Correspondence

3712.  EBB & RB to Harriet G. Hosmer

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 75–77.

Jan. 13. ’56.

Had I taken pen & written to you, dearest Hatty, once for every ten times that I meant to do so (overnight) & had you answered one of every ten that I so wrote,—& I know you would have done better than that,—I should have plenty to read & comfort myself with,—whereas now there’s only the hope that we soon shall have something when you know how happy it will make us two here in the cold to hear about you. When we got to London,—cares and calls and weariness all day, and letter-writing to-morrow: when we left London for this place,—a horrible lodging, taken for us against our will & protestation by an enthusiastic friend, [1] —an apartment with no bottom (for carriages were under it) no top (for the roof tiles were over it) no back (for there was an end to the house with the wall of our room) and a front facing the due East: we staid two months’ misery out, and then carried our dead & wounded to this present house which,—not quite the Vatican, in itself,—seems a great catch beside the other abomination. You may suppose, there was no charity in telling you this, till we could add that we were alive & out. Now—I tell you: & moreover, that we both of us long with all our hearts to hear as much news of your darling self as you can & will put into a letter: of course all this while we have heard of you constantly from other people, or else we would have known the reason why. Isa Blagden always let us go shares in her tidings of you—for which Miss Hays was mainly to thank. And Miss Farquhar [2] loves & talks about you incessantly: I saw her yesterday—they have been here these two months. Isa arrived two days ago: got into the exact sort of up-stairs place she should have avoided and is abundantly uncomfortable—which is the more provoking that she seems to have brought with her a tolerable stock of health & strength, which will be spent to very little purpose. However we must try & help to brighten matters for her. Mrs Sartoris is here—such a dearest creature as you well know. I ought to see her about every other day, if my laziness did not stand in the way,—& whenever I go, .. I swear I’ll never miss another time—but do miss times & times, alas! I’ll go to-morrow and tell her I’ve written—unless, as is likely, she calls this afternoon. She sings and talks and looks and is just as of old,—and so good that is! Your pet of a daguerreotype lies on her table, and I know who gets hold of & keeps it as long as he sits there! Leighton is a better fellow than ever,—very loveable, really: he is painting a very fine and original picture, life-size, of Orpheus playing Eurydice out of Hell: [3] full of power & expression. He has a capital Pan enjoying himself in a dell—from a superb Italian model here,—the perfection of a man: a Venus, very clever too [4] —and designs for perhaps a dozen delicious pagan figures,—a sudden taste that has possessed him. The Aidés are here—kind & sympathetic as you remember—Cartwrights, [5] & other Roman people. I don’t think any new friend of mine would please you like Rosa Bonheur—who is a glorious little creature, with a touch of Hatty about her that makes one start. Oh, Hatty, why were you not here,—in London first,—and you should have heard Alfred Tennyson read “Maud” to us, and Mrs Sartoris sing to Ruskin, & Carlyle talk—our three best remembrances: & here, at Paris, there were pictures to see,—but I know all about the impossibility, & it is silly to speak of it. Well, won’t you tell us what you have done and are doing? How dear Page is, and what he paints now, and if he prospers in health & spirits? And of Gibson, and of Rome generally? Do you know, we mean to try hard and go to Rome next winter to repair the harm done at the bottomless pit of a house afore said? And Mrs Sartoris was sure to go, too,—till the night before last when she pleased to feel sure she should not go– Sartoris meaning to settle in Paris—for the next quarter of an hour, he means it, I should explain– How good to find ourselves all together again! But then the slips ’twixt the cups & the lips! [6] Anyhow, here is a word to you that wants a word in return. God bless you, dearest Hatty– Penini is well,—better by far than in London– Ba shall put in a word—I have left room for no more. For me, count on nothing as said, of all that I have to say, save & except that I am affectionately yours ever,

Robert Browning.

[Continued by EBB]

I will answer for it dearest Hatty, that what Robert has said to you about meaning & vowing to write & write to Hatty, is “all true”. Be magnanimous & send us a long letter of absolution. You ought, being at Rome. Tell us about yourself & your works, & when you have told yourself out <***>

Publication: Harriet Hosmer, Letters and Memories, ed. Cornelia Carr (New York, 1912), pp. 58–61 (in part, as 8 January 1856).

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

1. Louisa Corkran.

2. Maria Farquhar (1825–89), the youngest and at this time the only unmarried daughter of Thomas Harvie Farquhar and his wife, Sybella Martha (see letter 3705, note 11).

3. “The Triumph of Music: ‘Orpheus, by the Power of his Art, Redeems his Wife from Hades’.” It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856 but was so poorly received that Leighton rolled up the canvas and kept it in storage during his lifetime (see Emilie I. Barrington, The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton, 1906, I, 246).

4. “Venus” and “Pan” were exhibited in Manchester in September 1856 (see Barrington, I, 261n).

5. William Cornwallis Cartwright (1825–1915), journalist and politician, was spending the winter in Paris with his wife, Clementine (1822–90), and daughter, Wanda (afterwards L’Estrange, 1849–1907). Burdened with debt when his father died in 1850, Cartwright leased the family estate of Aynhoe Park in Northumberland and lived on the continent, mainly at Rome, where he met and became friends with Leighton.

6. Cf. the proverbial “There’s many a slip ’twixt cup and lip.”

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