Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“ 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. ”

“ Rome is spoiled to me—there's the truth. Still, one lives through one's associations when not too strong, and I have arrived at almost enjoying some things—the climate, for instance, which, though perilous to the general health, agrees particularly with me, and the sight of the blue sky floating like a sea-tide through the great gaps and rifts of ruins. We read in the papers of a tremendously cold winter in England and elsewhere, while I am able on most days to walk out as in an English summer, and while we are all forced to take precautions against the sun. ”

“ Still, I am surprised, I own, at the amount of success; and that golden-hearted Robert is in ecstasies about it—far more than if it all related to a book of his own. The form of the story, and also something in the philosophy, seem to have caught the crowd. As to the poetry by itself, anything good in that repels rather. I am not as blind as Romney, not to perceive this. He had to be blinded, observe, to be made to see; just as Marian had to be dragged through the uttermost debasement of circumstances to arrive at the sentiment of personal dignity. ”

“ It's the system, the system which is all one gangrene; the most corrupt system in Europe, is it not? Here is my comfort. Apart from the dreadful amount of individual suffering which cries out against us to heaven and earth, this adversity may teach us much, this shock which has struck to the heart of England may awaken us much, and this humiliation will altogether be good for us. We have stood too long on a pedestal talking of our moral superiority, our political superiority, and all our other superiorities, which I have long been sick of hearing recounted. ”

“ As to politics, you know you have all put me in the corner because I stand up for universal suffrage, and am weak enough to fancy that seven millions and a half of Frenchmen have some right to an opinion on their own affairs. It's really fatal in this world to be consequent—it leads one into damnable errors. So I shall not say much more at present. You must bear with me—dear Miss Bayley and all of you—and believe of me, if I am ever so wrong, that I do at least pray from my soul, 'May the right prevail!'—loving right, truth, justice, and the people through whatever mistakes. ”

“ The beauty of the architecture, the silver trails of water up between all that gorgeous colour and carving, the enchanting silence, the moonlight, the music, the gondolas—I mix it all up together, and maintain that nothing is like it, nothing equal to it, not a second Venice in the world. Do you know, when I came first I felt as if I never could go away. But now comes the earth side. Robert, after sharing the ecstasy, grows uncomfortable, and nervous, and unable to eat or sleep; and poor Wilson, still worse, in a miserable condition of continual sickness and headache. ”

“ I do hope and trust you can give me good news of yourselves. Do you read aloud to one another or each alone? Robert and I do the last always. May God bless you both in health of body and soul, and every source of happiness for the coming and other years! I wish and pray it out of my heart....
And you are studying music? I honour you for it. Do tell me, dearest Mrs. Martin, did you know nothing of music before, and have you taken up the piano? I hold a peculiar heresy as to the use hereafter of what we learn here. When there is no longer any growth in me, I desire to die—for one. ”

“ The heat at Florence was very bearable, and our child grew into his roses lost at Rome, and we have lived a very tranquil and happy six months on our own sofas and chairs, among our own nightingales and fireflies. There's an inclination in me to turn round with my Penini and say, 'I'm an Italian.' Certainly both light and love seem stronger with me at Florence than elsewhere....
The war! The alliance is the consolation; the necessity is the justification. For the rest, one shuts one's eyes and ears—the rest is too horrible. ”

“ We walked home to the song of nightingales by starlight and firefly-light. Florence looks to us more beautiful than ever after Rome. I love the very stones of it, to say nothing of the cypresses and river.
Robert says, 'Are you nearly done?' I am done. Give Penini's love and mine to the dear nonno, and tell him (and yourself, dear) how delighted we shall be [to] have you both. You are prepared to go to England, I hope. By the way, the weather there is said to be murderous through bitter winds, but it must soften as the season advances. May God bless you! I am yours in truest love. ”

“ My dearest Sarianna,—You can't think how pleased I am to find myself in Florence again in our own house, everything looking exactly as if we had left it yesterday. Scarcely I can believe that we have gone away at all. But Robert has been perfectly demoralised by Paris, and thinks it all as dull as possible after the boulevards: 'no life, no variety.' Oh, of course it is very dead in comparison! but it's a beautiful death, and what with the lovely climate, and the lovely associations, and the sense of repose, I could turn myself on my pillow and sleep on here to the end of my life ”

“ Robert, too, will tell you that he hates all Buonapartes, past, present, or to come, but then he says that in his self-willed, pettish way, as a manner of dismissing a subject he won't think about—and knowing very well that he doesn't think about it, not mistaking a feeling for a reason, not for a moment. There's the difference between women and men.
Well, but you won't come here to knit your brows about politics, but rather to forget all sorts of anxieties and distresses, and be well and happy, I do hope. You deserve a holiday after all that work. ”

“ Are you aware that Carlyle travelled with us to Paris? He left a deep impression with me. It is difficult to conceive of a more interesting human soul, I think. All the bitterness is love with the point reversed. He seems to me to have a profound sensibility—so profound and turbulent that it unsettles his general sympathies. Do you guess what I mean the least in the world? or is it as dark as my writings are of course?
I hope on every account you will have no increase of domestic care. How is Miss Procter? How kind everybody was to us in England, and how affectionately we remember it! ”

“ But Paris is so full of life—murmurs so of the fountain of intellectual youth for ever and ever—that rolling up the rue de Rivoli (much more the Boulevards) suggests a quicker beat of the fancy's heart; and I like it—I like it. The architectural beauty is wonderful. Give me Venice on water, Paris on land—each in its way is a dream city. If one had but the sun there—such a sun as one has in Italy! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Still I do beg to say both to you and to others accusing that Italy is not my 'adopted country.' I love Italy, but I love France, too, and certainly I love England. Because I have broken through what seems to me the English 'Little Pedlingtonism,' am I to be supposed to take up an Italian 'Little Pedlingtonism'? No, indeed. I love truth and justice, or I try to love truth and justice, more than any Plato's or Shakespeare's country. [73] I certainly do not love the egotism of England, nor wish to love it. I class England among the most immoral nations in respect to her foreign politics. ”

“ I do love Florence, when all's said. The very calm, the very dying stillness is expressive and touching. And then our house, our tables, our chairs, our carpets, everything looking rather better for our having been away! Overjoyed I was to feel myself at home again! our Italians so pleased to see us, Wiedeman's nurse rushing in, kissing my lips away almost, and seizing on the child, 'Dio mio, come è bellino! the tears pouring down her cheeks, not able to look, for emotion, at the shawl we had brought her from England. Poor Italians! ”

“ What a time of anxiety this war time is! [38] I do thank God that we have no reasons for its being a personal agony, through having anyone very precious at the post of danger. I have two first cousins there, a Hedley, and Paget Butler, Sir Thomas's son. I understand that the gloom in England from the actual bereavements is great; that the frequency of deep mourning strikes the eye; that even the shops are filled chiefly with black; and that it has become a sort of mode to wear black or grey, without family losses, and from the mere force of sympathy. ”

“ Ah! you in England, and in Belgium still less, do not know what scenery is, what Nature is when she is natural. You could as soon guess at a tiger from the cat on the hearthstone. You do not know; but, being a poet, you can dream. You have divine insights, as we all have, of heaven, all of us with whom the mortal mind does not cake and obstruct into cecity. ”

“ Kenyon gave us a key to. I quite understand how a whole life may seem rumpled up and creased—torn for the moment; only you will live it smooth again, dear Mr. Chorley—take courage. You have time and strength and good aims, and human beings have been happy with much less. I understate your advantages on purpose, you see. I heard you talked of in Florence when Miss Cushman, in the quarter of an hour she gave us at Casa Guidi, told us of the oath she had in heaven to bring out your play and make it a triumph. ”

“ Oh, yes, it made me glad to see our poor darling Florence again; I do love Florence when all's said against it, and when Robert (demoralised by Paris) has said most strongly that the place is dead, and dull, and flat, which it is, I must confess, particularly to our eyes fresh from the palpitating life of the Parisian boulevards, where we could scarcely find our way to Prichard's for the crowd during our last fortnight there. ”

“ To Miss Browning
[Florence: January 1857.]
My dearest Sarianna,—A great many happy years to you, and also to the dear Nonno. I am glad, for my part, to be out of the last, which has been gloomy and almost embittering to me personally; but we must throw our burdens behind our backs as far as possible, and be cheerful for the rest of the road. If Robert alone wrote about 'Aurora,' I won't leave it to him to be alone grateful to dear M. Milsand for his extraordinary kindness. Do tell him, with my love, that I could not have expected it, even from himself—which is saying much. ”

“ Death is as vain as life; the common impression of it, as false and as absurd. A mere change of circumstances. What more? And how near these spirits are, how conscious, how full of active energy and tender reminiscence and interest, who shall dare to doubt? For myself, I do not doubt at all. If I did, I should be sitting here inexpressibly sad—for myself, not you....
Robert unites with me in affectionate sympathy, and Sarianna was here last night, talking feelingly about you. ”

“ I say nothing of Florence, but even of Paris, where I do wish to be able to live, on account of the nearness to this dear detestable England.
Now let me tell you of Wimpole Street. Henry has been very kind in coming not infrequently; he has a kind, good heart. Occy, too, I have seen three or four times, Alfred and Sette once. My dearest Arabel is, of course, here once if not twice a day, and for hours at a time, bringing me great joy always, and Henrietta's dear kindness in coming to London on purpose to see me, for a week, has left a perfume in my life. ”

“ Being a democrat, I dare to be so consequently. There never was a more legitimate chief of a State than Louis Napoleon is now—elected by seven millions and a half; and I do maintain that, ape or demi-god, to insult him where he is, is to insult the people who placed him there. As to the stupid outcry in England about forced votes, voters pricked forward by bayonets—why, nothing can be more stupid. Nobody not blinded by passion could maintain such a thing for a moment. ”

“ My dearest Sarianna,—Robert will have told you, I dare say, what a heavy time we have had here with poor Lytton. It was imprudent of him to come to Florence at the hottest of the year, and to expose himself perfectly unacclimated; and the chance by which he was removed here just in time to be nursed was happy for him and all of us. We have had great heat in the days even here, of course—no blotting out, even by mountains, of the Italian sun; but the cool nights extenuate very much—refresh and heal. Now I do hope the corner is turned of the illness. ”

“ Meanwhile we stay.
You can't conceive of the intense interest which is reigning here, you can't realise it, scarcely. In Paris there is vivid interest, of course, but that is from less immediate motives, except with persons who have relations in the army. Here it is as if each one had a personal enemy in the street below struggling to get up to him. When we are anxious we are pale; when we are glad we have tears in our eyes. This 'unnecessary' and 'inexcusable' war (as it has been called in England) represents the only hope of a nation agonising between death and life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Dearest Isa, I miss you, and love you. How perfect you are to me always.
Robert's true love, with Pen's. And I may send my love to Miss Field, may I not?
Yours, in tender affection,
Ba.
Do write, and tell me everything.
Yes, England will do a little dabbling about constitutions and the like where there's nothing to lose or risk; and why does Mrs. Trollope say 'God bless them' for it? I never will forgive England the most damnable part she has taken on Italian affairs, never. The pitiful cry of 'invasion' is the continuation of that hound's cry, observe. Must we live and bear? ”