883. RB to Euphrasia Fanny Haworth
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 188–190.
Thursday Mg [16 December 1841] [1]
Dear Miss Haworth,
You are kindest of the kind, now and always. —I just remember having said something about wanting to know Etty [2] —but some owl-faced people perched opposite my desk and looked at me– I don’t know what I said—“that I worshipped Etty”? —Well, and why not—as well as Polidoro da Caravaggio? [3] But then “my worship is not like other men’s”—to quote Mr Poole’s friend’s play– Who is Mr P’s friend? —One who, quoth P., made somebody thus soliloquize—
I love her so—
That when I see that beauteous cheek of hers
I long to bite it as ye would a peach–
Nay, there’s no part in all my mistress[’] frame
But I could cut it off, devour it up ..
—To show my love is not like other men’s. [4]
(Very possibly I quote ill—I remember thro’ a mist of claret—) However, thank you, dear friend of mine—if I can I’ll call at this week’s end—(do I understand you that the note should precede me by post?) I am getting to love painting as I did once—do you know I was a young wonder (as are eleven out of the dozen of us) at drawing? My father had faith in me—and over yonder in a drawer of mine lies, I well know, a certain cottage and rocks in lead pencil and black currant jam-juice (paint being rank poison, as they said when I sucked my brushes)—with his (my father’s) note in one corner “RB ætat. 2 years 3 months—“How fast, alas, our days we spend– How vain they be, how soon they end!”– [5]
I am going to print “Victor,” however, by Feby [6] —and there is one thing not so badly painted there– —Oh, let me tell you—I chanced to call on Forster the other day—and he pressed me into committing verse on the instant, not the minute, in Maclise’s behalf—who has wrought a divine Venetian work, it seems, for the British Institution– Forster described it well—but I could do nothing better than this wooden ware (All the “properties,” as we say, were given—and the problem was how to cataloguize them in rhyme and unreason)——
I send my heart up to thee—all my heart
In this my singing!
For the stars help me, and the sea bears part,
—The very night is clinging
Closer to Venice’-streets to leave one space
Above me whence thy face
May light my joyous heart to thee—its dwelling place. [7]
Singing and stars and night and Venice streets in depths of shade and space and face and joyous heart are “properties,” do you please to see. And now tell me, is this below the average of Catalogue original poetry? Tell me—for to that end, of being told, I write it. (It is, I suppose in print now and past help)
I dined with dear Carlyle and his wife (catch me calling people “dear”, in a hurry, except in letter-beginnings!) yesterday—I dont know any people like them—there was a son of Burns’ there, Major Burns [8] whom Macready knows—he sung “Of all the airts”—“John Anderson”—and another song of his fathers.
I am forced to go and dress– I shall be very glad to see you when you return to Town—tho’ sure to do something or other snub-worthy—witness what you say about my absent thoughts—but I will do my endeavours.
Truly yours,
R Browning.
Publication: LRB, pp. 6–7 (as [ca. 30 December 1841]).
Manuscript: British Library.
1. Dated by the reference to RB’s dining with Carlyle, also mentioned in letter 884.
2. William Etty (1787–1849) studied with Sir Thomas Lawrence and then in Italy. He is now remembered mainly for the texture and coloration of his nudes.
3. Polidoro da Caravaggio (ca. 1500–43) executed a number of façade paintings in Rome, imitating classical reliefs; only drawings of these survive. His fresco in Rome’s S. Silvestro al Quirinale foreshadowed later landscapes in heroic style by such as Claude and Poussin.
4. John Poole (1786?–1872) was a prolific playwright, whose works, such as Paul Pry (1825) and ’Twixt the Cup and the Lip (1826), advanced the reputation of Charles Kemble, among others. We have not been able to identify his friend, or the quotation.
5. We have not located the source of this quotation.
6. DeVane (p. 97) gives the official publication date of King Victor and King Charles as 12 March 1842, but some copies must have been circulated prior to this, as the play was reviewed in The Spectator of 5 March (see pp. 400–401).
7. These are the first seven lines of “In a Gondola.” In a letter of 15 September 1881 to Furnivall, RB recounted how, without having seen Maclise’s painting, he composed these lines impromptu from Forster’s description of it. The Serenade was exhibited at the British Institution in 1842, and RB told Furnivall that, having seen it, he thought his lines “too jolly somewhat for the notion I got from Forster—and I took up the subject in my own way.” This he did by adding a further 226 lines and presenting a situation of his own devising; the revised version appeared in Dramatic Lyrics in November 1842.
8. It is not clear whether this reference is to William Nicol Burns (1791–1872) or to James Glencairn Burns (1794–1865); both reached the rank of colonel in the employment of the East India Company.
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