3504. RB to William Wetmore Story & Emelyn Story
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 41–42.
Florence,
Dec 27. ’54.
My dear Story & Mrs Story,
I am very happy to hear this good news & congratulate you heartily [1] —so does my wife. Surely this will give poor Paris one pleasant association in your thoughts, will it not? I should try Germany, were I you, since Rome seems out of the question,—for I don’t know that Florence has developed any new feature that would correct the first impression she was unlucky enough to give you. We have spent a very tolerable summer there, however, and are all better than when you left us—our greatest misfortune being in this sad business of the Pages, [2] —as we divine it, rather than understand it, for many accounts reach us, each disagreeing with the other. I fear Page is left deeply involved in debts of her contracting—she has not necessarily, therefore, taken anything of Cirella. Dear noble Page will be merciful & just,—I am sure,—beyond the power or conception of the world. It is heavy on him but he will “grieve it down,” [3] as Wallenstein says. I have not heard from him, nor anybody else, directly. She was kind & good & affectionate to us & to our child and we keep it in mind. Page & Cirella—a man & a wisp of straw!
I am glad indeed to find that you work despite the ungenial influences and that “Beethoven” is perfected: [4] it seemed so fine before! I shall rejoice to have the cast you promise me—(plaster, you remember the stipulation .. I need not say that)– I can give you no artistic news. Powers has changed his notion and drapes the pensive statue [5] you may have seen—or was it finished last year? I forget. Your own great work got safely to America and begins to repay you, I trust. [6]
Give our love to Edie–we both wish her all happiness in this best of new years gifts—and you every continuance of the same—my wife joining with
Ever yours affectionately,
Robert Browning–
Address, on integral page: France. / Monsieur W. Story, / Avenue des Champs-Elysées 63 / Paris.
Publication: BAF, pp. 35–37.
Manuscript: Keats-Shelley Memorial Association.
1. On the birth of their second son, Thomas Waldo Story (1854–1915), on 9 December at Paris.
2. Sara Page left her husband sometime in the late autumn. She joined her lover, Alfonso Gonzaga, son of the Duke of Cirella (see letter 3420, note 6), at Albano, and from there they probably travelled to Naples, for which Mrs. Page had procured a visa (see BAF, 285–289). After several attempts at reconciliation, Page secured a divorce from his wife in June 1857. He remarried four months later. In 1860, after a brief stage career in America, Sara Page married Peter B. Sweeny, New York City Chamberlain and Park Commissioner under Mayor A. Oakey Hall.
3. Cf. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s translation of Schiller’s The Death of Wallenstein (1800), V, 1, 58–59, where Coleridge provides a literal translation of the original German: “I shall grieve down this blow, of that I’m conscious; / What does not man grieve down?”
5. La Penserosa; RB discussed the “drapery” in letter 3489.
6. The statue of his father—“at present at Leghorn awaiting a vessel” (BAF, p. 286).
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