3718. John Ruskin to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 86.
[London]
22nd Jany 1856.
Many & many happy years to you both.
Dear Mr Browning
I have been laid up with sore throat, & not been able to attend to business: otherwise you would have had my book [1] before now—but please tell me if the address of this letter is right, now as I want to send it safely.
–That was a nice cunning answer of yours—for that you are. You answered the only two questions in all my letter that were easy—& left all the difficult ones to the imagination—and as I have’nt got any, I am badly off—still—but always affectionately yours & Mrs Browning[’]s–
J. Ruskin.
I did’nt quite know which of you I admired the most, but I was sure Mrs Browning would like the book best as it is—offered to you. On the whole I do hope you will both find something that you like in it. That’s another thing I’ve to quarrel with you for—those mighty modest Dedications of yours to Landor and I don’t know whom else– [2] I can’t bear modesty.
Address: Robrt Browning Esq / 102. Rue de Grenelle / Faubourg St Germain / Paris. Redirected: Rue du Colysée No 3.
Publication: DeLaura, p. 328.
Manuscript: University of Texas.
1. Modern Painters, vol. III, published by Smith, Elder & Co. on 16 January 1856. The copy that Ruskin sent to RB sold as part of lot 1051 in Browning Collections; it is inscribed by the author: “Robert Browning. with John Ruskin’s affectionate and respectful regards” (Reconstruction, A1983).
2. RB dedicated the eighth and last part of his Bells and Pomegranates (1846), containing Luria and A Soul’s Tragedy, to Landor: “I dedicate / These last attempts for the present at dramatic poetry / To a Great Dramatic Poet; / ‘Wishing what I write may be read by his light:’ / —If a phrase originally addressed, by not the least worthy of his contemporaries, / To Shakespeare, / May be applied here, by one whose sole privilege is in a grateful admiration, / To Walter Savage Landor.” Ruskin may also have in mind, RB’s dedication to John Kenyon in Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845), the seventh part of Bells and Pomegranates: “Inscribed / to / John Kenyon, Esq., / In the hope that a recollection of his own successful / ‘Rhymed Plea for Tolerance’ / May induce him to admit good-naturedly this humbler prose one of / His very sincere friend, / R. B.”
___________________
