Chapter 14

1860-1861

Early in 1860 the promised booklet, 'Poems before Congress,' was published in England, and met with very much the reception the authoress had anticipated. It contained only eight poems, all but one relating to the Italian question. Published at a time when the events to which they alluded were still matters of current controversy, they could not but be regarded rather as pamphleteering than as poetry; and it could hardly be expected that the ordinary Englishman, whose sympathy with Italy did not abolish his mistrust (eminently justifiable, as later revelations have shown it to be) of Louis Napoleon, should read with equanimity the continual scorn of English policy and motives, or the continual exaltation of the Emperor. Looking back now over a distance of nearly forty years, and when the Second Empire, with all its merits and its sins, has long gone to its account, we can, at least in part, put aside the politics and enjoy the poetry. Though pieces like 'The Dance' and 'A Court Lady' are not of much permanent value, there are many fine passages, notably in 'Napoleon III. in Italy,' and 'Italy and the World,' in which a true and noble enthusiasm is expressed in living and burning words, worthy of a poet.

For attacks on her Italian politics Mrs. Browning was prepared, as the foregoing letters show; but one incident caused her real and quite unexpected annoyance. The reviewer in the 'Athenæum' (apparently Mr. Chorley) by some unaccountable oversight took the 'Curse for a Nation' to apply to England, instead of being (as it obviously is) a denunciation of American slavery. Consequently he referred to this poem in terms of strong censure, as improper and unpatriotic on the part of an English writer; and a protest from Mrs. Browning only elicited a somewhat grudging editorial note, in a tone which implied that the interpretation which the reviewer had put upon the poem was one which it would naturally bear. One can hardly be surprised at the annoyance which this treatment caused to Mrs. Browning, though some of the phrases in which she speaks of it bear signs of the excitement which characterised so much of her thought in these years of mental strain and stress, and bodily weakness and decay.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Jameson_

(Fragment) [Early in 1860.]

I remember well your kindness to it. Nothing was said then about the 'fit arguments for poetry,' and I recovered from it to write 'Aurora Leigh,' of which, however, many people did say that it was built on an unfit argument, and besides was a very indecent, corrupting book (have I not heard of ladies of sixty, who had 'never felt themselves pure since reading it'?) But now, consider. Since you did not lose hope for me in 'Casa Guidi Windows,' because the line of politics was your own, why need you despair of me in the 'Poems before Congress,' although I do praise the devil in them? A mistake is not fatal to a critic? need it be to a poet? Does Napoleon's being wicked (if he is so) make Italy less interesting? or unfit for poetry historical subjects like 'The Dance' or the 'Court Lady'? Meanwhile that thin-skinned people the Americans exceed some of you in generosity, rendering thanks to reprovers of their ill deeds, and understanding the pure love of the motive.[77] Let me tell you rather for their sake than mine. I have extravagant praises and _prices_ offered to me from 'over the western sun,' in consequence of these very 'Poems before Congress.' The nation is generous in these things and not 'thin-skinned.'

As to England, I shall be forgiven in time. The first part of a campaign and the first part of a discussion are the least favourable to English successes. After a while (by the time you have learnt to shoot cats with the new rifles), you will put them away, and arrive at the happy second thought which corrects the first thought. That second thought will not be of _invasion_, prophesies a headless prophet. 'Time was when heads were off a man would die.' A man--yes. But a woman! _We_ die hard, you know.

Here, an end. I hope you will write to me some day, and ease me by proving to me that I have ceased to be bitter to the palate of your soul. Believe this--that, rather than be a serious sadness to you, I would gladly sit on in the pillory under the aggressive mud of that mob of 'Saturday Reviewers,' who take their mud and their morals from the same place, and use voices hoarse with hooting down un-English poetesses, to cheer on the English champion, Tom Sayers. For me, I neither wish for the 'belt'[78] nor martyrdom; but if I were ambitious of anything, it might be to be wronged where, for instance, Cavour is wronged.

* * * * *

_To Miss I. Blagden_

[Rome], Friday [end of March 1860].

My ever dearest Isa, I am scarcely in heart yet for writing letters, and did not mean to write to-day. You heard of the unexpected event which brought me the loss of a very dear friend, dear, dear Mrs. Jameson.[79] It was, of course, a shock to me, as such things are meant to be....

And now I come to what makes me tax you with a dull letter, I feeling so dully; and, dear, it is with dismay I have to tell you that the letter you addressed under cover to Mr. Russell has _never reached us_. Till your last communication (this moment received), I had hoped that the contents of it might have been less important than O.-papers must be. What is to be done, or thought? I beseech you to write and tell me if _harm_ is likely to follow from this seizure. The other inclosure came to me quite safely, because it came by the Government messenger. I think you sent it through Corbet. But Mr. Russell's _post_ letters are as liable to opening as mine are; his name is no security. Whenever you send a 'Nazione' newspaper through him, it never reaches us, though we receive our 'Monitore' through him regularly. Why? Because in his position he is allowed to have newspapers for his own use. He takes in for himself no 'Monitore,' so ours goes to his account, but he does take in a 'Nazione,' therefore ours is seized, as being plainly for other hands than his own licensed ones.

I am very much grieved about this loss of your letter and its contents. First, there's my fear lest harm should come of this, and then there's my own personal _mulcting_ of what would have been of such deep interest to me. I am 'revelling'? See how little.

Robert wrote in a playful vein to Kate, and you must not and will not care for that. He had understood from your letter that you and the majority had all, like the 'Athenæum,' understood the 'Curse for a Nation' to be directed against England. Robert was _furious_ about the 'Athenæum'; no other word describes him, and I thought that both I and Mr. Chorley would perish together, seeing that even the accusation (such a one!) made me infamous, it seemed.

The curious thing is, that it was at Robert's suggestion that that particular poem was reprinted there (it never had appeared in England), though 'Barkis was willing'; I had no manner of objection. I never have to justice.

Mr. Chorley's review is objectionable to me because unjust. A reviewer should read the book he gives judgment on, and he could not have read from beginning to end the particular poem in question, and have expounded its significance so. I wrote a letter on the subject to the 'Athenæum' to correct this mis-statement, which I cared for chiefly on Robert's account.

In fact, _I_ cursed neither England nor America. I leave such things to our Holy Father here; the poem only pointed out how the curse was involved in the action of slave-holding.

I never saw Robert so enraged about a criticism. He is better now, let me add.

In the matter of Savoy,[80] it has vexed and vexes me, I do confess to you. It's a handle given to various kinds of dirty hands, it spoils the beauty and glory of much, the uncontested admiration of which would have done good to the world. At the same time, as long as Piedmont and Savoy agree in the annexation to France, there is nothing to object to--not to object to with a reasonable mind. And it seems to be understood (it is stated in fact), that the cession is under condition of the assent of the populations. The Vote is necessary to the honour of France. I do not doubt that it will be consulted. Meantime there is too much haste, I think. There is a haste somewhat indelicate in the introduction of French garrisons into Savoy, previous to the popular conclusion being known. There should have been mixed garrisons, French and Piedmontese, till the vote was taken. Napoleon should have been more particular in Savoy than he was even in central Italy, as to the advance of any occasion of the current charge of 'pressure.'

Altogether the subject is an anxious one--would be, even if less rancorous violence on the part of his enemies were wreaked upon it. The English Tories are using it with the frenzy of despair, and no wonder!

Lamoricière's arrival is another proof of the internal coalition against the Empire.

Now I must end, Robert says, or I shall lose the post. My true best love, and Robert's--and Peni's.

Write to me, do, dearest Isa, and tell me if the MSS. sent were _nuisibles_. The Excommunication just out is said to include the Emperor.

Your ever loving BA.

* * * * *

_To Miss Browning_

[Rome: about March 1860.]

Dearest Sarianna,--It is impossible to have a regret for dear Lady Elgin. She has been imprisoned here under double chains too long. To be out of the dark and the restraint is a blessing to that spirit, and must be felt so by all who love her. Of course I shall write to Lady Augusta Bruce....

No, I don't think there is much to be forgiven by my countrymen in my book. What I reproach them for, none of them deny. They certainly took no part in the war, nor will they if there is more war, and certainly the existence of the rifle clubs is a fact.

Robert and I began to write on the Italian question together, and our plan was (Robert's own suggestion!) to publish jointly. When I showed him my ode on Napoleon he observed that I was gentle to England in comparison to what he had been, but after Villafranca (the Palmerston Ministry having come in) he destroyed his poem and left me alone, and I determined to stand alone. What Robert had written no longer suited the moment; but the poetical devil in me burnt on for an utterance. I have spoken nothing but historical truths, as far as the outline is concerned. But the spirit of the whole, is, of course, opposed to the national feeling, or I should not in my preface suppose it to be offended.

With every deference to you, dearest Sarianna, I cannot think that you who live, as the English usually do, quite aside and apart from French society, can judge of the interest in France for Italy. I see French letters--letters of French men and women--giving a very contrary impression. The French newspapers give a very contrary impression. And the statistics of books and pamphlets published and circulated in France on the Italian question this year are in most prodigious disaccord with such a conclusion. Compare them with the same statistics in England, and then judge.

Besides, the English, to do them justice, can be active and generous in any cause in which they are really interested, and it is a fact that we could not get up a subscription in England even for Garibaldi's muskets lately, while France is always giving.

Not that there are not, and have not been, many English of generous sympathies towards Italy. That I well know. But it is a small, protesting minority. Lord John has done very well, as far as words can go, but it has been simply in giving effect to the intentions of France, who wanted much a respectable conservative Power like England to endorse her bill of revolution with the retrograde European Governments.

I will spare what I think of the treatment in England of the Savoy question. We are losing all moral prestige in the eyes of the world, with our small jealousies and factional struggles for power.

Ah! dear Sarianna, I don't complain for myself of an unappreciating public--_I have no reason_. But, just for _that_ reason, I complain more about Robert, only he does not hear me complain. To _you_ I may say, that the blindness, deafness, and stupidity of the English public to Robert are amazing. Of course Milsand had 'heard his name'! Well, the contrary would have been strange. Robert _is_. All England can't prevent his existence, I suppose. But nobody there, except a small knot of pre-Raffaelite men, pretends to do him justice. Mr. Forster has done the best in the press. As a sort of lion, Robert has his range in society, and, for the rest, you should see Chapman's returns; while in America he's a power, a writer, a poet. He is read--he lives in the hearts of the people. 'Browning readings' here in Boston; 'Browning evenings' there. For the rest, the English hunt lions too, Sarianna, but their favourite lions are chosen among 'lords' chiefly, or 'railroad kings.' 'It's worth _eating much dirt_,' said an Englishman of high family and character here, 'to get to Lady ----'s soirée.' Americans will eat dirt to get to _us_. There's the difference. English people will come and stare at _me_ sometimes, but physicians, dentists, who serve me and refuse their fees, artists who give me pictures, friends who give up their carriages and make other practical sacrifices, are _not English_--no--though English Woolner was generous about a bust. Let _me_ be just at least.

There is a beautiful photograph of Wilde's picture of Pen on horseback, which shall go to you, the likeness better than in the picture.

I can scarcely allude to the loss of my loved friend Mrs. Jameson. It's a blot more on the world to me. Best love to you and the dear Nonno from Pen and myself. The editor of the 'Atlas' writes to thank me for the justice and courage of my international politics. English clergyman stops at the door to say to the servant, 'he does not know me, but applauds my sentiments.' So there may be ten just persons who spare

Your affectionate sister.

* * * * *

_To Miss I. Blagden_

[Rome]: Saturday [April 1860].

My dearest dear Isa, not well! That must be the first word 'by return of post.' Dear, let me have a better letter, to say that you are well and bright again, and brilliant Isa as customary.

And now, join me in admiration of the 'husband Browning!' Isn't he a miracle, whoever else may be? The wife Browning, not to name most other human beings, would have certainly put the 'Monitore' receipt into the fire, or, at best, lost it. In fact, whisper it not in the streets of Askelon, but _she_ had forgotten even the fact of its having been sent, and was quietly concluding that Wilson had lost it in a fog and that we should have patiently to pay twice. Not at all. Up rises the husband Browning, superior to his mate, and with eyes all fire, holds up the receipt like an heroic rifleman looking to a French invasion at the end of a hundred years. Blessed be they who keep receipts. It is a beatitude beyond my reach.

Only I do hope my Tuscan friends of the 'Monitore' are only careless and forgetful in their business habits, and that they didn't think of 'annexing'--eh, Isa! No, I don't believe it was dishonesty, it might have so very well been oblivion.

May the paper come to-day, that's all. We get the 'Galignani,' but can't afford to miss our Italian news. Then, not only we ourselves, but half a dozen Tuscan exiles here in Rome who are not allowed to read a freely breathed word, come to us for that paper, friends of Ferdinando's living in Rome. First he lent them the paper, then they got frightened for fear of being convicted through some spy of reading such a thing[81], and prayed to come to this house to read it. There have been six of them sometimes in the evening. We keep a sort of café in Rome, observe, and your 'Monitore' is necessary to us.

You have seen by this time Lamoricière's[82] address to the Papal array. It's extraordinary, while the French are still here, that such a publication should be permitted, obvious as the position taken must be to all, and personally displeasing to the Emperor as the man is known to be. Magnanimity is certainly a great feature of Napoleon's mind. And now what next? The French are going, of course. You would suppose an attack on Romagna imminent. And better so. Let us have it out at once.

I have the papers. I am much the better for some things in them. There's to be the universal suffrage, the withdrawal of troops, whatever I wanted. Cavour's despatch to the Swiss is also excellent. Those injured martyrs wanted the bone in their teeth, that's all.

The wailing in England for Swiss and Savoyards, while other nationalities are to be trodden under foot without intervention, except what's called _aggression_, is highly irritating to me.

Dearest Isa, Robert tore me from my last sentence to you. I was going to say that I cared less for the attacks of the press on my book than I care for your sympathy. Thank you for feeling 'mad' for me. But be sane again. Dear, it's not worth being mad for.

In the advertised 'Blackwood,' do you see an article called 'Poetic Aberration'? It came into my head that it might be a stone thrown at me, and Robert went to Monaldini's to glance at it. Sure enough it is a stone. He says a violent attack. And let me do him justice. It was only the misstatement in the 'Athenæum' which overset him, only the first fire which made him wink. Now he turns a hero's face to all this cannonading. He doesn't care a straw, he says, and what's more, he doesn't, really. So I, who was only sorry for him, can't care. Observe, Isa, if there had been less violence and more generosity, the poems would obviously have been less deserved.

The English were not always so thin-skinned. Lord Byron and Moore have....

[_The rest of the letter is lost_]

* * * * *

_To Miss I. Blagden_

Rome: April 2, [1860].

Ever dearest Isa,--Here are the letters! I am sorry I wrote rashly yesterday; but from an expression of yours I took for granted that the packet went by the post; and I have been really very anxious about it.

No, Isa; I don't like the tone of these letters so well. I can understand that what is said of Belgium and the Rhine provinces is in the event of a certain coalition and eventual complication, but it doesn't do, even in a thought and theory, to sacrifice a country like Belgium. I respect France, and 'l'idée Napoléonienne'; yes, but conscience and the populations more.

As to Napoleon's waiting for the bribe of Savoy before he would pass beyond Villafranca, this is making him ignoble; and I do not believe it in the least. Also it contradicts the letter-writer's previous letter, in which he said that Savoy had been from the beginning the _sous entendre_ of Venetia. No, I can see that an Italy in unity, a great newly constituted nation, might be reasonably asked by her liberator to shift her frontier from beyond the Alps, but for Victor Emmanuel to be expected at Milan to put his hand into his pocket and pay, without completion of facts, or consultation of peoples, this would be to 'faire le marchand' indeed, and I could write no odes to a man who could act so. I don't sell my soul to Napoleon, and applaud him _quand même_. But absolutely I disbelieve in this version, Isa. If the war had not stopped at Villafranca, it would have been European; _that_, if not clear at the time, is clear now--clear from the official statement of Prussia. By putting diplomacy in the place of the war, a great deal was absolutely attained, besides a better standpoint for a renewal of the war, should that be necessary. 'Hence those tears'--of Villafranca!

The letter-writer is very keen, and evidently hears a good deal, while he selects after his own judgment. _I_ am glad to hear that 'L'Opinion Nationale' represents the efficient power. That's comfortable. What's to be done next in the south here rests with _us_, it seems. But what of the occupation of Rome? And what is the meaning of Lamoricière being here 'with the consent of the Emperor'? Lamoricière can mean no good either to the French Government or to Italy; and the Emperor knows it well.

My dearest Isa, let us make haste to say that of course I shall be glad to let my book be used as is proposed. How will we get a copy to M. Fauvety? I enclose an order to Chapman and Hall which M. Dall' Ongaro[83] may enclose to his friend, who must enclose it on to England, with a letter conveying his address in Paris. Then the book may be sent by the _book post_. Wouldn't that do?

I shall give a copy to Dall' Ongaro (when I can get a supply), and one for the Trollopes also, never forgetting dear Kate! (and I do expect copies through the embassy) but I have not seen a word of the book yet. I only know that, being Cæsar's wife, I am not merely 'suspected' (poor wife!), but dishonored before the 'Athenæum' world as an unnatural vixen, who, instead of staying at home and spinning wool, stays at home[84] and curses her own land. 'It is my own, my native land!' If, indeed, I had gone abroad and cursed other people's lands, there would have been no objection. That poem, as addressed to America, has always been considered rather an amiable and domestic trait on my part. But England! Heavens and earth! What a crime! The very suspicion of it is guilt.

The fact is, between you and me, Isa, certain of those quoted stanzas do '_fit_' England 'as if they were made for her,' which they were _not_, though....

According to your letters, Venetia seems pushed off into the future a little, don't you think?

Still, they are interesting, very. Get Dall' Ongaro to remember me in future. The details about Antonelli shall go to him. I am delighted at the idea of being translated by him....

Write to me, my dearly loved Isa. You who are true! let me touch you!

Yours ever from the heart BA.

* * * * *

_To Miss I. Blagden_

28 Via del Tritone: Monday and Tuesday [April 1860].

Ever dearest Isa,--I send you under this enclosure an abstract of some papers given to me by somebody who can't be named, with a sketch of Antonelli. I wasn't allowed to copy; I was only to abstract. But everything is in. The whole has been verified and may be absolutely relied on, I hear. So long I have waited for them. Should I have translated them into Italian, I wonder? Or can Dall' Ongaro get to the bottom of them so? Dates of birth are not mentioned, I observe. From another quarter I may get those. About has the character of romancing a little.

Not a word do you say of your health. Do another time. Remember that your previous letter left you in bed.

Dearest Isa, how it touched me, your putting away the 'Saturday Review'! But dear, don't care more for me than I do for myself. That very Review, lent to us, _we_ lent to the Storys. Dear, the abuse of the press is the justification of the poems; so don't be reserved about these attacks. I was a little, little vexed by a letter this morning from my brother George; but _pazienza_, we must bear these things. Robert called yesterday on Odo Russell, who observed to him that the article in the 'Saturday Review' was infamous, and that the general tone of the newspaper had grown to be so offensive, he should cease to take it in. (Not on my account, observe.) 'But,' said Mr. Russell, 'it's extraordinary, the sensation your wife's book has made. Every paper I see has something to say about it,' added he; 'it is curious. The offence has been less in the objections to England than in the praise of Napoleon. Certainly Monckton Milnes said a good thing when he was asked lately in Paris what, after all, you English wanted. "_We want_" he answered, "_first, that the Austrians should beat you French thoroughly; next, we want that the Italians should be free, and then we want them to be very grateful to us for doing nothing towards it._" This, concluded Russell, 'sums up the whole question.' Mark, he is very English, but he can't help seeing what lies before him, having quick perceptions, moreover. Then men have no courage. Milnes, for instance, keeps his sarcasm for Paris, and in England supports his rifle club and all Parliamentary decencies.

Mind you read 'Blackwood.' Though I was rather vexed by George's letter (he is awfully vexed) I couldn't help laughing at my sister Henrietta, who accepts the interpretation of the 'Athenæum' (having read the poems) and exclaims, 'But, oh, Ba, such dreadful curses!'...

Mrs. Apthorp has arrived, but I have not seen her nor received the paper. Pins were right, though I should have liked some smaller. 'Monitores' arrived up at the 12. Beyond, nothing. I hear that Mr. Apthorp was struck with the 'brilliant conversation between you and Miss Cobbe.' You made an impression too, on Mrs. Apthorp.

Oh, Isa, how I should like to be with you in our Florence to-day. Yes, yes, I think of you. Here the day is gloomy, and with a sprinkling now and then of rain. I trust you may have more sun. God bless the city and the hills, and the people who dwell therein!

I have just sent a lyric to Thackeray for his magazine.[85] He begged me for something long ago. Robert suggested that _now_ he probably wanted nothing from such profane hands. So I told him that in that case he might send me back my manuscripts. In the more favorable case it may be still too late for this month. The poem is 'meek as maid,' though the last thing I wrote--no touch of 'Deborah'--'_A Musical Instrument_.' How good this 'Cornhill Magazine' is! Anthony Trollope is really superb.[86] I only just got leave from Robert to send something: he is so averse to the periodicals as mediums....

Lamoricière's arrival produces a painful sensation among the people here; and the withdrawal of the French troops has become most unpopular. I am anxious. If the Emperor has consented to his coming, it was pure magnanimity, and very characteristic; but the _cost of this_ should be paid by France and not Italy, we must feel besides. I am content about Savoy.

Dearest Isa, you and your 'Saturday Reviewer' shall have Robert's portrait. Are you sure he didn't ask for _mine_? How good you are to us and Landor! God bless you, says

Your tenderly loving BA.

* * * * *

_To Mr. Chorley_

28 Via del Tritone, Rome: April 13, [1860].

My dear Mr. Chorley,--It is always better to be frank than otherwise; sometimes it is necessary to be frank--that is when one would fain keep a friend, yet has a thing against him which burns in one. I shall put my foot on this spark in a moment; but first I must throw it out of my heart you see, and here it is.

Dearest Mr. Chorley, you have not been just to me in the matter of my 'Poems before Congress.' Why have you not been just to me? You are an honest man and my friend. Those two things might go together. Your opinions, critical or political, are free from stress of friendship. I never expected from you favor or mercy _because_ you were my friend (it would have been unworthy of us both) but I did expect justice from you, _although_ you were my friend. That is reasonable.

And I consider that as a conscientious critic you were bound to read through the whole of the 'rhyme' called 'A Curse for a Nation' before ticketing it for the public, and I complain that after neglecting to do so and making a mistake in consequence, you refused the poor amends of printing my letter in full. A loose paragraph like this found to-day in your 'Athenæum' about Mrs. Browning 'wishing to state' that the 'Curse' was levelled at America _quoad_ negro-slavery, and the satisfaction of her English readers in this correction of what was 'generally thought'; as if Mrs. Browning 'stated' it arbitrarily (perhaps from fright) and as if the poem stated nothing distinctly, and as if the intention of it _could_ be 'generally thought' what the 'Athenæum' critic took it to be, except by following his lead or adopting his process of a general skipping of half the said poem--this loose paragraph does not cover a great fault, it seems to me. Well, I have spoken.

As to the extent of the 'general thought,' we cannot, of course judge here, where it is so difficult to get access to periodicals. We have seen, however, two virulent articles from enemies in 'Blackwood' and the 'Saturday Review,' the latter sparing none of its native mud through three columns; _not_ to speak of a renewal of the charge in several political articles with a most flattering persistency. Both these writers (being enemies) keep clear of the 'general thought' suggested by a friend, and accepted indeed by friendly and generous reviewers in the 'Atlas' and 'Daily News.' Therefore I feel perfectly unaggrieved by all the enemies' hard words. They speak from their own point of view, and have a right to speak.

In fact, in printing the poems, I did not expect to help my reputation in England, but simply to deliver my soul, to get the relief to my conscience and heart, which comes from a pent-up word spoken or a tear shed. Whatever I may have ever written of the least worth has represented a conviction in me, something in me felt as a truth. I never wrote to please any of you, not even to please my own husband. Every genuine artist in the world (whatever his degree) goes to heaven for speaking the truth. It is one of the beatitudes of art, and attainable without putting off the flesh.

To be plain, and not mystical, it is obvious that if I had expected compliments and caresses from the English press to my 'Poems before Congress,' the said poems would have been little deserved in England, and a greater mistake on my part than any committed by the 'Athenæum,' which is saying much.

There! I have done. The spark is under my shoe. If in 'losing my temper' I have 'lost my music,' don't let it be said that I have lost my friend by my own fault and choice also.

For I would not willingly lose him, though he should be unjust to me thrice, instead of this once throughout our intercourse. Affectionately yours, dear Mr. Chorley,

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

* * * * *

_To Mr. Chorley_

28 Via del Tritone, Rome: May 2, [1860].

My dear Mr. Chorley,--I make haste to answer your letter, and beg you to do the like in putting out of your life the least touch of pain or bitterness connected with me. It is true, true, true, that some of my earliest gladness in literary sympathy and recognition came from you. I was grateful to you then as a stranger, and I am not likely ever to forget it as a friend. Believe this of me, as I feel it of _you_.

In the matter of reviews and of my last book, and before leaving the subject for ever, I want you distinctly to understand that my complaint related simply to the mistake in facts, and not to any mistake in opinion. The quality of neither mercy nor justice should be strained in the honest reviewer by the personal motive; and, because you felt a regard for me, _that_ was no kind of reason why you should like my book.

In printing the poems, I well knew the storm of execration which would follow. Your zephyr from the 'Athenæum' was the first of it, gentle indeed in comparison with various gusts from other quarters. All fair it was from your standpoint, to see me as a prophet without a head, or even as a woman in a shrewish temper, and if my husband had not been especially pained by my being held up at the end of a fork as the unnatural she-monster who had 'cursed' her own country (following the Holy Father), I should have left the '_mistake_' to right itself, without troubling the 'Athenæum' office with the letter they would not insert. In fact, Robert was a little vexed with me for not being vexed enough. I was only vexed enough when the 'Athenæum' corrected its misstatement in its own way. _That did_ extremely vex me, for it made me look ungenerous, cowardly, mean--as if, in haste to escape from the dogs in England, I threw them the good name of America. 'Mrs. Browning _now states_.'

Well, dear Mr. Chorley, it was not your doing. So the thing that 'vexed me enough' in you was a mistake of mine. Let us forgive one another our mistakes; and there, an end. _I_ was wrong in taking for granted that the letter which referred to your review was entrusted to you to dispose of; and you were not right in being in too much haste to condemn a book you disliked to give the due measure of attention to every page of it. The insurgents being plainly insurgents, you shot one at least of them without trial, as was done in Spain the other day. True, that even favorable critics have fallen here and there into your very mistake; but is not that mainly attributable to the suggestive power of the 'Athenæum,' do you not believe so yourself? 'Thais led the way!'

And now that we clasp hands again, my dear friend, let me say one word as to the 'argument' of my last poems. Once, in a kind and generous review of 'Aurora Leigh,' you complained a little of 'new lights.' Now I appeal to you. Is it not rather _you_ than I, who deal in 'new lights,' if the liberation of a people and the struggle of a nation for existence have ceased in your mind to be the right arguments for poetry? Observe, I may be wrong or right about Napoleon. He may be snake, scoundrel, devil, in his motives. But the thing he did was done before the eyes of all. His coming here was real, the stroke of his sword was indubitable, the rising and struggle of the people was beyond controversy, and the state of things at present is a fact. What if the father of poetry Homer (to go back to the oldest lights) made a mistake about the cause of Achilles' wrath. What if Achilles really wanted to get rid of Briseis and the war together, and sulked in his tent in a great sham? Should we conclude against the artistic propriety of the poet's argument therefore?

You greatly surprise me by such objections. It is objected to 'new lights,' as far as I know, that we are apt to be too metaphysical, self-conscious, subjective, everything for which there are hard German words. The reproaches made against myself have been often of this nature, as you must be well aware. 'Beyond human sympathies' is a phrase in use among critics of a certain school. But that, in any school, any critic should consider the occasions of great tragic movements (such as a war for the life of a nation) unfit occasions for poetry, improper arguments, fills me with an astonishment which I can scarcely express adequately, and, pardon me, I can only understand your objection by a sad return on the English persistency in its mode of looking at the Italian war. You have looked at it always too much as a mere table for throwing dice--so much for France's ambition, so much for Piedmont's, so much stuff for intrigue in an English Parliament for ousting Whigs, or inning Conservatives. You have not realised to yourselves the dreadful struggle for national life, you who, thank God, have your life as a nation safe. A calm scholastic Italian friend of ours said to my husband at the peace, '_It's sad to think how the madhouses will fill after this._' You do not conceive clearly the agony of a whole people with their house on fire, though Lord Brougham used that very figure to recommend your international neutrality. No, if you conceived of it, if you did not dispose of it lightly in your thoughts as of a Roccabella conspiracy, full half vanity, and only half serious--a Mazzini explosion, not a quarter justified, and taking place often on an affair of _métier_--you, a thoughtful and feeling man, would cry aloud that if poets represent the deepest things, the most tragic things in human life, they need not go further for an argument. And _I_ say, my dear Mr. Chorley, that if, while such things are done and suffered, the poet's business is to rhyme the stars and walk apart, _I_ say that Mr. Carlyle is right, and that the world requires more earnest workers than such dreamers can be.

For my part, I have always conceived otherwise of poetry. I believe that if anything written by me has been recognised even by _you_, the cause is that I have written not to please you or any critic, but the deepest truth out of my own heart and head. I don't dream and make a poem of it. Art is not either all beauty or all use, it is essential truth which makes its way through beauty into use. Not that I say this for myself. Artistically, I may have failed in these poems--that is for the critic to consider; but in the choice of their argument I have not failed artistically, _I think_, or my whole artistic life and understanding of life have failed.

There, I cannot persuade you of this, but I believe it. I have tried to stand on the facts of things before I began to feel 'dithyrambically.' Thought out coldly, then felt upon warmly. I will not admit of 'being heated out of fairness!' I deny it, and stand upon my innocency.

And after all, 'Casa Guidi Windows' was a book that commended itself to you, Mr. Chorley.

[_The rest of this letter is missing_]

* * * * *

_To John Forster_

28 Via del Tritone, Rome: Monday [May 1860].

I have tried and taken pains to see the truth, and have spoken it as I have seemed to see it. If the issue of events shall prove me wrong about the E. Napoleon, the worse for _him_, I am bold to say, rather than for me, who have honored him only because I believed his intentions worthy of the honor of honest souls.

If he lives long enough, he will explain himself to all. So far, I cannot help persisting in certain of my views, because they have been held long enough to be justified by the past on many points. The intervention in Italy, while it overwhelmed with joy, did not dazzle me into doubts of the motive of it, but satisfied a patient expectation and fulfilled a logical inference. Thus it did not present itself to my mind as a caprice of power, to be followed perhaps by an onslaught on Belgium, and an invasion of England. These things were out of the beat; and _are_. There may follow Hungarian, Polish, or other questions--but there won't follow an English question unless the English _make_ it, which, I grieve to think, looks every day less impossible.

Dear Mr. F., have you read 'La Foi des Traités,' written, some of it, by L.N.'s own hand? Do you consider About's 'Carte de l'Europe' (as the 'Times' does) 'a dull _jeu d'esprit_'? The wit isn't dull, and the serious intention, hid in those mummy wrappings, is not inauthentic. Official--certainly not; but Napoleonic--yes. I believe so. And I seem to myself to have strong reasons.

But you are sorry that Cavour loves popularity in England. I cried rather bitterly, 'Better so!' A complete injustice comes to nearly the same thing as a complete justice. Have we not watched for a year while every saddle of iniquity has been tried on the Napoleonic back, and nothing fitted? Wasn't he to crush Piedmontese institutions like so many egg-shells? Was he ever going away with his army, and hadn't he occupied houses in Genoa with an intention of bombarding the city? Didn't he keep troops in the north after Villafranca on purpose to come down on us with a Grand Duke at best, or otherwise with a swamping Kingdom of Etruria and Plon-Plon to rule it? and wouldn't he give back Bologna to the Pope bound by seven devils fiercer than the first, and prove Austria bettered by Solferino? Also, were not Cipriani, Farini, and other patriots, his 'mere creatures' in treacherous correspondence with the Tuileries; 'doing his dirty work,' 'keeping things in suspense' till destruction should arrange itself on falsehood? Have I not read and heard from the most intelligent English journals, and the best-informed English politicians (men with one foot and two ears in the Cabinet) these true things written and repeated, and watched while they died out into the Vast Inane and Immense Absurd from which they were born?

So I would rather have a rounded, complete injustice, as we can't have the complete justice. After all, the thing done is only a nation saved. Hurry up the men who did it on the same cord! Ought not Cavour to be there?

And if the Savoy cession is a crime, he is criminal, he, who undeniably from the beginning contemplated it, not as the price of the war, but as the condition of a newly constituted Italy. And the condition implies more than is understood, more than the consenting parties dare to confess--can at present afford to confess--unless I am deceived by information, which has hitherto justified itself in the event. Be patient with me one moment--for if I differ from you, I seem to have access to another class of facts than you see. If Italy, for instance, expands itself to a nation of twenty-six millions, would you blame the Emperor who 'did it all' (Cavour's own phrase) for providing an answer to his own people in some small foresight about the frontier, when in the course of fifty or a hundred years they may reproach his memory with the existence of an oppressive rival or enemy next door? Mr. Russell said to me last January 'Everything that comes out proves the Emperor to have acted towards Italy like an Italian rather than a Frenchman.' At which we applaud; that is, you, and Mr. R., and I, and the Italians generally applaud. But--let us be just--_that_ would not be a satisfactory opinion in France of the Head of the State, would it, do you think? It was obviously his duty not to be negligent of certain eventualities in the case of his own country, to be a 'Frenchman' _there_.

Oh, Savoy has given me pain: and I would rather for the world's sake that a great action had remained out of reach of the hypothetical whispers of depreciators. I would rather not hear Robert say, for instance: 'It was a great action; but he has taken eighteenpence for it, which is a pity.' I don't think this judgment fair--and much worse judgments are passed than that, which is very painful. But, after all, this thing may have been a necessary duty on L.N.'s part, and I can understand that it was so. For this loss of the Italians, _that_ is not to be dwelt on; while for the Savoyards, none knew better than Cavour (not even L.N.) the leaning of those populations towards France for years back; it has been an inconvenient element of his government. Whether there are or are not natural frontiers, there are natural barriers, and the Alps hinder trade and make direct influence difficult; and what the popular vote would be nobody here doubted. Be sure that nobody did in Switzerland. The Swiss have been insincere, it seems to me--talking of terror when they thought chiefly of territory. But I feel tenderly for poor heroic Garibaldi, who has suffered, he and his minority. He is not a man of much brain; which makes the subject the more cruel to him. But I can't write of Garibaldi this morning, so anxious we are after an unpleasant despatch yesterday. He is a hero, and has led a forlorn hope out to Sicily, to succeed for Italy, or to fail for himself. It's 'imprudence,' if he fails: if otherwise, who shall praise him enough? it's salvation and glory.

* * * * *

_To Miss E.F. Haworth_

[Rome], 28 Via del Tritone: May 18, 1860 [postmark].

My dearest Fanny,--It seems to me that you have drunk so much England, which cheers _and_ inebriates, as to have forgotten your Italian friends. Here have I been waiting with my load of gratitude, till my shoulders ache under it, not knowing to what address to carry it! Sarianna sent me one address of your London lodgings, with the satisfactory addition that you were about to move immediately. You really _might_ have written to me before, unkindest and falsest of Fannies! Or else (understand) you should not have sent me those graceful and suggestive drawings, for which only now I am able to thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It was very kind of you to let me have them.

Then, pray how did you get my 'Poems before Congress'? Was I not to send you an order? Here I send one at least, whether you scorn my gift or not; and by this sign you will inherit also an 'Aurora Leigh.'

Yes, I expected nothing better from the 'British public,' which, strictly conforming itself to the higher civilisation of the age, gives sympathy only where it gives 'the belt.'[87] As the favorite hero says in his last eloquent letter, 'In all my actions, whether in private or public life, may I be worthy of having had the honor ... _of a notice in the_ "_Times_,"' he concludes 'of the abuse of the "Saturday Review"' &c., &c., say _I_.

For the rest, being turned out of the old world, I fall on my feet in the new world, where people have been generous, and even publishers turned liberal. Think of my having an offer (on the ground of that book) from a periodical in New York of a hundred dollars for every single poem, though as short as a sonnet--that is, for its merely passing through their pages on the road to the publisher's proper. Oh, I shall cry aloud and boast, since people choose to abuse me. Did you see how I was treated in 'Blackwood'? In fact, you and all women, though you hated me, should be vexed on your own accounts. As for me, it's only what I expected, and I have had that deep satisfaction of 'speaking though I died for it,' which we are all apt to aspire to now and then. Do you know I was half inclined to send my little book to Mr. Cobden, and then I drew back into my shell, with native snail-shyness.

We remain here till the end of May, when we remove back to Florence. Meanwhile I am in great anxiety about Sicily. Garibaldi's hardy enterprise may be followed by difficult complications.

Let us talk away from politics, which set my heart beating uncomfortably, and don't particularly amuse you....

Have you read the 'Mill on the Floss,' and what of it? The author is here, they say, with her elective affinity, and is seen on the Corso walking, or in the Vatican musing. Always together. They are said to visit nobody, and to be beheld only at unawares. Theodore Parker removed to Florence in an extremity of ill-health, and is dead there. I feel very sorry. There was something high and noble about the man--though he was not deep in proportion. Hatty Hosmer has arrived in America, and found her father alive and better, but threatened with another attack which must be final. Gibson came to us yesterday, and we agreed that we never found him so interesting. I grieve to hear that Mr. Page's pictures (another Venus and a Moses) have been rejected at your Academy.

Robert deserves no reproaches, for he has been writing a good deal this winter--working at a long poem[88] which I have not seen a line of, and producing short lyrics which I _have_ seen, and may declare worthy of him. For me, if I have attained anything of force and freedom by living near the oak, the better for me. But I hope you don't think that I mimic [him, or] lose my individuality. [Penini] sends his love with Robert's. [He ri]des his pony and learns his Latin and looks as pretty as ever--to my way of [thinking]. If you don't write directly, address to Florence.

We have another thick Indian letter for you, but Robert is afraid of sending it till you give us a safe address.

* * * * *

_To Miss I. Blagden_

[Rome: about May 1860.]

[_The beginning of this letter is wanting_]

When the English were raging about Savoy, I heard a word or two from Pantaleone which convinced me that the Imperial wickedness did not strike him as the sin against the Holy Ghost precisely. In fact, I doubt much that he (an intimate friend of Massimo d' Azeglio) knew all about it before the war.

By the by, why does Azeglio write against Rome being the capital just now? It seems to us all very ill-advised. Italy may hereafter select the capital she pleases, but now her game ought to be to get Rome, as an indispensable part of the play, as soon as possible. There are great difficulties in the way--that's very sure. It's quite time, indeed, that Mrs. Trollope's heart should warm a little towards the Emperor, for no ruler has risked so much for a nation to which he did not belong (unless he wished to conquer it) as Napoleon has for this nation. He has been tortuous in certain respects--in the official presentation of the points he was resolute on carrying--but from first to last there has been one steady intention--the liberation of Italy without the confusion of a general war. Moreover, his eyes are upon Venice, and have been since Villafranca. What I _see_ in the very suggestion to England about stopping Garibaldi from attacking the mainland was a preparation to the English mind towards receiving the consequence of unity, namely, the seizure of Venice. 'You must be prepared for that. You see where you are going? You won't cry out when France joins her ally again!' Lord John didn't see the necessity. No, of course he didn't. He never does see except what he runs against. He protested to the last (by the Blue Book) against G.'s attack; he was of opinion, to the last, that Italy would be better in two kingdoms. But he _wouldn't intervene_. In which he was perfectly right, of course, only that people should see where their road goes even when they walk straight. And mark, if France had herself prevented Garibaldi's landing, Lord John would simply have 'protested.' _He said so._ France might have done it without the least inconvenience, therefore, and she _did not_. She confined herself to observing that if V.E. _might_ have Naples, he _must_ have Venice, and that there could be no good in objecting to logical necessities of accepted situations. In spite of which, every sort of weight was hung on the arms of France that no aid should be given for Venetia. Certain things written to Austria, and uttered through Lord Cowley, I can't forgive Lord John for; my heart does not warm, except with rage. To think of writing only the other day to an Austrian Court: '_All we can do for you_ is to use our strongest influence with France that she should not help Italy against you in Venetia. And in our opinion you will always be strong enough to baffle Italy. Italy can't fight you alone.' The words I am not sure of, but the idea is a transcript. And the threats uttered through Lord Cowley were worse--morally hideous, I think.

Napoleon's position in France is hard enough of itself. Forty thousand priests, with bishops of the colour of Mon. d'Orléans and company, having, of course, a certain hold on the agricultural population which forms so large a part of the basis of the imperial throne. Then add to that the parties the 'Liberals' (so called) and others, who use this question as a weapon simply. In the Senate and Legislative Body they haven't forgotten how to talk, have they--these French? The passion and confusion seem to have been extreme. After all, we shall get a working majority, I do hope and trust, for all the intelligent supporters of the Government are with us, and the Chamber will be dissolved at need. There is talk of it already in Rome....

At last we see your advertisement. _Viva_ 'Agnes Tremorne'![89] We find it in 'Orley Farm.' How admirably this last opens! We are both delighted with it. What a pity it is that so powerful and idiomatic a writer should be so incorrect grammatically and scholastically speaking! Robert insists on my putting down such phrases as these: 'The Cleeve was distant from Orley two miles, though it _could not be driven_ under five.' '_One rises up the hill._' 'As good as _him_.' 'Possessing more _acquirements_ than he would have _learned_ at Harrow.' _Learning acquirements!_ Yes, they are faults, and should be put away by a first-rate writer like Anthony Trollope. It's always worth while to be correct. But do understand through the pedantry of these remarks that we are full of admiration for the book. The movement is so excellent and straightforward--walking like a man, and 'rising up-hill,' and not going round and round, as Thackeray has taken to do lately. He's clever always, but he goes round and round till I'm dizzy, for one, and don't know where I am. I think somebody has tied him up to a post, leaving a tether. Dearest Isa, the day before yesterday I had two letters from Madame M---- to ask us to take rooms. He is coming directly to Rome. She says he has much to tell me, and it's evident, of course, that an Italian senator, native to the Roman States, wouldn't come here just now without mission or permission. I am full of expectation, but will say no more.

Dearest Isa, have I been long in writing indeed? You see, I let so many letters accumulate which I hadn't the heart to reply to, that, on taking up the account, I had over much to do in writing letters. Then I have been working a little at some Italian lyrics. Three more are gone lately to the 'Independent,' and another is ready to go. All this, with helping Pen to prepare for the Abbé, has filled my hands, and they are soon tired, my Isa, nowadays. When the sun goes down, I am down. At eight I generally am in bed, or little after. And people will come in occasionally in the day, and annul me. I had a visit from Lady Annabella Noel lately, Lord Byron's granddaughter. Very quiet, and very intense, I should say. She is going away, and I shall not see her more than that once, I dare say; but she looked at me so with her still deep eyes, and spoke so feelingly, that I kissed her when she went away. Another new acquaintance is Lady Marion Alford, the Marquis of Northampton's daughter, very eager about literature and art and Robert, for all which reasons I should care for her; also Hatty calls her divine. I thought there was the least touch of affectation of fussiness, but it may not be so. She knelt down before Hatty the other day and gave her--placed on her finger--the most splendid ring you can imagine, a ruby in the form of a heart, surrounded and crowned with diamonds. Hatty is frankly delighted, and says so with all sorts of fantastical exaggerations.

Tell me what you think of the photographs which Robert sends, with his best love. I think the head perfect, and the other very poetical and picturesque. I wish I had mine to send Kate, tell her with my dear love, but I have not one, nor can get one. Perhaps I may have to sit again before leaving Rome, and then she shall be remembered. And Robert will give her his.

Pray don't apologise for your Borden. He is very much to be liked. Mrs. Bruen is charmed. He has been three times to talk with me, and Robert has called on him twice. Robert is quite vexed at your 'pretension' about having friends not good enough for his acquaintance. Yes, really he was vexed. 'Isa _never_ understood him--not she!'

Is there not reason, we may murmur? But the truth is he is always ready (be pleased to know) to honour your drafts in acquaintanceship, and chooses to be considered ready.

[_The remainder of this letter is wanting_]

* * * * *

_To Miss E.F. Haworth_

Florence: June 16, 1860 [postmark].

My dearest Fanny,--I must use my opportunity of sending you these photographs, because I think you will care to have them. Peni is _himself_, not a likeness, but an identity. _I_, like a devil, or the Emperor Napoleon, am not as black as I seem; but Pen looks lovely enough to satisfy my vanity.

Your Indian poet's letter was despatched to you from Rome, and 'so Apollo saved me.' Oh--if you knew how I hate giving opinions! I think a poet's opinion of another poet should be paid by some triple fee. I, at least, always feel that after being ingenuous on these occasions and advising persons who can barely spell against publishing their epic poems, one is supposed to be secretly influenced by the fear of a rival or worse. Give me a triple fee.

Poor dearest Fanny, of course you are in the chain; being in England. You are moved to set down the Emperor as 'the Beast' 666, of course. If he crushes 'Garibaldi you must give him up.' Yes; but what an If. If you stab Miss Heaton with a golden bodkin, right through the heart, under circumstances of peculiar cruelty, I shall have to give up _you_. If I bake Penini in a pie and eat him, you'll have to give up me.

The Emperor Napoleon is faithful and will be faithful to the Italian cause, and to the cause of the nationalities, as long as and wherever it is prudent, for the general interest; possible without dangerous complications. He has risked enough for it, to be trusted a little I think--his life and dynasty certainly. At this moment I hear from Rome of a great dinner given by Lamoricière to his staff, or by his staff to him (I don't know which), only that the health of _Henri Cinq_ was suggested and drunk at it. Gorgon telegraphed the news to Paris. What then? English newspapers (even such papers as the 'Daily News') have stated that Lamoricière was doing Napoleonic business at Rome. Perhaps this is of it.

Chapman junior is in Florence (doing business upon Lever I believe), and he maintains that I have done myself no mortal harm by the Congress poems, which incline to a second edition after all. Had it been otherwise I yet never should have repented speaking the word out of me which burnt in me. Printing that book did me real good. For the rest 'Aurora Leigh' is in the press for a _fifth_ edition. Read the 'Word for Truth by a Seaman,' written by a naval officer of high reputation.

We left Rome on the 4th of June, and travelled by vettura through Orvieto and Chiusi. Beautiful scenery, interesting pictures and tombs, but a fatiguing journey. At least, Pen's pony and I were both of us unusually fatigued, and scarcely, at the end of a week, am I myself yet. I am not as strong since my illness last summer. We stay here till the early part of July and then remove to Siena, to the villa we had last year; and there Pen keeps tryst with his Abbé and the Latin. He has made great progress this winter in Latin and much besides, and he isn't going to be a 'wretched little Papist,' as some of our friends precipitately conclude from the fact of his having a priest for a tutor. Indeed Pen has to be restrained into politeness and tolerance towards ecclesiastical dignities. Think of his addressing his instructor (who complained of the weather at Rome one morning) thus--in choice Tuscan: 'Of course it's the excommunication. The prophet says that a curse begins with the curser's own house; and so it is with the Holy Father's curse.' Wasn't that clever of Pen? and impertinent, but our Abbé only tried at gravity; he sympathises secretly with the insorgimento d' Italia, and besides is very fond of Pen. Poor Pen, 'innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,' how his mama has been wickedly cursing her native country (after Chorley)! It's hard upon me, Fanny, that you won't tell me of the spirits, you who can see. Here is even Robert, whose heart softens to the point of letting me have the 'Spiritual Magazine' from England. Do knock at Mrs. Milner Gibson's doors till you get to see the 'hands' and the 'heads' and the 'bodies' and the 'celestial garlands' which she has the privilege of being familiar with. _Touch_ the hands. Has Mr. Monckton Milnes seen anything so as to believe? Is it true that Lord Lyndhurst was lifted up in a chair? Does he believe? I hear through Mr. Trollope and Chapman that Edwin Landseer has received the faith, and did everything possible to persuade Dickens to investigate, which Dickens refused. Afraid of the truth, of course, having deeply committed himself to negatives. This is a moral _lâcheté_, hard for my feminine mind to conceive of. Dickens, too, who is so fond of ghost-stories, as long as they are impossible....

I can scarcely imagine the summer's passing without a struggle on the Continent of Italy. It can't be, I think. At least we are prepared for it here.

We find Wilson well. Mr. Landor also. He had thrown a dinner out of the window only once, and a few things of the kind, but he lives in a chronic state of ingratitude to the whole world except Robert, who waits for his turn. I am glad to think that poor Mr. Landor is well; unsympathetical to me as he is in his _morale_. He has the most beautiful sea-foam of a beard you ever saw, all in a curl and white bubblement of beauty. He informed us the other morning that he had 'quite given up thinking of a future state--he had _had_ thoughts of it once, but that was very early in life.' Mr. Kirkup (who is deafer than a post now) tries in vain to convert him to the spiritual doctrine. Landor laughs so loud in reply that Kirkup hears him.

Pray keep Mr. ---- off till we have settled the independence and unity of Italy. It isn't the hour for peace, and we don't want a second Villafranca. By the way, I dare say nobody in England lays his face in the dust and acknowledges, in consequence of the official declaration of the Prussian Minister (to the effect that Prussia was to attack on the crossing of the Mincio, and that nothing but the unexpected conclusion of hostilities hindered the general war)--acknowledges that Napoleon stands fully justified in making that peace. I cannot expect so much justice in an Englishman. He would rather bury his past mistake in a present mistake than simply confess it.

Now no more. May God bless you! Do be happy, and do write to me. We talk of Paris and England for next year.

Your very affectionate BA.

Robert's love and Pen's.

* * * * *

_To Miss Browning_

[Florence: about June 1860.]

I didn't write last time, dearest Sarianna, not only because of being over-busy or over-tired, but because I had not the heart that day. Peni had another touch of fever, and was forced to have a doctor and cataplasms to his feet. It was only a day's anxiety, but I didn't like writing just then. He had been in the sun or the wind or something. I was glad to get away from Rome. There were two cases of fever in our courtyard, and both the sun and the shade were _suspectés_. As far as Pen is concerned, the evil was averted, and I assure you he is looking in the full bloom of health, and we have been congratulated on all sides on his appearance and growth since we returned to Florence. Riding so much has agreed well with him; and the general results of the Roman campaign cannot be said to be otherwise than favourable. Set down as much for Robert. Everybody exclaims at his stoutness. In fact, never since I have known him has he condescended to put on such an air of _robustness_, there's no other word for it. Shall we give the glory to Rome, or to _nux_, to which he is constant. For two years and a half he has had recourse to no other remedy, and it has not yet failed to produce its effect. How do you unbelievers account for that? At the same time, I never would think of using it in any active or inflammatory malady, and where a sudden revolution or _scosso_ is required from the remedial agent.

We find poor Mr. Landor tolerably amenable to Wilson, and well in health, though he can't live more than three months, he says, and except when Robert keeps him soothed by quoting his own works to him, considers himself in a very wretched condition, which is a sort of satisfaction too. He is a man of great genius, and we owe him every attention on that ground. Otherwise I confess to you he is to me eminently unsympathetic....

If ---- 'turns Catholic,' as you say, on the ground of the organisation of certain institutions, it will be a proof of very peculiar ignorance. This power of organisation is _French_, and not Catholic. You look for it in vain in Rome, for instance, except where the organisation comes from France. The _soeurs de charité_, who are of all Catholic nations, are organised entirely by the French. The institutions here are branch institutions. In Rome the tendency of everything is to confusion and 'individuality' with separate pockets. Lamoricière was in despair at it all, and even now people talk of his resigning, though he gave a dinner the other day to his staff, with the toast of '_Henri Cinq_.'

Individuality is an excellent thing in its place, and an infamous thing out of it. In England we have some very successful efforts at organisation--the post office, which is nearly perfect, and society, in which the demarcation between class and class is much too perfect to be humane. In other respects we are apt to fail.

We do not fail, however, in organisation only with regard to these charitable institutions. We are very hard and unsympathetic in them. A distinguished woman has been here lately--a Miss Cobbe (a fellow-worker with Miss Carpenter)--who, having overworked herself, was forced by her physician to come here for three months and rest, under dire penalties. She went to Isa Blagden's, and returned to England and her work just now. She is very acute, and so perfectly without Continental prejudices, that she didn't pretend to much interest even in our Italian movement, having her heart in England and with the poor. But she was much struck, not merely with the order of foreign institutions, but with their superior tenderness and sympathy. The account she gave of the English workhouses and hospitals was very sad, very cruel, corresponding, in fact, to what I have heard from other quarters.

Ah, Sarianna, 'charming old men' who call the Tuscans angels, except that they lie (what an exception!), can be mistaken like others. _That_ passes for 'liberality,' does it? We are not angels, and we don't lie--there's no more lying in Italy than in England, I begin to affirm. Also, M. Tassinari was in prison, not a week but a month--and well did he deserve it. We deal now in French coinage, and are to see no more pauls after the middle of next month. Robert thinks it will destroy the last vestige of our cheapness, but I am very favorable to a unification of international coinage. It agrees with my theories, you know.

We are all talking and dreaming Garibaldi just now in great anxiety. Scarcely since the world was a world has there been such a feat of arms. All modern heroes grow pale before him. It was necessary, however, for us all even here, and at Turin just as in Paris, to be ready to disavow him. The whole good of Central Italy was hazarded by it. If it had not been success it would have been an evil beyond failure. The enterprise was forlorner than a forlorn hope. The hero, if he had perished, would scarcely have been sure of his epitaph even.

And 'intervention' _does_ mean quite a different thing at Naples and in Lombardy. In Lombardy there was the _foreign tyrant_. At Naples Italians deal with Italians; and the Austrian influence is _indirect_. So also at Rome. It is this which makes the difficulty of dealing with Southern Italy and the difference of treatment which you observe in certain French papers.

I am sure, though you don't like photographs, you say, that you will find nothing lacking in what we send you and dearest Nonno of our Penini. It isn't like him, it's himself. As for me, I murmur, in the depths of my vanity, that like the Emperor Napoleon (and the devil) I'm not so black as I'm painted; but I forgive everything for Pen's sake. Robert is not very favourably represented, I think. The beard on the upper lip had not been properly clipped, and makes the space seem too long for him. Another time I will mend that. I was very unusually tired after my journey, but am getting past it. Weather was hot; but within two days we have had some cooling rain.

Give my best love to M. Milsand, beside the photographs, and thank him for not being offended in his 'patriotism' by my Congress poems. If he approved of the preface as he says, I can't see how he can have written anything about 'intervention' which I would not accept. Nothing could have ended the intervention of Austria, except the intervention of France; and it was on that account that we feel the latter to be a great and chivalrous action. Italy is grateful. And if France were in difficulty she might count on this delivered nation, as on herself. In spite of all the bad words hurled at me in every English newspaper and periodical nearly (and I assure you I have been put in the pillory among them) the poems are going into a second edition, Chapman says, and 'Aurora Leigh' into a fifth. Also Chapman junior, who has come out here to see after Lever, smoothes me down a little about Robert, and says that the sale is bettering itself, and that a new edition of the 'Poems' will soon be wanted. I just now see a pleasant notice of myself in 'Bentley's Magazine.' Abuse of the 'Congress Poems,' of course. Then a side stroke at 'Aurora Leigh,' which was original, of course, because it's my way to stand alone and attack people; but the principal merit of which otherwise was the suggestion of 'Lucille' (Lytton's new poem)--'Lucille,' says the critic, being superior in holiness and virtue and that sort of thing to 'Aurora'! Of course.

They subscribed in England five thousand pounds for Tom Sayers. There's the advance of civilisation. Napoleon has gone to Baden to arrange the world a little more comfortably, I hope.

Mr. Lewes and Miss Evans have been here, and are coming back to settle into our congenial bosom. I admire her books so much, that certainly I shall not refuse to receive her, though she is not a medium. Sarianna!

Your ever affectionate sister.

* * * * *

The programme of the previous year was repeated in 1860. Returning from Rome to Florence at the beginning of June, the Brownings in July went to Siena to avoid the extreme heat of the summer at Florence, staying as before at the Villa Alberti. Their visit to Siena was, however, rather shorter than the previous one, lasting only till September.

There is no doubt that Mrs. Browning, during all this time, was losing ground in point of health; and she now received another severe blow in the news of the serious illness of her sister Henrietta (Mrs. Surtees Cook). The anxiety lasted for several months, and ended with the death of Mrs. Cook in the following winter.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Martin_

Villa Alberti, Siena: August 21, [1860].

I thank you, my dearest friend, from my heart for your letter, and the ray of sunshine it brought with it. Do you know I was childish enough to kiss it as if it knew what it did. I wish I could kiss _you_. Yes, I have been very unhappy, not giving way on the whole, going about my work as usual, but with a sense of a black veil between me and whatever I did, sometimes feeling incapable of crawling down to sit on the cushion under my own fig-tree for an hour's vision of this beautiful country--sometimes in 'des transes mortelles' of fear.

But we must not be atheists, as a friend said to me the other day. I hope I do not live quite as if I were. But it was a great shock from the beginning. Henrietta always seemed so strong that I never feared that way.

My first impulse was to rush to England, but this has been over-ruled by everybody, and I believe wisely. With my usual luck I should just have increased the sum of evil instead of bringing a single advantage to anyone. The best thing I can do for the others, is to keep quiet and try not to give cause for trouble on my account, to be patient and live on God's daily bread from day to day. I had a crumb or two the day before yesterday through Storm, who thought there might be a little less pain--and here you have sent me almost a slice--may God be thanked! How good you were to mention the doctor! It is grievous to me to think of her suffering. Darling!

I knew how strong your sympathy and personal feeling would be, and, even on that account, I had not the heart and courage to write to you. But no, dearest friends, I did not receive the letter you speak of, though I heard of your grief a good while afterwards. And so sorry I was--we both were--so sorry for Fanny, so sorry for you! May God bless you all! How the spiritual world gets thronged to us with familiar faces, till at last, perhaps, the world here will seem the vague and strange world, even while we remain.

Still, it is beautiful out of this window; and of public affairs in Italy, I am stirred to think with the most vivid interest through all. The rapture is not as in the northern war last year, because (you don't understand that in England) last year we fought the Austrian and now it is Italian against Italian,[90] which tempers every triumph with a certain melancholy. Also the Italian question in the south was decided in the north, and remained only a question of time, abbreviated (many think rashly) by our hero Garibaldi. For the crisis, so quickened, involves very serious dangers and most solemn thoughts. The southern difficulty may be considered solved--so we think--but just now that very solution opens out, as we all fear a new Austrian invasion in the north, backed indirectly at least by Prussia and Germany, who will use the opportunity in carrying out the coalition against France. There seems no doubt of the mischief hatched at Toeplitz. I wish I had known that England's influence was not used in drawing together those two powers. Prussia deserves to be--what shall I say?--docked of her Rhenish provinces? It would be a too slight punishment. She caused the Villafranca halt (according to her official confession by the mouth of Baron Schleinitz, last spring), and now this second time, would she interrupt the liberation of Italy? The aspect of affairs looks very grave. As to England, England wishes well to this country at this present time, but _she will make no sacrifices_ (not even of her hatreds, least of all, perhaps, of her blind hatreds), for the sake of ten Italys. Tell dear Mr. Martin that after the speech for the Defences, I gave up Lord Palmerston for ever. He plays double. He is too shrewd to believe in the probability of invasions, &c., &c., but he wants a shield to guard his sword-arm. The statesmanship of England pines for new blood, for ideas of the epoch, and the Russell old-fogyism will not do any more at all. These old bottles won't hold the new wine. People are positively calling on the Muse and William Pitt. It's religion to hate France, and to set up a 'Boney' as a 'raw head and bloody bones' sort of scarecrow. But it won't do. As the Revolutionists say, 'È troppo tardi.'

I am not, however, in furies all day, dearest Mrs. Martin. (I answer satisfactorily your question whether I am 'ever calm.') The newspapers from various parts of Italy thunder down on us here, not to speak of 'Galignanis' and 'Saturday Reviews.' See how calm-blooded I must be to bear the 'Saturday Review.' (I consider it a curiosity in vice, certainly.) Then we have books from the subscription library in Florence, and sights of the 'Cornhill,' and political pamphlets by the book-post; nay, even the 'Spiritual Magazine,' sent by Chapman and Hall, in the last number of which that clever and brave William Howitt (who, like a man, is foolish sometimes) suggests gravely in an article that I have lately been 'biologised by infernal spirits,' in order to the production of certain bad works in the service of 'Moloch,' meaning, of course, L.N. Oh! and did anyone tell you how Harriet Martineau, in her political letters to America, set me down with her air of serene superiority? But such things never chafe me--never. They don't even quicken my pulsation. And the place we are passing the summer in is very calm--a great lonely villa, in the midst of purple hills and vineyards, olive-trees and fig-trees like forest-trees; a deep soothing silence. A mile off we have friends, and my dear friend Miss Blagden is in a villa half a mile off. This for the summer. Also, we brought with us from Florence and dropped in a villino not far, our friend Mr. Landor (Walter Savage), who is under Robert's guardianship, having quarrelled with everybody in and out of England. I call him our adopted son. (You did not know I had a son of eighty-six and more.) Wilson lives with him, and Robert receives from his family in England means for his support. But really the office is hard, and I tell Robert that he must be prepared for the consequences: an outbreak and a printed statement that he (Robert), instigated by his wicked wife, had attempted to poison him (Landor) slowly. Such an extraordinary union of great literary gifts and incapacity of will has seldom surprised the world. Of course he does not live with us, you know, either here or in Florence, but my husband manages every detail of his life, and both the responsibility and trouble are considerable. Still he is a great writer. We owe him some gratitude therefore.

Penini has his pony here, and rides with his father. We have had the coolest summer I ever remember in Italy. I _could_ have been very happy. But God, who 'tempers the wind,' finds it necessary for the welfare of some of us to temper the sunshine also....

As the very poorest proof of gratitude for your letter, Robert suggests that I should enclose this photograph of Penini and myself taken at Rome this last spring. You will like to have them, we fancy, but it is Robert's gift. I was half inclined last year to send you a photograph from Field Talfourd's picture of me,[91] but I shrank back, knowing that dear Mr. Martin would cry out at the flattery of it, which he well might do. But this photograph from nature can't be flattered, so I hazard it. You see the locks are dark still, not white, and the sun, in spite, has blackened the face to complete the harmony. Pen is very like, and very sweet we think.

Do, when you write, speak of yourself--yourselves. I hope you like the 'Mill on the Floss.'

Our love to dearest Mr. Martin and you.

Let me be as ever,

Your affectionate and grateful BA.

* * * * *

_To Miss E.F. Haworth_

Villa Alberti, Siena, Sardegna: August 25, [1860].

My dearest Fanny,--I received your letter with thanks upon thanks. It seemed long since I heard or wrote. I have been very sad, very--with a stone hung round my heart, and a black veil between me and all that I do, think, or look at. One of my sisters is very ill in England--my married sister--an internal tumour, accompanied with considerable suffering, and doubtful enough as to its issue to keep us all (I can answer at least for myself) in great misery. Robert says I exaggerate, and I think and know that consciously or unconsciously he wants to save me pain. She went to London, and the medical man called it an anxious case. We all know what that must mean. For a little time I was in an anguish of fear, and though come to believe now that no great change any way is to be expected quickly, you would pity what I feel when the letters are at hand. May God have mercy on us all! I wanted at first to get to England, but everyone here and there was against it, and I suppose it would have been a pure selfishness on my part to persist in going, seeing that the fatigue and the cold in England alone would have broken me up to a faggot (though of not so much use as to burn) so that I should have complicated other people's difficulties, without much mending my own. Still it would have been comfort to me (however selfish) to have just held her hand. But no. Oh, I am resigned to its being wiser. I am shaken, even at this distance. She has three children younger than my Peni. Don't let me talk of it any more.

You see, Fanny, my 'destiny' has always been to be entirely useless to the people I should like to help (except to my little Pen sometimes in pushing him through his lessons, and even so the help seems doubtful, scholastically speaking, to Robert!) and to have only power at the end of my pen, and for the help of people I don't care for. At moments lately, thanks from a stranger for this or that have sounded ghastly to me who can't go to smooth a pillow for my own darling sister. Now, I _won't_ talk of it any more. After all I try to be patient and wait quietly, and there ought to be hope and faith meantime.

The pen-utilities themselves don't pass uncontested, as you observe. Yes, I see the 'Spiritual Magazine,' and remarked how I was scourged in the house of my friends. Robert shouted in triumph at it, and hoped I was pleased, and as for myself, it really did make me smile a little, which was an advantage, in the sad humour I was in at the time. 'Biologised by infernal spirits since "_Casa Guidi Windows_"' yet 'Casa Guidi Windows' was not wholly vicious it seems to me, nor 'Aurora' utterly corrupt. And Mr. Howitt is both a clever man, and an honest and brave man, for all his sweeping opinions. Biologised and be-Harrised _he_ is certainly. What an extraordinary admiration! I wonder at _that_ more than at any of the external spiritual phenomena. Dearest Fanny, you were very, very good and generous to take my part with the editor--but _laissez faire_. These things do one no harm--and, for me, they don't even vex me. I had an anonymous letter from England the other day, from somebody who recognised me, he said, in some prodigious way as a great Age-teacher, all but divine, I believe, and now gave me up on account of certain atrocities--first, for the poem 'Pan'[92] in the 'Cornhill' (considered _immoral_!) and then for having had my 'brain so turned by the private attentions and flatteries of the Emperor Napoleon when I was in Paris, that I have devoted myself since to help him in the gratification of his selfish ambitions.' Conceive of this, written with an air of conviction, and on the best information. Now, of the two imputations, I much prefer 'the inspiration from hell.' There's something grandiose about that, to say nothing of the superior honesty of the position.

What a 'mountainous me' I am 'piling up' in this letter, I who want rather to write of _you_....

Italy ought not to draw you just now, Fanny. We are all looking for war, and wondering where the safety is. A Piccolomini said yesterday that it was as safe at Rome as in Florence, which only proved Florence unsafe. Austria may come down on Central Italy any day; and sooner or later there must be war. The Storys are alarmed enough to avoid going back to Rome until the end of November, when things may be a little arranged. The indignation here is great against 'questa canaglia di Germania.' Toeplitz means mischief both against France and Italy--that is plain. The Prince of Prussia gave his 'parole de gentilhomme' meaning the word of a rascal. My poor Venice! But you will see presently, only the fear is that our fire here may flash very far. In any case, it would not be desirable for Englishmen to come southwards this year. Our plans for the winter depend entirely on circumstances. If we can go to Rome in any reasonable security, I suppose we shall go. But I have no heart for plans just now.

Dear Isa Blagden is spending the summer in a rough _cabin_, a quarter of an hour's walk from here, and Mr. Landor is hard by in the lane. This (with the Storys a mile off) makes a sort of colonisation of the country here. Otherwise it's a solitude, 'very _triste_,' say the English, not even an English church, even in the city of Siena. We get books from Florence, and newspapers from everywhere, or one couldn't get on quite well. As it is I like it very much. I like the quiet! the lying at length on a sofa, in an absolute silence, nobody speaking for hours together (Robert rides a great deal), not a chance of morning visitors, no voices under the windows. The repose would help me much, if it were not that circumstances of pain and fear walk in upon me through windows and doors, using one's own thoughts, till they tremble. Pen has had an abbé to teach him Latin, and his pony to ride on, and he and Robert are very well and strong, thank God.

Thank you for your words on spiritualism. I have not _yet_ seen the last 'Cornhill.' It pleases me that Thackeray has had the courage to maintain the facts before the public; I think _much the better of him_ for doing so. Owen's book I shall try to get. There is a weak reference to the subject in the 'Saturday Review' (against it), and I see an article advertised in 'Once a Week,' all proving that the public is awaking to a consideration of the class of phenomena. _Investigation_ is all I desire. The 'Spiritual Magazine' lingers so this month that I fear, and Robert hopes, something may have happened to it.

* * * * *

On returning to Rome for the winter, which they did about September, the Brownings found quarters at 126 Via Felice. The following letter was written shortly after the death of Mrs. Browning's sister.

* * * * *

_To Miss E.F. Haworth_

[Rome: autumn 1860.]

In one word, my dearest Fanny, I will thank you for what is said and not said, for sympathy true and tender each way. It is a great privilege to be able to talk and cry; but _I cannot_, you know. I have suffered very much, and feel tired and beaten. Now, it's all being lived down; thrown behind or pushed before, as such things must be if we _are_ to live: not forgetting, not feeling any tie slackened, loving unchangeably, and believing how mere a _line_ this is to overstep between the living and the dead.

Do you know, the first thing from without which did me the least good was a letter from America, from dear Mrs. Stowe. Since we parted here in the spring, neither of us had written, and she had not the least idea of my being unhappy for any reason. In fact, her thought was to congratulate me on public affairs (knowing how keenly I felt about them), but her letter dwelt at length upon spiritualism. She had heard, she said, for the fifth time from her boy (the one who was drowned in that awful manner through carrying out a college jest) without any seeking on her part. She gave me a minute account of a late manifestation, not seeming to have a doubt in respect to the verity and identity of the spirit. In fact, secret things were told, reference to private papers made, the evidence was considered most satisfying. And she says that all of the communications descriptive of the _state_ of that Spirit, though coming from very different mediums (some high Calvinists and others low infidels) tallied exactly. She spoke very calmly about it, with no dogmatism, but with the strongest disposition to receive the facts of the subject with all their bearings, and at whatever loss of orthodoxy or sacrifice of reputation for common sense. I have a high appreciation of her power of forming opinions, let me add to this. It is one of the most vital and growing minds I ever knew. Besides the inventive, the critical and analytical faculties are strong with her. How many women do you know who are _religious_, and yet analyse point by point what they believe in? She lives in the midst of the traditional churches, and is full of reverence by nature; and yet if you knew how fearlessly that woman has torn up the old cerements and taken note of what is a dead letter within, yet preserved her faith in essential spiritual truth, you would feel more admiration for her than even for writing 'Uncle Tom.' There are quantities of irreverent women and men who profess infidelity. But this is a woman of another order, observe, devout yet brave in the outlook for truth, and considering, not whether a thing be _sound_, but whether it be true. Her views are Swedenborgian on some points, beyond him where he departs from orthodoxy on one or two points, adhering to the orthodox creed on certain others. She used to come to me last winter and open out to me very freely, and I was much interested in the character of her intellect. Dr. Manning tried his converting power on her. 'It might have answered,' she said, 'if one side of her mind had not confuted what the other side was receptive of.' In fact, she caught at all the beauty and truth and good of the Roman Catholic symbolism, saw what was better in it than Protestantism, and also, just as clearly, what was worse. She admired Manning immensely, and was very keen and quick in all her admirations; had no national any more than ecclesiastical prejudices; didn't take up Anglo-Saxon outcries of superiority in morals and the rest, which makes me so sick from American and English mouths. By the way (I must tell Sarianna _that_ for M. Milsand!) a clever Englishwoman (married to a Frenchman) told Robert the other day that she believed in 'a special hell for the Anglo-Saxon race on account of its hypocrisy.'...

Meanwhile you will care for Roman news, and I have not much to tell you. I am very much in my corner, and very quiet. Robert, who has been most dear and tender and considerate to me through my trial, kept all the people off, and even now, when the door is open a little, gloomy lionesses with wounded paws don't draw the public, I thank God, and I am not much teased, if at all. Sir John Bowring came with a letter of introduction, and intimate relations with Napoleon to talk of, and he has confirmed certain views of mine which I was glad to hear confirmed by a disciple of Bentham and true liberal of distinguished intelligence. He said that nothing could be more ludicrous and fanatical than the volunteer movement in England rising out of the most incredible panic which ever arose without a reason. I only hope that if the volunteers ever have to act indeed, they may behave better than at Naples, where they left the worst impression of English morals and discipline. They embarked to return home dead drunk all of them, and the drunkenness was not the worst. Sir John Bowring has been ill since he came, so perhaps he may go before I see him again. Then Madame Swab [Schwabe], whom I slightly knew in Paris, has been with me to-day, talking on Italian affairs. There is room for anxiety about the Neapolitans; but don't believe in exaggerations: we shall do better than our enemies desire. There will be war probably....

Robert has taken to modelling under Mr. Story (at his studio) and is making extraordinary progress, turning to account his studies on anatomy. He has copied already two busts, the Young Augustus and the Psyche, and is engaged on another, enchanted with his new trade, working six hours a day. In the evening he generally goes out as a bachelor--free from responsibility of crinoline--while I go early to bed, too happy to have him a little amused. In Florence he never goes anywhere, you know; even here this winter he has had too much gloom about him by far. But he looks entirely well--as does Penini. I am weak and languid. I struggle hard to live on. I wish to live just as long as and no longer than to grow in the soul.

May God bless you, dearest Fanny. Write.

America is making me very anxious just know. If they compromise in the north it is a moral death, but a merely physical dissolution of the States would be followed by a resurrection 'in honor,' and I should not fear. What are you painting?

Your affectionate as ever BA.

Did you see Lacordaire received? Those are things I care to see in Paris, wishing, however, to Guizot, the king of Prussia, and all prigs, the contempt they deserve.

* * * * *

_To Miss I. Blagden_

126 Via Felice, [Rome]: Monday, [November December 1860].

Ever dearest Isa,--How you grieve me by this news of your being unwell. Dear, I wondered at having no letter, and now with the letter and all the proofs of your remembering me (newspaper and pens) comes the bad word of your being ill....

I myself am not very well. I thought I was going to have a bad attack of the oppression, but this morning it seems to have almost gone, and without a blister! I had one night very bad. Probably a sudden call from the tramontana brought it; even frost we had. Only, on the whole, and considering accounts from other places, Rome has distinguished itself for mildness this year; and I hope I shall keep from bad attacks, having not much strength in body, nerve, or spirit to bear up resistingly against them....

Sir John Bowring has been to see us. Yes, he speaks with great authority and conviction, and it carries the more emphasis because he is not without Antigallican prejudice, I observed. He told me that the panic in England about invasion had reached, at one time, a point of phrenzy which would be scarcely credible to anyone who had not witnessed it. People were in terrors, expecting their houses to be burnt and sacked directly. Placards of the most inflammatory character, calling passionately on the riflemen to arm, arm, arm! He himself was hissed at Edinburgh for venturing to say that the rifle-locks would be very rusty if only used against invading Napoleons.

He told me that the Emperor's intentions towards Italy had been undeviatingly ignored, and that whatever had seemed equivocal had been misunderstood, or was the consequence of misunderstanding, or of the press of some otherwise great difficulty. The Italian question was only beginning to be understood in England. I said (in my sarcastic way) that at first they had seemed to understand it upside down. To which he replied that when, at the opening of the Revolution, he came over with several English officers from India, they were _all prepared_ (in case England didn't fight on the Hapsburg side) to enter the Austrian army as volunteers to help them to keep down Italy.

But men like Mr. Trollope find it easy to ignore all this. It is we who have done the most for Italy--we who did nothing! Yes, I admit so far. We abstained from helping the Austrians with an open force.

That now we wish well to the Italian cause is true, I hope, but, at best, it is a noble inconsistency; and that we should set up a claim to a nation's gratitude on these grounds seems to me worse than absurd. The more we are in earnest now, the more ashamed we should be for what has been.

I have been sorry about Gaeta;[93] but there is somewhere a cause, and, perhaps, not hard to find. That the Emperor is ready to do for Italy _whatever will not sacrifice France_, I am convinced more than ever. And even the Romans (who have benefited least) think so. One of the patriots here, a watchmaker, was saying to Ferdinando the other day that he had subscribed to Garibaldi's fund, and had given his name for Viterbo,[94] but that there was one man in whom he believed most, and never ceased to believe--Louis Napoleon. And this is the common feeling. Mr. Trollope said that they only ventured to unbosom themselves to the English. Now my belief is that the Italians seldom do this to the English, as far as Napoleon is concerned. The Italians are _furbi assai_, and wish to conciliate us, and are perfectly aware of our national jealousies. I myself have observed the difference in an Italian when speaking to my own husband before me and speaking to me alone.

Since we came here I have had a letter from Ruskin, written in a very desponding state about his work, and life, and the world....

Life goes on heavily with me, but it goes on: it has rolled into the ruts again and goes....

Write to me, my Isa, and love me.

I am your ever loving BA.

* * * * *

_To Miss I. Blagden_

[Rome: November-December 1860.]

... Now while I remember it let me tell you what I quite forgot yesterday. If through Kate's dealing with American papers you get to hear of a lyric of mine called 'De Profundis,'[95] you are to understand that it was written by me nearly twenty years ago, _before I knew Robert_; you will observe it is in my 'early manner,' as they say of painters. It is a personal poem, of course, but was written even so, in comparatively a state of retrospect, catching a grief in the rebound a little. (You know I never _can_ speak or cry, so it isn't likely I should write verses.) The poem (written, however, when I was very low) lay unprinted all those years, till it turned up at Florence just when poor Mrs. Howard's bereavement and Mr. Beecher's funeral sermon in the 'Independent' suggested the thought of it--on which, by an impulse, I enclosed it to the editor, who wanted more verses from me. Now you see it comes out just when people will suppose the motive to be an actual occasion connected with myself. Don't let anyone think so, dear Isa. In the first place, there would be great _exaggeration_; and in the second, it's not my way to grind up my green griefs to make bread of. But that poem exaggerates nothing--represents a condition from which the writer had already partly emerged, after the greatest suffering; the only time in which I have known what absolute _despair_ is.

Don't notice this when you write.

Write. Take the love of us three. Yes, I love you, dearest Isa, and shall for ever.

BA.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Martin_

126 Via Felice, Rome: Friday, [about December 1860].

I have not had courage to write, my dearest friend, but you will not have been severe on me. I have suffered very much--from suspense as well as from certainty. If I could open my heart to you it would please me that your sympathy should see all; but I can't write, and I couldn't speak of that. It is well for those who in their griefs _can_ speak and write. I never could.

But to you after all it is not needful. You understand and have understood.

My husband has been very good to me, and saved me all he could, so that I have had solitude and quiet, and time to get into the ruts of the world again where one has to wheel on till the road ends. In this respect it has been an advantage being at Rome rather than Florence. Now I can read, and have seen a few faces. One must live; and the only way is to look away from oneself into the larger and higher circle of life in which the merely personal grief or joy forgets itself.

For the rest even I ought to have comfort, I know. I believe that love in its most human relations is an eternal thing. I do believe it, only through inconsistency and much weakness I falter.

Also there are other beliefs with me with regard to the spiritual world and the measuring of death, which ought, if I had ordinary logic, to rescue me from what people in general suffer in circumstances like these. Only I am weak and foolish; and when the tender past came back to me day by day, I have dropped down before it as one inconsolable.

Dearest Mr. Martin--give him my grateful love for every kind thought, and to yourself.

Now that page is turned.

I wish I knew that you were stronger, and at Pau. It is unfortunate that just on this bitter winter you have been unable to get away from England.

Here, though there was snow once, we have fared mildly as to climate. And our rooms are very warm. Penini has his pony and rides, and studies with his Abbé, and looks very rosy and well. I help him to prepare his lessons, but that is all, except hearing him read a little German now and then, and Robert sees to the music, and the getting up of the arithmetic. For the first time I have had pain in looking into his face lately--which you will understand.

I saw a man from Naples two days since, an Englishman of intelligence and impartiality, who has resided there for months in the heart of the politics. He told me that the exaggeration of evils was great. Evils there were certainly; and no government succeeding Garibaldi's could have satisfied a public trained to expect the impossible. Our poor Garibaldi, hero as he is, and an honest hero, is in truth the weakest and most malleable of men, and had become at last the mere mouthpiece of the Mazzinians. If the Bourbons' fall had not been a little delayed, north and south Italy would have broken in two. So I was assured by my friend, who gave reasons and showed facts.

That the Neapolitans are not equal to the other Italians is too plain; and if corrupt governments did not corrupt the government they would be less hateful to all of us, of course. But a little time will give smoothness to the affairs of Italy, and none of my old hopes are in the meanwhile disturbed.

The design as to Rome seems to be to starve out the Pope by the financial question; to let the rotten fruit fall at last as much by its own fault as possible, and by the gentlest shake of the tree. I hear of those who doubted most in the Emperor's designs beginning to confess that he can't mean ill by Italy.

Possibly you and dear Mr. Martin think more just now of America than of this country, which I can understand. The crisis has come earlier than anyone expected. It is a crisis; and if the north accepts such a compromise as has been proposed the nation perishes morally, which would be sadder than the mere dissolution of States, however sad. It is the difference between the death of the soul and of the body.

There might and ought to be a pecuniary compromise; but a compromise of principle would be fatal.

I am anxious that before we go too far with the Minghetti project here (separate administration of provinces) we should learn from America that a certain degree of centralisation (not carried out too far) is necessary to a strong and vital government. And Italy will want a strong government for some years to come. There is much talk of war in the spring, and if Austria will not cede Venetia war must be, even if she should satisfy her other provinces, which she will probably fail to do.

This is a dull lecture, but you will pardon it and me.

I know all your goodness and sympathy. Do not think that _I_ think that _any bond is broken_, or that anything is lost. We have been fed on the hillside, and now there are twelve baskets full of fragments remaining.

May God bless you and love you both!

Your ever affectionate and grateful BA.

* * * * *

_To Miss I. Blagden_

126 Via Felice, Rome: Tuesday, [January 1861].

Ever dearest Isa,--I wrote a long letter, which you have received, I do hope, and am waiting for a long one from you to tell me that you are not suffering any more. This is on business merely--that is, it is merely to give you trouble, the customary way for me to do business in these latter days. Will you, dear, without putting yourself to too much inconvenience by overhaste, direct the 'Nazione' people to send the journal, to which we must subscribe for three months, to _S.E. le Général Comte de Noue, Comandante della piazza di Roma. No other name._ The General, who can do what he pleases, pleases to receive our paper (our kind Abbé mediating) on condition that we do not talk of it, and so at last I shall attain to getting out of this dark into the free upper air. It is insufferable to be instructed by the 'Giornale di Roma' as to how Cialdini writes to Turin that his Piedmontese are perfectly demoralised, and that the besieged dance for triumph each time an Italian cannon is fired into the vague. On the other hand, I hear regularly every morning from the Romans that Gaeta is taken,[96] with the most minute particulars, which altogether is exasperating. The last rumour is of typhus fever in the fortress, but I have grown sceptical, and believe nothing on either side now. One thing is clear, that it wasn't only the French fleet which prevented our triumph....

Robert came home this morning between three and four. A great ball at Mrs. Hooker's--magnificent, he says. All the princes in Rome (and even cardinals) present. The rooms are splendid, and the preparations were in the best taste. The Princess Ruspoli (a Buonaparte) appeared in the tricolor. She is most beautiful, Robert says.

So you see our Americans can dance even while the Republic goes to pieces. I think I would not do it. Not that I despair of America--God forbid! If the North will be faithful to its conscience there will be only an increase of greatness after a few years, even though it may rain blood betwixt then and now. Mr. Story takes it all very quietly. He would be content to let the South go, and accept the isolation of the North as final. 'We should do better without the South,' said he. I don't agree in this. I think that the unity of the State should be asserted with a strong hand, and the South forced to pay taxes and submit to law.

Mdme. Swab [Schwabe] told me that a friend of hers had travelled with Klapka from Constantinople, and that K. had said, 'there would not be war till next year,--diplomacy would take its course for the present year.' Perhaps he did not speak sincerely. I can't understand how the Austrian provinces will hold out in mere talk for twelve months more. Do you mark the tone of the 'Opinion Nationale' on Austria, and about Hungary being a natural ally of France, and also what is said in the 'Morning Chronicle,' which always more or less reflects the face of the French Government? Then it seems to me that the Emperor's speech is not eminently pacific, though he 'desires peace.' I hear from rather good authority what I hope is possible, that Teliki accepted as a condition of his liberation, not simply that he would not personally act against Austria, but that he would use his endeavours to prevent any action on the part of his compatriots. Men are base.

Mr. Prinsep[97] is here. Last autumn he made a walking tour into Cornwall with Alfred Tennyson, to tread in the steps of King Arthur. Tennyson was dreadfully afraid of being recognised and mobbed, and desired to be called 'the other gentleman,' which straightway became convertible now and then into 'the old gentleman,' much to his vexation. But Mr. Prinsep is in the roses and lilies of youth, and comparatively speaking, of course, the great Laureate was an ancient. He is in considerable trouble, too by their building a fort in front of his house on the southern coast of the Isle of Wight. I couldn't help saying that he deserved it for having written 'Riflemen, arm!' It's a piece of pure poetical justice, really.

Here I end.

Write to me, my Isa, and do me good with your tender, warm thoughts. Do you think I have no comfort in feeling them stroke me softly through the dark and distance?

May God love you, dearest Isa!

Always your loving BA.

Robert's true love, and Pen's.

The weather is wonderfully warm. In fact, the winter has been very mild--milder than usual for even Rome.

* * * * *

_To Miss E.F. Haworth_

126 Via Felice, Rome: Tuesday, [about January 1861].

You really astonish me, dearest Fanny, so much by your letter, that I must reply to it at once. I ask myself under what new influence (strictly clerical) is she now, that she should write so? And has she forgotten me, never read 'Aurora Leigh,' never heard of me or from me that, before 'Spiritualism' came up in America, I have been called orthodox by infidels, and heterodox by church-people; and gone on predicting to such persons as came near enough to me in speculative liberty of opinion to justify my speaking, that the present churches were in course of dissolution, and would have to be followed by a reconstruction of Christian essential verity into other than these middle-age scholastic forms. Believing in Christ's divinity, which is the life of Christianity, I believed this. Otherwise, if the end were here--if we were to be covered over and tucked in with the Thirty-nine Articles or the like, and good-night to us for a sound sleep in 'sound doctrine'--I should fear for a revealed religion incapable of expansion according to the needs of man. What comes from God has life in it, and certainly from all the growth of living things, spiritual growth cannot be excepted. But I shun religious controversy--it is useless. I never 'disturb anybody's mind,' as it is called--let those sleep who can. If I had not known that _your_ mind was broken up rather broadly by truths out of Swedenborg, I should not have mooted the subject, be sure. (Have you given up Swedenborg? this by the way.) Having done so, I am anxious to set you right about Mrs. Stowe. As the author of the most successful book printed by man or woman, perhaps I a little under-rated her. The book has genius, but did not strike _me_ as it did some other readers. Her 'Sunny Memories,' I liked very little. When she came to us in Florence some years ago, I did not think I should like her, nor did Robert, but we were both of us surprised and charmed with her simplicity and earnestness. At Rome last year she brought her inner nature more in contact with mine, and I, who had looked for what one usually finds in women, was startled into much admiration and sympathy by finding in her a largeness and fearlessness of thought which, coming out of a clerical and puritan _cul-de-sac_, and combined with the most devout and reverent emotions, really is fine. So you think that since 'Uncle Tom' she has turned infidel, because of her interest in Spiritualism. Her last words to me when we parted, were, 'Those who love the Lord Jesus Christ never see one another for the last time.' That's the attitude of the mind which you stigmatise as corrupting.

With regard to 'Spiritualism,' so called, you might as well say '_books_' are dangerous, without specifying the books. Surely you _know_ that every sort of doctrine is enjoined by these means, from Church of Englandism to Free Love. A lady was with me this very morning, who was converted from infidelity to Christianity solely by these means, and I am told that thousands declare the same. As far as I am concerned, I never heard or read a single communication which impressed me in the least: what does impress me is the probability of there being communications at all. I look at the movement. What _are_ these intelligences, separated yet relating and communicating? What is their state? what their aspiration? have we had part or shall we have part with them? is this the corollary of man's life on the earth? or are they unconscious echoes of his embodied soul? That anyone should admit a fact (such as a man being lifted into the air, for instance), and not be interested in it, is so foreign to the habits of my mind (which can't insulate a fact from an inference, and rest there) that I have not a word to say. Only I _see_ that if this class of facts, however grotesque, be recognised among thinkers, our reigning philosophy will modify itself; scientific men will conceive differently from Humboldt (for instance) of the mystery of life; the materialism which stifles the higher instincts of men will be dislodged, and the rationalism which divides Oxford with Romanism (_nothing between_, we hear!) will receive a blow.

_No truth can be dangerous._ What if Jesus Christ be taken for a medium, do you say? Well, what then? As perfect man, He possessed, I conclude, the full complement of a man's faculties. But if He walked on the sea as a medium, if the virtue went out of Him as a mesmeriser, He also spoke the words which never man spoke, was born for us, and died for us, and rose from the dead as the Lord God our Saviour. But the whole theory of spiritualism, all the phenomena, are strikingly _confirmatory_ of revelation; nothing strikes me more than that. Hume's argument against miracles (a strong argument) disappears before it, and Strauss's conclusions from _a priori_ assertion of impossibility fall in pieces at once.

Now I have done with this subject. Upon the whole, it seems to me better really that you should not mix yourself up with it any more. Also I wish you joy of the dismissal of M. Pierart. There was no harm that he took away your headache, if he did not presume on that. You tell me not to bid you to beware of counting on us in Paris. And yet, dearest Fanny, I must. The future in this shifting world, what is it? As for me, whom you recognise as 'so much myself,' dear, I have a stout pen, and till its last blot, it will write, perhaps, with its 'usual insolence' (as a friend once said), but if you laid your hand on this heart, you would feel how it stops, and staggers, and fails. I have not been out yet, and am languid in spirits, I gather myself up by fits and starts, and then fall back. Do you know, I think with positive terror sometimes, less of the journey than of having to speak and look at people. If it were possible to persuade Robert, I should send him with Pen; but he wouldn't go alone, and he must go this year. Oh, I daresay I shall feel more up to the friction of things when once I have been out; it's stupid to give way. Also my sister Arabel talks of meeting me in France, though I might have managed that difficulty, but that Robert should see his father is absolutely necessary. Meanwhile we don't talk of it, and by May or June I shall be feeling another woman probably....

So you are going to work hard in Germany: that is well. Only beware of the English periodicals. There's a rage for new periodicals, and because the 'Cornhill' answers, other speculations crowd the market, overcrowd it: there will be failures presently.

I have written a long letter when I meant to write a short one. May God keep you, and love you, and make you happy! Your ever affectionate

BA.

I am anxious about America, fearing a compromise in the North. All other dangers are comparatively null.

* * * * *

_To Miss E.F. Haworth_

126 Via Felice, Rome: Saturday, [about January 1861].

Ah, dearest Fanny, I can't rest without telling you that I am sorry at your receiving such an impression from my letter. May God save me from such a sin as arrogance! I have not generally a temptation to it, through knowing too well what I am myself. At the same time, I do not dispute my belief in what you have so often confessed, that you don't hold your attainments and opinions sufficiently 'irrespectively of persons.' Believing which of you, I said, 'under what new influence?' and if I said anything with too much vivacity, forgive me with that sweetness of nature which is at least as characteristic of you as the intellectual impressionability. Really I would not wound you for the world--but I myself perhaps may have been over-excitable, irritable just then, who knows? and, in fact, I _was_ considerably vexed at the moment that, from anything said by me, you would infer what was so injurious and unjust to a woman like Mrs. Stowe. I named her in this relation because she struck me as a remarkable example of the compatibility of freedom of thought with reverence of sentiment. You generally get one or the other; the one excluding the other. I never considered her a deep thinker, but singularly large and unshackled, considering the associations of her life, she certainly is. When I hinted at her stepping beyond Swedenborg in certain of her ideas, I referred to her belief that the process called 'regeneration,' may _commence_ in certain cases beyond the grave, and in her leaning to universal salvation views, which you don't get at through Swedenborg.

For the rest, I don't think, if you will allow of my saying so, that you apprehend Swedenborg's meaning very accurately always. If Swedenborg saw sin and danger in certain communications, for instance, why did he consider it privilege on his own part to live in the world of spirits as he did. True, he spoke of 'danger,' but it was to those who, themselves weak and unclean, did not hold 'by the Lord.' He distinctly said that in the first unfallen churches there was incessant communion, and that the 'new church, as it grew, would approximate more and more to that earlier condition. There is a distinct prospect given in Swedenborg of an increasing aptitude in the bodies and souls of men towards communication with the Disembodied. I consider that he foresaw not only what we are seeing (if these manifestations be veritable) but greater and more frequent phenomena of the same class,--which does not in any way exclude considerable danger to some persons in the meanwhile. And do you think I doubt _that_? No indeed. Unsettled minds, especially when under affliction, will lose their balance at moments,--there is danger. It is not the occasion for passion and fanaticism of sentiment, but for calm and reasonable inquiry into facts. Let us establish the facts first, and then '_try the spirits_' as the apostle directs; afterwards remains the difficulty of assuring oneself of the personalities. I don't think you should complain of the subject being unsatisfactory to you, because you don't get 'a sublime communication,' or a characteristic evidence of some spirit known to you. Much less would satisfy _me_. But it seemed to me that the consideration of the subject disturbed you, made you uncomfortable, and that you didn't approach any conclusion, and with that impression and not because of 'contempt,' be sure, I advised you to let it rest. Why should we beat our heads against an obstacle which we can't walk through? Then your liability to influence is against you here as much as your attraction towards such high speculations is in your favour. You have an 'open mind,' yes, but you leave all the doors open, and you let people come in every now and then, and lock them, and keep them locked as long as said people stand by. The teachings of Spiritualism are much like the teachings in the world. There are excellent things taught, and iniquitous things taught. Only the sublime communications are, as far as I know, decidedly absent. Swedenborg directs you to give no more weight to what is said by a spirit-man than by a man in the body, and there's room for the instruction. 'Heralds of Progress' on one side, 'Heralds of Light' on the other, if a right thing is said, 'judge ye.' If infidels are here, there are devout, yes, and very orthodox Christians there.

I beg to say that when I speak of 'old cerements' being put off, I pre-suppose a living body in resurrection. Also, I don't call _marriage_, for instance, an old cerement. We must distinguish. With regard to the common notion of a 'hell,' as you ask me, I don't believe in it. I don't believe in any such thing as arbitrary reward or punishment, but in consequences and logical results. That seems to me God's way of working. The Scriptural phrases are simply symbolical, it seems to me, and Swedenborg helps you past the symbol. Then as to the Redemption and its mode--let us receive the thing simply. Dr. Adam Clarke, whose piety was never doubted, used to say, 'Vicarious suffering is vicarious nonsense.' Which does not hinder the fact that the suffering of the Lord was necessary, in order that we should not suffer, and that through His work and incarnation His worlds recovered the possibility of good. It comes to the same thing. The manner in which preachers analyse the Infinite, pass the Divine through a sieve, has ceased to be endurable to thinking men. You speak of Luther. We all speak of Luther. Did you ever _read_ any of his theological treatises. He was a schoolman of the most scholastic sect; most offensive, most absurd, presenting my idea of 'old cerements' to the uttermost. We are entering on a Reformation far more interior than Luther's; and the misfortune is, that if we don't enter we must drop under the lintel. Do you hear of the storms in England about 'Essays and Reviews'? I have seen the book simply by reviews in abstract and extract. I should agree with the writers in certain things, but certainly not in all. I have no sort of sympathy with what is called 'rationalism,' which is positivism in a form. The vulgar idea of miracles being put into solution, leaves you with the higher law and spiritual causation; which the rationalists deny, and which you and I hold faithfully. But whatever one holds, free discussion has become necessary. That it is full of danger; that, in consequence of it, many minds will fall into infidelity, doubt, and despair, is certain; but through this moral crisis men must pass, or the end will be worse still. That's my belief, I have seen it coming for years back.

'The hungry flock looks up and is not fed,' except with chopped hay of the schools. Go into any church in England, or out of England, and you hear men preaching 'in pattens,' walking gingerly, lest a speck of natural moisture touch a stocking; seeking what's 'sound,' not what's 'true.' Now if only on theology they must not think, there will be soon a close for theologians. Educated men disbelieve to a degree quite unsuspected. That, I know of knowledge.

No! Swedenborg does not hold the existence of _devils_ in the ordinary meaning. Spiritual temptation comes, he says, through disembodied corrupt spirits, out of this or _other earths_. The word Satan, remember, he conceives to represent a company of such evil spirits.

Now in what spirit have I written all this? Gently, this time, I do hope. If you knew in what an agonised state of humiliation I am sometimes, you would not suspect me of 'despising' you? Oh no, indeed. But I am much in earnest, and can't 'prophesy smooth things,' at moments of strong conviction. Who can?

Indeed, indeed, yes. I am very anxious about what passes in Paris. Do you know that Keller's infamous discourse was _corrected by Guizot's own hand_? Mr. Pentland (who was with the Prince of Wales) knows G. and this. He (P.) has just come from Paris. He knows the 'sommités' there, and considers that, though there is danger, yet on the whole the Emperor dominates the situation. Prince N.'s speech, in its general outline, was submitted to the E. and had his full sympathy, _Persigny said to_ P. or in his presence. Let no one ever speak ill of Prince N. before me; I read all the seventeen columns in the 'Moniteur,' and most magnificent was the discourse. Rome is greatly excited, but hopeful. There may be delay, however.

Surely you don't think the large head of Robert bad. Why, it is exquisite.... I can't read over, and send this scratch that you may pardon me before you go (not to lose the post).

Sarianna says that Squires carries about his own table. In which case, I give him up. Don't _you_ write.

* * * * *

_To Miss I. Blagden_

126 Via Felice, [Rome: early in 1861].

Dearest dear Isa,--We don't get the paper. Will you ask why? Here's a special address enclosed.

I have just heard from what seems excellent authority (_F.P._ Zanetti has been here) that a French company is to be withdrawn from Rome to-day, and that _all_ the troops will be immediately withdrawn from the R.S., except Rome and Cività Vecchia. The French generals, however, were not aware of this yesterday morning, though prepared for much, and thus I can't help a certain scepticism. There is an impression in French quarters, that the delay arises from a fear of a '_coup_' on the part of Austria, if she didn't see France hereabouts. But Gorgon means to try to get away before the crisis, which isn't in his tastes at all. De Noue has gone--went yesterday.

I heard yesterday of Sir John Bowring telling somebody that _the time_ had resolved itself now into an affair of _days_. Still, there are people I suppose who hold fast their opinions of the antique form, like Mr. Massy Dawson, for instance, who called on me yesterday with moustaches and a bride, but otherwise unchanged. He still maintains that Napoleon will perish in defence of the Papacy, and that (from first to last) he has been thwarted in Italy. 'I know that Sir John Bowring, Diomed Pantaleone, Mrs. Browning' (bowing graciously to me in that complimentary frame of body which befits disputants with female creatures), 'and other persons better informed than I am, think differently. And, in fact, if I looked only _at facts_ and at the worldly circumstances of the case, I should agree with you all. But reading the "Apocalypse" as I do, I find myself before a fixed conclusion!' Imagine this, dearest Isa mine, his bride sitting in a delicate dove-coloured silk on the sofa, as tame as any dove, and not venturing to coo even. I suppose she thought it quite satisfactory. What a woman with a brain could be made to suffer under certain casualties! He quoted simply St. John and Mr. Kinglake! Mr. Kinglake plainly running a little with St. John. 'Wasn't he (Kinglake) a member of Parliament, and a lawyer?' And if his allegation wasn't true, and if Napoleon did not propose to Francis Joseph to swap Lombardy for the Rhine provinces, why was there no contradiction on the part of the French Emperor?

Now do mark the necessity of Napoleon's saying, 'I didn't really pick Mr. Jones's pocket of his best foulard last Monday--no, though it hung out a tempting end. Pray don't let the volunteers think so ill of me.'

That would have been '_like_' our Emperor--wouldn't it?

By the way, I had yesterday a crowd of people, and all at once, so that I was in a flutter of weakness, and didn't get over it quickly. Mrs. Bruen brought Miss Sewell (Amy Herbert) and Lady Juliana Knox, whom Annunziata takes in as a homoeopathic dose, 'È molto curioso questo cognome, precisamente come la medicina--_nux_ (tale quale).' She (Lady Juliana) had just been presented to the Pope, just before his illness, and was much touched, when at the close of the reception of indiscriminately Catholics and Protestants, he prayed a simple prayer in French and gave them all his benediction, ending in a sad humble voice, '_Priez pour le pape._'

It _was_ touching--was it not? Poor old man! When you feel the human flesh through the ecclesiastical robe, you get into sympathy with him at once.

Miss Sewell will come and see me again, she promised, and then I shall talk with her more. I couldn't get at her through the people yesterday. She is very nice, gentle-looking, cheerful, respectable sort of--single-womanish person (decidedly single) of the olden type; very small, slim, quiet, with the nearest approach to a poky bonnet possible in this sinful generation. I, in my confusion, did not glance at her petticoats, but, judging _a priori_, I should predicate a natural incompatibility with crinoline. But really I liked her, liked her. There were gentleness, humility, and conscience--three great gifts. Of course we can touch only on remote points; but I hope (for my own sake) we may touch on these, and another day I mean to try. She said one thing which I liked. Speaking of convents, she 'considered that women must deteriorate by any separation from men.' Now that's not only true, but it is not on the surface of things as seen from her standpoint.

I had a visit a day ago from M. Carl Grün, a Prussian, with a letter of introduction from Dall' Ongaro. I feel a real regard and liking for Dall' Ongaro, and would welcome any friend of his. No--my Isa. I would prefer him as my translator to any 'young lady of twenty.' Heavens, never whisper it to the Marchesa, but I confide to you that my blood ran cold at that thought. I know what poets of twenty must in all probability be--Dall' Ongaro _is_ a poet, and has a remarkable command of language.

I have tried my hand at turning into literal Italian prose (only marking the lines) a lyric on Rome sent lately to America; and I may show it to you one of these days.

Now I must send off this. In tender love.

Your BA.

* * * * *

_To Miss I. Blagden_

[Rome,] 126 Via Felice: March 20, [1861].

... Let me answer your questions concerning _Non Pio V.E._ Se non vero, ben trovato. Very happy, and I hope true. Probably enough it may be true, though I never heard it but from you. There was a banner with 'Viva Pio IX.' on one side, and 'Viva V.E. re d'Italia' on the other--that's true. And various devices we have had, miraculous rains of revolutionary placards among the rest. The French have taken to 'protect' our demonstrations here, half by way of keeping them under, perhaps--although the sympathy between the people and the troops (Gorgon apart) has been always undeniable. You know there was to be a gigantic demonstration to meet the declaration in the North. It was fixed to spread itself over three days. The French politely begged the 'papalini' to keep out of sight, and then they marched with the Roman demonstration for two days--twenty thousand Romans gathered together, I hear from those who were there, the greatest order observed--tricolors insinuated into the costume of all the women. After a certain time, French officer turns round and addresses the populace 'Gioventù Romana, basta cosí. Adesso bisogna andare a casa, poichè mi farebbe grandissimo dispiacere d' aprire ad alcuno la strada delle carceri.' The last words said smiling--as words to the wise. 'Grazie, grazie, grazie' were replied on all sides, and the people dispersed in the best humour possible. Yesterday (San Giuseppe) we were to have had it repeated, but it rained hard, which was fortunate, perhaps; and I hear something of cannons being placed in evidence, and of Gorgon saying 'de haute voix' that he couldn't allow it to go on. But everybody understands Gorgon. He has certainly, up to a point, Papal sympathies, and is as tender as he dares be to the Holy Father, and the irritation and wrath of the priestly party is naturally great. On the other hand, the whole body of French troops and their officers are as much vexed by Gorgon as Gorgon can vex me, and there's fraternisation with the Romans to an extraordinary degree.

Penini came home three days ago in a state of ecstasy. 'No--he never had been so happy in all his life. Oh mama, I _am_ so happy!' What had happened, I asked. Why, Pen, being on the Pincio, had fallen on the French troops, had pushed through, and heard 'l'ordre du jour' read, had made friends with 'ever so many captains,' had marched in the ranks round the Pincio and into the _caserne_, had talked a great deal about Chopin, Stephen Heller, &c., with musical officers, and most about politics, and had been good-naturedly brought back to our door because he was 'too little to come alone through the crowd.' What had they not told him? Such things about Italy. 'They hoped,' said Pen, 'that _I would not think_ they were like the Papalini. No indeed. They hoped I knew the French were different quite; and that, though they protected the Holy Father, they certainly didn't mean to fight for him. What _they_ wanted was V.E. King of Italy. _Napoléon veut l'Italie libre._ I was to _understand that, and remember it_.' The attention, and the desire to conciliate Pen's good opinion, had perfectly turned the child's head. It will be 'dearest Napoleon' more than ever. Of course, he had invited the officers to 'come in and see mama,' only they were too discreet for this.

Pantaleone is exiled--ordered to go in eight days, three of which are passed. He is still in hopes of gaining more time, but the Pope is said to be resolutely set against him. I am very sorry, not surprised. He told Robert yesterday, that nothing can be surer than that Napoleon has been throughout a true friend to Italy. Which is a good deal for a man to admit who began with all the irritation against Napoleon of a Roman of 1849. Even after the war, through Villafranca, the bad feeling returned, and as he lives so much among the English, it was only natural that he should receive certain influences. He is with Odo Russell (who calls him Pant) nearly every day, and Mr. Cartwright is very intimate with him besides. But P. is above all things Italian, and the Italian of the most _incisive_ intellect I ever talked with. He praises Lord John.

* * * * *

_To Miss Browning_

[Rome,] [end of March] 1861 [postmark].

We take ourselves to be dismally aggrieved, ever dearest Sarianna, by your criticisms on our photographs. After deep reflection I can't help feeling sure (against Robert's impression) that he sent you--not the right one, but one which has undeniably a certain 'grin.' I prevail with him to let you have the _two-third likeness_ this time, in order to decide the point. If you keep your opinion, why then all artistic Rome is against you without exception. Nobody likes the sepia-coloured thing of last year in comparison. Every album in Rome gives up its dead and insists on the new likeness--not only is it considered more like, but so infinitely superior in expression and poetical _convenance_, that it _ought_ to be more like. So everybody thinks. With regard to the head, I am of opinion that the head is beautiful, and the eyes singularly full of expression for photographed eyes, but there may be more difference of opinion about the head. The _two-third view_ you certainly can't have seen. Why, we had even resolved (as we couldn't hope to grow younger) to stand or fall with posterity by this production. 'Ecco!'

As to age--no! it's cruel of you to talk so. Robert's beard was tolerably white when he was in Paris last, and, in fact, his moustache is less so than the rest, therefore there can't be, and isn't in this respect, so rapid a 'decline and fall' in his appearance. The clipping of the side whiskers, which are very grey, is an advantage, and as to the hair, it is by no means cut short. 'Like an _épicier_?' No indeed. The _épicier_ is bushy and curly about the ears (see an example in 'Galignani'), and moreover will keep the colour of the curl 'if he dyes for it'--an extremity to which Robert and I will never be driven--having too much the fear of attentive friends and affectionate biographers before our eyes--as suggested by poor Balzac's. But Robert is looking remarkably well and young--in spite of all lunar lights in his hair. Though my hair keeps darker with a certain sprinkle however, underneath which forces its way outwards, I would willingly change on the whole with him, if he were not my own Robert. He is not thin or worn, as I am--no indeed--and the women adore him everywhere far too much for decency. In my own opinion he is infinitely handsomer and more attractive than when I saw him first, sixteen years ago--which does not mean as much as you may suppose, that I myself am superannuated and wholly anile, and incompetent therefore for judgment. No, indeed, I believe people in general would think the same exactly. And as to the modelling--well, I told you that I grudged a little the time from his own particular art--and that is true. But it does not do to dishearten him about his modelling. He has given a great deal of time to anatomy with reference to the expression of form, and the clay is only the new medium which takes the place of drawing. Also, Robert is peculiar in his ways of work as a poet. I have struggled a little with him on this point--for I don't think him right--that is to say, it wouldn't be right for me--and I heard the other day that it wouldn't be right for Tennyson. Tennyson is a regular worker, shuts himself up daily for so many hours. And we are generally so made that a regular hour is good, even for so uncertain an influence as mesmerism. But Robert waits for an inclination--works by fits and starts--he can't do otherwise he says.[98] Then reading hurts him. As long as I have known him he has not been able to read long at a time--he can do it now better than in the beginning of time. The consequence of which is that he wants occupation and that an active occupation is salvation to him with his irritable nerves, saves him from ruminating bitter cud, and from the process which I call beating his dear head against the wall till it is bruised, simply because he sees a fly there, magnified by his own two eyes almost indefinitely into some Saurian monster. He has an enormous superfluity of vital energy, and if it isn't employed, it strikes its fangs into him. He gets out of spirits as he was at Havre. Nobody understands exactly why--except me who am in the inside of him and hear him breathe. For the peculiarity of our relation is, that even when he's displeased with me, he thinks aloud with me and can't stop himself. And I know ultimately that whatever takes him out of a certain circle (where habits of introvision and analysis of fly-legs are morbidly exercised), is life and joy to him. I wanted his poems done this winter very much--and here was a bright room with three windows consecrated to use. But he had a room all last summer, and did nothing. Then, he worked himself out by riding for three or four hours together--there has been little poetry done since last winter, when he did much. He was not inclined to write this winter. The modelling combines body-work and soul-work, and the more tired he has been, and the more his back ached, poor fellow, the more he has exulted and been happy--'_no, nothing ever made him so happy before_'--also the better he has looked and the stouter grown. So I couldn't be much in opposition against the sculpture--I couldn't, in fact, at all. He has the material for a volume, and will work at it this summer, he says. His power is much in advance of 'Strafford,' which is his poorest work of all. Oh, the brain stratifies and matures creatively, even in the pauses of the pen.

At the same time his treatment in England affects him naturally--and for my part I set it down as an infamy of that public--no other word. He says he has told you some things you had not heard, and which, I acknowledge, I always try to prevent him from repeating to anyone. I wonder if he has told you besides (no, I fancy not) that an English lady of rank, _an acquaintance of ours_ (observe that!), asked, the other day, the American Minister whether 'Robert was not an American.' The Minister answered 'Is it possible that _you_ ask me _this_? Why, there is not so poor a village in the United States where they would not tell you that Robert Browning was an Englishman, and that they were very sorry he was not an American.' Very pretty of the American Minister--was it not?--and literally true besides.

I have been meditating, Sarianna, dear, whether we might not make our summer out at Fontainebleau in the picturesque part of the forest. It would be quiet, and not very dear. And we might dine together and take hands as at Havre--for we will all insist on Robert's doing the hospitality. I confess to shrinking a good deal about the noise of Paris--we might try Paris later. What do you say? The sea is so very far--it is such a journey--it looks so to me just now. And the south of France is very hot--as hot as Italy--besides making you pay greatly 'for your whistle.' Switzerland would increase both expenses and journey for everybody. Fontainebleau is said to be delicious in the summer, and if you don't mind losing your sea bathing, it might answer. Arabel wants me to go to England, but as _I did not last year_ my heart and nerves revolt from it now. Besides, we belong to the nonno and you this summer. Arabel can and, I dare say, will join us. And Milsand? You say 'once in three years.' Not quite _so_, I think. In any case, it has been far worse with some of mine. All the days of the three times of meeting in fourteen years, can only be multiplied together into _three weeks_; and this after a life of close union! Also, it was not _her_ fault--she had not pecuniary means. I am bitter against myself for not having gone to England for a week or two in the Havre year. I could have done it, Robert would have let me. But now, no more. It was the war the year before last, and my unsteadiness of health last year, which kept us from our usual visit to you. This time we shall come.

Only we shall avoid the Alps, coming and going, out of prudence. Then, for next winter, we return to Rome....

Why do you believe all the small gossip set in movement by the Emperor's enemies, in Paris, against his friends, as in foreign countries against himself? It's a league of lies against him and his. 'Intriguing lacqueys.' That's a sweeping phrase for all persons of distinction in France, except members of the Opposition. That men like De Morny and Walewski may speculate unduly I don't doubt, but even the 'Times' says now that these things have been probably exaggerated. I have heard great good of both these men. As to Prince Napoleon, he has spoken like a man and a prince. We are at his feet here in Italy. Tell our dear friend Milsand that I read the seventeen columns of the speech in the 'Moniteur.' Robert said 'magnificent.' I had tears in my eyes. There may have been fault in the P.'s private life--and may be still. Where is a clean man? But for the rest, he has done and spoken worthily--and what is better, we have reason to believe here that the Emperor sympathises with him wholly. Odo Russell knows the Prince--says that he is 'pétillant d'esprit' and has great weight with the Emperor.

[_The remainder of this letter is missing_]

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Martin_

[Rome,] 126 Via Felice: [April 1861].

[My] very dear friends, how am I to thank [you] both? I receive the photograph with a heart running over. It is perfect. Never could a likeness be more satisfactory. It is himself. Form, expression, the whole man and soul, on which years cannot leave the least dint of a tooth. The youthfulness is extraordinary. We are all crying out against our 'black lines' (laying them all to the sun of course!) and even pretty women of our acquaintance in Rome come out with some twenty years additional on their heads, to their great dissatisfaction. But my dear Mr. Martin is my dear Mr. Martin still, unblacked, unchanged, as when I knew him in the sun long ago, when suns were content to make funny places, instead of drawing pictures! How good of dearest Mrs. Martin (it was she, I think!) to send this to me! I wish she (or he) had sent me hers besides. (How grasping some of us are!)

Then she sent me a short time since a book for my Peni, which he seized on with blazing eyes and an exclamation, 'Oh, what fun!' A work by his great author, Mayne Reid, who outshines all other authors, unless it's Robinson Crusoe, who, of course, wrote his own life. It was so very very good of you. Robert had repeatedly tried in Rome to buy a new volume of Mayne Reid for the child, and never could get one. Our drawback in Rome relates to books. We subscribe to a French library (not good) and snatch at accidental 'waifs,' and then the newspapers (which I intrigue about, and get smuggled through the courteous hands of French generals) are absorbing enough.

I had a letter from George yesterday with good news of dearest Mrs. Martin. May it be true. But I can't understand whether you have spent this winter in Devonshire or Worcestershire, or where. The thick gloom of it is over now, yet I find myself full of regrets. It's so hard to have to get out into the workday world, daylight, open air and all, and there's a duty on me to go to France, that Robert may see his father. You would pity me if you could see how I dread it. Arabel will meet me, and spend at least the summer with us, probably in the neighbourhood of Paris, and after just the first, we--even I--may be the happier. Don't tell anyone that I feel so. I should like to go into a cave for the year. Not that I haven't taken to work again, and to my old interests in politics. One doesn't quite rot in one's selfishness, after all. In fact, I think of myself as little as possible; it's the only way to bear life, to throw oneself out of the personal.

And my Italy goes on well in spite of some Neapolitan troubles, which are exaggerated, I can certify to you. Rome, according to my information as well as my instincts, approaches the crisis we desire. In respect to Venetia, we may (perhaps must) have a struggle for it, which might have been unnecessary if England had frankly accepted co-action with France, instead of doing a little liberalism and a great deal of suspicion on her own account. As it is, there's an impression in Europe that considerations about the East (to say nothing of the Ionian Islands) will be stronger than Vattel, and forbid our throwing over our 'natural ally' for the sake of our 'natural enemy.'

I am sure you must have been anxious lately on account of America. There seems to be a good deal of weakness, even on the part of Lincoln, who, if he had not the means of defending Fort Sumter and maintaining the Union, should not have spoken as he did. Not that it may not be as well to let the Southern States secede. Perhaps better so. What I feared most was that the North would compromise; and I fear still that they are not heroically strong on their legs on the _moral question_. I fear it much. If they can but hold up it will be noble.

We remain here (where we have had the mildest of winters) till somewhat late in May, when we go to Florence for a week or two on our way to Paris.

You see my Emperor is 'crowning the edifice';[99] it is the beginning. Sir John Bowring says that the more liberty he can give, the better he will like it. _He told Sir John so._

Is it right and loyal meanwhile of Guizot and his party to oppose the Empire by upholding the enemies of Italy? I ask you. Such things I hear from Paris! Guizot corrected Keller's speech with his own hand.

May God bless you! Pen's love and gratitude. If Robert were here he would be named. Love me and think of me a little.

Your ever affectionate and grateful BA.

* * * * *

_To Miss Browning_

[Rome]: May 11, 1861 (postmark).

Your account of the dearest nonno was very pleasant on the whole, only, of course, you will be very careful with him. And then, dearest Sarianna, you yourself have not been well. The grippe seems to have been bitter against you. This is the time of year when it generally rages, and even Pen has had a small cough, which makes me austere about hours. In fact, the weather in the north has reverberated here, and we have paid for our mild winter by a considerable lingering of cold wind, from snow on the mountains, they say. As for me, it's much to my disadvantage in getting air and strength. I hope you are quite well again, as is Pen, and that the loved nonno is as strong as he ever was. Do you get good wine for him? The vintages are said to have suffered (which grieves me for poor dear Milsand) from the frost. We hear of travellers in snowstorms through England, where the cold has been great, and that in Paris, too, there has been snow. I do hope the opening summer will not copy the last.

Dearest Sarianna, try to find out if Fontainebleau is damp, because I was assured the other day that it was, besides being subject to intense heats. Also, will you see if there is a completed railroad to Trouville? Robert denies that sea-air ever disagrees with him (sea-_bathing_ does), and it may be good for you and for Pen, to say nothing of Arabel, who is coming in the course of the summer. The objection is the journey, but if the railroad is there, it would not prolong the journey (in relation to Fontainebleau) more than two or three hours, if so much, would it? We ought to inquire a little beforehand. We shall get to you as early as we can. The weather is against us everywhere. We shall cut Florence quite short. By the way, we have the satisfaction of seeing a precipitation of the Tuscan funds down, down, which only makes Robert wish for more power of 'buying in,' causing the eyes of a Florentine Frescobaldi to open in wonder at so much audacity. But Robert, generally so timid in such things, has caught a flush of my rashness, and is alarmed by neither sinking funds nor rising loans. We have a strong faith in Italy--_Italia fatta_--particularly since that grand child, Garibaldi, has turned good again. The troubles in the Neapolitan States are exaggerated, are perilous even so, and I dare say Milsand thinks we are all going to pieces, but _we shall not_; there are great men here, and there will be a great nation presently. An Australian Englishman, very acute, and free from the political faults (as I see them) of England, did all he could to prepare me for failure in Italy, 'to save my heart from breaking,' as he said. And we have had drawbacks since then, yet my hope remains as strong.

The Duchesse de Grammont (French Embassy) sent us a card for Penini--'matinée d'enfants'--and he went, and was rather proud of being received under a full-length portrait of Napoleon, who is as dear as ever to him. It was a very splendid affair, quite royal. Pen wore a crimson velvet blouse, and was presented to various small Italian princes, Colonnas, Dorias, Piombinos, and had the honor of talking ponies and lessons and playing leap-frog with them. The ambassador's own boy, the little Grammont, has a pony 'tale quale' like Pen's, only superannuated rather, which gives us the advantage....

I wonder if he will confide to you his tender admiration for the young queen of Naples, whom, between you and me, he pursues, and receives in return ever so many smiles from that sad lovely face. When charged with a love affair, Pen answered gravely, that he 'did feel a kind of _interest_.' He told us that two days since she stood up in her carriage three times to smile at him. Something, it may be for the pony's sake; but also, Pen confessed, to an impression that his new jacket attracted! Fancy little Pen! Robert says she is very pretty, and for Pen (who makes it a point of conscience to consider the whole 'razza' of Bourbons and Papalini as 'questi infami _birboni_') to be so drawn, there must be a charm. After all, poor little creature, she acted heroically from her point of sight, and if the king had minded her, he would have made liberal concessions _in time_ perhaps. The wretched queen-mother and herself were at daggers drawn from the beginning.

I hear that Jessie Mario and her husband have been taken up at Ferrara. They were _only_ going to begin the war with Austria on their own account. Mazzini deserves what I should be sorry to inflict. He is a man without conscience. And that's no reason why Jessie and her party should use him for _theirs_. Mario is only the husband of his wife.

Robert has brought me home a most perfect copy of a small torso of Venus--from the Greek--in the clay. It is wonderfully done, say the learned. He says 'all his happiness lies in clay now'; _that_ was his speech to me this morning. _Not_ a compliment, but said so sincerely and fervently, that I could not but sympathise and wish him a life-load of clay to riot in. It's the mixture of physical and intellectual effort which makes the attraction, I imagine. Certainly he is very well and very gay.

I am happy to see that the 'North British Quarterly' has an article on him. That gives hope for England. Thackeray has turned me out of the 'Cornhill' for indecency, but did it so prettily and kindly that I, who am forgiving, sent him another poem. He says that plain words permitted on Sundays must not be spoken on Mondays in England, and also that his 'Magazine is for babes and sucklings.' (I thought it was for the volunteers.)

May God bless you, dearest Sarianna and nonno! Pen's love.

* * * * *

The incident alluded to in the last paragraph deserves fuller mention, for the credit it does to both parties concerned in it. The letters that passed between Thackeray and Mrs. Browning on the subject have been given by Mrs. Richmond Ritchie in the 'Cornhill Magazine' for July 1896, from which I am allowed to quote them. Mrs. Browning, in reply to a request from Thackeray for contributions to the then newly established 'Cornhill,' had sent him, among other poems, 'Lord Walter's Wife,'[100] of which, though the moral is unimpeachable, the subject is not absolutely _virginibus puerisque_. The editor, in this difficulty, wrote the following admirable letter:--

* * * * *

_W.M. Thackeray to Mrs. Browning._

36 Onslow Square: April 2, 1861.

My dear, kind Mrs. Browning,--Has Browning ever had an aching tooth which must come out (I don't say _Mrs._ Browning, for women are much more courageous)--a tooth which must come out, and which he has kept for months and months away from the dentist? I have had such a tooth a long time, and have sate down in this chair, and never had the courage to undergo the pull.

This tooth is an allegory (I mean _this_ one). It's your poem that you sent me months ago, and who am I to refuse the poems of Elizabeth Browning and set myself up as a judge over her? I can't tell you how often I have been going to write and have failed. You see that our Magazine is written not only for men and women but for boys, girls, infants, sucklings almost; and one of the best wives, mothers, women in the world writes some verses which I feel certain would be objected to by many of our readers. Not that the writer is not pure, and the moral most pure, chaste, and right, but there are things _my_ squeamish public will not hear on Monday, though on Sundays they listen to them without scruple. In your poem, you know, there is an account of unlawful passion, felt by a man for a woman, and though you write pure doctrine, and real modesty, and pure ethics, I am sure our readers would make an outcry, and so I have not published this poem.

To have to say no to my betters is one of the hardest duties I have, but I'm sure we must not publish your verses, and I go down on my knees before cutting my victim's head off, and say, 'Madam, you know how I respect and regard you, Browning's wife and Penini's mother; and for what I am going to do I most humbly ask your pardon.'

My girls send their very best regards and remembrances, and I am, dear Mrs. Browning,

Always yours,

W.M. THACKERAY.

* * * * *

Mrs. Browning's answer follows.

* * * * *

_To W.M. Thackeray_

Rome, 126 Via Felice: April 21, [1861].

Dear Mr. Thackeray,--Pray consider the famous 'tooth' (a wise tooth!) as extracted under chloroform, and no pain suffered by anybody.

To prove that I am not sulky, I send another contribution, which may prove too much, perhaps--and, if you think so, dispose of the supererogatory virtue by burning the manuscript, as I am sure I may rely on your having done with the last.

I confess it, dear Mr. Thackeray, never was anyone turned out of a room for indecent behaviour in a more gracious and conciliatory manner! Also, I confess that from your 'Cornhill' standpoint (paterfamilias looking on) you are probably right ten times over. From mine, however, I may not be wrong, and I appeal to you as the deep man you are, whether it is not the higher mood, which on Sunday bears with the 'plain word,' so offensive on Monday, during the cheating across the counter? I am not a 'fast woman.' I don't like coarse subjects, or the coarse treatment of any subject. But I am deeply convinced that the corruption of our society requires not shut doors and windows, but light and air: and that it is exactly because pure and prosperous women choose to _ignore_ vice, that miserable women suffer wrong by it everywhere. Has paterfamilias, with his Oriental traditions and veiled female faces, very successfully dealt with a certain class of evil? What if materfamilias, with her quick sure instincts and honest innocent eyes, do more towards their expulsion by simply looking at them and calling them by their names? See what insolence you put me up to by your kind way of naming my dignities--'Browning's wife and Penini's mother.'

And I, being vain (turn some people out of a room and you don't humble them properly), retort with--'materfamilias!'

Our friend Mr. Story has just finished a really grand statue of the 'African Sybil.' It will place him very high.

Where are you all, Annie, Minnie?--Why don't you come and see us in Rome?

My husband bids me give you his kind regards, and I shall send Pen's love with mine to your dear girls.

Most truly yours, ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

We go to Florence in the latter part of May.

* * * * *

Before leaving Florence, however, the following letter was written to Mr. Thackeray, which I quote from the same article by Mrs. Ritchie. The poem alluded to must, however, be 'The North and the South,'[101] Mrs. Browning's last poem, written with reference to Hans Andersen's visit to Rome; not 'A Musical Instrument,' as Mrs. Ritchie suggests, which had been written some time previously.

* * * * *

_To W.M. Thackeray_

Rome, 126 Via Felice: [May 21, 1861].

Dear Mr. Thackeray,--I hope you received my note and last poem. I hope still more earnestly that you won't think I am putting my spite against your chastening hand into a presumptuous and troublesome fluency.

But Hans Christian Andersen is here, charming us all, and not least the children. So I wrote these verses--not for 'Cornhill' this month, of course--though I send them now that they may lie over at your service (if you are so pleased) for some other month of the summer.

We go to Florence on the first of June, and lo! here is the twenty-first of May.

With love to dear Annie and Minny,

I remain, most truly yours, ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

* * * * *

_To Miss I. Blagden_

Rome: Saturday, [about May 1861].

Ever dearest Isa,--Now that Robert's letter is gone, I am able for shame to write. His waiting did not _mean_ a slackness of kindness, but a tightness of entanglement in other things; and then absolutely he has got to the point of doing without reading. Nothing but clay does he care for, poor lost soul. But you will see, I hope, from what he has written (to judge by what he speaks), that he is not so lost as to be untouched by Agnes.[102]...

I send you, dear, two more translations for Dall' Ongaro. You will have given him my former message. I began that letter to him, and was interrupted; and then, considering the shortness of our time here, would not begin another. You will have explained, and will make him thoroughly understand, that in sending him a verbal and literal translation I never thought of exacting such a thing from _him_, but simply of letting him have the advantage of seeing the _raw, naked poetry as it stands_. In fact, my translation is scarcely Italian, I know very well. I mean it for English rather. Conventional and idiomatical Italian forms have been expressly avoided. I have used the Italian as a net to catch the English in for the use of an Italian poet! Let him understand.

We shall be soon in our Florence now. I am rather stronger, but so weak still that my eyes dazzle to think of it. Povera me!

Tell Dall' Ongaro that his friend M. Carl Grün had enough of me in one visit. He never came again, though I prayed him to come. I have not been equal to receiving in the evening, and perhaps he expected an invitation. I go to bed at eight on most nights. I'm the rag of a Ba. Yet I _am_ stronger, and look much so, it seems to me. Mr. Story is _doing_ Robert's bust, which is likely to be a success.[103] Hatty brought us a most charming design for a fountain for Lady Marion Alford. The imagination is unfolding its wings in Hatty. She is quite of a mind to spend the summer with you at Florence or elsewhere. The Storys talk of Switzerland....

Andersen (the Dane) came to see me yesterday--kissed my hand, and seemed in a general _verve_ for embracing. He is very earnest, very simple, very childlike. I like him. Pen says of him, 'He is not really pretty. He is rather like his own ugly duck, but his mind has _developed_ into a swan.'

That wasn't bad of Pen, was it? He gets on with his Latin too. And, Isa, he has fastened a half-franc to his button-hole, for the sake of the beloved image, and no power on earth can persuade him out of being so ridiculous. I was base enough to say that it wouldn't please the Queen of Spain! And he responded, he 'chose her to know that he _did_ love Napoleon'!

Isa, I send these two last poems that Dall' Ongaro may be aware of my sympathy's comprehending more sides than one of Italian experience.

We have taken no apartment yet!!!

* * * * *

_To Miss Browning_

Florence: June 7, 1861 [postmark].

I can't let Robert's disagreeable letter go alone, dearest Sarianna, though my word will be as heavy as a stone at the bottom of it. I am deeply sorry you should have had the vain hope of seeing Robert and Pen. As for me, I know my place; I am only good for a drag chain. But, dear, don't fancy it has been the fault of my _will_. In fact, I said almost too much at Rome to Robert, till he fancied I had set my selfwill on tossing myself up as a halfpenny, and coming down on the wrong side. Now, in fact, it was not at all (nearly) for Arabel that I wished to go, only I did really wish and do my best to go. He, on the other hand, before we left Rome, had made up his mind (helped by a stray physician of mine, whom he met in the street) that it would be a great risk to carry me north. He (Robert) always a little exaggerates the difficulties of travelling, and there's no denying that I have less strength than is usual to me even at the present time. I touched the line of vexing him, with my resistance to the decision, but he is so convinced that repose is necessary for me, and that the lions in the path will be all asleep by this time next year, that I yielded. Certainly he has a right to command me away from giving him unnecessary anxieties. What does vex me is that the dearest nonno should not see his Peni this year, and that you, dear, should be disappointed, _on my account again_. That's hard on us all. We came home into a cloud here. I can scarcely command voice or hand to name _Cavour_.[104] That great soul, which meditated and made Italy, has gone to the Diviner country. If tears or blood could have saved him to us, he should have had mine. I feel yet as if I could scarcely comprehend the greatness of the vacancy. A hundred Garibaldis for such a man. There is a hope that certain solutions had been prepared between him and the Emperor, and that events will slide into their grooves. May God save Italy! Dear M. Milsand had pleased me so by his appreciation, but there _are_ great difficulties. The French press, tell him, has, on the whole, done great service, except that part of it under the influence of the ultramontane and dynastic opposition parties. And as to exaggerated statements, it is hard, even here, to get at the truth (with regard to the state of the south), and many Italian liberals have had hours of anxiety and even of despondency. English friends of ours, very candid and liberal, have gone to Naples full of hope, and returned hoping nothing--yet they are wrong, unless this bitter loss makes them right--

Your loving BA--

Robert tears me away--

* * * * *

With this letter the correspondence of Mrs. Browning, so far, at least, as it is extant or accessible, comes to an end. The journey to Paris had been abandoned, but it does not appear that there was any cause to apprehend that her life could now be reckoned only by days. Yet so it was. For the past three years, it is evident, her strength had been giving way. Attacks of physical illness weakened her, without being followed by any adequate rally; but more than all, the continuous stress and strain of mental anxiety wore her strength away. The war of 1859, the liberation of Sicily and Naples, the intense irritation of feeling in connection with English opinion of Louis Napoleon and his policy, the continual ebb and flow of rumours concerning Venetia and the Papal States, the illness and death of her sister Henrietta--all these sources of anxiety told terribly on her sensitive, emotional mind, and thereby on her enfeebled body. The fragility of her appearance had always struck strangers. So far back as 1851, Bayard Taylor remarked that 'her frame seemed to be altogether disproportionate to her soul.' Her 'fiery soul' did, indeed, with a far more literal truth than can often be the case, fret her 'puny body to decay, and o'er-informed its tenement of clay.' Her last illness--or, it may more truly be said, the last phase of that illness which had been present with her for years--was neither long nor severe; but she had no more strength left to resist it. Shortly after her return to Casa Guidi another bronchial attack developed itself, to all appearance just like many others that she had had before; but this time there was no recovery.

Of the last scene no other account need be asked or wished for than that given by Mr. Browning himself in a letter to Miss Haworth, dated July 20, 1861.[105]

My dear Friend,--I well know you feel, as you say, for her once and for me now. Isa Blagden, perfect in all kindness to me, will have told you something, perhaps, and one day I shall see you and be able to tell you myself as much as I can. The main comfort is that she suffered very little pain, none beside that ordinarily attending the simple attacks of cold and cough she was subject to, had no presentiment of the result whatever, and was consequently spared the misery of knowing she was about to leave us: she was smilingly assuring me that she was 'better,' 'quite comfortable, if I would but come to bed,' to within a few minutes of the last. I think I foreboded evil at Rome, certainly from the beginning of the week's illness, but when I reasoned about it, there was no justifying fear. She said on the last evening 'It is merely the old attack, not so severe a one as that of two years ago; there is no doubt I shall soon recover,' and we talked over plans for the summer and next year. I sent the servants away and her maid to bed, so little reason for disquietude did there seem. Through the night she slept heavily and brokenly--that was the bad sign; but then she would sit up, take her medicine, say unrepeatable things to me, and sleep again. At four o'clock there were symptoms that alarmed me; I called the maid and sent for the doctor. She smiled as I proposed to bathe her feet, 'Well, you _are_ determined to make an exaggerated case of it!' Then came what my heart will keep till I see her again and longer--the most perfect expression of her love to me within my whole knowledge of her. Always smilingly, happily, and with a face like a girl's, and in a few minutes she died in my arms, her head on my cheek. These incidents so sustain me that I tell them to her beloved ones as their right: there was no lingering, nor acute pain, nor consciousness of separation, but God took her to Himself as you would lift a sleeping child from a dark uneasy bed into your arms and the light. Thank God! Annunziata thought, by her earnest ways with me, happy and smiling as they were, that she must have been aware of our parting's approach, but she was quite conscious, had words at command, and yet did not even speak of Peni, who was in the next room. The last word was, when I asked, 'How do you feel?' 'Beautiful.'...

So ended on earth the most perfect example of wedded happiness in the history of literature--perfect in the inner life and perfect in its poetical expression. It was on June 29, 1861, that Mrs. Browning died. She was buried at Florence, where her body rests in a sarcophagus designed by her friend and her husband's friend, Frederic Leighton, the future President of the Royal Academy. At a later date, when her husband was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, her remains might have been transferred to England, to lie with his among the great company of English poets in which they had earned their places. But it was thought better, on the whole, to leave them undisturbed in the land and in the city which she had loved so well, and which had been her home so long. In life and in death she had been made welcome in Florence. The Italians, as her husband said, seemed to have understood her by an instinct; and upon the walls of Casa Guidi is a marble slab, placed there by the municipality of Florence, and bearing an inscription from the pen of the Italian poet, Tommaséo:--

QUI SCRISSE E MORÌ ELISABETTA BARRETT BROWNING CHE IN CUORE DI DONNA CONCILIAVA SCIENZA DI DOTTO E SPIRITO DI POETA E FECE DEL SUO VERSO AUREO ANELLO FRA ITALIA E INGHILTERRA. PONE QUESTA LAPIDE FIRENZE GRATA 1861.

It is with words adapted from this memorial that her husband, seven years later, closed his own great poem, praying that the 'ring,' to which he likens it, might but--

'Lie outside thine, Lyric Love, Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised), Linking our England to his Italy.'

FOOTNOTES:

[77] This refers to the 'Curse for a Nation.'

[78] See note on p. 387. [Transcriber's note: Reference is to Footnote [87].]

[79] Mrs. Jameson died on March 17, 1860.

[80] The surrender to France of Savoy and Nice, which, though propounded by Napoleon to Cavour before the war, was only definitely demanded at the end of February 1860.

[81] Rome, it will be remembered, was still under Papal government.

[82] The French general appointed by the Pope in April, 1860, to command the Papal army.

[83] The Italian poet.

[84] So in the original, but probably a slip for 'goes abroad.'

[85] The _Cornhill Magazine_, the first number of which was published, under Thackeray's editorship, in December 1859. Mrs. Browning's poem, 'A Musical Instrument' (_Poetical Works_, v. 10), was published in the number for July 1860.

[86] His 'Framley Parsonage' was then appearing in the _Cornhill_.

[87] The championship trophy of the prize ring. The great fight between Sayers and Heenan had just taken place (April 17, 1860), and had engrossed the interest of all England, to say nothing of America.

[88] It is not clear what this can be. Browning published nothing between 1855 ('Men and Women') and 1864 ('Dramatis Personæ'), and there is no long poem in the latter, unless 'A Death in the Desert' and 'Sludge the Medium' may be so described. The latter is not unlikely to have been written now, when Home's performances were rampant. His next really long poem was 'The Ring and the Book,' which certainly had not yet been begun.

[89] A novel by Miss Blagden.

[90] Garibaldi was now engaged in his Neapolitan campaign. Sicily (except Messina) had been cleared of the Neapolitan troops by the end of July, and on August 19 Garibaldi had landed in Calabria.

[91] Now in the National Portrait Gallery. A reproduction of it is given as the frontispiece to vol. v. of the _Poetical Works_.

[92] 'A Musical Instrument'; see p. 377, above.

[93] Gaeta, the last remaining stronghold of the Neapolitan Government, was besieged by the Italian forces from November to January. During the first two months of the siege the French fleet prevented the Italians from operating against it by sea, and it was ultimately through the intervention of the English Government that Napoleon was persuaded to withdraw his ships.

[94] Viterbo had declared for the Italian government, but had been occupied by French troops on behalf of the Pope. Many of the inhabitants left it, and a body of Italian volunteers entered the country in support of them. It is presumably to this movement that the passage in the text refers.

[95] _Poetical Works_, v. 3. The poem evidently refers to the loss of her brother Edward, but might be supposed (being published at this moment) to refer to the death of her sister Henrietta, shortly after which this letter was evidently written.

[96] Gaeta fell on January 15, 1861.

[97] Mr. Val Prinsep, R.A.

[98] Mrs. Orr's _Life_ shows that this was only a temporary phase. In later life, especially, he was very regular in his hours of poetical work.

[99] It is curious that these are the very words which (as a translation from the Greek) Robert Browning used ten years later as the motto of his study of Louis Napoleon in 'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau'; but the 'crowning' was of a very different kind then.

'Attempting one more labour, in a trice, Alack, _with ills I crowned the edifice_.'

[100] _Poetical Works_, iv. 252.

[101] _Poetical Works_, v. 6

[102] 'Agnes Tremorne,' Miss Blagden's novel.

[103] After Mrs. Browning's death, Mr. Story made a companion bust of her, and both busts were subsequently executed in marble on the commission of Mr. George Barrett, who presented them to Mr. R. Barrett Browning, in whose possession they have since remained.

[104] Cavour died on June 6, 1861.

[105] Mrs. Orr's _Life and Letters of Robert Browning_, p. 249.

INDEX

Abd-el-Kader, i. 388

Aberdeen, Lord, ii. 109

About, E., ii. 226

Æschylus, i. 118, 168, 210; Translation of his 'Prometheus Bound,' i. 244

Agassiz, Miss, i. 458, 467, 468

Alexander, Sir William, i, 106

America, literary piracy in, i. 451; appreciation of Mrs. Browning's poetry, i. 118, 120, 131, 177, 178, 218, ii. 253, 364, 387; of Robert Browning, ii. 436; the slavery question, ii. 111, 411, 417, 419, 439

Anacreon, translation from, i. 263

Ancona, i. 381

Andersen, Hans Christian, ii. 446, 448

Andrea del Sarto, i. 121

Appleton, Mr., ii. 133

Apuleius, translations from, i. 249, 250

Arnold, Dr. Thomas, i. 206, 207

Arnold, Matthew, i. 429

Arnould, Mr., ii. 16

Arqua, ii. 9

'Athenæum,' the, i. 37, 64, 69, 71, 91, 93, 95, 117, 120, 133, 180, 193, 207, 227, 256, 446, 469, ii. 171, 242, 243, 334, 366

'Atlas,' the, i. 64, 69, 181, 194, 199, ii. 370

Austen, Jane, ii. 217

Austria, war with France and Italy, ii. 305 ff.

Azeglio, Massimo d', ii. 308, 312, 389

Baillie, Joanna, i. 230

Balzac, H. de, i. 319, 363, 375, 428, 442, 462, ii. 71

Barnes, William, i. 223

Barrett, Alfred, brother of E.B.B., i. 2, 20, 121, ii. 18; marriage, ii. 207

Barrett, Arabel, sister of E.B.B., i. 2, 10, 19, 20, 39, 52, 70, 71, 76, 77, 81, 82, 124, 242, 270, 294, ii. 12, 18, 172, 180, 210, 235, 237, 264, 292

Barrett, Charles John ('Stormie'), brother of E.B.B., i. 2, 29, 86, 121, 151, 152, 189, 242, 251

Barrett, Edward ('Bro'), brother of E.B.B., i. 2, 11, 14, 29, 42, 47, 53, 55, 74, 76, 77; his death, 83

Barrett, Edward Moulton, father of E.B.B., i. 1, 2, 11, 27, 76, 82, 86, 179, 291, 407, 435, 438, 439, ii. 18, 20, 178, 180, 237; death, 263 ff.

Barrett, afterwards Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, birth, i. 1; childhood and youth at Hope End, 3-6; removal to Sidmouth, 10; to London (74 Gloucester Place), 31; failure of health, _ib._; removal to 50 Wimpole Street, 56; publication of 'The Seraphim,' _ib._ 63; breaking of a blood-vessel, _ib._; removal to Torquay, 74; death of her brother Edward, 83; return to London, 91; publication of the 'Poems' of 1844, 180-188, 193 ff.; proposed journey to Italy in 1845, 266 ff.; love and marriage, 280 ff.; departure from England, _ib._; at Pisa, 302 ff.; Florence, 325; expedition to Vallombrosa, 332 ff.; settlement at Casa Guidi, 365, 372; birth of a son, 395; her name suggested for the Laureateship, 449, 452; illness, 456, 458; travels, ii. 1 ff.; publication of 'Casa Guidi Windows,' 2; visit to England, 13 ff.; residence in Paris, 22 ff.; the _Coup d'état_ in France, 30 ff.; second visit to London, 76; verses by, 81; return to Paris, 89; to Florence, 91; first visit to Rome, 146; severe illness, 202; visit to England, 205 ff.; to Paris, 215 ff.; last visit to England, 235 ff.; publication of 'Aurora Leigh,' 240; carnival in Florence, 256 ff.; visit to Bagni di Lucca, 267 ff.; last visit to France, 280 ff.; winter in Rome, 292 ff.; the war with Austria, 305 ff.; summer at Siena, 319 ff.; severe illness, 325; winter in Rome, 352 ff.; publication of 'Poems before Congress,' 363; last summer at Siena, 400; last winter in Rome, 408 ff.; death, 450 ff. Portraits: by Reade, ii. 144; by Miss Fox, ii. 151; by Leighton, ii. 310; by Field Talfourd, ii. 404; bust by Story, ii. 448 _note_. Her knowledge of Greek literature, i. 101, 102, 242; opinions on religion, i. 115, 127, 159, 247, ii. 156, 420 ff.; on Roman Catholicism, ii. 5; on versification, i. 140, 156, 183; on female poets, i. 229-233; on Greek scholarship, i. 260; on mesmerism, i. 255-259; on marriage, i. 339, ii. 72, 73, 222 ff.; on communism, i. 363; on socialism, i. 467; protest against publication of juvenile performances, i. 454, 455,