Chapter VII (3)

You never write a word to us, and so I don't mean to send you a letter to-day--only as few lines as I can drop in a sulky fit, repenting as I go on. 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. As it was in the beginning, from 'Casa Guidi Windows,' so it is now from the Avenue des Champs-Elysées. I am most humanly liable, of course, to make mistakes, and am by temperament perhaps over hopeful and sanguine. But I do see with my own eyes and feel with my own spirit, and not with other people's eyes and spirits, though they should happen to be the dearest--and that's the very best of me, be certain, so don't quarrel with it too much.

As to the worst of the President, let him have vulture's beak, hyena's teeth, and the rattle of the great serpent, it's nothing to the question. Let him be Caligula's horse raised to the consulship--what then? I am not a Buonapartist; I am simply a 'democrat,' as you say. I simply hold to the fact that, such as he is, the people chose him, and to the opinion that they have a right to choose whom they please. When your English Press denies the _fact of the choice_ (a fact which the most passionate of party-men does not think of denying here), _I_ seem to have a right to another opinion which might strike you as unpatriotic if I uttered it in this place. _Hic tacet_, then, rather _jacet_.

For the rest, for heaven's sake and the truth's, do let us try to take breath a little and be patient. Let us wait till the dust of the struggle clears away before we take measures of the circus. We can't have the liberty of a regular government under a dictatorship. And if the 'constitution' which is coming is not model, it may wear itself into shape by being worked calmly. These new boots will be easier to the feet after half an hour's walking. Not that I like the pinching meanwhile. Not that stringencies upon the Press please _me_--no, nor arrests and imprisonments. I like these things, God knows, as little as the loudest curser of you all, but I don't think it necessary and lawful to exaggerate and over-colour, nor to paint the cheeks of sorrows into horrors, nor to talk, like the 'Quarterly Review' (betwixt excuses for the King of Naples), of two thousand four hundred persons being cut to mincemeat in the streets of Paris, nor to call boldness hypocrisy (because hypocrisy is the worse word), and the appeal to the sovereignty of the people usurpation, and universal suffrage the pricking of bayonets. Above all, I would avoid insulting the whole French nation, who have judged their own position and acted accordingly. If Louis Napoleon disappoints their expectation, he won't sit long where he is. Of that I feel satisfactory assurance; and, considering the national habits of insurrection, I really think that others may.

Meanwhile it is just to tell you that the two deepest-minded persons whom we have known in Paris--one an ultra-Republican of European reputation (I don't like mentioning names), and the other a Constitutionalist of the purest and noblest moral nature--are both inclined to take favorable views of the President's personal character and intentions. For my part, I don't pretend to an opinion. He may be, as they say, '_bon enfant_,' '_homme de conscience_,' and 'so much in earnest as to be fanatical,' or he may be a wretch and a reptile, as you say in England. That's nothing to the question as I see it. I don't take it up by that handle at all. Caligula's horse or the people's 'Messiah,' as I heard him called the other day--what then? You are wonderfully intolerant, you in England, of equine consulships, you who bear with quite sufficient equanimity a great rampancy of beasts all over the world--Mr. Forster not blowing the trumpet of war, and Mrs. Alfred Tennyson not loading the rifles.

There now--I've done with politics to-day. Only just let me tell you that Cormenin is said to be the adviser in the matter of the Orleans decrees. So much the worse for him.

Whom do you think I saw yesterday? George Sand. Oh, I have been in such fear about it! It's the most difficult thing to get access to her, and, notwithstanding our letter from Mazzini, we were assured on all sides that she would not see us. She has been persecuted by bookmakers--run to ground by the race, and, after having quite lost her on her former visit to Paris, it was in half despair that we seized on an opportunity of committing our letter of introduction to a friend of a friend of hers, who promised to put it into her own hands. With the letter I wrote a little note--I writing, as I was the woman, and both of us signing it. To my delight, we had an answer by the next day's post, gracious and graceful, desiring us to call on her last Sunday.

So we went. Robert let me at last, though I had a struggle for even that, the air being rather over-sharp for me. But I represented to him that one might as well lose one's life as one's peace of mind for ever, and if I lost seeing her I should with difficulty get over it. So I put on my respirator, smothered myself with furs, and, in a close carriage, did not run much risk after all.

She received us very kindly, with hand stretched out, which I, with a natural emotion (I assure you my heart beat), stooped and kissed, when she said quickly, 'Mais non, je ne veux pas,' and kissed my lips. She is somewhat large for her height--not tall--and was dressed with great nicety in a sort of grey serge gown and jacket, made after the ruling fashion just now, and fastened up to the throat, plain linen collarette and sleeves. Her hair was uncovered, divided on the forehead in black, glossy bandeaux, and twisted up behind. The eyes and brow are noble, and the nose is of a somewhat Jewish character; the chin a little recedes, and the mouth is not good, though mobile, flashing out a sudden smile with its white projecting teeth. There is no sweetness in the face, but great moral as well as intellectual capacities--only it never _could_ have been a beautiful face, which a good deal surprised me. The chief difference in it since it was younger is probably that the cheeks are considerably fuller than they used to be, but this of course does not alter the type. Her complexion is of a deep olive. I observed that her hands were small and well-shaped. We sate with her perhaps three-quarters of an hour or more--in which time she gave advice and various directions to two or three young men who were there, showing her confidence in us by the freest use of names and allusion to facts. She seemed to be, in fact, _the man_ in that company, and the profound respect with which she was listened to a good deal impressed me. You are aware from the newspapers that she came to Paris for the purpose of seeing the President in behalf of certain of her friends, and that it was a successful mediation. What is peculiar in her manners and conversation is the absolute simplicity of both. Her voice is low and rapid, without emphasis or variety of modulation. Except one brilliant smile, she was grave--indeed, she was speaking of grave matters, and many of her friends are in adversity. But you could not help seeing (both Robert and I saw it) that in all she said, even in her kindness and pity, there was an under-current of scorn. A scorn of pleasing she evidently had; there never could have been a colour of coquetry in that woman. Her very freedom from affectation and consciousness had a touch of disdain. But I liked her. I did not love her, but I felt the burning soul through all that quietness, and was not disappointed in George Sand. When we rose to go I could not help saying, 'C'est pour la dernière fois,' and then she asked us to repeat our visit next Sunday, and excused herself from coming to see us on the ground of a great press of engagements. She kissed me again when we went away, and Robert kissed her hand.

Lady Elgin has offered to take him one day this week to visit Lamartine (who, we hear, will be glad to see us, having a cordial feeling towards England and English poets), but I shall wait for some very warm day for that visit, not meaning to run mortal risks, except for George Sand. _Nota bene._ We didn't see her smoke.

Robert has ventured to send to your house, my dearest friend, two copies of 'Shelley' besides yours--one for Mr. Procter, and one for Mrs. Jameson, with kindest love, both. There is no hurry about either, you know. We wanted another for dear Miss Bayley, but we have only six copies, and don't keep one for ourselves, and she won't care, I dare say.

Your ever most affectionate and grateful BA.

Will you let your servant put this letter into the post for Miss Mitford? She upset me by her book, but had the most affectionate intentions, and I am obliged to her for what she meant. Then I am morbid, I know.

Tell dearest Miss Bayley, with my love, I shall write to her soon.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Jameson_

[Paris], 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées: February 26, [1852].

Never believe of me so bad a thing as that I could have received from you, my ever dear and very dear friend, such a letter as you describe, and rung hollow in return. I did not get your letter, so how could I send an answer? Your letter's lost, like some other happy things. But I thank you for it fervently, guessing from what you say the sympathy and affection of it. I thank you for it most gratefully.

As for poor dear Miss Mitford's book, I was entirely upset by the biography she thought it necessary or expedient to give of me. Oh, if our friends would but put off anatomising one till after one was safely dead, and call to mind that, previously, we have nerves to be agonised and morbid brains to be driven mad! I am morbid, I know. I can't bear some words even from Robert. Like the lady who lay in the grave, and was ever after of the colour of a shroud, so I am white-souled, the past has left its mark with me for ever. And now (this is the worst) every newspaper critic who talks of my poems may refer to other things. I shall not feel myself safe a moment from references which stab like a knife.

But poor dear Miss Mitford, if we don't forgive what's meant as kindness, how are we to forgive what's meant as injury? In my first agitation I felt it as a real vexation that I couldn't be angry with her. How could I, poor thing? She has always loved me, and been so anxious to please me, and this time she seriously thought that Robert and I would be delighted. Extraordinary defect of comprehension!

Still, I did not, I could not, conceal from her that she had given me great pain, and she replied in a tone which really made me almost feel ungrateful for being pained, she said 'rather that her whole book had perished than have given me a moment's pain.' How are you to feel after _that_?

For the rest, it appears that she had merely come forward to the rescue of my reputation, no more than so. Sundry romantic tales had been in circulation about me. I was 'in widow's weeds' in my habitual costume--and, in fact, before I was married I had grievously scandalised the English public (the imaginative part of the public), and it was expedient to 'tirer de l'autre coté.'

Well, I might have laughed at _that_--but I didn't. I wrote a very affectionate letter, for I really love Miss Mitford, though she understands me no more under certain respects than you in England understand Louis Napoleon and the French nation. Love's love. She meant the best to me--and so, do you, who have a much more penetrating sense of delicacy, forgive her for my sake, dear friend....

Of the memoirs of Madame Ossoli, I know only the extracts in the 'Athenæum.' She was a most interesting woman to me, though I did not sympathise with a large portion of her opinions. Her written works are just _naught_. She said herself they were sketches, thrown out in haste and for the means of subsistence, and that the sole production of hers which was likely to represent her at all would be the history of the Italian Revolution. In fact, her reputation, such as it was in America, seemed to stand mainly on her conversation and oral lectures. If I wished anyone to do her justice, I should say, as I have indeed said, 'Never read what she has written.' The letters, however, are individual, and full, I should fancy, of that magnetic personal influence which was so strong in her. I felt drawn in towards her, during our short intercourse; I loved her, and the circumstances of her death shook me to the very roots of my heart. The comfort is, that she lost little in this world--the change could not be loss to her. She had suffered, and was likely to suffer still more.

And now, am I to tell you that I have seen George Sand twice, and am to see her again? Ah, there is no time to tell you, for I must shut up this letter. She sate, like a priestess, the other morning in a circle of eight or nine men, giving no oracles, except with her splendid eyes, sitting at the corner of the fire, and warming her feet quietly, in a general silence of the most profound deference. There was something in the calm disdain of it which pleased me, and struck me as characteristic. She was George Sand, that was enough: you wanted no proof of it. Robert observed that 'if any other mistress of a house had behaved so, he would have walked out of the room'--but, as it was, no sort of incivility was meant. In fact, we hear that she 'likes us very much,' and as we went away she called me 'chère Madame' and kissed me, and desired to see us both again.

I did not read myself the passage in question from Miss M.'s book. I couldn't make up my mind, my courage, to look at it. But I understood from Robert.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Martin_

[Paris], 138 Avenue des Ch.-Elysées: February 27, [1852].

I get your second letter, my dearest Mrs. Martin, before I answer your first, which makes me rather ashamed.

... Dearest friend, it is true that I have seldom been so upset as by this act of poor dear Miss Mitford's, and the very impossibility of being vindictive on this occasion increased my agitation at the moment....

There are defects in delicacy and apprehensiveness, one cannot deny it, and yet I assure you that a more generous and fervent woman never lived than dear Miss Mitford is, and if you knew her you would do her this justice. She is better in herself than in her books--more large, more energetic, more human altogether. I think I understand her better on the whole than she understands me (which is not saying much), and I admire her on various accounts. She talks better, for instance, than most writers, male or female, whom I have had any intercourse with. And affectionate in the extreme, she has always been to me.

So I have mystified you and disgusted you with my politics, and my friends in England have put me in the corner; just so....

The French nation is very peculiar. We choose to boast ourselves of being different in England, but we have simply _les qualités de nos défauts_ after all. The clash of speculative opinions is dreadful here, practical men catch at the ideal as if it were a loaf of bread, and they literally set about cutting out their Romeos 'into little stars,' as if that were the most natural thing in the world. As for the socialists, I quite agree with you that various of them, yes, and some of their chief men, are full of pure and noble aspiration, the most virtuous of men and the most benevolent. Still, they hold in their hands, in their clean hands, ideas that kill, ideas which defile, ideas which, if carried out, would be the worst and most crushing kind of despotism. I would rather live under the feet of the Czar than in those states of perfectibility imagined by Fourier and Cabet, if I might choose my 'pis aller.' All these speculators (even Louis Blanc, who is one of the most rational) would revolutionalise, not merely countries, but the elemental conditions of humanity, it seems to me; none of them seeing that antagonism is necessary to all progress. A man, in walking, must set one foot before another, and in climbing (as Dante observed long ago) the foot behind 'è sempre il più basso.' Only the gods (Plato tells us) keep both feet joined together in moving onward. It is not so, and cannot be so, with men.

But I think that not only in relation to the socialists, but to the monarchies, is L.N. the choice of the French people. I think that they will not _bear_ the monarchies, they will not have either of them, they put them away. It seems to me that the French people is essentially democratical, and that by the vote in question they never meant to give away either rights or liberties. The extraordinary part of the actual position is that the Government, with these ugly signs of despotism in its face, stands upon the democracy (is no 'military despotism,' therefore, in any sense, as the English choose to say), and may be thrown, and will be thrown, on that day when it disappoints the popular expectation. For my part, I am hopeful both for this reason and for others. I hope we shall do better, when there is greater calm; that presently there will be relaxation where there is stringency, and room to breathe and speak. At present it is a dictatorship, and we can't expect at such a time the ease and liberty of a regular government. The constitution itself may be modified, as the very terms of it imply, and the laws of the Press not carried out. Even as it is, all the English papers, infamous in their abuse of the Government (because of their falsifications and exaggerations properly called infamous) and highly immoral in their tone towards France generally, come in as usual, without an official finger being lifted up to hinder them. Louis Philippe would not admit Punch, you remember, on account of a few personal sarcasms....

So much there is to say, and the post going. Can you read as I write on at a full gallop? Don't be out of heart. Do let us trust France--not L. Napoleon, but _France_....

Dearest friends, think of me as your

Ever affectionate BA.

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

[Paris], 138 Avenue des Ch.-Elysées: April 7, 1852.

What a time seems to have passed since I wrote to you, my ever loved friend! Again and again I have been on the point of writing, and something has stopped me always. I have wished to wait till I had more about this and that to gossip of, and so the time went on. Now I am getting impatient to have news of you, and to learn whether the lovely spring has brought you any good yet as to health and strength. Don't take vengeance on my silence, but write, write....

Yes, I want to see Béranger, and so does Robert. George Sand we came to know a great deal more of. I think Robert saw her six times. Once he met her near the Tuileries, offered her his arm, and walked with her the whole length of the gardens. She was not on that occasion looking as well as usual, being a little too much 'endimanchée' in terrestrial lavenders and supercelestial blues--not, in fact, dressed with the remarkable taste which he has seen in her at other times. Her usual costume is both pretty and quiet, and the fashionable waistcoat and jacket (which are a spectacle in all the 'Ladies' Companions' of the day) make the only approach to masculine _wearings_ to be observed in her. She has great nicety and refinement in her personal ways, I think, and the cigarette is really a feminine weapon if properly understood. Ah, but I didn't see her smoke. I was unfortunate. I could only go with Robert three times to her house, and once she was out. He was really very good and kind to let me go at all, after he found the sort of society rampant around her. He didn't like it extremely, but, being the prince of husbands, he was lenient to my desires and yielded the point. She seems to live in the abomination of desolation, as far as regards society--crowds of ill-bred men who adore her _à genoux bas_, betwixt a puff of smoke and an ejection of saliva. Society of the ragged Red diluted with the lower theatrical. She herself so different, so apart, as alone in her melancholy disdain! I was deeply interested in that poor woman, I felt a profound compassion for her. I did not mind much the Greek in Greek costume who tutoyéd her, and kissed her, I believe, so Robert said; or the other vulgar man of the theatre who went down on his knees and called her 'sublime.' 'Caprice d'amitié,' said she, with her quiet, gentle scorn. A noble woman under the mud, be certain. _I_ would kneel down to her, too, if she would leave it all, throw it off, and be herself as God made her. But she would not care for my kneeling; she does not care for me. Perhaps she doesn't care for anybody by this time--who knows? She wrote one, or two, or three kind notes to me, and promised to 'venir m'embrasser' before she left Paris; but she did not come. We both tried hard to please her, and she told a friend of ours that she 'liked us'; only we always felt that we couldn't penetrate--couldn't really _touch_ her--it was all vain. Her play failed, though full of talent. It didn't draw, and was withdrawn accordingly. I wish she would keep to her romances, in which her real power lies.

We have found out Jadin, Alexandre Dumas' friend and companion in the '_Speronare_.' He showed Robert at his house poor Louis Philippe's famous 'umbrella,' and the Duke of Orleans' uniform, and the cup from which Napoleon took his coffee, which stood beside him as he signed the abdication. Then there was a picture of 'Milord' hanging up. I must go to see too. Said Robert: 'Then Alexandre Dumas doesn't write romances always?' (You know it was like a sudden spectacle of one of Leda's eggs.) 'Indeed,' replied Jadin, 'he wrote the true history of his own travels, only, of course, seeing everything, like a poet, from his own point of view.' Alfred de Musset was to have been at M. Buloz's, where Robert was a week ago, on purpose to meet him, but he was prevented in some way. His brother Paul de Musset, a very different person, was there instead--but we hope to have Alfred on another occasion. Do you know his poems? He is not capable of large grasps, but he has poet's life and blood in him, I assure you. He is said to be at the feet of Rachel just now, and a man may nearly as well be with a tigress in a cage. He began with the Princess Belgiojoso--followed George Sand--Rachel finishes, is likely to 'finish' in every sense. In the intervals, he plays at chess. There's the anatomy of a _man_!

We are expecting a visit from Lamartine, who does a great deal of honour to both of us, it appears, in the way of appreciation, and is kind enough to propose to come. I will tell you all about it.

But now tell _me_. Oh, I want so to hear how you are. Better, stronger, I hope and trust. How does the new house and garden look in the spring? Prettier and prettier, I dare say....

The dotation of the President is enormous certainly, and I wish for his own sake it had been rather more moderate. Now I must end here. Post hour strikes. God bless you.

Do love me as much as you can, always, and think how I am your ever affectionate

BA.

Our darling is well; thank God.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Jameson_

[Paris]: 138 Avenue des Ch.-Elysées: April 12, Monday, 1852.

Your letter was pleasant and not so pleasant, dearest Monna Nina; for it was not so pleasant indeed to hear how ill you had been--and yet to be lifted into the hope, or rather certainty, of seeing you next week pleased us extremely of course, and the more that your note through Lady Lyell had thrown us backward into a slough of despond and made me sceptical as to your coming here at all....

What a beautiful Paris it is! I walked out a little yesterday with Robert, and we both felt penetrated with the sentiment of southern life as we watched men, women, and children sitting out in the sun, taking wine and coffee, and enjoying their _fête_ day with good happy faces. The mixture of classes is to me one of the most delicious features of the South, and you have it here exactly as in Italy. The colouring too, the brightness, even the sun--oh, come and enjoy it all with us. We have had a most splendid spring beginning with February. Still, I have been out very seldom, being afraid of treacherous winds combined with burning sunshine, but I have enjoyed the weather in the house and by opening the windows, and have been revived and strengthened much by it, and shall soon recover my summer power of walking, I dare say. What do you think I did the other night? Went to the Vaudeville to see the 'Dame aux Camélias' on above the fiftieth night of the representation. I disagree with the common outcry about its immorality. According to my view, it is moral and human. But I never will go to see it again, for it almost broke my heart and split my head. I had a headache afterwards for twenty-four hours. Even Robert, who gives himself out for _blasé_ on dramatic matters, couldn't keep the tears from rolling down his cheeks. The exquisite acting, the too literal truth to nature everywhere, was _exasperating_--there was something profane in such familiar handling of life and death. Art has no business with real graveclothes when she wants tragic drapery--has she? It was too much altogether like a bull fight. There's a caricature at the shop windows of the effect produced, the pit protecting itself with multitudinous umbrellas from the tears of the boxes. This play is by Alexandre Dumas _fils_--and is worthy by its talent of Alexandre Dumas _père_.

Only that once have I been in a Parisian theatre. I couldn't go even to see 'Les Vacances de Pandolphe' when George Sand had the goodness to send us tickets for the first night. She failed in it, I am sorry to say--it did not 'draw,' as the phrase is. Now she has left Paris, but is likely to return.

I am sure it will do you great good to have change and liberty and distraction in various ways. The '_anxiety_' you speak of--oh, I do hope it does not relate to Gerardine. I always think of her when you seem anxious.

I shall be very glad if, when you come, you should be inclined to give your attention, you with your honest and vigorous mind, to the facts of the political situation, not the facts as you hear them from the English, or from our friend Madme Mohl, who confessed to me one day that she liked exaggerations because she hated the President. She is a clever shrewd woman, but most eminently and on all subjects a woman; her passions having her thoughts inside them, instead of her thoughts her passions. That's the common distinction between women and men, is it not?

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. God bless you, dear friend.

Our united love goes to you and stays with you.

Your ever affectionate BA.

* * * * *

_To Miss Mulock_

[Paris]: 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées: April 27, [1852].

I am afraid you must think me--what can you have thought of me for not immediately answering a letter which brought the tears both to my eyes and my husband's? I was going to write just _so_, but he said: 'No, do not write yet; wait till we get the book and then you can speak of it with knowledge.' And I waited.

But the misfortune is that Messrs. Chapman & Hall waited too, and that up to the present time 'The Head of the Family' has not arrived. Mr. Chapman is slow in finding what he calls his opportunities.

Therefore I can't wait any more, no indeed. The voice which called 'Dinah' in the garden--which was true, because certainly I did call from Florence with my whole heart to the writer of these verses[13] (how deeply they moved me!)--will have seemed to you by this time as fabulous as the garden itself. And we had no garden at Florence, I must confess to you, only a terrace facing the grey wall of San Felice church, where we used to walk up and down on the moonlight nights. But San Felice was always a good saint to me, and when I had read and cried over those verses from the 'Athenæum' (my husband wrote them out for me at the reading room) and when I had vainly written to England to find out the poet, and when I had all as vainly, on our visit to England last summer, inquired of this person and that person, it turns out after all that 'Dinah' answers me. Do you not think I am glad?

The beautiful verses touched me to the quick, so does your letter. We shall be in London again perhaps in two months for a few weeks, and then you will let us see you, I hope, will you not? And, in the meanwhile, you will believe that we do not indeed think of you as a stranger. Ah, your dream flattered me in certain respects! Yet there was some truth in it, as I have told you, even though you saw in the dreamlight more roses than were growing.

Certainly Mr. Chapman will at last send me 'The Head of the Family,' and then I will write again of course.

Dear Miss Mulock, may I write myself down now, because I _must_,

Affectionately yours and gratefully, ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

[Paris],138 Avenue des Ch.-Elysées: May 9, [1852].

I began a long letter to you in the impulse left by yours upon me, and then destroyed it by accident. That hindered me from writing as soon as I should have done, for indeed I am anxious to have other news of you, my dearest dear Miss Mitford, and to know, if possible, that you are a little better.... Tell me everything. Why, you looked really well last summer; and I want to see you looking well this summer, for we shall probably be in London in June--more's the pity, perhaps! The gladness I have in England is so leavened through and through with sadness that I incline to do with it as one does with the black bread of the monks of Vallombrosa, only pretend to eat it and drop it slyly under the table. If it were not for some ties I would say 'Farewell, England,' and never set foot on it again. There's always an east wind for _me_ in England, whether the sun shines or not--the moral east wind which is colder than any other. But how dull to go on talking of the weather: _Sia come vuole_, as we say in Italy.

To-morrow is the great _fête_ of your Louis Napoleon, the distribution of the eagles. We have done our possible and impossible to get tickets, because I had taken strongly into my head to want to go, and because Robert, who didn't care for it himself, cared for it for me; but here's the eleventh hour and our prospects remain gloomy. We did not apply sufficiently soon, I am afraid, and the name of the applicants has been legion. It will be a grand sight, and full of significances. Nevertheless, the empire won't come _so_; you will have to wait a little for the Empire. Who were your financial authorities who praised Louis Napoleon? and do the same approve of the late measure about the three per cents.? I am so absolutely _bête_ upon such subjects that I don't even _pretend_ to be intelligent; but I heard yesterday from a direct source that Rothschild expressed a high admiration of the President's financial ability. A friend of that master in Israel said it to our friend Lady Elgin. Commerce is reviving, money is pouring in, confidence is being restored on all sides. Even the Press palpitates again--ah, but I wish it were a little freer of the corset. This Government is not after my heart after all. I only tolerate what appear to me the necessities of an exceptional situation. The masses are satisfied and hopeful, and the President stronger and stronger--not by the sword, may it please the English Press, but by the democracy.

I am delighted to see that the French Government has protested against the reactionary iniquities of the Tuscan Grand Duke, and every day I expect eagerly some helping hand to be stretched out to Rome. I have looked for this from the very first, and certainly it is significant that the Prince of Canino, the late President of the Roman Republic, should be in favour at the Elysée. Pio Nono's time is but short, I fancy--that is, reforms will be forced upon him.

When George Sand had audience with the President, he was very kind; did I tell you that? At the last he said: 'Vous verrez, vous serez contente de moi.' To which she answered, 'Et vous, vous serez content de moi.' It was repeated to me as to the great dishonour of Madame Sand, and as a proof that she could not resist the influence of power and was a bad republican. I, on the contrary, thought the story quite honourable to both parties. It was for the sake of her _rouge_ friends that she approached the President at all, and she has used the hand he stretched out to her only on behalf of persons in prison and distress. The same, being delivered, call her gratefully a recreant.

Victor Cousin and Villemain refuse to take the oath, and lose their situations in the Academy accordingly; but they retire on pensions, and it's their own fault of course. Michelet and Quinet should have an equivalent, I think, for what they have lost; they are worthy, as poets, orators, dreamers, speculative thinkers--as anything, in fact, but instructors of youth.

No, there is a brochure, or a little book somewhere, pretending to be a memoir of Balzac, but I have not seen it. Some time before his death he had bought a country place, and there was a fruit tree in the garden--I think a walnut tree--about which he delighted himself in making various financial calculations after the manner of César Birotteau. He built the house himself, and when it was finished there was just one defect--it wanted a staircase. They had to put in the staircase afterwards. The picture gallery, however, had been seen to from the first, and the great writer had chalked on the walls, 'Mon Raffaelle,' 'Mon Corrège,' 'Mon Titien,' 'Mon Léonard de Vinci,' the pictures being yet unattained. He is said to have been a little loth to spend money, and to have liked to dine magnificently at the restaurant at the expense of his friends, forgetting to pay for his own share of the entertainment. For the rest, the 'idée fixe' of the man was to be rich one day, and he threw his subtle imagination and vital poetry into pounds, shillings, and pence with such force that he worked the base element into spiritual splendours. Oh! to think of our having missed seeing that man. It is painful. A little book is published of his 'thoughts and maxims,' the sweepings of his desk I suppose; broken notes, probably, which would have been wrought up into some noble works, if he had lived. Some of these are very striking.

Lamartine has not yet paid us the promised visit. Just as we were beginning to feel vexed we heard that the intermediate friend who was to have brought him had been caught up by the Government and sent off to Saint-Germain to 'faire le mort,' on pain of being sent farther. I mean Eugène Belleton. If he talked in many places as he talked in this room, I can't be very much surprised, but I am really very sorry. He is one of those amiable domestic men who delight in talking 'battle, murder, and sudden death.'

[_The end of this letter is wanting_]

* * * * *

_To Miss Mulock_

[Paris], 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées: June 2, [1852].

My husband went directly to Rue Vivienne and came back without the book. We waited and waited, but at last it reached us, and we have read it, and since then I have let some days go by through having been unwell. You seemed to let me sit still in my chair and do nothing; you did not call too loud. So was it with most other things in the universe. Now, having awakened from my somnolency, recovered from 'La Grippe' (or what mortal Londoners call the influenza), the first person and first book I think of must naturally be you and yours.

So I thank you much, much, for the book. It has interested me, dear Miss Mulock, as a book should, and I am delighted to recognise everywhere undeniable talent and faculty, combined with high and pure aspiration. A clever book, a graceful book, and with the moral grace besides--thank you. Many must have thanked you as well as myself.

At the same time, precisely because I feel particularly obliged to you, I mean to tell you the truth. Your hero is heroic from his own point of view--accepting his own view of the situation, which I, for one, cannot accept, do you know, for I am of opinion that both you and he are rather conventional on the subject of his marriage. I don't in the least understand, at this moment, why he should not have married in the first volume; no, not in the least. It was a matter of income, he would tell me, and of keeping two establishments; and I would answer that it ought rather to have been a matter of faith in God and in the value of God's gifts, the greatest of which is love. I am romantic about love--oh, much more than you are, though older than you. A man's life does not develop rightly without it, and what is called an 'improvident marriage' often appears to me a noble, righteous, and prudent act. Your Ninian was a man before he was a brother. I hold that he had no right to sacrifice a great spiritual good of his own to the worldly good of his family, however he made it out. He should have said: 'God gives me this gift, He will find me energy to work for it and suffer for it. We will all live together, struggle together if it is necessary, a little more poorly, a little more laboriously, but keeping true to the best aims of life, all of us.'

That's what _my_ Ninian would have said. I don't like to see noble Ninians crushed flat under family Juggernauts, from whatever heroic motives--not I. Do you forgive me for being so candid?

I must tell you that Mrs. Jameson, who is staying in this house, read your book in England and mentioned it to me as a good book, 'very gracefully written,' before I read it, quite irrespectively, too, of my dedication, which was absent from the copy she saw at Brighton. It was mentioned as one of the novels which had pleased her most lately.

I shall like to show you my child, as you like children, and as I am vain--oh, past endurance vain, about him. You won't understand a word he says, though, for he speaks three languages at once, and most of the syllables of each wrong side foremost.

No, don't call me a Bonapartist. I am not a Bonapartist indeed. But I am a Democrat and singularly (in these days) consequent about universal suffrage. Also, facts in England have been much mis-stated; but there's no room for politics to-day.

When I thank you, remember that my husband thanks you. We both hope to see you before this month shall be quite at an end, and then you will know me better, I hope; and though I shall lose a great deal by your knowing me, of course, yet you won't, _after that_, make such mistakes as you 'confess' in this note which I have just read over again. Did I think you 'sentimental'? Won't you rather think _me_ sentimental to-day? Through it all,

Your affectionate ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Martin_

[Paris], 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées: June 16, [1852].

My first word must be to thank you, my dearest kind friend, for your affectionate words to me and mine, which always, from you, sink deeply. It was, on my part, great gratification to see you and talk to you and hear you talk, and, above all, perhaps, to feel that you loved me still a little. May God bless you both! And may we meet again and again in Paris and elsewhere; in London this summer to begin with! As the Italians would say in relation to any like pleasure: 'Sarebbe una _benedizione_.'

We are waiting for the English weather to be reported endurable in order to set out. Mrs. Streatfield, who has been in England these twelve days, writes to certify that it is past the force of a Parisian imagination to imagine the state of the skies and the atmosphere; yet, even in Paris, we have been moaning the last four days, because really, since then, we have gone back to April, and a rather cool April, with alternate showers and sunshine--a crisis, however, which does not call for fires, nor inflict much harm on me. It was the thunder, we think, that upset the summer.

You seem to have had a sort of inkling about my brittleness when you were here. It was the beginning of a bad attack of cough and pain in the side, the consequence of which was that I turned suddenly into the likeness of a ghost and frightened Robert from his design of going to England. About that I am by no means regretful; he was not wanted, as the event proved abundantly. The worst was that he was annoyed by the number of judicious observers and miserable comforters who told him I was horribly changed and ought to be taken back to Italy forthwith. I knew it was nothing but an accidental attack, and that the results would pass away, as they did. I kept quiet, applied mustard poultices, and am now looking again (tell dear Mr. Martin) 'as if I had shammed.' So all these misfortunes are strictly historical, you are to understand. To-night we are going to Ary Scheffer's to hear music and to see ever so many celebrities. Oh, and let me remember to tell you that M. Thierry, the blind historian, has sent us a message by his physician to ask us to go to see him, and as a matter of course we go. Madame Viardot, the prima donna, and Leonard, the first violin player at the Conservatoire, are to be at M. Scheffer's.

After all, you are too right. The less amused I am, clearly the better for me. I should live ever so many years more by being shut up in a hermitage, if it were warm and dry. More's the pity, when one wants to see and hear as I do. The only sort of excitement and fatigue which does me no harm, but good, is _travelling_. The effect of the continual change of air is to pour in oil as the lamp burns; so I explain the extraordinary manner in which I bear the fatigue of being four-and-twenty hours together in a diligence, for instance, which many strong women would feel too much for them.

All this talking of myself when I want to talk of you and to tell you how touched I was by the praises of your winning little Letitia! Enclosed is a note to Chapman & Hall which will put her 'bearer' (if she can find one in London) in possession of the two volumes in question. I shall like her to have them, and she must try to find my love, as the King of France did the poison (a 'most unsavoury simile,' certainly), between the leaves. I send with them, in any case, my best love. Ah, so sorry I am that she has suffered from the weather you have had. She is a most interesting child, and of a nature which is rare....

Robert's warm regards, with those of your

Ever affectionate and grateful BA.

Madame Viardot is George Sand's heroine Consuelo. You know that beautiful book.

* * * * *

With the last days of June the long stay in Paris came to an end, and the Brownings paid their second visit to London. Their residence on this occasion was at 58 Welbeck Street ('very respectable rooms this time, and at a moderate price'), and here they stayed until the beginning of November. Neither husband nor wife seems to have written much poetry during this year, either in Paris or in London.

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

[London], 58 Welbeck Street: Saturday, [June-July 1852].

... We saw your book in Paris, the Galignani edition, and I read it all except the one thing I had not courage to read. Thank you, thank you. We are both of us grateful to you for your most generous and heartwarm intentions to us. As to the book, it's a book made to go east and west; it's a popular book with flowers from the 'village' laid freshly and brightly between the critical leaves. I don't always agree with you. I think, for instance, that Mary Anne Browne should never be compared to George Sand in 'passion,' and I can't grant to you that your extracts from her poems bear you out to even one fiftieth degree in such an opinion. I agree with you just as little with regard to Dr. Holmes and certain others. But to _have_ your opinion is always a delightful thing, and 'it is characteristic of your generosity,' to say the least, we say to ourselves when we are 'dissidents' most.

I am writing in the extremest haste, just a word to announce our arrival in England. We are in very comfortable rooms in 58 Welbeck Street, and my sister Henrietta is some twenty doors away. To-morrow Robert and I are going to Wimbledon for a day to dear Mr. Kenyon, who looks radiantly well and has Mr. Landor for a companion just now. Imagine the uproar and turmoil of our first days in London, and believe that I think of you faithfully and tenderly through all. I am overjoyed to see my sisters, who look well on the whole ... and they and everybody assure me that I show a very satisfactory face to my country, as far as improved looks go.

What nonsense one writes when one has but a moment to write in. I find people talking about the 'facts in the "Times"' touching Louis Napoleon. Facts in the 'Times'!

The heat is _stifling_. Do send one word to say how you are, and love me always as I love you.

Your most affectionate BA.

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

58 Welbeck Street: Friday, July 31, 1852 [postmark].

I want to hear about you again, dear, dearest Miss Mitford, and I can't hear. Will you send me a line or a word.... I mean to go down to see you one day, but certainly we must account it right not to tire you while you are weak, and not to spoil our enjoyment by forestalling it. Two months are full of days; we can afford to wait. Meantime let us have a little gossip such as the gods allow of.

Dear Mr. Kenyon has not yet gone to Scotland, though his intentions still stand north. He passed an evening with us some evenings ago, and was brilliant and charming (the two things together), and good and affectionate at the same time. Mr. Landor was staying with him (perhaps I told you that), and went away into Worcestershire, assuring me, when he took leave of me, that he would never enter London again. A week passes, and lo! Mr. Kenyon expects him again. Resolutions are not always irrevocable, you observe.

I must tell you what Landor said about Louis Napoleon. You are aware that he loathed the first Napoleon and that he hates the French nation; also, he detests the present state of French affairs, and has foamed over in the 'Examiner' 'in prose and rhyme' on the subject of them. Nevertheless, he who calls 'the Emperor' 'an infernal fool' expresses himself to this effect about the President: 'I always knew him to be a man of wonderful genius. I knew him intimately, and I was persuaded of what was in him. When people have said to me, "How can you like to waste your time with so trifling a man?" I have answered: "If all your Houses of Parliament, putting their heads together, could make a head equal to this trifling man's head it would be well for England."

It was quite unexpected to me to hear Mr. Landor talk so.

He, Mr. Landor, is looking as young as ever, as full of life and passionate energy.

Did Mr. Horne write to you before he went to Australia? Did I speak to you about his going? Did you see the letter which he put into the papers as a farewell to England? I think of it all sadly.

Mazzini came to see us the other day, with that pale spiritual face of his, and those intense eyes full of melancholy illusions. I was thinking, while he sate there, on what Italian turf he would lie at last with a bullet in his heart, or perhaps with a knife in his back, for to one of those ends it will surely come. Mrs. Carlyle came with him. She is a great favorite of mine: full of thought, and feeling, and character, it seems to me.