3180. EBB & RB to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 18–22.
| [In RB’s hand] | Florence, |
March 17. ’53.
My dear Mr Kenyon,
We were, both Ba & I, very happy to have your letter. You have been ill & shut up for a month—see how England kept its word of menace to you!. But it would have been too much to have you in London last year & in Florence this spring—let us pass it to next year’s account of funds in dream-land. We know all about your engagements & whether you think of us or no—don’t fancy we want you to write long, or often, or ever .. if there were any other way of learning, for example, whether the sad weather that must have set in just when you wrote last, has brought back that bronchitis, or any thing like it. May we take no (prompt) answer,—for a sign that it has not done so? [1] “So find we profit from losing of our prayers” [2] —even those prayers we don’t put up. Our two selves here—three, indeed—are very well, quiet & busy. There was snow for a day,—rain in abundance,—hardly cold enough for health,—and lo, winter is gone, and one turns back ere half at the end of the riverside walk by the Cascine, so warm & Junelike is the sun & blue sky. Here the “one” is not Ba yet,—but I & Frederic[k] Tennyson,—the eldest Brother,—whom we have got to know & like very much—the last being the easier matter of the two. He is to the Poet what a solution is to the chrystals which it ends in producing—the same temperament of thought & feeling, unconcentrated by the accident of the wire—(don’t chrystals come so?) [3] He comes of an evening every now & then. We see, also, Bulwer’s son—very likeable also, in his way, & striking. Of late, we had several visits from the Marshes—(he is the U.S. minister at Constantinople—full of kindness & interest. They have just left for Athens—(whither should you incline to go, and want a courier & “governante,” these last, when once arrived, can find a lodging of their own!) Other good americans, and american-minded people look in, [4] and so runs the season away. But we work beside, as Arabel tells you truly, Ba’s last edition is out—there’s for you! And another called for—which she is correcting and despatching—one volume being gone & the next to follow directly. Let herself say what she is about beside. I am trying if I can’t take people’s ears at last, by the lyrical tip,—if they have one,—and make songs & such like at a great rate—that being your presidency in my “works”—at all events, I do my best & think I may have found out and set right some old cranks & hitches which used to stop my success so cruelly. [5] Meanwhile, do you know, there comes a pretty letter from Helen-Faucit that was, Martin that is, asking leave to act an old thing of mine, Colombe, next April at the Haymarket—there is a new management, with this promising beginning! I said “yes,” gladly enough—for the play having been in print these ten years, the players dealing with it can be but a compliment, at worst,—while a very little success would advertise the volumes it stands in. So, look out next month for the Haymarket’s doings—& wish me well, as you will! Poor Forster must hear of it from myself—I will trouble you with a word for him. Chapman told me in his letter (about Ba’s edition) that he was too likely to relapse—how unfortunate! [6] He has been overworking himself, no doubt. All is well & most well at Paris, thank God! The salary has been formally & irrevocably accorded, [7] —in the kindest manner, with a special message “of their warm wishes for many years of life to enjoy it in.” I make no doubt that at no very distant time I shall be able to buy off, for a trifle, the bar to return, if that should be a comfort to him. [8] He is well & happy—a family, [9] whose acquaintance we made during our stay, is untiring in good offices & sympathy for Sarianna,—and all prospers.
Now of the “Andrea” you would have copied. I have made the proper enquiries. I know the picture well and esteem it just as you do. [10] It should be well copied. The business of copying is carried on with remarkable rascality here. Such an one, for instance, is in vogue: do you order a picture of him? It is, nine-tenths of it, painted by one of his dozen assistants—& the final-touch put in by himself—which, as that touch is like to be an inventive one, might better be wanting. I think I find a man as fit as any who will do the whole conscientiously & well—a Roman & able to draw. But I think he asks too much—for he considers two heads as two pictures, and wants 100 dollars [11] for them. (I need not say, I have simply enquired his terms) He has 80, he says, for a copy of the “Flora,” [12] just finished. It will take him six weeks labor, and four months’ waiting at the Pitti,—ere his turn of admission comes. How say you? I confess,—as you bid me, that my heart bleeds at the notion of so many good ducats going for any copy whatever of a picture that is ever in evidence in a safe place, referable-to, come-at-able—while there be great, non-replaceable works, originals, to be secured now or never, which twice or thrice the sum would secure. There is one such I have had my eye on this long while: do you remember when we were at Hampton Court you spoke of the “Venus & Cupid,” by Pontormo, from the cartoon of M. Angelo? [13] —It is glorified in Vasari (see life of Pontormo) as a wonder of wit—as it surely is—for its heroic action & feeling: [14] well, that at Hampton Court is a repetition only, at best—the original is here,—I have every reason to believe—“authenticated in its passage from the family for whom it was painted”—if the possessor says truly. It is too “nude” for the sinful dealers– May they dwell with Carlo Dolci forever. [15] I had rather you had it than any picture now on sale in Florence, I know. Unless you liked, more than I am altogether sure that you do, Ghirlandajo & Frater Philippus [16] —good things of whom are still extant at Metzger’s [17] —who, by the way, I verily believe, has discovered the precious little picture by Giotto, of which Vasari says so much, and how he heard Michelagnolo admire it to heart’s content—“the death of the Virgin”—missing from S. Spirito in Vasari’s time, [18] and supposed to be recovered in England—that is, a picture was engraved as this of Giotto’s which was by Fra Angelico [19] —the most purely unlike of men! Now, why won’t Sir Charles Eastlake look after this, and see how the truth is? [20] Lord J. Russell recommended that the old masters be collected, I observe. [21] And now, to descend rapidly—to your Bust .. for, you must forgive me, it is yours now—the refusal came too late—the thing was packed and consigned duly—it will arrive in a week or two, and you have simply to send it to your villa and think when you see it that I wish it better. You say I value it more than you will—now, that’s true, probably, for a reason I did not tell you before—do you know, Ba & I always fancied it like you—yes, yourself, in several respects; the brow & head are not like, fortunately—but these apart,—(and all the expression, alas!) is there not a likeness—& think, the man is dead, gone, and nameless since so many years!– For the inscription is a fanciful one—“Eustachius Venusinus.” [22] I know of no such Eustachius—only take it as Roman—said poor Greenough, (a judge) and Powers—and intact—and like you, to say the best last. Kirkup thought it hardly Roman “because of the whiskers”– I have seen many examples of them in indubitable antiques. Here I will leave off—where is the room for Ba?
Ever yours most affectionately,
RB.
[Continued by EBB]
Will you say to Miss Bayley, dearest Mr Kenyon, that I have gladly received her letter & will thankfully answer it another day. Meanwhile I do wonder how you are, for the “meteorological report” as I see it from England in the Galignani makes me fear for you indeed. [23] What punishment follows oathbreaking, you who promised to come to Italy in February (was’nt it February) & never came!– God bless you– Be well for all our sakes–
Your most affectionate Ba–
I will ask you to let your servant take this note to the post for Mrs Jameson, who has sent us her Madonna.
Do you know I am uneasy about Miss Mitford. She does not seem to rally from the accident you of course have heard of– Why does she not rally?
Wilson is very pleased by your remembrance of her– Oh—always kind you are!–
Address, on cover sheet, in RB’s hand: John Kenyon Esqre / 39. Devonshire Place, / Regent’s Park.
Publication: Studies in Browning and His Circle, 1 (Fall 1973), 52–53 (in part).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. In SD1641 John Kenyon writes: “I have been shut up—three or four weeks—with my usual bronchitis—but am now well again.”
2. Cf. Antony and Cleopatra, II, 1, 7–8.
3. Andrew Crosse (1784–1855), a good friend of John Kenyon’s, had discovered many years before that he could form crystals by passing a weak electrical current through an appropriate solution. In Memorials, Scientific and Literary, of Andrew Crosse, the Electrician (1857), edited by his wife, he describes the process (p. 42).
4. One of the “good americans” was Hiram Powers. Among the “american-minded people,” may have been Jane Wills-Sandford.
5. RB was working on poems that would appear in Men and Women (1855).
6. See 3175, note 6.
8. The “bar to return” was an £800 judgment against him; see letter 3060, note 2.
9. The Corkrans. RB had told Kenyon this in letter 3160.
10. RB refers to “The Artist and His Wife,” a painting in the Pitti Palace, attributed at that time to Andrea del Sarto (1486–1530) and thought to represent the painter and his wife Lucrezia. Many years later, writing to The Academy, F.J. Furnivall reported a conversation he had with RB: “I asked Mr. Browning whether the Pitti picture had suggested his poem to him, and, to my delight, he said, yes, it had” (26 November 1881, p. 403). Kenyon’s request for a copy of the work was also discussed, and RB remarked that when “none could be got,” he wrote “‘Andrea del Sarto’ from the picture, and sent it to Mr. Kenyon instead of the copy of the Pitti original” (p. 403). In an article on this subject, Julia Markus questions the credibility of Furnivall’s letter to The Academy, as there is no evidence to support it (see “Browning’s ‘Andrea’ Letter at Wellesley College: A Correction of DeVane’s Handbook,” Studies in Browning and His Circle, 1, Fall 1973, 52–55). In his Andrea del Sarto: Catalogue Raisonné (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), S.J. Freedberg places the work in the “Attributed Paintings” section under the title Portrait of a Man and Wife and comments: “The attribution has been doubted at least since … 1835 … and more often rejected out of hand” (p. 223).
11. Commonly referred to as Spanish dollars or Roman dollars, one was then equivalent to about nine Tuscan pauls or about 4 English shillings (see Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Northern Italy, 1852, p. 395).
12. “Flora” (ca. 1515) by Titian, in the Uffizi, Florence.
13. The “Venus and Cupid” is one of two paintings that Jacopo da Pontormo (1494–1556), a student of Andrea del Sarto, made from cartoons by Michelangelo. It is now in the Accademia delle Belle Arti, Florence. The painting at Hampton Court Palace, a copy, has been attributed to Giorgio Vasari (1511–74).
14. We have been unable to confirm these remarks in Vasari. However, he did write the following about the “Venus and Cupid”: “It being seen how highly Michelagnolo esteemed Pontormo and how excellently the latter executed the designs of the former, Bartolommeo Bettini induced his friend Michelagnolo to make a cartoon of a nude Venus with a cupid kissing her, to be painted by Pontormo and put in the middle of a room of his … . Jacopo [Pontormo] executed this cartoon at his ease, in a style known to all the world, so that I need not stop to praise it” (Vasari’s Lives of the Painters, translated by A.B. Hinds, 1927, III, 249).
15. Carlo Dolci (1616–86), Florentine painter of highly-finished, pious subjects. In “Old Pictures in Florence” (Men and Women, 1855), RB refers to him as “clay-cold, vile Carlino” (line 232).
16. Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio (1483–1561) and Fra Filippo Lippi (1406?–69) were both Florentine painters.
17. A reference to Ludwig Metzger, an art dealer whose place of business was his apartment in Palazzo Ginori. His father Johann Metzger (1772–1844) had started the business in the early part of the century, “acting as agent and dealer for Crown Prince Ludwig, later King Ludwig I of Bavaria” (John Fleming, “Art Dealing in the Risorgimento II,” The Burlington Magazine, 121, August 1979, 497).
18. According to Vasari, “When this book of the Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, was first published, there was a small picture in distemper, in the transept of the church belonging to the Umiliati, which had been painted by Giotto with infinite care. The subject was the death of the Virgin, with the Apostles around her, and with the figure of Christ, who receives her soul into his arms. This work has been greatly prized by artists, and was above all valued by Michael Angelo Buonarotti, who declared, as we have said before, that nothing in painting could be nearer to the life than this was, and it rose still higher in the general estimation after these Lives had appeared; but has since been carried away from the church, perhaps from love of art and respect to the work, which may have seemed to the robber to be not sufficiently reverenced, who thus out of piety became impious, as our poet saith” (Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, trans. Mrs. Jonathan Foster, 1850, 1, 113). “The church belonging to the Umiliati” was not Santo Spirito but rather Ognissanti, which the religious order built in the mid-thirteenth century.
“The Death of the Virgin” was acquired by Walter Davenport Bromley (1787–1863) of Wootton Hall, near Ashbourne, probably before the date of this letter (see Gustav Friedrich Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, 1854, I, Preface and III, 374–375). The painting is now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.
19. Untraced.
20. Sir Charles Lock Eastlake (1793–1865), a student of Benjamin Robert Haydon, was at this time president of the Royal Academy and a trustee of the National Gallery.
21. On 8 March 1853, a motion was made in the House of Commons for the creation of “a select committee to inquire into the management of the National Gallery, also to consider in what mode the collective monuments of antiquity and fine art possessed by the nation might be most securely preserved, judiciously augmented, and advantageously exhibited” (The Times, 9 March 1853, p. 3). Rising in support of the motion, Lord John Russell said that “the National Gallery, as now composed, was rather such a collection as a very rich individual … might gather together, than such a collection as a great nation should have collected together for its instruction and delight. … He had himself more than once urged upon the trustees of the National Gallery … the obtaining a collection of the early Italian masters, not so much, perhaps, on account of their intrinsic beauty, as for the great aid they would afford us in tracing the progress of painting” (p. 3).
22. Possibly Eustace of Matera (fl. ca. 1270) who was a judge at Venosa; thus the second name could have been Latinized as RB gives it, or as “Venosinus.” In the years 1270–1271, Eustace “composed a long Latin poem in elegiac distichs, Planctus Italie (Italy’s Laments), detailing the fate of various cities in Sicily and elsewhere in Italy. … Evidently, Planctus Italie extended to as many as fourteen books, but today it is preserved only in fragments” (Medieval Italy: an Encyclopedia, ed. Christopher Kleinhenz, New York, 2004, I, 324).
23. Numerous reports of foul weather in England during the first week of March 1853 appeared in Galignani’s Messenger. An article in the 3 March issue referred to “tempestuous weather” that had “been felt generally throughout the country, and was accompanied at intervals by heavy falls of snow and severe frost” (p. 1).
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