Correspondence

3470.  EBB & RB to Adelaide Sartoris

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 313-314.

Septr 14. ’54.

My dear Mrs Sartoris,

That kind, good Leighton seems to think that it might be well if you came to Florence for a while, though you are not intending to do so: for, being your old self, you want a stronger incitement than in the mere notion of doing yourself good by the change of place & life. Perhaps you will let the great delight to us poor friends of yours,—who for various reasons cannot get to see you,—be that incitement—will you not? I am sure I only care to remember Rome for the sake of you and yours. Do give our Florence that crown too. Such a time as we have, now that the heat is gone & the company not come—such a time as we will have if you do this one kindness more to yours faithfully and affectionately,

R Browning

& to his wife who shall speak for herself,—see!

[Continued by EBB]

Do come, dearest Mrs Sartoris, & comfort us for not being able to go to you. Having suffered a small martyrdom on this Florence gridiron, after the fashion of St Lawrence, we should have a small crown of glory too—come & bring us our asphodel. [1] We have been thinking much of you—and there’s poor Hatty who is not well & has been horribly tormented by being obliged to lie on a sofa—she cant sit, poor dear thing, .. she has had a very painful boil .. and not having fairly made up her mind to be human & liable to such contingenc[i]es (not found in the marble) it has gone hard with her, & she has been out of spirits to a degree which really makes a sort of demand upon your presence for consolation. You might as well lay the Pallas Minerva of the Vatican [2] on a sofa—it seems as natural a prostration as dear Hatty’s.

Wont you come? I hear with envy & malignity that your baby, [3] besides being more beautiful than ever, is more fat. Consider my feelings!

And do come to see Robert

& your affectionate EBB——

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Scripps College.

1. “By the poets made an immortal flower, and said to cover the Elysian meads” (OED). The word occurs in Homer, Odyssey, XI, 539.

2. This statue, in the Vatican Museum, is listed in Murray’s A Handbook for Travellers in Central Italy (1853) as “Minerva Medica, one of the finest draped statues in Rome” (part II, p. 162). Now known as Minerva Giustiniani, it depicts a helmeted goddess carrying a spear, with a snake (the symbol of healing) beside her. EBB refers to this sculpture in Aurora Leigh, V, 787–799.

3. Algernon Charles Frederick Sartoris (1851–93).

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