Obtención de la espuma floral que cumpla con los parámetros para su comercialización con ayuda del programa STATGRAPHICS Centurion

God’s goodness she appears quite well; weak, certainly, as compared to persons in ordinary health,

but with no other ailment perceptible. A few days ago, she seem ed to have caught a slight cold— (thro’ her kind care o f Wilson, who has been ill as I am sure Ba w ill have told you )— but yesterday & today the few symptoms o f aching &c have disappeared. Dr Cook, the physician w e called in to W ilson, w ho had seen Ba just on his arrival, expressed his surprize & delight at the manifest

improvement in her appearance— and he observed to W ilson, “this com es o f a visit to Pisa in

tim e''’— (he is learned in pulmonary disease and has written a book about it^^— he has just returned,

moreover, from England— “where the cold was intense” he said[)]. Here, also, the cold has been considerable, and w e are too indebted to the good already produced by the climate, to peril it by going out rashly at this (as we hope) the winter’s end: but I trust and believe that, with the stock o f strength p re se rv e d thro’ the winter w e shall so profit by the com ing fine weather, as to need fear no relapse. Ba sleeps admirably— and is steadily dim inishing the doses o f morphine, quite as much as is prudent. I daresay she explained to you the cause o f the Apothecary’s mistake

about the prescription,^^ at the beginning— he really believed his morphine to be so superior to

what w e could get in England that he felt h im self bound to diminish the quantity— ever since, his performances have been unexceptionable— indeed, he is said to be one o f the best Chymists in Italy. What, I think, you would be most struck with in Ba, is the strengthened v o ic e - W ilson

hears it, she says, thro’ her door and ours.

I

however— no words can convey the entire sweetness, unselfishness o f that dear nature! Yet

I

have been used to the kindest o f natures, and am by no means likely to err from excess o f indulgence to any one.^®

You found fault, I am told, with our midnight attendance at Mass on Christmas ev e— but w e took great precautions and the Cathedral is but a few paces from our house. When the weather

permits (and not before) w e hope to make an excursion to Sienna, C olie, and Volterra,^^— fine old Etruscan cities, one & all. In the meantime, w e are in Carnival season, and I saw full h alf a dozen masqueradors [5/c] yesterday,— a more effective sermon on the vanity o f human pleasure you would not w ish to hear! It may grow better by and bye. There is to be a grand affair in August, a service to a particular picture o f the Virgin “Sotto gli Organi”^® which, they say, saved this city from the earthquakes last year— but we shall be away. I believe I have filled my envelope without telling you very much, but another time I shall succeed better. Know me for your most affectionate

R B - Address, in EBB's hand, on integral page: (To the care o f Miss Trepsack) / Miss Arabel Barrett / 5 - Upper

Montagu Street / Montagu Square.

Publication: BC, 14, 121-128.

Manuscript: Berg Collection.

1. Year provided by postmark and the dated continuation in R B’s hand.

2. According to Murray’s Hand-Book f o r Travellers in Northern Italy (London: John Murray, 1847), Bagni di Lucca is “about 15 miles from Lucca” (p. 415).

3. This is one o f the earliest known statements o f account o f sales o f either o f the Brownings’ poetry. 4. Early in the courtship correspondence, RB mentioned the possibility o f the two poets writing something together, and EBB responded that she “should like it for some ineffable reasons” {BC, 10, 204). This is the first o f several references in the letters to Arabella that they intended to produce a book together “with our separate signatures,” as EBB noted a month later in letter 10. They must have been discussing the idea about this time; in a letter to Moxon o f 24 February 1847, RB wrote that “Providence helping, my w ife and 1 want to print a book as well as our betters, after what we think a new and good plan” {BC, 14, 135). EBB makes no further reference to Arabella about such a scheme after May 1847 (see letter 13); although in September 1847 she told Thomas Westwood “you may have the ‘joint volume’ you kindly desire” {BC, 14, 299), which indicates that he might have anticipated their plan and suggested that the two write something together.

5. In Voyage en Italie (Paris: E. Bourdin, 1839), Jules Janin gives an account o f his lottery success in a chapter entitled “La Palazzina Lazzarini,” the name o f the house he won near Lucca.

6. In the fifth letter RB ever wrote to EBB, he began: “Real warm Spring, dear Miss Barrett, and the birds know it; and in Spring 1 shall see you, surely see you .. for when did I once fail to get whatever I had set my heart upon?—as 1 ask m yself sometimes, with a strange fear” {BC, 10, 97).

7. A reference to La Belle Assemblée, or Court and Fashionable Magazine and to The World o f Fashion and Continental Feuilletons, both o f which would have fit EBB’s implication here o f a publication comprised o f writing in the style o f the blue-stocking school.

8. Charles Babbage (1792-1871), a mathematician and inventor o f an elaborate calculating machine, made several extended visits to Italy, including attendance at a “scientific congress o f Turin in 1840, when he was received with singular and unexpected favour by the king, Charles Albert” {DNB). Kenyon and Babbage had been acquainted fbr many years; EBB wrote to her brother George in 1841 that their father had met Babbage at a dinner at Kenyon’s house {BC, 5, 31), and RB met Babbage at Talfourd’s in July 1846 (see BC, 13, 144). Antonio Panizzi (1797-1879) had become assistant librarian o f the British Museum in 1831, and keeper o f printed books shortly afterwards in 1837. Acquisition o f the Grenville library in 1846 was mostly due to his efforts, and he was largely responsible for the design o f the round Reading Room o f the British Museum.

9. Unidentified. 10. See letter 3, note 1.

11. Mary Frances Graham-Clarke (afterwards Wilmer, b. 1845) was the only child o f Isabella and Leonard Graham-Clarke. EB B’s allusion to his conduct is unclear, but it might refer to his subsequent marriage to Lavinia Horsford.

12. Mary Hunter (b. 1826) was the daughter o f George Barrett Hunter (d. 1857). Hunter had been Minister o f the March Independent Chapel in Sidmouth, where EBB became acquainted with him in 1832. He left the Marsh Chapel in 1834, and took up itinerant preaching in that area. Hunter was married, but his w ife suffered from some form o f mental illness, and must have been institutionalized. EBB admired Hunter’s eloquent preaching, as well as his sympathetic interests in poetry and literature, and they soon became good friends. Eventually, however, EBB became weary o f Hunter’s bitterness over her success in the literary world. Mary Hunter was always a favourite with EBB, as well as with Arabella. Hunter, and his daughter Mary, eventually settled in Ramsgate, Kent (see letter 66, note 13), but according to The Congregational Year-Book (1855) he retired from Ramsgate in 1854 to Beer, Devon.

13. EBB sent Blackwood's Edinburgh M agazine eight sonnets. Four o f them appeared in the May 1847 issue: “Life,” “Love,” “Heaven and Earth. 1845,” and “The Prospect. 1845.” Four more appeared in the June 1847 issue: “Two Sketches” (depicting her sisters Henrietta and Arabella), “Mountaineer and Poet,” and “The Poet.”

14. See letter 3, note 21.

15. The Republic o f Cracow had been an independent state since the Congress o f Vienna in 1815, but the Austrian government sent troops to Cracow in March 1846, and in November 1846 it was incorporated into the Austrian empire. Despite the protests o f other countries, especially England and France, it remained under Austrian rule until 1918, when it was returned to Poland.

16. On 10 October 1846, Queen Isabella II o f Spain and her sister Luisa Fernanda, the Infanta, married the Duke o f Cadiz and the Duke o f Montpensier, respectively. The French and English governments had previously agreed that the marriage o f the Infanta to Montpensier was not to have taken place until after the Queen’s marriage. For this reason, Guizot, Louis Philippe’s minister, was accused o f deceit in the affair. He also saw the advantage o f the triumph as a political victory for his party, as well as feeling a sense o f personal pride because o f his dislike for Palmerston. Despite initial success, these events led to the fall o f Guizot and the Orleans monarchy the following year. Both poets make passing references to Guizot in their poetry: EBB in Aurora Leigh, IV, 402, and RB in “Respectability,” line 22.

17. EBB’s brother, Octavius, was studying with Charles Barry (1795-1860), the architect chosen to design the new Houses o f Parliament. Drawings by Octavius made during this period were given to the British nation by members o f the Moulton-Barrett family (see BC, 1, 296).

18. Georgiana Elizabeth (“Lizzie”) Barrett (1833-1918), was the only daughter o f George Goodin Barrett (1792-1854) and his wife Elizabeth Jane {née Turner, 1800-86), who was placed in a lunacy asylum soon after her daughter’s birth. Lizzie was a frequent visitor o f the Barrett household, and is first mentioned being with them in Torquay in 1838. When her father and brother left England in 1840 to look after their Jamaican affairs, Lizzie was placed in a boarding school near Wimpole Street, and EB B’s father was her unofficial guardian. She was the subject o f EBB’s poem, “A Portrait,” published in Poems ( 1844). Except for a valentine greeting addressed from EBB, Henrietta, and Arabella in 1844 (see BC, 8, 200), there are no extant letters between EBB and Lizzie.

19. As in letter 4 (see note 5), this passage calls to mind the imagery in “A Lovers’ Quarrel,” although the poets had yet to discover the sources o f their quarrelling.

20. Mary Anne Russell (18167-70); she was a sister o f Sir William Russell (see BC, 11, 298) and o f Emma and Jane Munro. EB B’s cousin, Arabella Sarah Butler, had married Allen Ralph Gosset in 1835.

21. The first public demonstration o f the use o f sulphuric ether as an anaesthesia was made by William Thomas Green Morton (1 8 1 9 -6 8 ), a dentist from Massachusetts, on 16 October 1846. Robert Liston was the first Englishman to demonstrate its use in an amputation at University C ollege Hospital on 21 December 1846. EBB mentions “chloroform and ether-gas” in Casa Guidi Windows, I, 695.

22. EB B’s uncle by marriage, Richard Butler, and her cousin Samuel Goodin Barrett (1 812-76), with his wife Susanna Maria (néeBell, 1816-1904) and their family, were residing outside England to avoid creditors and imprisonment. EBB is apparently referring to the “Act to abolish the Court o f Review on Bankruptcy, and to make alterations in the Jurisdiction o f the Courts o f Bankruptcy and Court for R elief o f Insolvent Debtors,” a new act which was being debated by Parliament. It became law in July 1847, but it would not have affected EBB’s family members since its advantage was to creditors who could recover small debts without great cost. Imprisonment for debt was not abolished until 1869.

23. Cf. Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1711), line 372: “Not so, when swift Camilla scours the Plain.” 24. An allusion to Nicholas 1 (1796-1855), who reigned as Czar from 1825 until his death; he was known for his obstinate and tyrannical nature.

25. RB did not learn the day and month o f EBB’s birth, 6 March, until August 1885 (see Reconstruction,

A232, now at Eton). RB was informed o f the year, 1806, by her brother George in November 1887 (H a rp er’s Monthly Magazine, March 1916, p. 530).

26. See note 3 in the preceding letter.

27. EBB explained this incident in the preceding letter, and told Arabella that the Italian pharmacist “was startled at the quantity” in EBB’s case.

28. This is an interesting—and somewhat unusual—aside in reference to R B ’s family.

29. Volterra and Colle are southwest o f Florence. According to Murray’s A Hand-Book f o r Travellers in Central Italy (London: John Murray, 1850), “travellers returning from Volterra to Florence may proceed through Pontedera and Empoli. The distance is 66 miles, about 20 more than that through Colle and Poggibonsi; but it is more level than that route” (p. 204). Poggibonsi is a little more than halfway between Florence and Siena. Volterra is noted for its Etruscan architecture as it “was one o f the most powerful o f the twelve confederate cities o f Etruria” (EB), and Murray’s claims that it “retains more o f its ancient character than any other Etruscan settlement” (p. 194). Although EBB mentions the possibility o f visiting Volterra in numerous letters, they never went there. In a letter to Isa Blagden, dated 1 October 1871, RB wrote: “... thus 1 never saw — (after fourteen years o f intention to see)—Volterra, St Gimignano or Certaldo, Pistoja, and other points o f great interest to m e,—Ba could not go, 1 could not leave her” (DI, p. 368).

30. The ''Madonna delTOrgano, the object o f Catholic devotion . .. is a Greek painting, and was venerated at Pisa before 1224, and may possibly be as old as the first foundation o f the present building” (Murray’s Hand- Book, p. 445). Another guide-book to Pisa calls it the “Madonna di sotto gli Organi” and says it has been attributed to Francesco Curradi (Nuova Guida di Pisa, Pisa: Nistri, 1843, p. 93).