3424. RB to John Forster
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 228–229.
Florence,
June 5, ’54
My dear Forster,
Lytton sent me your last note some weeks ago—the letter that was lost has never come to hand, alas! I was very glad to hear of you,—the lecture, talk of travelling and other proofs of what the old doctors call “a return to a laudable habit of body” [1] —and now I see a little more of the mind of you by an “Examiner” or two, sent by Lytton also. I am truly happy that the “large composition” I have been used to admire has done itself justice—the Pym-like build [2] of you, which made chairs creak & floors groan when we turned over books together in the Strafford crisis. [3] Do you really think of going westward or do you joke? [4] At this distance, it seems as good a business as anybody’s, now rising, standing, or lying down in England. But you are there, and I here—so to tell you of what I do here, I would not answer your note at once that I might get to know a little what we are likely to do– We left Rome last week, after no very prosperous sojourn—the good we found being just what we had least expected, in an afflux of friends old & new. The place is ill-starred, under a curse seemingly, and I would not live there for the Vatican with the Pope out of it. This old Florence takes us to its breast like a friend after our defection—but I fear we can’t stay in Italy and rest, as I am fain to do. Our child is grown, and not much otherwise than well,—but his looks do not content us, and tho’ he is fast regaining his ripe cheeks, northern air would be precious just now. We shall go, I suppose—tho’ not for a few weeks. I must be in London, or Paris at farthest, to print my poems– You enquire about these, and, I think, are anticipating another guess matter than I shall have to show,—did you mean, a joint work of my wife & myself, you once wanted us to write? This is what I have written—only a number of poems of all sorts and sizes and styles and subjects—not written before last year, but the beginning of an expressing the spirit of all the fruits of the years since I last turned the winch of the wine press. [5] The manner will be newer than the matter. I hope to be listened to, this time, and I am glad I have been made to wait this not very long while. My wife’s poem is a long one, a novel in verse. I know not one word of it. I shall be ready by the Autumn—she in the Spring,—we count on it, at least. Can one do anything with the American Booksellers, do you know? They tell us it is possible. But the talking usually blows a great round shiny bubble which a touch of the Yankee finger breaks promptly enough. You must know,—more, infinitely, than sanguine American friends,—whether one can get a trifle for proofs in advance &c. [6]
I have missed newspapers in travelling and thro’ press of occupation, and know little of what is doing. I must go and see you, that is clear. Will you be glad of it, as I shall? If I don’t go, I shall send a picture painted by that wonderful Page, I wrote of! ’Tis myself,—just the head—but such a work! His best, he says, and I believe. He was three months painting it and then gave it to my wife, in his princely way.
My wife desires to be most kindly remembered by you. Will you not forget to give my true regards to Macready: I heard of him, and of you from Miss Haworth—pleasant news of you all, too. Must one really leave off here, just because the paper chooses?
Ever yours affectionately,
RB.
Address, on integral page: John Forster Esq. / 58 Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
Docket, in Forster’s hand: forwarded by / John Kenyon.
Publication: NL, pp. 76–78.
Manuscript: Victoria and Albert Museum.
1. Cf. RB, “An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician” (Men and Women, 1855), lines 109–110: “Sanguine, proportioned, fifty years of age, / The body’s habit wholly laudable.” RB may have remembered this phrase from the chapter on fasting in Nathaniel Wanley’s The Wonders of the Little World (1678), p. 590, at the end of paragraph 10: “This Maid continued thus fasting for the space of almost three years entire, and afterwards by degrees returned to her food, and to a laudable habit of body.” RB’s copy of Wanley’s sold as part of lot 931 in Browning Collections and is now at ABL (see Reconstruction, A2412).
2. John Pym (1584–1643), the hero of Browning’s play Strafford, is depicted as a man of stout physique in the George Glover engraving in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
3. In 1836 RB assisted an ailing Forster in completing “Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford” for Lives of Eminent British Statesmen (7 vols., 1831–39); see letter 2374, note 4.
4. In letter 3399, Forster had written that he was “nearly disposed to set up General Lectures … and make immediate arrangements for America.”
5. i.e., since Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (1850). The new poems he mentions are for Men and Women (1855).
6. RB eventually negotiated an agreement with J.T. Fields to publish Men and Women in America for £60 and one with C.S. Francis to publish Aurora Leigh for £100.
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