Correspondence

3330.  RB to Maria Rosalie Hamilton

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 86.

[Rome]

Friday Mg. [ca. February 1854] [1]

My dear Mrs Hamilton, [2]

You are quite right to give up all thought of statues, or anything that is marble and cold, this sad day. Tomorrow I am equally at your orders and with the greatest pleasure.

Yours faithfully,

Robert Browning.

Address, on integral page: Mrs Hamilton.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

1. Approximate dating suggested by reference to letter 3405, in which EBB introduces Mrs. Hamilton to Robert Maxwell Hanna, and by RB’s implication that the weather was cold. In letter 3361 EBB speaks of a “severe six weeks” of cold weather that began in the last week of January.

2. Maria Rosalie Hamilton (née Colbiörnsen, 1793–1878) married on 24 April 1809 at Tranquebar, India, Alexander Hamilton Kelso Hamilton (1783–1853), of the East India Civil Service. In the year of his marriage he changed his surname to Hamilton when he succeeded to the properties of his maternal uncle, Alexander Hamilton, of The Retreat, Devon. Following her husband’s death, Mrs. Hamilton travelled to Rome with her daughters and later to Florence where they joined her sons. She is listed in the Brownings’ address book of this period (AB-3) at 96 Via del Babuino.

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