2948. RB to William Allingham
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 107–108.
26. Devonshire St
Sept 23. ’51.
Dear Mr Allingham, [1]
Although I had been duly informed in Italy of your kindness in sending us your Poems, [2] I saw nothing of them, beyond an occasional extract in the reviews, till our return to London some weeks ago. I judged pretty accurately from the scraps, what the whole feast would be—and can honestly congratulate you on the power, beauty & freshness of very many of your productions. Certainly no one of the Poets that have come forward within the last few years exhibits so much promise & performance together—& this poor opinion of mine is bettered by its entire coincidence with that of my wife. So go on courageously for everybody’s sake, & God speed you!
What ought we to say,—my wife & I,—of your flowery baptism of our two selves? She, in virtue of her lily-of-the-valleyship, may characteristically bow her head & say nothing—but I, the bolder blossom, [3] —what is left me but to remind you that Mrs Malaprop’s avowal “Pardon my cameleon blushes—I am Dalia,” [4] is good precedent for one who if not Dahlia is Tiger-lily. Now you know that, as the day’s paper testifies, whenever people front the world in London-streets in “full Bloomer costume,” they have to “retreat to a Cab” in quick time– [5] Suppose, therefore, that your Tiger has jumped up behind yours, as the way is, & that touching his hat gratefully he mutely signifies how entirely he is,
Dear Mr Allingham,
Yours faithfully ever
Robert Browning.
Publication: Letters to William Allingham, ed. Helen P. Allingham and E. Baumer Williams (London, 1911), pp. 94–95.
Manuscript: R.H. Taylor Collection.
1. William Allingham (1824–89), Irish poet, born in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, eldest son of William Allingham and his wife Elizabeth (née Crawford). He became a friend and correspondent of the Brownings, as well as of Tennyson, Carlyle, and D.G. Rossetti.
2. Poems (1850), a copy of which, inscribed “To Mr. & Mrs. Browning—with Mr. Allingham’s compliments,” sold as lot 328 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A52).
3. In Poems (1850) Allingham refers to RB as a tiger lily in “Poets and Flowers: Fourth Guess” (pp. 242–243) and to EBB as an “aspiring, shrinking Lily of the Vale” in “Poets and Flowers: A Parting Posy” (p. 295).
4. Cf. Sheridan, The Rivals (1775), V, 3, 199.
5. In an article entitled “Bloomerism in Belgravia” in The Morning Herald (23 September 1851), it was reported that as “two young ladies, apparently of the ages 18 and 22, attired in the new costume … promenaded in this aristocratic locality … they attracted the attention of some stablemen … who immediately bore down with rude laughter upon the unfortunate Bloomers, which being observed by them, a cab coming up Eccleston-street was hailed, into which they all got” (p. 5).
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