3717. Harriet G. Hosmer to EBB & RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 83–85.
Rome
Jan 21st [1856] [1]
My most dear & Silent friends. The sweet little letter which was put into my hands two days ago seemed to be that “shivering” & “parched scroll” [2] of which one of the poets speaks connected with Judgment Day & Resurrection for hearing from you once more seems like a message from the other world. Indeed if I had not known of your existence I should have thought you defunct– I think our acquaintance is of two years standing & for the last three I have given you up as lost. As a last resort I once interrogated the spirits respecting your terrestrial welfare but the only reply was a vague scrawl & a long straight line at the end of it. So having no friend to interpret I concluded it meant you were here or there or somewhere else exactly as I find you to be– Well though your letters are like angels[’] visits yet they are as sweet when they do come & the honey of them lasts a long time though it would be a great deal better to have more. Oh and how I wish I could be telling you all this instead of writing it. The curse of Cain [3] must be in it. I think that I can never see you: I don’t remember exactly what that curse was but its the first one I can think of so it will do– Indeed do you really think you will come to Rome next winter. You must & of course bring with you all the shooting stars around you. Now that brings me to one point: I’ve enclosed a note to Isa, that naughty nomad who seems bent on her own destruction & who will sooner or later come to her end if wiser people dont look after her– Now read what I have written & back me up to the extent of your abilities & what will be the best argument in the world in my favor (in every sense of the word) tell her you are to be in Rome too & say so conscientiously. It would seem to be too divine you know if we could all meet together again as of yore & I am sure there is one who would more appreciate her blessings that [sic, for than] she did before for they always brighten as they take their flight & we think what owls we have been. As to 11 via Mercede it is like the condemned cell to me. [4] I should as soon think of eating [at] a funeral as to go into the house though I know the people who live in it. I console myself as best I can by looking at the mouth (blessed be plaster) [5] which used to say such dear things. I don’t trust myself to gaze often at the nose lest I might be tempted to give it an imaginary pull for the devil a bit does the maternal owner of it write but you pray to heap a scaldino [6] on her head [7] & write a long long letter to her. Of course you know who her is & give her lots & lots of love & if Mrs Browning doesn’t object I commission you Mr B. to give her a kiss which I will repay principal, & interest compound when we meet. That dear Miss Farquhar too is in Paris or has been & I fancy by this time they are in King St– [8] She is a great pet of mine & I love her a great deal more than she loves me. I can’t recover from my amazement to hear that Fay is actually painting a Venus. [9] I should have said that a strange combination of circumstances might have induced him to immortalize Cats on Skates or Shaggy Abbys perhaps but never a Venus. What has transformed him? Give him my dear love & tell him he is as base as my mother [10] for never writing to a fellow. Little Penini I suppose wears long tailed coats by this time & is beginning to think of wigs .. has he begun his Epic yet. How splendid it would have been when Tennyson read Maud & then when somebody else read something else [11] which I haven’t read because I am waiting till they (books I mean) come from Florence!!! Then won’t I pick you to pieces dear Mr B. but the pieces will be saved depend upon it & treasured up until there are twelve baskets full. [12] As to what I am doing I cant describe it: one can never talk of what one is doing one’s self you know. Suffice it to say I am immensely busy & am making the Cenci in prison [13] which young lady I trust you will one of these days see. Mr Gibson is making a beautiful statue of Pandora, [14] simple & graceful & listen ye pagans—it’s one not only colored but Castellani [15] is to make the earrings!!! Page is very well not finished his Venus yet but it is magnificent—between ourselves it is now about two years since I began sitting & my picture is not finished it [sic]. [16] By the way tell Isa I am inventing a stair-chair to get her upstairs so that at home she will never have to put one foot higher than another– Here I am half way down the fourth page & have written nothing but twaddle. The fact is I must wait till I see you before I talk sense & shant even then if I don’t see you soon. Rome is well-filled & intensely gay the only startling news is that they have swept twice since your departure the steps leading from the Piazza here to the San Bastianello [17] —do come here next winter—do—do—do—do—do—do—do—& now that Penini is studying Latin, as I suppose he is, he would have such a chance to converse with the priests!!! Dont be so long in writing again even Pulsatilla [18] wont set me right if you do. Best love to Mrs Aide & the Capitano. I haven’t said half what I have to say (except that I’m going to send your dear kind letter over [illegible word] to my Pa) but wherever, however, or whatever I may be hold me ever & ever as one of your most faithful & loving old Hat.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Scripps College.
1. Year provided by Harriet Hosmer’s reference to Frederic Leighton’s “Venus,” which RB had mentioned in letter 3712.
2. Cf. Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto Sixth, 32 (“Hymn for the Dead”), 5. For “shivering,” read “shrivelling.”
3. See Genesis 4:11–12.
4. The Rome address of the Sartorises. It is listed in the Brownings’ address book of this period (AB-3). We are unable to identify “the people” living there at the time of this letter.
5. Apparently, Miss Hosmer had made a plaster likeness of Mrs. Sartoris’s head. We have been unable to trace any other record of it.
6. A basket or pan heated by lighted charcoals for warming hands or feet.
7. Cf. Proverbs 25:22 and Romans 12:20.
8. Miss Hosmer refers to Maria Farquhar (see letter 3712, note 2) and her family’s London address, 18 King Street, St. James’s (see letter 3705, note 11).
9. See letter 3712, note 4. “Fay” was Frederic Leighton’s nickname.
10. i.e., Mrs. Sartoris; see Dolly Sherwood, Harriet Hosmer: American Sculptor, 1830–1908 (Columbia, Missouri, 1991, p. 68). Miss Hosmer’s mother, Sarah (née Grant), died in 1836.
11. Miss Hosmer is probably thinking of Men and Women, but she may have heard that RB had read “Fra Lippo Lippi” (see letter 3636, note 2).
12. Cf. Mark 6:43.
13. “Beatrice Cenci” (1856) was exhibited at the Royal Academy the following year. It depicts the sixteenth-century Roman noblewoman Beatrice Cenci (1577–99), recumbent in her prison cell. She was driven to murder her father after he allegedly raped her and violently abused the rest of his family. Her story is the subject of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s verse-drama, The Cenci. A Tragedy in Five Acts (1820).
14. John Gibson’s “Pandora,” completed between 1856 and 1861, was shown in London at the International Exhibition of 1862. It was originally intended for the 2nd Duke of Wellington, who had suggested the subject and a design. But when Gibson executed his own design, the Duke declined the statue, and it was subsequently bought by Lady Marian Alford (see Life of Gibson, R.A., ed. Elizabeth Eastlake, 1870, pp. 214–217).
15. A firm of Roman jewelers, founded by Fortunato Pio Castellani (1794–65), known for its Etruscan reproductions and antique styles. Although “Pandora” did not feature earrings at the 1862 exhibition or afterwards, there is evidence to support Miss Hosmer’s remark. According to James Edwards Freeman, Gibson was reluctant to turn over his statue to the buyer: “I have fallen in love with her since I have painted her. … I have just made my charmer a present of a pair of Etruscan gold ear-rings, which I bought of Castellani. Oh, no; I can’t give up my Pandora yet” (“Reminiscences,” Appleton’s Journal, October 1876, p. 357).
16. William Page probably completed his portrait of Harriet Hosmer sometime in 1858. In a letter dated 22 May 1857 RB writes to her: “How glad I am that your picture is done” (ms at Radcliffe). But on 21 February 1858, he asks her: “Is your portrait nearing completion by a touch or two?” (Harriet Hosmer, Letters and Memories, ed. Cornelia Carr, New York, 1912, p. 121). This painting is reproduced in vol. 20, facing p. 178 (in the “List of Illustrations,” p. vi, it is incorrectly dated 1854).
17. Miss Hosmer may have in mind the Salita (“Ascent”) di San Sebastianello. From Via San Sebastianello, at the northeast corner of Piazza di Spagna, there are steps leading to an arched niche with a sarcophagus fountain. From there, steps ascend to S. Trinità de’ Monti, the church at the top of the Spanish Steps.
18. A tincture or extract from the anemone pulsatilla (pasque-flower), prescribed by Homœopathists for a variety of ailments.
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