‘I never showed them…’ EBB to Arabella MB 12 January 1851, #2899.
‘Swindling’ Kenyon: ‘I feel trodden down by either his too great penetration or too great unconsciousness.’ EBB to RB 31 January 1846, #2195. ‘Secrets indeed…’ EBB to RB 12 August 1846, #2535.
p. 169
Surtees is made captain after exchanging to 83rd Foot Regiment; he won’t be promoted to major for fifteen years.
Aunt Hedley: ‘At dinner my aunt said to Papa .. “I have not seen Ba all day—and when I went to her room, to my astonishment a gentleman was sitting there”. “Who was that” said Papa’s eyes to Arabel—“Mr Browning called here today,” she answered—“And Ba bowed her head”, continued my aunt, “as if she meant to signify to me that I was not to come in”—“Oh,” cried Henrietta, “that must have been a mistake of yours. Perhaps she meant just the contrary.”’ EBB to RB 15 July 1846, #2484; EBB to RB 13 July 1846, #2482.
‘Why should not…’ RB to EBB 12 June 1846, #2411.
p. 170
‘Therefore decide…’ EBB to RB 9 September 1846, #2593. ‘Married directly…’ RB to EBB 10 September 1846, #2594. Uncle Sam’s shares: ‘Stormie told me the other day that I had eight thousand pounds in the funds,—of which the interest comes to me quarterly […] from forty to forty five pounds Papa gives me every three months, the income tax being first deducted. […] Then there is the ship money .. a little under two hundred a year on an average […] the annual amount of which […] has been added to the Fund-money until this year, when I was directed to sign a paper which invested […] the annual return in the Eastern Railroad [to] increase by doubling almost […] Then there are the ten shares in Drury Lane Theatre—out of which, comes nothing.’ EBB to RB 5 August 1846, #2526.
‘Stormie told me this morning…’ EBB to RBB 6 August 1846, #2528.
p. 171
‘Sixteen pounds a year…’ EBB to RBB 22 July 1846, #2499. Thanking Wilson for standing witness because Robert’s closest friend, Captain Pritchard, is away: RB to EBB 12 September 1845, #2597; RB to EBB 13 September 1846, #2600.
p. 172
‘It does make us laugh…’ EBB to Arabella MB 13 September 1847, #2701. ‘Emotion & confusion…’ EBB to RB 13 September 1846, #2599. ‘You shall have the ring…’ EBB to RB 10 September 1846 #2596.
p. 173
On journalists: EBB to RB 12 September 1846, #2598. On Mr Boyd: EBB to RB 30 June 1846, #2446. ‘Grave faces…’ #2598. EBB continues: ‘I kept saying, “What nonsense, .. what fancies you do have to be sure”, .. trembling in my heart with every look they cast at me—.’ ‘I will be docile…’ EBB to RB 16 September 1846, #2608.
p. 174
Timetable muddles: EBB to RB 18 September 1846, #2613. Le Havre is still Havre-de-Grace. The Railway Times vol. IX, no. 38 (19 September 1846), p. 1368. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=w2I3AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA1368&lpg=PA1368&dq=london+weather+12+september+1846&source=bl&ots=Ac9wp3yUFY&sig=ACfU3U0hYWNaMIMqvuaf6akTMWT6Dw8x3g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjU9NSVx_fhAhVaShUIHVptCNEQ6AEwFHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=london%20weather%2012%20september%201846&f=false [retrieved 30 April 2019].
At EBB’s request, the newspaper text substitutes plain ‘Saturday’ for a date, leaving room for the belief that it takes place on the day they leave the country. EBB to RB 14 September 1846, #2604.
p. 175
EBB puts off friends, and cancels Miss Mitford.
‘My dearest George… I knew…’ EBB to George Goodin MB 17–18 September 1846, #2616.
45 New Cavendish Street was then 9 Great Marylebone Street. The family firm of Hodgson’s also had a stationers and bookshop at 6 Great Marylebone Street, on the actual corner of the terrace where the Barretts lived. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/architecture/sites/bartlett/files/chapter15_devonshire, pp. 4, 25 [retrieved 1 May 2019].
‘After the Havre… Now five horses…’ EBB to Arabella MB 26 September 1846, #2620. They arrive in Le Havre six months before the new boat train service direct to Paris. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris–Le_Havre_railway [retrieved 2 May 2019].
p. 176
‘I prevailed… We were deposited… She came…’ #2620.
p. 177
‘Just a pretty…’ EBB to Henrietta MB 23 November 1847, #2711. In Robert, on the other hand, Anna Jameson sees ‘inexhaustible wit, & learning & good humour’. EBB to Mitford 2 October 1846, #2622; EBB to Arabella MB 16–19 October 1846, #2624. ‘Death warrant… Very hard letters…’ EBB to Arabella MB 2 October 1846, #2621. ‘He will wish…’ EBB to RB 14 September 1846, #2604. ‘“Imprudence” into “Prudence” …’ #2621.
p. 178
‘We hear… I want…’ EBB to Julia Martin 22 October 1846, #2625.
Fontaine de Vaucluse: #2624. ‘Nearly as much attention…’ #2622.
‘Glittering… A thousand mountains…’ #2624.
p. 179
‘Beautiful Genoa… And now this is… You would certainly smile…’ #2624. Their companions stay in Pisa a month, then go on to Rome where Jameson researches her masterpiece, Sacred and Legendary Art. https://www.wantedinrome.com/news/tracing-the-footsteps-of-romes-foreign-writers-and-artists.html [retrieved 26 November 2019].
‘We have our dinners from the Trattoria…’ EBB to Julia Martin 5–9 November 1846, #2627.
p. 180
‘Infinitely more… We are going to be busy…’ #2624. ‘The ordering of the dinner…’ EBB to Mitford 5–8 November 1846, #2626.
p. 181
‘Lizards…’ #2627. ‘Won’t call me improved…’ #2626.
‘Towards evening…In the first moment…’ EBB and RB to Arabel and Henrietta MB 26 March 1847, #2663. ‘So dreadfully affected…’ EBB to Henrietta MB 31 March 1847, #2664.
p. 182
‘Wilson…’ #2663.
SEVENTH FRAME
p. 183
Gillian Rose, Preface in Judaism and Modernity: Philosophical Essays (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), p. v.
BOOK EIGHT
Epigraph
AL Bk 5, Ll. 227–29.
p. 185
‘I persuaded…’ EBB to Henrietta MB c.24–30 April 1847, #2670.
p. 186
‘& saucers &c &c…’ EBB to Arabella MB, 29–30 May 1847, #2680. ‘A bottle… A bad artist…’ EBB to Henrietta MB 23–24 November 1847, #2711. In 1849 Geddie marries her ‘bad artist’, becoming working partner to Rome-based Scottish painter and art-photographer Robert Macpherson (1814–72), and herself a photographer and engraver and eventually her aunt’s biographer. ‘Matrimonio…’ EBB to Henrietta MB [?24]–30 April 1847, #2670. Greetings: EBB to Arabella MB 6 May 1847, #2672.
Thomas Carlyle to RB, 23 June 1847, #2682; quoted in EBB to Henrietta MB 9 July 1847, #2684.
Curtis will write up his visit in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, September 1861, as an obituary. EBB to Henrietta MB 16 May 1847, #2678.
‘Half past ten…’ #2680.
p. 187
‘I dream…’ EBB to Arabella MB 12 April 1847, #2668. Brotherly contact: EBB to Henrietta MB 21–24 February 1848, #2719. Criticism: ‘That [Henry] shd be hindered in the legitimate & honorable desire of taking a step out into life for himself.’ EBB to Arabella MB 6 May 1847, #2672.
‘Disposed to scold…’ Henrietta MB to Samuel MB 14–15 July 1839, SD1018.
p. 188
Daisy’s bride, a Barrett cousin, is thought to have mental health problems. Stormie’s estate is Bryngwyn, in Montgomeryshire. R. A. Barrett, The Barretts of Jamaica. For Uncle Sam’s daughter see p. 184; for Stormie’s daughters see pp. 138–39, 181; for Sette’s daughter see p. 139.
EBB’s enjoyment: Frances Hanford to Frances Parthenope Nightingale 21 May 1847, SD1320.
p. 189
‘On their arrival…’ #2681. ‘We could not lead…’ EBB to RB 2 July 1846, #2455. The Ugolino connection is made later: EBB to Arabella MB 10–11 May 1848, #2731. ‘The eight windows…’ EBB to Arabella MB 26 July 1847, #2686.
p. 190
‘At about eight…
The green plaid…’ EBB to Arabella MB 6 May 1847, #2672.
‘We have taken Anunziata [sic] with us in our
‘Little front-caps…’ EBB to Henrietta MB 9 July 1847, #2684. Robert ‘hates ribbon, & prefers everything as simple & quiet as possible.’
‘Thin…’ EBB to Arabella MB 22–25 June 1847, #2681. ‘For above three hours… EBB to Arabella MB 13 September 1847, #2701.
p. 191
‘The windows…’ #2701. ‘Milky way…’ EBB to Henrietta MB 21–24 February 1848, #2719.
The ‘little baby-house’ is almost certainly number 8 Piazza de’ Pitti. EBB to Henrietta MB 23–24 November 1847, #2711. ‘Such tiny rooms! […] But the situation, .. nothing cd be perfecter than the situation […] a bad staircase, steep & narrow .. & on the second floor the people agreeing to take us for twenty scudi a month, that is four pounds, nine shillings—’: EBB to Henrietta MB 20 October 1847, #2707.
‘In came…’ #2719.
p. 192
‘My usual health…’ EBB to Mitford 22 February 1848, #2720. Morning sickness: #2719. EBB miscarries on 16 March. EBB to Henrietta MB 15 March to 1 April 1848, #2724. Possibly a sedentary life and low BMI mean light periods, hard to differentiate from problematic spotting. Though EBB thinks ‘there must be a great mistake in the time… Of course it is natural…’ #2720.
Casa Guidi Windows Part 1 Ll. 478–81, 516–22.
p. 193
Blackwood’s turns down the poem in October 1848. EBB supplies a limited number of notes for the first, book publication. Cooperative ideas realised as Ateliers Nationaux. ‘Really we are not communists…’ EBB to Kenyon 1 May 1848, #2730.
p. 194
‘As if the hope of the world…’ #2730.
The Globe and Traveller (10 June 1851), p. 2.
p. 195
‘Next summer we shall let…’ EBB to Arabella MB 10–11 May 1848, #2731.
She continues: ‘Florence is the cheapest place in Italy, which brings it to being the cheapest place in the world. Also this is the cheapest moment for Florence, through the panic.’
‘The carpet… We wanted… The bedrooms…’ EBB to Henrietta MB 18–20 November 1848, #2751.
p. 196
Again, perhaps at first EBB doesn’t realise she’s pregnant.
p. 197
Domett is Colonial Secretary 1862–63. ‘I cannot well…’ RB to Domett 22 May 1842, #964. Meeting Elizabeth: ‘I have some important objects in view with respect to my future life—’ RB to Alfred Domett 13 July 1846, #2483.
RB and EBB visit Dante’s tomb in the pre-dawn because they’re leaving for Florence and prefer travelling in the night cool. And because, not having registered the required paperwork, they aren’t actually allowed in. In 1810 Dante’s actual bones were hidden from the occupying French in a pillar in the adjoining cloister.
‘He looked east…’ EBB to Mitford 24 August 1848, #2744.
p. 198
Wilson also wants to call Dr Harding for RB. ‘Most active members…
Wineglass…’ EBB to Arabella MB 7–11 October 1848, #2748. EBB suspects quinsy too: EBB & RB to Mary Louisa Boyle 3 December 1848, #2754.
Mahony has nursing experience, from nursing in Cork Cholera Hospital during the 1832–33 epidemic. Thomas Francis Woodlock, Catholic Encyclopedia vol. 12 (1913 edition). https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Father_Prout [retrieved 11 June 2019].
‘He plants himself…’ #2748.
p. 199
‘Disagreeableness… Little dear…’ #2748. The couple have just one night off from Mahony in two months.
Vanity Fair completes a nineteen-part serialisation in Punch in July 1848. EBB reads it in volume form. EBB to Mitford 30 April 1849, #2787. The Fraserians, an 1835 group-portrait line drawing by Daniel Maclise, also includes Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, although they weren’t regular contributors. As for sententiousness, Virginia Woolf will be right to say that ‘the long years of seclusion had done [EBB] irreparable damage as an artist’. ‘I want to be…’ RB to EBB 3 August 1846 #2521. ‘Oh to be with you…’ RB to EBB 7 August 1846, #2529. ‘Society by flashes…’ #2792.
p. 200
‘Laughed a little…’ EBB to Henrietta MB 16 May 1847, #2678.
‘Robert came in from his walk the other evening with an “Ah, ha! I have been kissed by somebody since I saw you last.” I suppose he meant to make me dreadfully jealous; instead […] it came into my head that you and Arabel were in Florence […] Robert seeing me quite gasp for breath, hastened to explain that it was only his haunting friend, Father Prout,—who spending an hour or two in Florence on his road to Rome, of course met Robert, & kissed him in the street, mouth to mouth, a good deal to his surprise.’ EBB to Henrietta MB 23–24 November, 1847, #2711.
‘Mrs Jameson says…’ #2678. ‘A strange sort of person…’ Mitford to Charles Boner, 22 February 1847, SD1310.
‘At a young ladies’ school in Chelsea, Mary received an education strongly rooted in literature and French’: ‘Mary Russell Mitford (1787–1855)’ in The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 3, pp. 319–321.
‘Femmelette’ is used in Julien Chevalier’s L’inversion de l’instinct sexuel au point de vue médico-légal of 1885. Cited in Jeffrey Merrick, Bryant T. Ragan, Bryant T. Ragan, Jr, Homosexuality in Modern France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 159–60. G. R. Emile Batault’s 1885 categorisation of male hysterics in the Salpêtrière Hospital contrasts a ‘perfumed and pomaded femmelette’ with a ‘robust working man’ of healthy masculinity: G. R. Emile Batault, Contribution à l’étude de l’hystérie chez l’homme (Paris: republished Hachette, 2017). In the twenty-first century femmelette will be campily reappropriated by the French gay community, like the English ‘queer’.
p. 201
Alfred Domett also goes on to a scandalously passionate heterosexual relationship, apparently conducting an affair with his future wife, Mary George, a married Wellington school teacher for years. ‘Alfred Domett’ in Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1d15/domett-alfred [retrieved 14 June 2019]. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Nelson-14202 ‘The Church of England in the Early Days of Ahuriri’, Daily Telegraph, issue 5511, 27 April 1889 [retrieved 14 June 2019].
p. 202
‘I wd have sent…’ #2748. In the same letter EBB admits her tumble and describes Mahony: ‘Not over refined in the way of him, though so highly cultivated in intellectual respects. Then it is a grace in these fathers of the church, to be “fraternal” they think.’
‘The second life…’ EBB to Henrietta MB 18–20 November 1848, #2751.
p. 203
Righi ‘may get from forty to seventy pounds a year perhaps, which in Florence is a high point of prosperity.’ #2751. RB to Arabella MB and Henrietta MB 18 March 1849, #2779.
‘The nurse says…’ RB to Arabella MB and Henrietta MB 9 March 1849, #2776. ‘& I comforted myself…The first cry…’ EBB to Anna Jameson 30 April 1849, #2785. Birth announcement: #2776. ‘Her perfect goodness…’ #2779. ‘Little fellow…’ RB to Arabella MB and Henrietta MB 13 March 1849, #2778. Doesn’t breast-feed: ‘Tho’ Ba is inconvenienced a little […] seeing that she does not nourish the infant herself’. #2779.
p. 204
Looking for balie: #2778. ‘Mighty woman…’ #2779. ‘Nobody was ever…’
EBB to Mitford 10 October 1848, #2749. ‘Just because…’ EBB to Julia Martin 14 May 1849, #2791. RB’s mother was already unconscious when the news of the birth arrived.
Chapman and Hall has taken on both poets from the dilatory Moxon. ‘One heap…’ Mitford to Charles Boner, 22 February 1847, SD1310. ‘Lord Tennyson manfully tackled it, but […] “There were only two lines in it that I understood, and they were both lies; they were the opening and closing lines, ‘Who will may hear Sordello’s story told,’ and ‘Who would has heard Sordello’s story told!’ ” […] “My wife,” [Carlyle] writes, “has read through ‘Sord
ello’ without being able to make out whether ‘Sordello’ was a man, or a city, or a book.”’ William Sharp, Life of Robert Browning (London: Walter Scott Ltd, 1897) chapter 5, pp. 93–113.
The Eclectic Review (August 1849), pp. 203–14; The Atlas (13 January 1849), pp. 33–34; The English Review (June 1849), pp. 354–86; Graham’s American Monthly Magazine of Literature and Art (December 1849), pp. 378–79; The Mornng Post (9 February 1849), p. 6.
p. 205
‘So longingly…’ EBB to Henrietta MB 23–25 May 1849, #2793. ‘If your…’ EBB to Sarianna Browning 2 May 1849, #2789.
Christening: ‘Ba told me I should greatly oblige her by not only giving our child that name, but by always calling him by it.’ He has a Nonconformist’s christening ‘at the French Evangelical Protestant Church, being the chapel of the Prussian Legation at Florence’, RB to Sarianna Browning 2 July 1849, #2800. Moïse Droin, the Genevan-born progressive educationalist and pastor of the Lutheran Evangelical Church 1835–50, has published liturgical verse. That it’s actually the German Lutheran Evangelical Church we know from Claire Keller, Une passion italienne: Le général Ostermann-Tolstoï et Maria Pagliari (Geneva: Éditions Slatkine, 2016) page number not given: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gyIiCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT145&lpg=PT145&dq=Moïse+Droin&source=bl&ots=MwGYKIIhgm&sig=ACfU3U2DdPPX46kKg13BJ7zt4gb7fKkpeg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwias_iTgYXjAhX0QUEAHUXJBiw4ChDoATAFegQICRAB#v=onepage&q=Moïse%20Droin&f=false [retrieved 25 June 2019].
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