3314. EBB to Anne Braun
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 49–50.
[Rome]
[January 1854] [1]
Dearest Mme Braun,
Robert was to give you the paper you allowed us to read at the lecture today, and took it away in his pocket for that purpose.
We think it excellently adapted to the Athenæum, & advise you to put it into Mrs Jameson’s hands as the most favorable instrument possible to such an end. [2] Such a series as you propose, would be very acceptable I should fancy to the journal in question, & interesting to its readers, artists or amateurs—& Mrs Jameson would see this at a glance– Still, if for any reason unapparent to me, you would prefer our intervention, we shall have real pleasure in doing this little business for you with Mr Chorley– So use us, as we can be useful– Consider.
What makes us prefer Mrs Jameson’s instrumentality for you, is simply that Mr Chorley kept a m∙s of Mr Powers’s, [3] which we sent to him, some six months before he printed it, and never seemed to think of payment. To be sure we said nothing about the scudi.
You will see in the paper of yours Robert has in his pocket, a few pencil marks .. suggestions of mine– For instance .. would it not be well to put the English instead of Latin names? Then I took the liberty of criticising an expression .. “the actual reality” .. which struck me as a pleonasm.
Ever your affectionate
EBB
Publication: None traced.
Source: Transcript in editors’ file.
1. Dating suggested by EBB’s references to Mrs. Braun’s “paper,” intended for The Athenæum, and to the “lecture” the Brownings attended. In a letter to Mrs. Jameson, dated 24 February [1855], EBB writes: “Madme. Braun sent you last winter a paper on Overbeck” (ms at Wellesley). EBB went out frequently in the first three and a half weeks of January 1854, but cold weather forced her to remain at home during the last part of December and nearly all of February.
2. Mrs. Braun’s “paper” appeared in The Athenæum of 3 June 1854 (no. 1388, pp. 692–693) under the title “M. Cornelius in Rome” and signed “B.” Since EBB later referred to the article as a “paper on Overbeck” (Friedrich Overbeck, 1789–1869, German painter), one assumes that it was severely edited. What remains is a detailed description of Peter von Cornelius’s design, commissioned by the King of Prussia, for a fresco depicting “the moment preceding that of the Last Judgment” (p. 693).
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