Casa Tolomei (Alia Villa), Bagni di Lucca:
August 10, [1853].

My dear Mr. Chorley,--I can't bear that you should intimate by half a
word that you are 'a creature to be eaten'--viz. not to have your share
in friendship and confidence. Now, if you fancy that we, for instance,
don't affectionately regard you, you are very wrong, and I am very right
for feeling inclined to upbraid you. I take the pen from Robert--he
would take it if I did not. We scramble a little for the pen which is to
tell you this--which is to say it again and again, and be dull in the
reiteration, rather than not instruct you properly, as we teach our
child to do--D O G, dog; D O G, dog; D O G, dog. Says Robert, 'What a
slow business!' Yet he's a quick child; and you too must be quick and
comprehending, or we shall take it to heart sadly. Often I think, and we
say to one another, that we belied ourselves to you in England. If you
knew how, at that time, Robert was vexed and worn!--why, he was not the
same even to _me_! He seemed to himself to be slipping out of waistcoats
and friends at once--so worn and teased he was! But then and now believe
that he loved and loves you. Set him down as a friend--as somebody to
'rest on' after all; and don't fancy that because we are away here in
the wilderness (which blossoms as a rose, to one of us at least) we may
not be full of affectionate thoughts and feelings towards you in your
different sort of life in London. So sorry we are--I especially, for I
think I understand the grief especially--about the household troubles
which you hint at and Mr. 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. How she praised the play, and
you! Twice I have spoken with her--once on a balcony on the boulevard,
when together we saw Louis Napoleon enter Paris in immediate face of the
empire, and that once in Florence. I like the 'manly soul' in her face
and manners. Manly, not masculine--an excellent distinction of Mrs.
Jameson's. By the way, we hear wonderful things of the portrait painted
of Miss Cushman at Rome by Mr. Page the artist, called 'the American
Titian' by the Americans....

There I stop, not to 'fret' you beyond measure. Besides, now that you
Czars of the 'Athenaeum' have set your Faradays on us, ukase and knout,
what Pole, in the deepest of the brain, would dare to have a thought on
the subject? Now that Professor Faraday has 'condescended,' as the
'Literary Gazette' affectingly puts it (and the condescension is
sufficiently obvious in the letter--'how we stoop!')--now that Professor
Faraday has condescended to explain the whole question--which had
offered some difficulty, it is admitted, to 'hundreds of intelligent
men, including five or six eminent men of science,' in Paris, and, we
may add, to thousands of unintelligent men elsewhere, including the
eminent correspondent of the 'Literary Gazette'--let us all be silent
for evermore. For my part, I won't say that Lord Bacon would have
explained any question to a child even without feeling it to be an act
of condescension. I won't hint under my breath that Lord Bacon
reverenced every _fact_ as a footstep of Deity, and stooped to pick up
every rough, ungainly stone of a fact, though it were likely to tear and
deform the smooth wallet of a theory. I, for my part, belong, you know,
not to the 'eminent men of science,' nor even to the 'intelligent men,'
but simply to the women, children (and poets?), and if we happen to see
with our eyes a table lifted from the floor without the touch of a
finger or foot, let no dog of us bark--much less a puppy-dog! The famous
letter holds us gagged. What it does not hold is the facts; but, _en
revanche_, the writer and his abettors know the secret of being
invincible--which is, not to fight. My child proposed a donkey-race
yesterday, the condition being that he should ride first. Somebody, told
me once that when Miss Martineau has spoken eloquently on one side of a
question, she drops her ear-trumpet to give the opportunity to her
adversary. Most controversies, to do justice to the world, are conducted
on the same plan and terms.

What I do venture however to say is that it's _not_ all over in Paris
because of Faraday's letter. _Ask Lamartine._ What I hear and what the
'Literary Gazette' hears from Paris is by no means the same thing. I
hear Hebrew while the 'Gazette' hears Dutch--a miracle befitting the
subject, or what was once considered to be the subject (I beg Professor
Faraday's pardon), before it was annihilated.

How pert women can be, can't they, Mr. Chorley? particularly when they
are safe among the mountains, shut in with a row of seven plane-trees
joined at top. I won't go on to offer myself as 'spiritual correspondent
to the "Athenaeum,"' though I have a modest conviction that it might
increase your sale considerably. Ah, tread us down! put us out! You will
have some trouble with us yet. The opposition Czar of St. Petersburg
supports us, be it known, and Louis Napoleon comes to us for oracles.
The King of Holland is going mad gently in our favour--quite absorbed,
says an informant. But I won't quote kings. It is giving oneself too
great a disadvantage.

We stayed in Florence till it was oven-heat, and then we came here,
where it was fire-heat for a short time, though with cool nights
comparatively, by means of which we lived, comparatively too. Now it is
cool by day and night. You know these beautiful hills, the green rushing
river which keeps them apart, the chestnut woods, the sheep-walks and
goat-walks, the villages on the peaks of the mountains like wild eagles;
the fresh, unworn, uncivilised, world-before-the-flood look of
everything? If you don't know it, you ought to know it. Come and know
it--do! We have a spare bedroom which opens its door of itself at the
thought of you, and if you can trust yourself so far from home, try for
our sakes. Come and look in our faces and learn us more by heart, and
see whether we are not two friends. I am so very sorry for your
increased anxiety about your sister. I scarcely know how to cheer you,
or, rather, to attempt such a thing, but it did strike me that she was
full of life when I saw her. It may be better with her than your fears,
after all. If you would come to us, you would be here in two hours from
Leghorn; and there's a telegraph at Leghorn--at Florence. Think of it,
do. The Storys are at the top of the hill; you know Mr. and Mrs. Story.
She and I go backward and forward on donkeyback to tea-drinking and
gossiping at one another's houses, and our husbands hold the reins. Also
Robert and I make excursions, he walking as slowly as he can to keep up
with my donkey. When the donkey trots we are more equal. The other day
we were walking, and I, attracted by a picturesque sort of ladder-bridge
of loose planks thrown across the river, ventured on it, without
thinking of venturing. Robert held my hand. When we were in the middle
the bridge swayed, rocked backwards and forwards, and it was difficult
for either of us to keep footing. A gallant colonel who was following us
went down upon his hands and knees and crept. In the meantime a peasant
was assuring our admiring friends that the river was deep at that spot,
and that four persons had been lost from the bridge. I was so sick with
fright that I could scarcely stand when all was over, never having
contemplated an heroic act. 'Why, what a courageous creature you are!'
said our friends. So reputations are made, Mr. Chorley.

Yes, we are doing a little work, both of us. Robert is working at a
volume of lyrics, of which I have seen but a few, and those seemed to me
as fine as anything he has done. We neither of us show our work to one
another till it is finished. An artist must, I fancy, either find or
_make_ a solitude to work in, if it is to be good work at all. This for
the consolation of bachelors!

I am glad you like Mr. Powers's paper. You would have 'fretted' me
terribly if you had not, for I liked it myself, knowing it to be an
earnest opinion and expressive of the man. I had a very interesting
letter from him the other day. He is devout in his art, and the simplest
of men otherwise....

Now, I will ask you to write to us. It is _you_ who give us up, indeed.
Will your sister accept our true regards and sympathies? I shall persist
in hoping to see her a little stronger next spring--or summer, rather.
May God bless you! I will set myself down, and Robert with me, as

Faithfully and affectionately yours,
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.