The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume I Part 35

We are here for two months certain, and perhaps longer. Do write.

Dear Aunt Nina,--Ba has said something for me, I hope. In any case, my love goes with hers, I trust you are well and happy, as we are, and as we would make you if we could. Love to Geddie. Ever yours, [R.B.]

[Footnote 161: The American sculptor.]

_To Mrs. Martin_ Florence: August 7, 1847.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--How I have been longing to get this letter, which comes at last, and justifies the longing by the pleasure it gives!... How kind, how affectionate you are to me, and how strong your claim is that I should thrust on you, in defiance of good taste and conventions, every evidence and a.s.surance of my happiness, so as to justify your _faith_ to yourselves and others. Indeed, indeed, dearest Mrs. Martin, you may 'exult' for me--and this though it should all end here and now. The uncertainties of life and death seem nothing to me. A year (nearly) is saved from the darkness, and if that one year has compensated for those that preceded it--which it has, abundantly--why, let it for those that shall follow, if it so please G.o.d. Come what may, I feel as if I never could have a right to murmur.

I have been happy enough. Brought about too it was, indeed, by a sort of miracle which to this moment, when I look back, bewilders me to think of; and if you knew the details, counted the little steps, and could; compare my moral position three years and a half ago with _this_, you would come to despise San Gualberto's miraculous tree at Vallombrosa, which, being dead, gave out green leaves in recognition of his approach, as testified by the inscription--do you remember? But you can't stop to-day to read mine, so rather I shall tell you of our exploit in the mountains. Only one thing I must say first, one thing which you must forgive me for the vanity of resolving to say at last, having had it in my head very often. There's a detestable engraving, which, if you have the ill luck to see (and you _may_, because, horrible to relate, it is in the shop windows), will you have the kindness, for my sake, not to fancy _like Robert_?--it being, as he says himself, the very image of '_a young man at Waterloo House_, in a moment of inspiration--"A lovely blue, ma'am."' It is as like Robert as Flush. And now I am going to tell you of Vallombrosa. You heard how we meant to stay two months there, and you are to imagine how we got up at three in the morning to escape the heat (imagine me!)--and with all our possessions and a 'dozen of port' (which my husband doses me with twice a day because once it was necessary) proceeded to Pelago by vettura, and from thence in two sledges, drawn each by two white bullocks up to the top of the holy mountain. (Robert was on horseback.) Precisely it must be as you left it. Who can make a road up a house? We were four hours going five miles, and I with all my goodwill was dreadfully tired, and scarcely in appet.i.te for the beef and oil with which we were entertained at the House of Strangers. We are simple people about diet, and had said over and over that we would live on eggs and milk and bread and b.u.t.ter during these two months. We might as well have said that we would live on manna from heaven.

The things we had fixed on were just the impossible things. Oh, that bread, with the fetid smell, which stuck in the throat like Macbeth's amen! I am not surprised, you recollect it! The hens had 'got them to a nunnery,' and objected to lay eggs, and the milk and the holy water stood confounded. But of course we spread the tablecloth, just as you did, over all drawbacks of the sort; and the beef and oil, as I said, and the wine too, were liberal and excellent, and we made our grat.i.tude apparent in Robert's best Tuscan--in spite of which we were turned out ignominiously at the end of five days, having been permitted to overstay the usual three days by only two. No, nothing could move the lord abbot. He is a new abbot, and; given to sanct.i.ty, and has set his face against women. 'While he is abbot,' he said to our mediating monk, 'he _will_ be abbot. So he is abbot, and we had to come back to Florence.' As I read in the 'Life of San Gualberto,' laid on the table for the edification of strangers, the brothers attain to sanctification, among other means, by cleaning out pigsties with their bare hands, without spade or shovel; but _that_ is uncleanliness enough--they wouldn't touch the little finger of a woman. Angry I was, I do a.s.sure you. I should have liked to stay there, in spite of the bread. We should have been only a little thinner at the end. And the scenery--oh, how magnificent! How we enjoyed that great, silent, ink-black pine wood! And do you remember the sea of mountains to the left? How grand it is! We were up at three in the morning again to return to Florence, and the glory of that morning sun breaking the clouds to pieces among the hills is something ineffaceable from my remembrance. We came back ignominiously to our old rooms, but found it impossible to stay on account of the suffocating heat, yet we scarcely could go far from Florence, because of Mr. Kenyon and our hope of seeing him here (since lost). A perplexity ended by Robert's discovery of our present apartments, on the Pitti side of the river (indeed, close to the Grand Duke's palace), consisting of a suite of s.p.a.cious and delightful rooms, which come within our means only from the deadness of the summer season, comparatively quite cool, and with a terrace which I enjoy to the uttermost through being able to walk there without a bonnet, by just stepping out of the window. The church of San Felice is opposite, so we haven't a neighbour to look through the sunlight or moonlight and take observations. Isn't that pleasant altogether? We ordered back the piano and the book subscription, and settled for two months, and forgave the Vallombrosa monks for the wrong they did us, like secular Christians. What is to come after, I can't tell you. But probably we shall creep slowly along toward Rome, and spend some hot time of it at Perugia, which is said to be cool enough. I think more of other things, wis.h.i.+ng that my dearest, kindest sisters had a present as bright as mine--to think nothing at all of the future. Dearest Henrietta's position has long made me uneasy, and, since she frees me into confidence by her confidence to you, I will tell you so. Most undesirable it is that this should be continued, and yet where is there a door open to escape?[162] ... My dear brothers have the illusion that n.o.body should marry on less than two thousand a year. Good heavens! how preposterous it does seem to me! _We_ scarcely spend three hundred, and I have every luxury, I ever had, and which it would be so easy to give up, at need; and Robert wouldn't sleep, I think, if an unpaid bill dragged itself by any chance into another week. He says that when people get into 'pecuniary difficulties,' his 'sympathies always go with the butchers and bakers.' So we keep out of sc.r.a.pes yet, you see....

Your grateful and most affectionate BA.

We have had the most delightful letter from Carlyle, who has the goodness to say that not for years has a marriage occurred in his private circle in which he so heartily rejoiced as in ours. He is a personal friend of Robert's, so that I have reason to be very proud and glad.

Robert's best regards to you both always, and he is no believer in magnetism (only _I_ am). Do mention Mr. C. Hanford's health. How strange that he should come to witness my marriage settlement! Did you hear?

[Footnote 162: Miss Henrietta Barrett was engaged to Captain Surtees Cook, an engagement of which her brothers, as well as her father, disapproved, partly on the ground of insufficiency of income.

Ultimately the difficulty was solved in the same way as in the case of Mrs. Browning.]

_To Miss Mitford_ Florence: August 20, [1847],

I have received your letter at last, my ever dearest Miss Mitford, not the missing letter, but the one which comes to make up for it and to catch up my thoughts, which were grumbling at high tide, I do a.s.sure you.... As you observed last year (not without reason), these are the days of marrying and giving in marriage. Mr. Horne, you see[163] ...

With all my heart I hope he may be very happy. Men risk a good deal in marriage, though not as much as women do; and on the other hand, the singleness of a man when his youth is over is a sadder thing than the saddest which an unmarried woman can suffer. Nearly all my friends of both s.e.xes have been draining off into marriage these two years, scarcely one will be left in the sieve, and I may end by saying that I have happiness enough for my own share to be divided among them all and leave everyone, contented. For me, I take it for pure magic, this life of mine. Surely n.o.body was ever so happy before. I shall wake some morning with my hair all dripping out of the enchanted bucket, or if not we shall both claim the 'Flitch' next September, if you can find one for us in the land of c.o.c.kaigne, drying in expectancy of the revolution in Tennyson's 'Commonwealth.' Well, I don't agree with Mr.

Harness in admiring the lady of 'Locksley Hall.' I _must_ either pity or despise a woman who could have married Tennyson and chose a common man. If happy in her choice, I despise her. That's matter of opinion, of course. You may call it matter of foolishness when I add that I personally would rather be teased a little and smoked over a good deal by a man whom I could look up to and be proud of, than have my feet kissed all day by a Mr. Smith in boots and a waistcoat, and thereby chiefly distinguished. Neither I nor another, perhaps, had quite a right to expect a combination of qualities, such as meet, though, in my husband, who is as faultless and pure in his private life as any Mr. Smith of them all, who would not owe five s.h.i.+llings, who lives like a woman in abstemiousness on a pennyworth of wine a day, never touches a cigar even.... Do you hear, as we do, from Mr. Forster, that his[164] new poem is his best work? As soon as you read it, let me have your opinion. The subject seems almost identical with one of Chaucer's. Is it not so? We have spent here the most delightful of summers, notwithstanding the heat, and I begin to comprehend the possibility of St. Lawrence's ecstasies on the gridiron. Very hot it certainly has been and is, yet there have been cool intermissions; and as we have s.p.a.cious and airy rooms, and as Robert lets me sit all day in my white dressing gown without a single masculine criticism, and as we can step out of the window on a sort of balcony terrace which is quite private and swims over with moonlight in the evenings, and as we live upon water melons and iced water and figs and all manner of fruit, we bear the heat with an angelic patience and felicity which really are edifying. We tried to make the monks of Vallombrosa let us stay with them for two months, but their new abbot said or implied that Wilson and I stank in his nostrils, being women, and San Gualberto, the establishes of their order, had enjoined on them only the mortification of cleaning out pigsties without fork or shovel.

So here a couple of women besides was (as d.i.c.kens's American said) 'a piling it up rayther too mountainious.' So we were sent away at the end of five days. So provoking! Such scenery, such hills, such a sea of hills looking alive among the clouds. _Which_ rolled, it was difficult to discern. Such pine woods, supernaturally silent, with the ground black as ink, such chestnut and beech forests hanging from the mountains, such rocks and torrents, such chasms and ravines. There were eagles there, too, [and] there was _no road_. Robert went on horseback, and Flush, Wilson, and I were drawn in a sledge (i.e.

an old hamper, a basket wine hamper without a wheel) by two white bullocks up the precipitous mountains. Think of my travelling in that fas.h.i.+on in those wild places at four o'clock in the morning, a little frightened, dreadfully tired, but in an ecstasy of admiration above all! It was a sight to see before one died and went away to another world. Well, but being expelled ignominiously at the end of five days, we had to come back to Florence, and find a new apartment cooler than the old, and wait for dear Mr. Kenyon. And dear Mr. Kenyon does not come (not this autumn, but he may perhaps at the first dawn of spring), and on September 20 we take up our knapsacks and turn our faces towards Rome, I think, creeping slowly along, with a pause at Arezzo, and a longer pause at Perugia, and another perhaps at Terni.

Then we plan to take an apartment we have heard of, over the Tarpeian Rock, and enjoy Rome as we have enjoyed Florence. More can scarcely be. This Florence is unspeakably beautiful, by grace both of nature and art, and the wheels of life slide on upon the gra.s.s (according to continental ways) with little trouble and less expense. Dinner, 'unordered,' comes through the streets and spreads itself on our table, as hot as if we had smelt cutlets hours before. The science of material life is understood here and in France. Now tell me, what right has England to be the dearest country in the world? But I love dearly dear England, and we hope to spend many a green summer in her yet. The winters you will excuse us, will you not? People who are, like us, neither rich nor strong, claim such excuses. I am wonderfully well, and far better and stronger than before what you call the Pisan 'crisis.' Robert declares that n.o.body would know me, I _look_ so much better. And you heard from dearest Henrietta. Ah, both of my dearest sisters have been perfect to me. No words can express my feelings towards their goodness. Otherwise, I have good accounts from home of my father's excellent health and spirits, which is better even than to hear of his loving and missing me. I had a few kind lines yesterday from Miss Martineau, who invites us from Florence to Westmoreland. She wants to talk to me, she says, of 'her beloved Jordan.' She is looking forward to a winter of work by the lakes, and to a summer of gardening. The kindest of letters Robert has had from Carlyle, who makes us very happy by what he says of our marriage. Shakespeare's favorite air of the 'Light of Love,' with the full evidence of its being Shakespeare's favorite air, is given in Charles Knight's edition. Seek for it there. Now do write to me and at length, and tell me everything of yourself. Flush hated Vallombrosa, and was frightened out of his wits by the pine forests. Flush likes civilised life, and the society of little dogs with turned-up tails, such as Florence abounds with. Unhappily it abounds also with _fleas_, which afflict poor Flush to the verge sometimes of despair. Fancy Robert and me down on our knees combing him, with a basin of water on one side! He suffers to such a degree from fleas that I cannot bear to witness it.

He tears off his pretty curls through the irritation. Do you know of a remedy? Direct to me, Poste Restante, Florence. Put _via_ France. Let me hear, do; and everything of yourself, mind. Is Mrs. Partridge in better spirits? Do you read any new French books? Dearest friend, let me offer you my husband's cordial regards, with the love of your own affectionate

E.B.B., BA.

[Footnote 163: Mr. Horne was just engaged to be married.]

[Footnote 164: Tennyson's _Princess_ had just been published.]

_To Mr. Westwood_ Florence: September 1847.

Yes, indeed, my dear Mr. Westwood, I have seen 'friars.' We have been on a pilgrimage to Vallombrosa, and while my husband rode up and down the precipitous mountain paths, I and my maid and Flush were dragged in a hamper by two white bullocks--and such scenery; such hilly peaks, such black ravines and gurgling waters, and rocks and forests above and below, and at last such a monastery and such friars, who wouldn't let us stay with them beyond five days for fear of corrupting the fraternity. The monks had a new abbot, a St. Seja.n.u.s of a holy man, and a petticoat stank in his nostrils, said he, and all the I beseeching which we could offer him with joined hands was cla.s.sed with the temptations of St. Anthony. So we had to come away as we went, and get the better as we could of our disappointment, and really it was a disappointment not to be able to stay our two months out in the wilderness as we had planned it, to say nothing of the heat of Florence, to which at the moment it was not pleasant to return. But we got new lodgings in the shade and comforted ourselves as well as we could. 'Comforted'--there's a word for Florence--that ingrat.i.tude was a slip of the pen, believe me. Only we had set our hearts upon a two months' seclusion in the deep of the pine forests (which have such a strange dialect in the silence they speak with), and the mountains were divine, and it was provoking to be crossed in our ambitions by that little holy abbot with the red face, and to be driven out of Eden, even to Florence. It is said, observe, that Milton took his description of Paradise from Vallombrosa--so driven out of Eden we were, literally. To Florence, though! and what Florence is, the tongue of man or poet may easily fail to describe. The most beautiful of cities, with the golden Arno shot through the breast of her like an arrow, and 'non dolet' all the same. For what helps to charm here is the innocent gaiety of the people, who, for ever at feast day and holiday celebrations, come and go along the streets, the women in elegant dresses and with glittering fans, s.h.i.+ning away every thought of Northern cares and taxes, such as make people grave in England.

No little orphan on a house step but seems to inherit, naturally his slice of water-melon and bunch of purple grapes, and the rich fraternise with the poor as we are unaccustomed to see them, listening to the same music and walking in the same gardens, and looking at the same Raphaels even! Also we were glad to be here just now, when there is new animation and energy given to Italy by this new wonderful Pope, who is a great man and doing greatly. I hope you give him your sympathies. Think how seldom the liberation of a people begins from the throne, _a fortiori_ from a papal throne, which is so high and straight.[165] And the spark spreads! here is even our Grand Duke conceding the civic guard,[166] and forgetting his Austrian prejudices. The world learns, it is pleasant to observe....

So well I am, dear Mr. Westwood, and so happy after a year's trial of the stuff of marriage, happier than ever, perhaps, and the revolution is so complete that one has to learn to stand up straight and steadily (like a landsman in a sailing s.h.i.+p) before one can do any work with one's hand and brain.

We have had a delightful letter from Carlyle, who loves my husband, I am proud to say.

[Footnote 165:'This country saving is a glorious thing: And if a common man achieved it? well.

Say, a rich man did? excellent. A king?

That grows sublime. A priest? Improbable.

A pope? Ah, there we stop, and cannot bring Our faith up to the leap, with history's bell

So heavy round the neck of it--albeit We fain would grant the possibility For thy sake, Pio Nono!'

_Casa Guidi Windows_, part i.]

[Footnote 166: The grant of a National Guard was made by the Grand Duke of Tuscany on September 4, 1847, in defiance of the threat of Austria to occupy any Italian state in which such a concession was made to popular aspirations.]

_To Miss Mitford_ [Florence:] October I, 1847 [postmark].

Ever dearest Miss Mitford,--I am delighted to have your letter, and lose little time in replying to it. The lost letter meanwhile does not appear. The moon has it, to make more s.h.i.+ne on these summer nights; if still one may say 'summer' now that September is deep and that we are cool as people hoped to be when at hottest.... Do tell me your full thought of the commonwealth of women.[168] I begin by agreeing with you as to his implied under-estimate of women; his women are too voluptuous; however, of the most refined voluptuousness. His gardener's daughter, for instance, is just a rose: and 'a Rose,'

one might beg all poets to observe, is as precisely _sensual_ as frica.s.seed chicken, or even boiled beef and carrots. Did you read Mrs.

Butler's 'Year of Consolation,' and how did you think of it in the main? As to Mr. Home's ill.u.s.trations of national music, I don't know; I feel a little jealous of his doing well what many inferior men have done well--men who couldn't write 'Orion' and the 'Death of Marlowe.'

Now, dearest dear Miss Mitford, you shall call him 'tiresome' if you like, because I never heard him talk, and he may be tiresome for aught I know, of course; but you _sha'n't_ say that he has not done some fine things in poetry. Now, you _know_ what the first book of 'Orion'

is, and 'Marlowe,' and 'Cosmo;' and you _sha'n't_ say that you don't know it, and that when you forgot it for a moment, I did not remind you.... It was our plan to leave Florence on the 21st. We stay, however, one month longer, half through temptation, half through reason. Which is strongest, who knows? We quite love Florence, and have delightful rooms; and then, though I am quite well now as to my general health, it is thought better for me to travel a month hence.

So I suppose we shall stay. In the meanwhile our Florentines kept the anniversary of our wedding day (and the establishment of the civic guard) most gloriously a day or two or three ago, forty thousand persons flocking out of the neighbourhood to help the expression of public sympathy and overflowing the city. The procession pa.s.sed under our eyes into the Piazza Pitti, where the Grand Duke and all his family stood at the palace window melting into tears, to receive the thanks of his people. The joy and exultation on all sides were most affecting to look upon. Grave men kissed one another, and grateful young women lifted up their children to the level of their own smiles, and the children themselves mixed their shrill little _vivas_ with the shouts of the people. At once, a more frenetic gladness and a more innocent manifestation of gladness were never witnessed. During three hours and a half the procession wound on past our windows, and every inch of every house seemed alive with gazers all that time, the white handkerchiefs fluttering like doves, and clouds of flowers and laurel leaves floating down on the heads of those who pa.s.sed. Banners, too, with inscriptions to suit the popular feeling--'Liberty'--the 'Union of Italy'--the 'Memory of the Martyrs'--'Viva Pio Nono'--'Viva Leopoldo Secondo'--were quite stirred with the breath of the shouters.

I am glad to have seen that sight, and to be in Italy at this moment, when such sights are to be seen.[167] My wrist aches a little even now with the waving I gave to my handkerchief, I a.s.sure you, for Robert and I and Flush sate the whole sight out at the window, and would not be reserved with the tribute of our sympathy. Flush had his two front paws over the window sill, with his ears hanging down, but he confessed at last that he thought they were rather long about it, particularly as it had nothing to do with dinner and chicken bones and subjects of consequence. He is less tormented and looks better; in excellent spirits and appet.i.te always--and _thinner_, like your Flush--and very fond of Robert, as indeed he ought to be. On the famous evening of that famous day I have been speaking of, we lost him--he ran away and stayed away all night--which was too bad, considering that it was our anniversary besides, and that he had no right to spoil it. But I imagine he was bewildered with the crowd and the illumination, only as he _did_ look so very guilty and conscious of evil on his return, there's room for suspecting him of having been very much amused, 'motu proprio,' as our Grand Duke says in the edict. He was found at nine o'clock in the morning at the door of our apartment, waiting to be let in--mind, I don't mean the Grand Duke.

Very few acquaintances have we made at Florence, and very quietly lived out our days. Mr. Powers the sculptor is our chief friend and favorite, a most charming, simple, straight-forward, genial American, as simple as the man of genius he has proved himself needs be. He sometimes comes to talk and take coffee with us, and we like him much.

His wife is an amiable woman, and they have heaps of children from thirteen downwards, all, except the eldest boy, Florentines, and the sculptor has eyes like a wild Indian's, so black and full of light.

You would scarcely wonder if they clave the marble without the help of his hands. We have seen besides the Hoppners, Lord Byron's friends at Venice, you will remember. And Miss Boyle, the niece of the Earl of Cork, and auth.o.r.ess and poetess on her own account, having been introduced once to Robert in London at Lady Morgan's, has hunted us out and paid us a visit. A very vivacious little person, with sparkling talk enough. Lord Holland has lent her mother and herself the famous Careggi Villa, where Lorenzo the Magnificent died, and they have been living there among the vines these four months. These and a few American visitors are all we have seen at Florence. We live a far more solitary life than you do, in your village and with the 'prestige' of the country wrapping you round. Pray give your sympathies to our Pope, and call him a great man. For liberty to spring from a throne is wonderful, but from a papal throne is miraculous. That's my doxy. I suppose dear Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Chorley are still abroad. French books I get at, but at scarcely a new one, which is very provoking. At Rome it may be better. I have not read 'Martin' even, since the first volume in England, nor G. Sand's 'Lucretia.'

May G.o.d bless you. Think sometimes of your ever affectionate

E.B.B.

[Footnote 167: In Tennyson's _Princess_.]

[Footnote 168: A picture of the same scene in verse will be found in _Casa Guidi Windows_, part i.:

'Shall I say What made my heart beat with exulting love A few weeks back,' &c.]

The 'month' lengthened itself out, and December found the Brownings still in Florence, and definitely established there for the winter.

During this time, although there is no allusion to it in the letters, Mrs. Browning must have been engaged in writing the first part of 'Casa Guidi Windows' with its hopeful aspirations for Italian liberty.

It was, indeed, a time when hope seemed justifiable. Pius IX. had ascended the papal throne--then a temporal as well as a spiritual sovereignty--in June 1846, with the reputation of being anxious to introduce liberal reforms, and even to promote the formation of a united Italy. The English Government was diplomatically advocating reform, in spite of the opposition of Austria; and its representative, Lord Minto, who was sent on a special mission to Italy to bring this influence to bear on the rulers of the various Italian States, was received with enthusiastic joy by the zealots for Italian liberty. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, as was noticed above, had taken the first step in the direction of popular government by the inst.i.tution of a National Guard; and Charles Albert of Piedmont was always supposed to have the cause of Italy at heart in spite of the vacillations of his policy. The catastrophe of 1848 was still in the distance; and for the moment a friend of freedom and of Italy might be permitted to hope much.

Yet a difference will be noticed between the tone of Mrs. Browning's letters at this time and that which marks her language in 1859. In 1847 she was still comparatively new to the country. She is interested in the experiment which she sees enacted before her; she feels, as any poet must feel, the attraction of the idea of a free and united Italy.

But her heart is not thrown into the struggle as it was at a later time. She can write, and does, for the most part, write, of other matters. The disappointment of Milan and Novara could not break her heart, as the disappointment of Villafranca went near to doing. They are not, indeed, so much as mentioned in detail in the letters that follow. It is in 'Casa Guidi Windows'--the first part written in 1847-8, the second in 1851--that her reflections upon Italian politics, alike in their hopes and in their failures, must be sought.

_To Miss Mitford_ Florence: December 8, 1847.

Have you thought me long, my dearest Miss Mitford, in writing? When your letter came we were distracted by various uncertainties, torn by wild horses of sundry speculations, and then, when one begins by delay in answering a letter, you are aware how a silence grows and grows.

Also I heard _of_ you through my sisters and Mrs. Duprey[?], and _that_ made me lazier still. Now don't treat me according to the Jewish law, an eye for an eye; no! but a heart for a heart, if you please; and you never can have reason to reproach mine for not loving you. Think what we have done since I wrote last to you. Taken two houses, that is, two apartments, each for six months, presigning the contract. You will set it down as excellent poet's work in the way of domestic economy; but the fault was altogether mine as usual, and my husband, to please me, took rooms which I could not be pleased by three days, through the absence of suns.h.i.+ne and warmth. The consequence was that we had to pay heaps of guineas away for leave to go away ourselves, any alternative being preferable to a return of illness, and I am sure I should have been ill if we had persisted in staying there. You can scarcely fancy the wonderful difference which the sun makes in Italy. Oh, he isn't a mere 'round O' in the air in this Italy, I a.s.sure you! He makes us feel that he rules the day to all intents and purposes. So away we came into the blaze of him here in the Piazza Pitti, precisely opposite the Grand Duke's palace, I with my remorse, and poor Robert without a single reproach. Any other man, a little lower than the angels, would have stamped and sworn a little for the mere relief of the thing, but as to _his_ being angry with _me_ for any cause, except not eating enough dinner, the said sun would turn the wrong way first. So here we are on the Pitti till April, in small rooms yellow with suns.h.i.+ne from morning to evening; and most days I am able to get out into the piazza, and walk up and down for some twenty minutes without feeling a shadow of breath from the actual winter. Also it is pleasant to be close to the Raffaels, to say nothing of the immense advantage of the festa days, when, day after day, the civic guard comes to show the whole population of Florence, their Grand Duke inclusive, the new helmets and epaulettes and the glory thereof. They have swords, too, I believe, somewhere.

The crowds come and come, like children to see rows of dolls, only the children would tire sooner than the Tuscans. Robert said musingly the other morning as we stood at the window, 'Surely, after all this, they would _use_ those muskets.' It's a problem, a 'grand peut-etre.' I was rather amused by hearing lately that our civic heroes had the gallantry to propose to the ancient military that these last should do the night work, i.e. when n.o.body was looking on and there was no credit, as they found it dull and fatiguing. Ah, one laughs, you see; one can't help it now and then. But at the real and rising feeling of the people by night and day one doesn't laugh indeed. I hear and see with the deepest sympathy of soul, on the contrary. I love the Italians, too, and none the less that something of the triviality and innocent vanity of children abounds in them. A delightful and most welcome letter was the last you sent me, my dearest friend. Your bridal visit must have charmed you, and I am glad you had the gladness of witnessing some of the happiness of your friend, Mrs. Acton Tyndal, _you_ who have such quick sympathies, and to whom the happiness of a friend is a gain counted in your own. The swan's shadow is something in a clear water. For poor Mrs.----, if she is really, as you say Mrs.

Tyndal thinks, pining in an access of literary despondency, why _that_ only proves to me that she is not happy otherwise, that her life and soul are not sufficiently filled for her woman's need. I cannot believe of any woman that she can think of _fame first_. A woman of genius may be absorbed, indeed, in the exercise of an active power, engrossed in the charges of the course and the combat; but this is altogether different to a vain and bitter longing for prizes, and what prizes, oh, gracious heavens! The empty cup of cold metal! _so_ cold, _so_ empty to a woman with a heart. So, if your friend's belief is true, still more deeply do I pity that other friend, who is supposed to be unhappy from such a cause. A few days ago I saw a bride of my own family, Mrs. Reynolds, Arlette Butler, who married Captain Reynolds some five months since.... Many were her exclamations at seeing me. She declared that such a change was never seen, I was so transfigured with my betterness: 'Oh, Ba, it is quite wonderful indeed!' We had been calculated on, during her three months in Rome, as a 'piece of resistance,' and it was a disappointment to find us here in a corner with the salt. Just as I was praised was poor Flush criticised. Flush has not recovered from the effects yet of the summer plague of fleas, and his curls, though growing, are not grown. I never saw him in such spirits nor so ugly; and though Robert and I flatter ourselves upon 'the sensible improvement,' Arlette could only see him with reference to the past, when in his Wimpole Street days he was sleek and over fat, and she cried aloud at the loss of his beauty.

Then we have had [another] visitor, Mr. Hillard, an American critic, who reviewed me in [the old] world, and so came to _view_ me in the new, a very intelligent man, of a good, n.o.ble spirit. And Miss Boyle, ever and anon, comes at night, at nine o'clock, to catch us at our hot chestnuts and mulled wine, and warm her feet at our fire; and a kinder, more cordial little creature, full of talent and accomplishment, never had the world's polish on it. Very amusing, too, she is, and original, and a good deal of laughing she and Robert make between them. Did I tell you of her before, and how she is the niece of Lord Cork, and poetess by grace of certain Irish Muses? Neither of us know her writings in any way, but we like her, and for the best reasons. And this is nearly all, I think, we see of the 'face divine,'

masculine and feminine, and I can't make Robert go out a single evening, not even to a concert, nor to hear a play of Alfieri's, yet we fill up our days with books and music (and a little writing has its share), and wonder at the clock for galloping. It's twenty-four o'clock with us almost as soon as we begin to count. Do tell me of Tennyson's book, and of Miss Martineau's. I was grieved to hear a distant murmur of a rumour of an apprehension of a return of her complaint: somebody said that she could not bear the _pressure of dress_, and that the exhaustion resulting from the fits of absorption in work and enthusiasm on the new subject of Egypt was painfully great, and that her friends feared for her. I should think that the bodily excitement and fatigue of her late travels must have been highly hazardous, and that indeed, throughout her convalescence, she should have more spared herself in climbing hills and walking and riding distances. A strain obviously might undo everything. Still, I do hope that the bitter cup may not be filled for her again. What a wonderful discovery this subst.i.tute for ether inhalations[169] seems to be. Do you hear anything of its operation in your neighbourhood? We have had a letter from Mr. Horne, who appears happy, and speaks of his success in lecturing on Ireland, and of a new novel which he is about to publish in a separate form after having printed it in a magazine.