The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume Ii Part 46

_To Miss I. Blagden_

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

Ever dearest Isa,--How you grieve me by this news of your being unwell.

Dear, I wondered at having no letter, and now with the letter and all the proofs of your remembering me (newspaper and pens) comes the bad word of your being ill....

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

Sir John Bowring has been to see us. Yes, he speaks with great authority and conviction, and it carries the more emphasis because he is not without Antigallican prejudice, I observed. He told me that the panic in England about invasion had reached, at one time, a point of phrenzy which would be scarcely credible to anyone who had not witnessed it.

People were in terrors, expecting their houses to be burnt and sacked directly. Placards of the most inflammatory character, calling pa.s.sionately on the riflemen to arm, arm, arm! He himself was hissed at Edinburgh for venturing to say that the rifle-locks would be very rusty if only used against invading Napoleons.

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

But men like Mr. Trollope find it easy to ignore all this. It is we who have done the most for Italy--we who did nothing! Yes, I admit so far.

We abstained from helping the Austrians with an open force.

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

I have been sorry about Gaeta;[93] but there is somewhere a cause, and, perhaps, not hard to find. That the Emperor is ready to do for Italy _whatever will not sacrifice France_, I am convinced more than ever. And even the Romans (who have benefited least) think so. One of the patriots here, a watchmaker, was saying to Ferdinando the other day that he had subscribed to Garibaldi's fund, and had given his name for Viterbo,[94]

but that there was one man in whom he believed most, and never ceased to believe--Louis Napoleon. And this is the common feeling. Mr. Trollope said that they only ventured to unbosom themselves to the English. Now my belief is that the Italians seldom do this to the English, as far as Napoleon is concerned. The Italians are _furbi a.s.sai_, and wish to conciliate us, and are perfectly aware of our national jealousies. I myself have observed the difference in an Italian when speaking to my own husband before me and speaking to me alone.

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

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

Write to me, my Isa, and love me.

I am your ever loving BA.

_To Miss I. Blagden_

[Rome: November-December 1860.]

... Now while I remember it let me tell you what I quite forgot yesterday. If through Kate's dealing with American papers you get to hear of a lyric of mine called 'De Profundis,'[95] you are to understand that it was written by me nearly twenty years ago, _before I knew Robert_; you will observe it is in my 'early manner,' as they say of painters. It is a personal poem, of course, but was written even so, in comparatively a state of retrospect, catching a grief in the rebound a little. (You know I never _can_ speak or cry, so it isn't likely I should write verses.) The poem (written, however, when I was very low) lay unprinted all those years, till it turned up at Florence just when poor Mrs. Howard's bereavement and Mr. Beecher's funeral sermon in the 'Independent' suggested the thought of it--on which, by an impulse, I enclosed it to the editor, who wanted more verses from me. Now you see it comes out just when people will suppose the motive to be an actual occasion connected with myself. Don't let anyone think so, dear Isa. In the first place, there would be great _exaggeration_; and in the second, it's not my way to grind up my green griefs to make bread of.

But that poem exaggerates nothing--represents a condition from which the writer had already partly emerged, after the greatest suffering; the only time in which I have known what absolute _despair_ is.

Don't notice this when you write.

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

BA.

_To Mrs. Martin_

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now that page is turned.

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

Here, though there was snow once, we have fared mildly as to climate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May G.o.d bless you and love you both!

Your ever affectionate and grateful BA.

_To Miss I. Blagden_