3399. John Forster to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 197–199.
58 Lincolns Inn Fields
25 April 1854
My dear Browning
It is too bad that the two unlucky letters I had most wished should reach you should both have miscarried!– But thank you for this kind little remembrance of me which I got only three days ago—having been lecturing in the Country (a promise I gave Macready in his Sherborne Institution [1] in a weak moment last year!) on what do you think but our old friend Strafford! And a great success it was, I assure you. [2] So great that I am nearly disposed to set up General Lectures on the Strength of it, and make immediate arrangements for America: Pending this, however, I shall be only too infinitely happy to see you & Mrs Browning & your little boy here in the Early Summer– Early as you can make it, I hope—not delaying your visit till our pavements here are dried up and empty. I do not know Miss Cushman, and shall therefore not see Mr Page’s portraits—but I had heard of him, through Miss Haworth if I remember rightly– Your old friend Miss Haworth, who used to write sonnets in the ancient time to certain persons’ forehead & eyebrows. [3] —Yes, Browning, the loss of poor dear Talfourd is a great loss—bitterly felt by me. Deeply have I sympathized, too, in that sorrow of the Storys—whom I remember well, and that handsome little boy they have lost. You will be surprized to hear that Lockhart rallied wonderfully on his journey—the pleasure of travelling with a Duke & Duchess had no doubt a great restorative effect—and is again accepting invitations to dinner. I shall meet him at the Royal Academy dinner next Saturday. What a man he might have been if heart, mind, soul, and every faculty he possesses, had not been condensed into a sneer as the greatest thing after all! Verily he has had his reward. He has made it his pride all his life to laugh at his own most serious pursuits—and it has not brought him absolute contentment. —Don’t fail to come over before the Academy closes, that you may see a very great picture by Maclise, [4] of which everybody is raving that has seen it. Leslie is great, too, and Landseer, [5] and Frith has a charming picture, [6] and Frank Grant has painted a portrait of Lord John Russell that will make an enormous sensation (fact! believe me) [7] —And I think that is all my news for the present. Macready has been in town, & we dined with Kenyon (with whom I hope to [break] fast tomorrow) on Sunday. My most kind regards to Mrs Browning. Always, my dear fellow,
Affectionately yrs
John Forster
PS.
I think that very good news of the sale of the poems. Mr Chapman had not told me. You do not tell me, as I wish you had done, that you have yet completed what I have been fancying Mrs Browning and yourself were both engaged in. Perhaps a mere fancy? But write me a little longer letter, & I will do the same by you.
Address, on integral page: Franco distino / Robert Browning Esqre / Via Bocca di Leone, 43. / Rome. [8]
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. The Sherborne Literary Institution was strongly supported by William Macready, who had retired to Sherborne House in Sherborne, Dorset, in 1850. According to his biographer, “at Sherborne Macready had busied himself greatly … with the spread of education among the people. He founded, or revived, a literary institution, at which he induced Dickens, Thackeray, Forster … and others to give readings and lectures” (William Archer, William Charles Macready, 1890, II, 189).
2. “The Sherborne, Dorchester, and Taunton Journal, 13 Apr, in a long report, described it as ‘a most spirit-stirring and valuable lecture … a powerfully impressive discourse.’ It lasted nearly two hours and a half and was greatly applauded” (Dickens, 7, 311n).
3. Forster refers to the two “Sonnets to the Author of ‘Paracelsus’” that appeared in The New Monthly Magazine of September 1836 (see letter 575, note 4). The first line of sonnet one reads: “Thy brow is calm, young Poet—pale and clear.” Neither “eyebrow” nor “eyebrows” is used in either sonnet, but in the sixth line of sonnet one RB’s eyes are described as “Quiet and shaded like an unsunned stream.” Fanny Haworth published the second sonnet in St Sylvester’s Day, and Other Poems (1847); see letter 2449, note 2.
4. “The Marriage of Strongbow [Earl of Pembroke]” by Daniel Maclise. The Examiner of 29 April 1854 declared it to be “the great picture of the year. … In its composition and colouring, in the wonders of its drawing, in the extraordinary power of its details, in the magnitude and scope of its design, the treatment is equal to the greatness of the theme. … It provides matter for the study of hours, and … for the admiration of centuries” (p. 261). The painting is now in the National Portrait Gallery of Ireland where it is titled “The Marriage of Strongbow and Aoife.”
5. Sir Edwin Landseer (1802–73) exhibited several pictures at the Royal Academy in 1854, including “Dandie Dinmont, the favourite Skye terrier of Her Majesty the Queen” and “Royal Sports on Hill and Loch.” Concerning the latter, which included portraits of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, The Examiner remarked that “no picture in the rooms attracted greater attention … a tribute paid in the first place by loyalty to her Majesty … but a tribute paid also in scarcely less degree to the genius of the painter” (29 April 1854, p. 261). The Athenæum of 6 May 1854 (no. 1384, p. 560) took a dimmer view of the work, criticizing its lack of subject, execution, and composition. Both periodicals mentioned that the painting was unfinished. Begun in 1850, it was “still incomplete at the artist’s death” and “was later destroyed” (ODNB). The Athenæum and The Examiner also differed on a work by Charles Robert Leslie (1794–1859), “The Rape of the Lock,” depicting the immediate aftermath of Pope’s title subject. The Athenæum described it as “a very dingy and unsatisfactory picture,—very coarse and careless in handling, very lurid in colour, and very feeble in expression” (no. 1384, p. 560). The Examiner, on the other hand, called it “a faultless illustration of the phase of social life which it presents” (13 May 1854, p. 294).
6. “Life at the Seaside” by William Powell Frith (1819–1909) was the first of the artist’s large canvases depicting contemporary Victorian society, one of the more famous being “A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881” (1882), which included among other public figures, RB. “Life at the Seaside” was bought by an art dealer for “a thousand guineas” who in turn sold it to Queen Victoria for the same price (see Frith’s My Autobiography and Reminiscences, 1887–88, I, 252–253 and 257–258).
7. This painting by Francis Grant (1803–78), originally a sporting painter who had turned to portraiture, was also highly commended by The Examiner: “One of the best portraits we have ever seen by old master or new” (29 April 1854, p. 261). It is now in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
8. The envelope is endorsed in the lower left-hand corner with the initials of Robert Bulwer Lytton, who has written “Franco distino” above the address. After two of his letters to Rome miscarried, Forster sent this letter via Lytton in Florence, who forwarded it in the diplomatic pouch.
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