3155. RB to Richard Monckton Milnes
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 295–297.
Florence,
Dec. 27. ’52.
My dear Milnes,
You know you bade me let you know something about myself from time to time. A curious thing turns up here, which may interest you—I will get rid of it in fewer words than it deserves, for the friend who procures me the opportunity of carriage for the parcel sits here waiting for it. [1]
Cardinal Gualterio [2] was Papal Nuncio at Paris from 1700 to 1706. He returned there in 1712, in a private capacity. He was instituted “Cardinal Protector of England” subsequently, and acted in Rome as the confidential agent of the “King of Engd”;—the Pretender. [3] He died in 1728. His descendant, the Marchese Gualterio, [4] possesses the whole mass of his official and private correspondence—he talks broadly of “about 500 quarto volumes”—these include all the original despatches from the Papal Court to the Nuncio,—an unbroken series, together with copies of all papers transmitted thither by the Cardinal. The collection also includes a body of correspondence of the Nuncio’s nephew, Cardinal Luigi Gualterio, [5] himself Nuncio at Paris and Naples. Out of all this, the documents relating to the Stewarts exclusively would make, it is stated, six quartos—“a parlous contribution.” [6] The rest is the affair of the leading agents of the Pope in different parts of Europe. I suppose one rarely meets with such an occasion of inclining a curious eye upon these darknesses. I never saw the actual Gualterio, but the friend [7] who has had the rummaging of his inheritance is divided between admiration of such a Godsend, and fears lest any but ourselves profit by it—so he has told me all this and more—and brought me a sample of the same—there it cumbers the edge of my table (of marble, luckily)—letters about the “blessed majesty of England,” fresh as if the ink had dried last week. Of course, Gualterio wants to sell his ware—and I believe he has offered it to the British Museum: [8] if it ought to be secured to us, it ought—that’s all. And that one of those able to judge whether it ought, may have an inkling of the matter, I write this preliminary to the pamphlet which it accompanies—a sort of “saggio” [9] or Taste of the Contents which Gualterio has had privately printed (’ware this paternal government and its white-coated friends!) [10] —just a few copies, of which my friend brings me three—one for yourself, another quite naturally to the Italians’ everything in issimo [11] Lord Palmerston, and a third for Mr. Hallam, if you will please to commend it to him. [12] Letter 1. is surely interesting just now—and do note the characteristic impudence of the third one on the institution of the King of Prussia. [13]
I hope, and my wife, from our hearts that all your house prospers—will you remember us both to Mrs. Milnes? We have carried those pleasant sights of you a long way off, but we often refer to them and find them fresh and good as ever. We go on to Rome when we are well wearied from Florence (style of us family people!) What do you say of your Soulouque now? [14] Does he stick his knees into the real animal of France, or remain aloft, as you thought, bestriding after Sancho’s fashion, an imaginary Dapple—the empty saddle, to wit—some Gines de Passamonte having stolen the tame beast from under him while he slept? [15] No, they’re his—as I’m yours, dear Milnes, & quite as affectionately,
Robt Browning
Mr. Macaulay has general & special accounts & catalogues of the whole business. [16]
Publication: NL, pp. 55–57.
Manuscript: Trinity College, Cambridge.
1. As with letter 3154, “carriage” was provided by the British legation’s diplomatic pouch. The “friend” is presumably the same one mentioned below, James Montgomery Stuart, who had occupied a post at the legation since 1851.
2. Filippo Antonio Gualterio (1660–1728), Nuncio in Paris (1700–06) and Camerlengo of the Sacred College of Cardinals (1712–13). He was named “Cardinal Protector of Scotland” (1706) and “Cardinal Protector of England” (1717).
3. James Francis Edward Stuart (1688–1766), Prince of Wales, only son of James II, was known as the “Old Pretender.” Jacobites referred to him as James III.
4. Filippo Antonio Gualterio (1819–74), Marchese Gualterio, an Italian historian who later represented Orvieto in parliament. His photograph appears in EBB’s carte-de-visite album; see EBB-AB, II, 576.
5. Luigi Gualterio (1706–61), Nuncio in Naples (1744–53) and in France (1754–59), was created cardinal in 1759.
6. We have been unable to trace the source of this quotation.
7. James Montgomery Stuart. In Reminiscences and Essays (1884), pp. 15–18, he describes the role he played in the British Museum’s acquisition of the Gualterio papers.
8. The Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the years MDCCCLIV–MDCCCLX (printed by order of the Trustees, 1875) describes Add. MSS. 20,241–20,686, acquired in 1854, as follows: “The voluminous correspondence and official and partly private papers of Cardinal Filippo Antonio Gualterio … containing much relating to the affairs of James II and the elder Pretender; and of his nephew Cardinal Luigi Gualterio” (Notice, p. vi). James Montgomery Stuart prompted Henry Bulwer to write to Anthony Panizzi, then keeper of printed books at the museum, apprising him of the collection and presumably of the Marchese’s desire to sell (see Reminiscences and Essays, pp. 16–17). Stuart also recorded that the trustees of the museum eventually purchased the collection for “£1,200, a sum certainly above its real value” (p. 18).
9. “Sample” or “summary.”
10. i.e., the Grand Duke’s government and the Austrian army, whose uniforms were white.
11. Suffix for the superlative in Italian.
12. Milnes’s connections made him the right person to undertake these negotiations. He had been one of Arthur Hallam’s close friends at Cambridge and had easy access, therefore, to the father, Henry Hallam, the distinguished historian and a trustee of the British Museum. And Milnes, like his father, enjoyed the lifelong intimacy and friendship of Lord Palmerston. Palmerston was issimo to Italians because of his foreign policy opposing all European tyrannies, especially Austria.
13. Frederick William I became King of Prussia on 25 February 1713.
14. Faustin Soulouque (1782–1867), President of Haiti (1847–49), was proclaimed Emperor Faustin I in 1849. But not until April 1852 was he finally crowned, in an elaborate ceremony. He was forced to abdicate ten years later. RB is obviously alluding to Napoleon III who was proclaimed Emperor of the French on 2 December 1852.
15. Cf. Cervantes, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, 1605, pt. I, ch. 23.
16. These were transmitted to Thomas Babington Macaulay by Stuart (see Reminiscences and Essays, pp. 16–17).
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