3293. Eliza Fox to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 9–11.
3 Sussex Place
Regents Park London
Nov. 28th [1853] [1]
My dear Mrs Browning
I have a favour to ask of you which I hope you will not have any objection to grant. It is for my friend Clara Macirone, [2] and concerns as you may guess from the first page of this letter [3] your own “Sweetest eyes”– [4] She has been setting them to music and would like to have your consent to publish the song dedicated to yourself. I am not much of a judge of music, but I hope you will like it because it would be such a great pleasure to her to know that you did. She is one of that class of persons of whom one hears now and then, who without making any public stir are the true heroines of modern life. One who might be called somewhat narrow in intellect, at any rate one who receives opinions on many subjects without question, but her heart is as large and deep as the sea. She has from the age of eighteen given her time & her talents to taking the place of both father and mother to a brother & sister, [5] both much younger than herself. She has given up very much the higher & pleasanter branches of her Art (which she truly loves as an Art) and has slaved at the life of a teacher of music, that she might earn the money to give them a really first rate education, & to save them from the life of unremitting drudgery in the professions to which she has submitted herself; and with all that she does for her own family I find her hand always readiest for help & kindness for any one when by any extra time or trouble she can be of any use.– I knew and loved her before her work began and think of all her steady, never failing self devotion with a kind of loving wonder. And so you may fancy that it would be a great pleasure to me to repeat any words of encouragement of yours to her, because she would value them so very much from you. You see we have both of us learned to love you in your books, and one unconsciously forgets that that sort of love and knowledge is not a mutual affair– So I hope at any rate you will forgive this intrusion my dear Mrs Browning from one who is so nearly a stranger to you and allow me to subscribe myself with all reverence and affection
Yours
Eliza Fox [6]
Papa & I send kindest regards to Mr Browning. And the young Florentine, [7] I hope he flourishes well under Italian skies.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Scripps College.
1. Year provided by reference to letter 3300, EBB’s reply.
2. Clara Angela Macirone (1821–1914), musician, was the eldest daughter of George Macirone (1789–1858), a London stockbroker, and his wife Mary Anne (née Perriman, 1791–1869). One of the first popular female composers, Miss Macirone was an associate of the Royal Philharmonic Society and a professor in the Royal Academy of Music. Her song, “‘Sweetest Eyes Were Ever Seen,’ Catarina to Camoens,” lyrics from EBB’s “Catarina to Camoëns,” was published as sheet music in 1856. The cover is reproduced facing p. 147.
3. See illustration on p. 9.
4. The first two words of the principal refrain in “Catarina to Camoëns” (Poems, 1844).
5. Mary Thompson Emily Macirone (1828–88) and George Augustus Macirone (1834–1910) were the only surviving siblings of Clara Macirone. According to Andrew Malleson, Clara’s father was an alcoholic and spent considerable time in asylums between 1846 and 1850 (see Discovering the Family of Miles Malleson, [Toronto], 2012, p. 227).
6. Eliza Florance Fox (afterwards Bridell, later Bridell-Fox, 1823–1903), painter and advocate for women’s rights, was the only daughter of three children born to William Johnson Fox (1785–1864) and his wife Eliza Florance (1793–1869). She first met RB in the 1830’s through her father; and EBB during the Brownings’ London stay in either 1851 or 1852. On 26 February 1859, RB, at the request of her father, gave Eliza away in marriage to landscape artist Frederick Lee Bridell (1830–63), and that same evening the Brownings entertained the newlyweds with a champagne dinner at their Roman residence. A few days later Eliza completed a portrait of EBB in coloured chalk, which is now at ABL. Her portrait of her father (1863) was presented to the National Portrait Gallery, London, by her second husband, George Edward Fox (1833–1908).
7. Cf. Casa Guidi Windows, II, 743.
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