3369. RB to William Wetmore Story
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 154–157.
[Rome]
Wednesday Mg [Postmark: 29 March 1854]
My dear Story–
We are most happy to hear this good news of dear little Edie—all seems going on admirably and, indeed, wonderfully. You are quite right to believe in, & be grateful to, this evident skill of your Adviser [1] —of whose zeal and kindness I was witness—and I hope we shall all have to praise him still more at the end. As for poor Pantaleoni, I have simply had one thought & care in my head whenever I either spoke or wrote about him to you,—a wish that you should avoid vexing yourself fruitlessly by recurrence to what is past and irretrievable. It is too natural, of course, that such a result of four months’ attendance should be unsatisfactory—but there is no helping it, wherever the mistake may have lain. All you have to do—(and that it is still possible is a joyful surprise when one considers how matters were but a few days ago)—is to get Edie well again. Under the circumstances, there was so shocking a charge involved in any accusation of neglect & indifference, that one is bound for your sake no less than Pantaleoni’s, to say any little that one can on the other side. I “believe” in nobody who is not plainly more instructed than I—and in that case how can I disbelieve? But every day I hear sufficient mention of his skill to induce me to conclude him not so ignorant as you suppose: take the last instance, for example, that has come under my notice. My friend Capt Aidé’s mother, [2] an old lady in delicate health, was attacked last wednesday by fever—they were to go on the following Monday to Naples. They called in Pantaleoni. I saw Aidé two days after. He said “The remedies prescribed seem to me violent for so weak a subject as my mother: but the skill of Pantaleoni should be respected.” So it was, I suppose—for he (Capt A) called on my wife next Evening but one and said “Violent as we fancied the remedies, what can one say when the patient is recovered enough to drive out to-day and proceed on the journey on Tuesday.” I hear constantly of patients as contented. As for his manner, it is brusque and liable to misconception enough: he is overworked in fact and I heard him say last Sunday that on one day, or rather night, of the past week—he had been let blood at half past eleven,—to stay inflammatory symptoms of danger—and yet was forced to go out at half past nine the next morning. About his real feeling for Edie now at least there can be no mistake—he commends the treatment of Dr Sciamani [sic], so far as I have been able to describe it to him,—and says that he can, of course, pronounce on no case, nor new symptoms, no longer under his own eyes. He puts aside the notion of the ill effects of the bleeding, and of the possibility of knowing anything about it after four months—and says that the affection of the liver resulted from the continuance of the fever—which he was desirous of stopping by the one thing that could do it,—quinine. If Dr S. has changed the treatment on the occurrence of new symptoms, I suppose Pantaleoni might have done so too. Since when I was with you, quinine was about to be administered: and all the question is between that and nothing. Of the last letters it seems unnecessary to speak to Pantaleoni—and I shall only hope to tell him henceforth of Edie’s renewed health and strength,—which little as he expected, will delight nobody more, I honestly think. And so now let us have done with the poor Doctor and his misdeeds or mishaps.
How you mock me (to begin quarreling with you on my own account) when you talk of the trouble of a few hours jaunting “there & back again”, on a summons which would have assuredly taken me a good deal farther. I came frightened, and left relieved—and had little thought for anything else. Ba is always nervous at the very words of danger, setting off, good bye, and the like: but she was all the better sympathiser with the joy of the return. She is quite well now—our child to match. Mrs Page, too, is none the worse. I will find out how Mr Rotch’s child is presently—not having heard since he told me of the illness. I suppose your next will be from Albano. I wish it had been Frascati, I think—so beautiful did it seem last Saturday when I went there with Lockhart—whose temper got a pain in it before the day was over– [3] I’ll tell you at Albano, where I shall go on a much lighter summons than the last. There are plenty of small news we will talk & laugh over, Baths of Lucca fashion, when we meet, if all proceeds as I trust. Chorley has brought out another play, with but dubious success I fear. [4] Grace Greenwood has printed us flamingly in her book, it seems. [5] But there’s only room for truest congratulations and love, to Mrs Story and yourself—from yours ever most affectionately RB.
P.S. I thought Ba would have added a line here—but on going into the other room, I find she has written on her own account– Keep us still aware of whatever happens. I got the letter written on Saturday late on Monday Evg after the Sunday one!
Address: All’Illussmo Signore / Signor Story / Alla Locanda “La Posta” / Velletri. Redirected: Albano.
Publication: Henry James, William Wetmore Story and His Friends (London, 1903), I, 285 (in part, as [December 1853]), and Tregaskis Catalogue 901 (1925), item 43 (in part).
Source: Transcript in editors’ file.
1. Identified below as “Dr. Sciamani,” though the name is misspelled. He was Luigi R. Sciamanna, respected physician and surgeon, of Albano and Rome. He and his wife Palmira (née Caccioli) were the parents of Ezio Sciamanna (1850–1905), noted neurologist and psychiatrist.
2. Charles Hamilton Aidé (1826–1906), novelist and poet, born in Paris, was the younger son of George Aïdá (d. 1830), a diplomatist and the son of an Armenian merchant settled in Constantinople, and his wife Georgina (née Collier, 1790–1875), second daughter of Admiral Sir George Collier. Aidé retired from the British Army in 1853 with the rank of Captain.
3. Details of the outing to Frascati are recorded by Annie Fields in her journal: “Sunday October 24 [1869]. … Mr. P[arker]. gave me a queer picture of a picnic Mrs Kemble described to him with her sister Mrs Sartoris, Lockhart and Browning. It was at Frascati—and she herself in but a poor mood; they had the week before also had a pic-nic when Lockhart ate and drank too much so she determined to have only enough this day. It was the year she wrote ‘A Year of Consolation’ and after they arrived at Cicero’s Villa and had walked in the avenue of olive trees ‘I was in such a poor mood myself that I sat down apart from myself [sic] and cried, then I got up and dried my eyes and we had lunch but at lunch Lockhart was out of temper because there was not enough of the sherry which he had especially said he liked so much the week before. Then we became tired of sitting there and I proposed we should go on to Albano (?) but when we came where we were to find horses there were none but I espied a party of persons whom I knew from their voices to be American at a short distance with their horses grazing beside them; so I said to Lockhart if you would only go to them and make yourself known as the author of Valerius you would be sure to have a loan of the horses with the greatest pleasure but he would not go; therefore we were obliged to walk thoughtfully back towards the spot where we had left our carriages when I said to Lockhart “you have still another week—let us try again next Sunday[”] but he made the excuse that he had many calls to make and he must take that day to leave cards. I said, Mr Lockhart if you regard these pasteboard conventionalities of society as more than the claims of friendship I have nothing more to say– His reply was, When you have lived as long as I you will come to a different conclusion. We were also silent a few moments when Browning said Damned fools! Then we got into our carriages and returned to Rome !!!’” (ms at MHS).
4. Henry Chorley’s play, Duchess Eleanour, was presented at the Haymarket on 13 March 1854 with Charlotte Cushman in the title role. On 16 March he was informed that the play was being withdrawn “in consequence of the disapprobation manifested at the fall of the curtain and the scanty receipts at the box-office” (Henry Fothergill Chorley: Autobiography, Memoir, and Letters, comp. Henry G. Hewlett, 1873, II, 141).
5. For Grace Greenwood’s account of the Brownings in Haps and Mishaps of a Tour in Europe (Boston, 1854), see SD1654 and SD1656 in vol. 19.
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