Chapter IX (4)

In Paris we saw Father Prout, who was in great force and kindness, and Charles Sumner, passing through the burning torture under the hands of French surgeons, which is approved of by the brains of English surgeons. Do you remember the Jesuit's agony, in the 'Juif Errant'? Precisely that. Exposed to the living coal for seven minutes, and the burns taking six weeks to heal. Mr. Sumner refused chloroform--from some foolish heroic principle, I imagine, and suffered intensely. Of course he is not able to stir for some time after the operation, and can't read or sleep from the pain. Now, he is just 'healed,' and is allowed to travel for two months, after which he is to return and be burned again. Isn't it a true martyrdom? I ask. What is apprehended is paralysis, or at best nervous infirmity for life, from the effect of the blows (on the spine) of that savage.

Then, just as we arrived in Paris, dear Lady Elgin had another 'stroke,' and was all but gone. She rallied, however, with her wonderful vitality, and we left her sitting in her garden, fixed to the chair, of course, and not able to speak a word, nor even to gesticulate distinctly, but with the eloquent soul full and radiant, alive to both worlds. Robert and I sate there, talking politics and on other subjects, and there she sate and let no word drop unanswered by her bright eyes and smile. It was a beautiful sight. Robert fed her with a spoon from her soup-plate, and she signed, as well as she could, that he should kiss her forehead before he went away. She was always so fond of Robert, as women are apt to be, you know--even _I_, a little....

Forster wrote the other day, melancholy with the misfortunes of his friends, though he doesn't name Dickens. Landor had just fled to his (Forster's) house in London for protection from _an action for libel_.

See what a letter I have written. Write to me, dearest Fanny, and love me. Oh, how glad I shall be to be back among you again in my Florence!

Your ever affectionate BA.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Jameson_

Maison Versigny, 2 Rue de Perry, Le Havre: July 24, 1858 [postmark].

Dearest Mona Nina,--Have you rather wondered at not hearing? We have been a-wandering, a-wandering over the world--have been to Étretat and failed, and now are ignominiously settled at Havre--yes, at Havre, the name of which we should have scorned a week ago as a mere roaring commercial city. But after all, as sometimes I say with originality, 'civilisation is a good thing.' The country about Étretat is very pretty, and the coast picturesque with fantastic rocks, but the accommodation dear in proportion to its badness; which I do believe is the case everywhere with places, now and then even with persons--dear in proportion to their badness. We could get three bedrooms, a salon, and kitchen, one opening into another and no other access, and the kitchen presenting the first door, all furnished exactly alike, except that where the bedroom had a bed the kitchen had a stove; wooden chairs _en suite_, not an inch of carpet, and just an inch of looking-glass in the best bedroom. View, a potato-patch, and price two hundred francs a month. Robert took it in a 'fine phrenzy,' on which I rebelled, and made him give it up on a sacrifice of ten francs, which was the only cheap thing in the place, as far as I observed anything. Also, the bay is so restricted that whoever takes a step is 'commanded' by all the windows of the primitive hotel and the few villas, and as people have nothing whatever to do but to look at you, you may imagine the perfection of the analysis. I should have been a fly in a microscope, feeling my legs and arms counted on all sides, and receiving no comfort from the scientific results. So, you see, we 'gave it up' and came here in a sort of despair, meaning to take the railroad to Dieppe; when lo! our examining forces find that the place here is very tenable, and we take a house close to the sea (though the view is interrupted) in a green garden, and quite away from a suggestion of streets and commerce. The bathing is good, we have a post-office and reading-rooms at our elbow, and nothing distracting of any kind. The house is large and airy, and our two families are lodged in separate apartments, though we meet at dinner in our dining-room. Certainly the country immediately around Havre is not pretty, but we came for the sea after all, and the sea is open and satisfactory. Robert has found a hole I can creep through to the very shore, without walking many yards, and there I can sit on a bench and get strength, if so it pleases God.

Have I not sent you a full account of us? Now if you would return me a cent. per cent.--_soll und haben_. I want so much to know all about you--how you feel, dearest friend, and how you are. Do write and tell me of yourself. May God bless you ever and ever!

Your affectionate and grateful BA.

* * * * *

_To Madame Braun_

2 Rue do Perry, Le Havre, Maison Versigny: August 10 [1858].

My dearest Madame Braun,--If you have not heard from me before, it has not been that I have not thought of you anxiously and tenderly, but I had the idea that so many must be thinking of you, and saying to you with sad faces 'they were sorry,' that I kept away, not to be the one too many. It seems so vain when we sympathise with a suffering friend. And yet it is _something_--oh yes, I have felt that! But you _knew_ I must feel for you, if I teased you with words or not; and I, for my part, hearing of you from others, felt shy, as I say, till I heard you were better, of writing to you myself. And you _are_ feeling better, Mrs. Jameson tells me, and are somewhat more cheerful about your state. I thank God for this good news....

One of the few reasons for which I regret our absence from England this summer is that I miss seeing you with my own eyes, and I should like much to see you and talk to you of things of interest to both of us. If illness suppresses in us a few sources of pleasure, it leaves the real _ich_ open to influences and keen-sighted to _facts_ which are as surely _natural_ as the fly's wing, though we are apt to consider them vaguely as 'supernatural.'

'More and more life is what we want' Tennyson wrote long ago, and that is the right want. Indifference to life is disease, and therefore not strength. But the life here is only half the apple--a cut out of the apple, I should say, merely meant to suggest the perfect round of fruit--and there is in the world now, I can testify to you, _scientific proof_ that what we call death is a mere change of circumstances, a change of dress, a mere breaking of the outside shell and husk. This subject is so much the most interesting to me of all, that I can't help writing of it to you. Among all the ways of progress along which the minds of men are moving, this draws me most. There is much folly and fanaticism, unfortunately, because foolish men and women do not cease to be foolish when they hit upon a truth. There was a man who hung bracelets upon plane trees. But it was a tree--it is a truth--notwithstanding; yes, and so much a truth that in twenty years the probability is you will have no more doubters of the immortality of souls, and no more need of Platos to prove it.

We have come here to dip _me_ in warm sea-water, in order to an improvement in strength, for I have been very weak and unwell of late, as perhaps Mrs. Jameson has told you. But the sea and the change have brought me up again, as I hope they may yourself, and now I am looking forward to getting back to Italy for the winter, and perhaps to Rome.

Did you know Lady Elgin in Paris? She has been hopelessly, in the opinion of her physicians, affected by paralysis, but is now better, her daughter writes to me. A most remarkable person Lady Elgin is. We left her sitting in her garden, not able to speak--to articulate one word--but with one of the most radiant happy faces I ever saw in man or woman. I think I remember that you knew her. Her salon was one of the most agreeable in Paris, and she herself, with her mixture of learning and simplicity, one of the most interesting persons in it....

Dearest Madame Braun, I won't think of the possibility even of your writing to me, so little do I expect to hear. Indeed, I would not write if I considered it would entail writing upon _you_. Only believe that I tenderly regard and think of you, and always shall. May God bless you, my dear friend! Your attached

ELIZABETH B. BROWNING.

* * * * *

The following letter was written at Paris during the stay there which intervened between leaving Havre and the return to Florence:

* * * * *

_To Miss I. Blagden_

6 Rue de Castiglione, Place Vendôme, Paris: October 2 [1858].

My dearest Isa,--I am saddened, saddened by your letter. We both are. Indeed, this last news from India must have struck--I know it did. Still, to your generous nature, long regret for your dear Louisa will be impossible; and you, so given to forget yourself, will come to forget a grief which is only your own. For she was in the world as not of it, in a painful sense; she was cut off from the cheerful, natural development of ordinary human beings; and if, as was probable, the conviction of this dreary fact had fastened on her mind, the result would have been perhaps demoralising, certainly depressing, more and more. Rather praise God for her therefore, dearest Isa, that she is gone above the cloud, gone where she can exercise active virtues and charities, instead of being the mild patient object of the charities and virtues of her friends. Perhaps she ministers to _you_ now instead of being ministered to by you, while the remembrance of her life on earth is tenderly united to you ever, a proof before men and angels that _your_ life (whatever you may please to say of yourself) has not been useless, nor barren of good and tender deeds....

In this letter and the last (such depressed letters!) you compare your own fate with that of some others with an injustice which God measures, and which I too have knowledge of. Isa, you speak you know not what. Be sure of one thing, however, that God has not been niggardly towards you, and that He never made a creature for which He did not make the work suited to its hand. He never made a creature necessarily useless, nor gave a life which it was not sin on the creature's part to hold unthankfully and throw back as a poor gift. Your excellent understanding will work clear your spirits presently. Some of those whom you think enviable, if they showed you their secret griefs, unsuspected by you, would leave tears in your eyes for _them_, not _you_. Every heart knows its own bitterness, and God knows when the bitterest drop is necessary for the heart's health. May He bless you, love you, teach you, strengthen you, make you serene and bright in Him, dear, dear Isa. I have spoken as to a sister; I have spoken as to my own soul in an hour of faintness. Let us take courage, Isa.

Dear, I had just folded up your parcel for Miss Alexander that my brother George should take it to-morrow. It has been my first opportunity for England--at least, for London. But now I will carry it back to you....

Arabel stays with me till we go, which will be in a fortnight perhaps from now. We have an apartment in an exquisite situation, two paces from the Tuileries Gardens, first floor, three best bedrooms and two servants' rooms, a closet of a dining-room, a salon--all small, but exquisitely comfortable and Parisian, looking into a court though, and we are not tempted to stay the winter. No; we return to Florence faithfully. Write again, and be happy, Isa; it is as if I said _be good_. Tell me, can it be true that Lytton is in Florence with his mother, as Father Prout assures us on the authority of Lady Walpole?...

Write to your ever, in word and deed, loving

BA.

* * * * *

In October the travellers were back in Florence, but this time only for a short stay of some six weeks, since it was decided that Rome would be more suitable to Mrs. Browning's failing health during the winter. On November 24 they reached Rome, and for the next six months were quartered, as in the winter of 1853-4, at No. 43 Via Bocca di Leone. Here it was that they heard the first mutterings of the storm which was to burst during the following year and to result in the making of Italy.

* * * * *

_To Miss E.F. Haworth_

Casa Guidi: Saturday [about October 1858].

You do not come, dearest Fanny, though I am here waiting, and I begin to be uneasy about you. Do at least write, do. We have been here since Tuesday, and here is Saturday, and every morning there has been an anxious looking forward for you....

Miss ---- wrote to me in Paris to propose travelling with us, which Robert lacked chivalry to accede to; and, in fact, our ways of journeying are too uncertain to admit of arrangements with anyone beyond our circle. For instance, we took nine days to get here from Paris, spending only one day at Chambéry, for the sake of Les Charmettes and Rousseau. Robert played the 'Dream' on the old harpsichord, the keys of which rattled in a ghastly way, as if it were the bones of him who once so 'dreamed.' Then there was the old watch hung up, without a tick in it. At St. Jean de Maurienne we got into difficulties with diligences, and submitted to being thrown out for the night at Lanslebourg, I more dead than alive, and indeed I suffered much in passing the mountain next morning. Then again, on the sea, we had a _burrasca_, and the captain had half a mind when half-way to Leghorn to turn back to Genoa. Passengers much frightened, including me, a little. A wretched Neapolitan boat, with a machine 'inclined to go to the devil every time the wind went anywhere,' as I heard a French gentleman on board say afterwards. Altogether we were so done up after eighteen hours of it, that we stayed at Leghorn instead of going on straight to Florence. Still, now I seem to have got over fatigue and the rest--and we keep our faces turned undeviatingly to Rome. Mdme. du Quaire having carefully apprised M. Mignaty that we left Paris on the thirteenth, our friends here seem to have made up their minds that we had perished by land or water, and Annunziata's poor sister had passed three days in tears, for instance.

Now, dearest Fanny, let me confess to you. I have not brought the bonnet. A bonnet is a personal matter, and I would not let anyone choose one for _me_. Still, as you had more faith in man (or woman), I would have risked even displeasing you, only Robert would not let me. He said it was absurd--I 'did not know your size;' I 'could not know your taste;' in fact, he would not let me. Perhaps after all it is better. You shall see mine, which is the last novelty, and I will tell you the results of having investigated the bonnet question generally. I was told at a fashionable shop that hats might be worn out of one's teens; but in Paris, let me hasten to add, you don't see hats walking about except on the heads of small girls. In Rome it may be otherwise, as at the seaside it was. Bonnets are a great deal larger, but you shall see.

Oh, so glad I am to be back--so glad, so glad!

And so happy I shall be to see you, dearest Fanny, whom, till now, I have not thanked for the pretty, pretty sketch. I recognised the persons at a glance, you threw into them so much character....

Your ever most affectionate E.B.B.

* * * * *

_To Miss Browning_

[Florence: about November 1858.]

Robert's uncertainty about Rome, my dearest Sarianna, has led him into delay of writing. We dropped here upon summer, and a few days afterwards, just as suddenly, the winter dropped upon _us_. Such wonderful weather, such cold, such snow--enough to strangle one. The rain has come, however, to-day, and though everything feels wretched enough, and I am languid about schemes of travelling, we talk of going next week, should nothing hinder.

'If it be possible
After much grief and pain.'

Peni would rather stay, I believe. His Florence is in his heart still.

Robert will have told you about his bust,[59] which is exquisite in the clay, and will be exhibited in London in the marble next May. The likeness, the poetry, the ideal grace and infantile reality are all there. I am so happy to have it. I set about teasing Robert till he gave it to me, and, as he really loses nothing thereby, I accepted at once, as you may suppose. I would rather have given up Rome and had the bust; but the artist was generous, and would only accept what would cover the expenses, twenty-five guineas. He said he 'would not otherwise do it for us, as he asked in the first place to be allowed to make the sketch in clay, and would not appear to have laid a trap for an order.' So we are all three very happy and grateful to one another--which is pleasant. I feel the most obliged perhaps of the three--obliged to the other two--and ought to be, after the napoleons dropt in Paris, Sarianna!

Oh no; the sea was necessary from Genoa. The expense of the journey would have been very much increased if we had taken the whole way by land, and it was a great thing to escape that rough Gulf of Lyons. The journey to Rome will be rendered easy to Robert's pocket by the extraordinary chance of Mr. Eckley's empty carriage, otherwise the repeated pulls might have pulled us down too low.

Peni will write to you. He loves his nonno and you very much--tell nonno; and my love goes with my message.

May God bless both of you! Love to M. Milsand.

Your affectionate BA.

* * * * *

_Robert Browning to Miss Browning_

Rome, 43 Bocca di Leone: Friday, November 26, 1858 [postmark].

Dearest Sis,--You received a letter written last thing on Wednesday, 18th. We started next day with perfectly fine mild weather and every sort of comfort, and got to our first night's stage, Poggio Bagnoli, with great ease; with the same advantages next day, we passed Arezzo and reached Camuscia, and on Saturday slept at Perugia, having found the journey delightful. Sunday was rainy, but just as mild, so Ba did not suffer at all; we slept at Spoleto. Rain again on Monday. We reached Terni early in the day in order to go to the Falls, but the thing was impossible for Ba. Eckley, his mother-in-law, and I went, however, getting drenched, but they were fine, the rain and melted snow having increased the waters extraordinarily. On Tuesday we had fine weather again to Cività Castellana; there we found that on the previous day, while we were staying at Terni, a carriage was stopped and robbed in the road we otherwise should have pursued. They said such a thing had not happened for years. On Wednesday afternoon, four o'clock, we reached Rome, with beautiful weather; so it had been for some four out of our seven days. Ba bore the journey irregularly well; of course she has thus had a week of open air, beside the change, which always benefits her. We always had the windows of the carriage open. We passed Wednesday night at an hotel in order to profit by any information friends might be able to furnish, but we ended by returning to the rooms here we occupied before, of which we knew the virtues--a blaze of sun on the front rooms--and absolute healthiness. Rents are enormous; we pay only ten dollars a month more than before, in consideration of the desire the old landlady had to get us again. To anybody else the price would have been 20 more--60 in all--for which we are to pay 40. The Eckleys took _good rooms_ and pay 1,000 (£210 or 15) for six months! One can't do _that_. The best is that they have thoroughly cleaned and painted the place, and everything is very satisfactorily arranged. We take the apartment for four months, meaning to be at liberty to go to Naples if we like. We have no fire this morning while I write, but it is before breakfast and Ba may like the sight of one, tho' I rather think she will not. Rome looks very well, and I hope we shall have a happier time of it than before. Many friends are here and everybody is very kind. The Eckleys were extravagantly good to us, something beyond conception almost. We have seen Miss Cushman, Hatty,[60] Leighton, Cartwright, the Storys, Page and his new (third) wife, Gibson, beside the Brackens and Mrs. Mackenzie; and there are others I shall see to-day. Ferdinando was sent on by sea with the luggage, and met us at the gate. It has been an expensive business altogether, but I think we shall not regret it. I daresay you have mild weather at Paris also. These premature beginnings of cold break down and leave the rest of the year the warmer, if not the better for them. Dearest Sis, write and tell me all the news of your two selves. Do you hear anything about Reuben's leaving London? Anything of Lady Elgin? How is Madame Milsand? I will send you the last 'Ath.' I have received, but break off here rather abruptly, in order to let Ba write. Good-bye. God bless you both. Kindest love to Milsand.

Yours ever affectionately R.B.

* * * * *

_E.B. Browning to Miss Browning_

My dearest Sarianna,--I don't know whether this letter from Rome will surprise you, but we have done it at last. Our journey was most prosperous, the wonderful inrush of winter which buried all Italy in snow, and for some days rendered the possibility of any change of quarters so more than doubtful (I myself gave it up for days), having given way to an inrush of summer as wonderful. The change was so pleasant that I bore with perfect equanimity the lamentations of certain English acquaintances of ours in Florence, who declared it was the most frightful and dangerous climate that could be, that now one was frozen to death and the next day burnt and melted, and that people couldn't be healthy under such transitions. But all countries of the south are subject to the same of course wherever there is a southern sun, and mountains to retain snow. Even in Paris you complain of something a little like it, because of the sun. We left Florence in a blaze of sunshine accordingly, and there and everywhere found the country transfigured back into summer, except for two days of April rain. Of the kindness of our dear friends Mr. and Mrs. Eckley I am moved when I try to speak. They humiliate me by their devotion. Such generosity and delicacy, combined with so much passionate sentiment (there is no other word), are difficult to represent. The Americans are great in some respects, not that Americans generally are like these, but that these could scarcely be English--for instance, that mixture of enthusiasm and simplicity we have not. Our journey was delightful and not without some incidents, which might have been accidents. We were as nearly as possible thrown once into a ditch and once down a mountain precipice, the spirited horses plunging on one side, but at last Mr. Eckley lent us his courier, who sate on the box by the coachman and helped him to manage better. Then there was a fight between our oxen-drivers, one of them attempting to stab the other with a knife, and Robert rushing in between till Peni and I were nearly frantic with fright. No harm happened, however, except that Robert had his trousers torn. And we escaped afterwards certain banditti, who stopped a carriage only the day before on the very road we travelled, and robbed it of sixty-two scudi.

Here at Rome we are still fortunate, for with enormous prices rankling around us we get into our old quarters at eleven pounds a month. The rooms are smaller than our ambition would fain climb to (one climbs, also, a little too high on the stairs), but on the whole the quiet healthfulness and sunshine are excellent things, particularly in Rome, and we are perfectly contented....

Rome is so full that I am proceeding to lock up my doors throughout the day. I can't live without some use of life. Here must come the break. May God bless you both! Pen's love with mine to the dear nonno and yourself.

BA.

* * * * *

_To Mr. Ruskin_

Rome, 43 Bocca di Leone: January 1, 1859.

My dear Mr. Ruskin,--There is an impulse upon me to write to you, and as it ought to have come long ago, I yield to it, and am glad that it comes on this first day of a new year to inaugurate the time. It may be a good omen for _me_. Who knows?

We received your letter at Florence and very much did it touch me--us, I should say--and then I would have written if you hadn't bade us wait for another letter, which has not come to this day. Shall I say one thing? The sadness of that letter struck me like the languor after victory, for you who have fought many good fights and never for a moment seemed to despond before, write this word and this. After treading the world down in various senses, you are tired. It is natural perhaps, but this evil will pass like other evils, and I wish you from my heart a good clear noble year, with plenty of work, and God consciously over all to give you satisfaction. What would this life be, dear Mr. Ruskin, if it had not eternal relations? For my part, if I did not believe so, I should lay my head down and die. Nothing would be worth doing, certainly. But I am what many people call a 'mystic,' and what I myself call a 'realist,' because I consider that every step of the foot or stroke of the pen here has some real connection with and result in the hereafter.

'This life's a dream, a fleeting show!' no indeed. That isn't my '_doxy_.' I don't think that nothing is worth doing, but that everything is worth doing--everything good, of course--and that everything which does good for a moment does good for ever, in _art_ as well as in morals. Not that I look for arbitrary punishment or reward (the last least, certainly. I would no more impute merit to the human than your Spurgeon would), but that I believe in a perpetual sequence, according to God's will, and in what has been called a 'correspondence' between the natural world and the spiritual.

Here I stop myself with a strong rein. It is fatal, dear Mr. Ruskin, to write letters on New Year's day. One can't help moralising; one falls on the metaphysical vein unaware.

Forgive me.

We are in Rome you see. We have been very happy and found rooms swimming all day in sunshine, when there is any sun, and yet not ruinously dear. I was able to go out on Christmas morning (a wonderful event for me) and hear the silver trumpets in St. Peter's. Well, it was very fine. I never once thought of the Scarlet Lady, nor of the Mortara case, nor anything to spoil the pleasure. Yes, and I enjoyed it both æsthetically and devotionally, putting my own words to the music. Was it wise, or wrong?

But we have had and are having some cold, some tramontana, and I have kept house ever since. Only in Rome there's always hope of a good warm scirocco. We talk of seeing Naples before we turn home to our Florence, to keep feast for Dante.

It is delightful to hear of all you are _permitted_ to do for England meanwhile in matters of art, and one of these days we shall go north to take a few happy hours of personal advantage out of it all. Not this year, however, I think. We have done duty to the north too lately. Now it seems to me we have the right (of virtue, in spite of what I said on another page, or rather, _because_ I said it in good human inconsistency), the right to have and hold our Italy in undisturbed possession. I never feel at home anywhere else, or to _live_ rightly anywhere else at all. It's a horrible want of patriotism, of course, only, if I were upon trial, I might say in a low voice a few things to soften the judgment against me on account of that sin. Ah! we missed you at Havre! If you had come it would have been something pleasant to remember that detestable place by, besides the salt-water which profited one's health a little. We were in Paris too some six weeks in all (besides eight weeks at Havre!) and Paris has a certain charm for me always. If we had seen you in Paris! But no, you must have floated past us, close, close, yet we missed you.

A good happy new year we wish to Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin, as to yourself, and, dear Mr. Ruskin, to your mother I shall say that my child is developing in a way to make me very contented and thankful. Yes, I thank God for him more and more, and _she_ can understand that, I know. His musical faculty is a decided thing, and he plays on the piano quite remarkably for his age (through his father's instruction) while I am writing this. He is reading aloud to me an Italian translation of 'Monte Cristo,' and with a dramatic intelligence which would strike you, as it does perhaps, that I should select such a book for a child of nine years old to read at all. It's rather young to be acclimated to French novels, is it not? But the difficulty of getting Italian books is great, and there's a good deal in the early part of 'Monte Cristo,' the prison part, very attractive. His voice was full of sobs when poor Dantes was consigned to the Château d'If. "Do you mean to say, mama, that _that boy_ is to stay there all his life?" He made me tell him 'to make him happy,' as he said.

For the rest he reads French and German, and we shall have to begin Latin in another year I suppose. Do you advise that, you, Mr. Ruskin? He has not given up the drawing neither. Ah! but there is a weight beyond the post, whatever your goodness may bear, and I must leave a little space for Robert.

May God bless you, my dear friend! Dare I say it? it _came_.

Affectionately yours always, ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

* * * * *

_Robert Browning to Mr. Ruskin_

I am to say something, dear Ruskin; it shall be only the best of wishes for this and all other years; go on again like the noble and dear man you are to us all, and especially to us two out of them all. Whenever I chance on an extract, a report, it lights up the dull newspaper stuff wrapt round it and makes me glad at heart and clearer in head. We, for our part, have just sent off a corrected 'Aurora Leigh,' which is the better for a deal of pains, we hope, and my wife deserves. There will be a portrait from a photograph done at Havre without retouching--good, I think. Truest love to you and yours--your father and mother. Do help us by a word every now and then.

Affectionately yours, R.B.

* * * * *

_To Miss I. Blagden_

[Rome]: 43 Bocca di Leone: January 7 [1859].

My dearest Isa,--Your letter seemed long in coming, as this will seem to you, I fear. I ought to have answered mine at once, and put off doing so from reason to reason, and from day to day. Very busy I have been, sending off seven of the nine books of 'Aurora,'[61] having dizzied myself with the 'ifs' and 'ands,' and done some little good I hope at much cost....

As to the Roman climate, we have had some beautiful weather, but Robert was calling his gods to witness (the goddess Tussis among them) that he never felt it so cold in Florence--never. Fountains frozen, Isa, and the tramontana tremendous. But it can't last--that's the comfort at Rome; and meantime we are housed exquisitely in our lion's mouth; the new _portiere_ and universal carpeting keeping it snugger than ever, and the sun over-streaming us through six windows. I have just been saying that whenever I come to Rome I shall choose to come here. The only fault is, the height and the smallness of the rooms; and, in spite of the last, we have managed to have and hold twenty people and upwards through a _serata_. Peni has had a bad cold, from over-staying the time on the Pincio one afternoon, and I have kept him in the house these ten days. Such things one may do by one's lion-cubs; but the lions are harder to deal with, and Robert caught cold two or three days ago; in spite of which he chose to get up at six every morning as usual and go out to walk with Mr. Eckley. Only by miracle and nux is he much better to-day. I thought he was going to have a furious grippe, as last year and the year before. I must admit, however, that he is extremely well just now, to speak generally, and that this habit of regular exercise (with occasional homoeopathy) has thrown him into a striking course of prosperity, as to looks, spirits and appetite. He eats 'vulpinely' he says--which means that a lark or two is no longer enough for dinner. At breakfast the loaf perishes by Gargantuan slices. He is plunged into gaieties of all sorts, caught from one hand to another like a ball, has gone out every night for a fortnight together, and sometimes two or three times deep in a one night's engagements. So plenty of distraction, and no Men and Women. Men and women from without instead! I am shut up in the house of course, and go to bed when he goes out--and the worst is, that there's a difficulty in getting books. Still, I get what I can, and stop up the chinks with Swedenborg; and in health am very well, for me, and in tranquillity excellently well. Not that there are not people more than enough who come to see me, but that there is nothing vexatious just now; life goes smoothly, I thank God, and I like Rome better than I did last time. The season is healthy too (for Rome). I have only heard of one English artist since we came, who arrived, sickened, died, and was buried, before anyone knew who he was. Besides ordinary cases of slight Roman fever among the English, Miss Sherwood (who with her father was at Florence) has had it slightly, and Mrs. Marshall who came to us from Tennyson. (A Miss Spring-Rice she was.) But the poor Hawthornes suffer seriously. Una is dissolved to a shadow of herself by reiterated attacks, and now Miss Shepherd is seized with gastric fever. Mr. Hawthorne is longing to get away--where, he knows not.

My Peni has conquered his cold, and when the weather gets milder I shall let him out. Meanwhile he has taken to--what do you suppose? I go into his room at night and find him with a candle regularly settled on the table by him, and he reading, deeply rapt, an Italian translation of 'Monte Cristo.' Pretty well for a lion-cub, isn't it? He is enchanted with this book, lent to him by our padrona; and exclaims every now and then, 'Oh, magnificent, magnificent!' And this morning, at breakfast, he gravely delivered himself to the following effect: 'Dear mama, for the future I mean to read _novels_. I shall read all Dumas's, to begin. And then I shall like to read papa's favourite book, "Madame Bovary."' Heavens, what a lion-cub! Robert and I could only answer by a burst of laughter. It was so funny. That little dot of nine and a half full of such hereditary tendencies.

And 'Madame Bovary' in a course of education!...

May God bless you, my much-loved Isa, for this and other years beyond also! I shall love you all that way--says the genius of the ring.

Your ever loving BA.

FOOTNOTES:

[46] Ferdinando Romagnoli. He died at Venice, in the Palazzo Rezzonico, January 1893. His widow (who, as the following letters show, continued to be called Wilson in the family) is still living with Mr. R.B. Browning.

[47] This refers to a note from Mrs. Browning to Miss Haworth, inquiring whether it was true that she was engaged to be married.

[48] The notorious medium, prototype of Mr. Browning's 'Sludge.' He subsequently changed his name to Home.

[49] An attempted revision of the poem, subsequently abandoned, as explained in the preface addressed to M. Milsand in 1863.

[50] Mr. Browning and the boy had been suffering from sore throats.

[51] For the substance of this information I am indebted to Mr. Charles Aldrich, to whom the letter was presented by Mrs. Kinney, and through whose kindness it is here printed. The original now forms part of the Aldrich collection in the Historical Department of Iowa, U.S.A.

[52] The husband of Wilson, Mrs. Browning's maid.

[53] An odd commentary on this 'poem' may be found in Mrs. Orr's _Life of Robert Browning_, p. 219.

[54] See _Aurora Leigh_, p. 276:

'I found a house at Florence on the hill
Of Bellosguardo. 'Tis a tower which keeps
A post of double observation o'er
That valley of Arno (holding as a hand
The outspread city) straight toward Fiesole
And Mount Morello and the setting sun,
The Vallombrosan mountains opposite,
Which sunrise fills as full as crystal cups
Turned red to the brim because their wine is red.
No sun could die nor yet be born unseen
By dwellers at my villa: morn and eve
Were magnified before us in the pure
Illimitable space and pause of sky,
Intense as angels' garments blanched with God,
Less blue than radiant. From the outer wall
Of the garden drops the mystic floating grey
Of olive trees (with interruptions green
From maize and vine), until 'tis caught and torn
Upon the abrupt black line of cypresses
Which signs the way to Florence. Beautiful
The city lies along the ample vale,
Cathedral, tower and palace, piazza and street,
The river trailing like a silver cord
Through all, and curling loosely, both before
And after, over the whole stretch of land
Sown whitely up and down its opposite slopes
With farms and villas.'

Miss Blagden's villa was the Villa Bricchieri, which is alluded to elsewhere in the letters.

[55] A line or two has been cut off the bottom of the sheet at this place.

[56] The _Elements of Drawing_.

[57] Orsini's attempt on the life of the Emperor Napoleon on January 14, 1858.

[58] Referring to the Conspiracy Bill introduced by Lord Palmerston after the Orsini conspiracy against Napoleon in January 1858, and to the outcry against it, as an act of subservience to France, which led to Palmerston's fall. Count Walewski was the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, and his despatch, alluded to below, called the attention of the English Government to the shelter afforded by England to conspirators of the type of Orsini.

[59] A bust of the child, by Monroe.

[60] Miss Hosmer.

[61] The fourth edition, in which several alterations were made.