4003. Frederick Tennyson to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 71–72.
Pisa.
May. 23. /57.
My dear Browning,
I suppose that by this time you will have received the barrel of Trapani wine [1] which I requested Morandi [2] to send you– Product of the fires blown by the bellows of the Cyclops, [3] if existing during the existence of the Mother of the Earth, it might have been poured out on her altars — As She is not; & the wine certainly is—as often as I drink it I think of your last book, [4] strong drink for strong men, but untinctured with indigestible spirit—& as often as you drink it, with or without the adjunct which I recommended, may you increase in strength & purity — Materially speaking, I should certainly recommend about a third of some lighter & more aromatic wine to be added to every glass. Burgundy-flavor’d—if possible– St Georges [5] for instance, a wine which I can get here for 20 Crazie [6] a bottle—a wine with the true Burgundian bouquet—and which married to the volcanic Sicilian begets a tertium Quid on the palate which If you despise I shall think myself contemptible.
I have just read Ba’s Book [7] with a pleasure & benefit impossible to be described– I don’t know when I have received so much pleasure from any book — Throughout I hear her talking—loving & wise– May we never lose her—& O Browning, write me a line to let me know if she is recovered– Though I said little to you I have thought much of her griefs– It is a sad & incurable case therefore let us love her the more–
Ever yours
F Tennyson
My love to Bellosguardo– [8]
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: The Pennsylvania State University.
1. i.e., Marsala, the fortified wine named for the town in the Trapani province of northwest Sicily. It was “invented” in 1773 by John Woodhouse, an English merchant, who added grape spirit to barrels of the local wine before shipping them to England (see The Oxford Companion to Wine, ed. Jancis Robinson, 4th ed., Oxford, 2015, p. 450).
2. Unidentified.
3. Tennyson suggests that the wine was fermented in volcanic fire. In Vergil’s Georgics, “the Cyclopes in haste forge bolts from tough ore, some with oxhide bellows make the blasts come and go, others dip the hissing brass in the lake, while Aetna groans under the anvils laid upon her” (Georgics, IV, 170–175, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough). In this and subsequent quotations from, or references to, Greek and Latin classical authors, citations are from the Loeb Classical Library unless otherwise indicated.
4. Men and Women (1855).
5. A Burgundy from the village of Nuits-St. Georges in the Côte-de-Nuits, the premier wine-growing region in the northern part of the Côte-d’Or.
6. A little over a shilling.
7. Aurora Leigh (1856).
8. i.e., to Isa Blagden and her circle.
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