3543. Harriet G. Hosmer to EBB & RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 132–133.
Rome
April 6th [1855] [1]
You two dear Angels I haven’t a word to say. I confess my silent crimes & stretch out my neck for the blow—provided I could stretch it as far as Florence I should rejoice in my sins & think the way of the transgressor soft– But neither a stretch of neck or of imagination can carry me there & I must content myself, as the apostle did by sending this greeting– [2] I am so sorry to hear that Mrs B. has been so ill– After all you see the climate of Rome is not so fiendish & nothing will ever persuade me that the air of Florence is good, summer or winter: in winter cold & bleak & in summer hot & boily. [3] Mr Villari told me every body was convalescent & when he left seemed to be enjoying that peace which passeth understanding. [4]
This is Easter Sunday & fra poco [5] I’m going to make the giro [6] of the walls on horseback & happen in at the Piazza in time to see the benediction– [7] The day is lovely & the only thing that would make the excursion more charming would be to have you both mounted too & little Peninni bringing up the rear. By the way there came a young lady into the Studio the other day who said she was well acquainted with you. A Miss Withers or Fustian or somebody I believe I have forgotten her name. Seems a very nice person but not eminent for beauty, sporting red tresses & the gravelly complexion usually accompanying. [8] You know who I mean– However she seemed radiant with glory coming as she did direct from Florence—it seemed half like being there myself. I wish the illusion had been reality.
Have you seen Thomas the Harpist? [9] He is a right good fellow, & clever as you will think if you have heard him. —We made an excursion to Frascati the other day—wanted to go to Ostia but being under water & we not being sea-nymp[h]s couldn’t. The party was very pleasant but nothing you know will do after last winter. I dare say I should have enjoyed myself spite of everything but I had such a horrid headache that it was naught as you may suppose– Oh do do do come to Rome & let us make one more excursion!!!
“Rome, or not Rome, that is the question,
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The coughs & boils of outrageous Florence,
Or to take coach instanter via Perugia
And, by passports, end them?” [10]
do tell me where we are to meet northward. When do you leave Florence, whither bound & all: tell me everything & save me from dying.
I am so sorry to hear this about little Lou. [11] Don’t you think it dreadful? I don’t send any message to Isa because you perceive I have insinuated a note into this. Dear Mrs Sartoris desires no end of love & kind messages. Of course she is the same darling as ever: has been giving concerts every Friday & singing magnificently. She has’nt the slightest idea what she is going to do this summer. Fancy letting her husband go on in that way! he condescended to say the other day that they should probably be in England in October—that’s all she knows. We are looking eagerly for any accounts of Fay’s pictures [12] —both have been sent. You should see a picture of Page’s—a Venus– [13] You never saw anything half so lovely—he always curses himself or something very nearly approaching it for never writing & always says he is going to do it– I’m so glad you found the little boiler useful– [14] Alas, for me the gift was ominous—the round number 24! [15] that’s all. Kisses to Peninni, love to Wilson & no end of both for yourselves.
<...> [16]
Address: Robert Browning Esq / Poste Restante / Firenze.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Scripps College.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Cf. Romans 16:3–4.
3. Harriet Hosmer puns on the weather and her attack of boils the previous summer in Florence.
4. Cf. Philippians 4:7.
5. “Shortly.”
6. “Tour.”
7. Delivered by the pope from the balcony of St. Peter’s; see letter 3387, note 2.
8. The red-haired Jessie White.
10. A parody of Hamlet’s soliloquy beginning “To be, or not to be,” Hamlet, III, 1, 55–87.
11. i.e., Louisa Alexander. She had caught a cold; see letter 3538. However, Miss Hosmer may have heard that Louisa would be returning to India in the summer, which EBB mentions in letter 3551.
12. “Fay” was Frederic Leighton’s nickname. The pictures were his “Cimabue’s Madonna Carried in Procession” and “The Reconciliation of the Montagues and Capulets” (see letter 3489, note 20).
13. Doubtless a reference to “Venus Rising from the Sea” (1856); see Joshua C. Taylor, William Page: The American Titian (Chicago, 1957), pp. 142–145.
14. A present from Miss Hosmer, for which the Brownings thanked her in letter 3489.
15. i.e., her 24th boil.
16. This letter is pasted in a scrapbook, and the last line, containing the salutation, is covered by an edge of the mounting.
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