual, remained unnoticed.

It has naturally begun to dawn upon my child that I have done something very wicked to make my father what he is. Once he came up to me earnestly and said, 'Mama, if you've been very, very naughty—if you've broken china!' (his idea of the heinous in crime)—'I advise you to go into the room and say, "Papa, I'll be dood."' Almost I obeyed the inspiration—almost I felt inclined to go. But there were considerations—yes, good reasons—which kept me back, and must continue to do so. In fact, the position is perfectly hopeless—perfectly.

We find our dear friend Mr. Kenyon better in some respects than we expected, but I fear in a very precarious state. Our stay is uncertain. We may go at a moment's notice, or remain if he wishes it; and, my proofs being sent post by post, we are able to see to them together, without too much delay. Still, only one-half of the book is done, and the days come when I shall find no pleasure in them—nothing but coughing.

George and my brothers were very kind to Robert at Ventnor, and he is quite touched by it. Also, little Pen made his way into the heart of 'mine untles,' and was carried on their backs up and down hills, and taught the ways of 'English boys,' with so much success that he makes pretensions to 'pluck,' and has left a good reputation behind him. On one occasion he went up to a boy of twelve who took liberties, and exclaimed, 'Don't be impertinent, sir' (doubling his small fist), 'or I will show you that I'm a boy.' Of course 'mine untles' are charmed with this 'proper spirit,' and applaud highly. Robert and I begged to suggest to the hero that the 'boy of twelve' might have killed him if he had pleased. 'Never mind,' cried little Pen, 'there would have been somebody to think of me, who would have him hanged' (great applause from the uncles). 'But you would still be dead,' said Robert remorselessly. 'Well, I don't tare for that. It was a beautiful place to die in—close to the sea.'

So you will please to observe that, in spite of being Italians and wearing curls, we can fight to the death on occasion....

Write to me, and say how you both are. Robert's love. We both love you.

Very lovingly yours, BA.

* * * * *

To Miss Browning

[West Cowes]: September 13, 1856 [postmark].

My dearest Sarianna,—Robert comes suddenly down on me with news that he is going to write to you, so, though I have been writing letters all the morning, I must throw in a few words. As to keeping Penini at the sea longer, he will have been three weeks at the sea to-morrow, and you must remember how late into the year it is getting—and we with so much work before us! And if Peni recovered his roses at Ventnor, I recovered my cough (from the piercing east winds); but I am better since, and last night slept well. It's far too early for cough, however, in any shape. We have heaps of business to do in London—heaps—and the book is only half-done. Still, we are asked to stay here till three days after Madame Braun's arrival, and it isn't fixed yet when she will arrive; so that I daresay Peni will have a full month of the sea, after all. Then I have a design upon Robert's good-nature, of persuading him to go round by Taunton to London (something like going round the earth to Paris), that I may see my poor forsaken sister Henrietta, who wants us to give her a week in her cottage, pathetically bewailing herself that she has no means for the expense of going to London this time—that she has done it twice for me, and can't this time (the purse being low); and unless we go to her, she must do without seeing me, in spite of a separation of four years. So I am anxious to go, of course.