3750. RB to Dante Gabriel Rossetti
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 156–157.
Paris, Rue du Colisée 3.
March 13. [1856] [1]
My dear Rossetti,
If I were wise I should write to you every week and so get nearer to the chance of being written to as you wrote a month ago. Only, there would be selfish policy in it, I confess. Your letters are a true delight to me, or rather, to us two here,—and you are generous otherwise—“put that & that together.” [2] This time, I waited a little to make up my mind about what you shall do for me with the Portrait; and thus I make it up—I have no choice, I think, but to run all risks and send it: the kind & admirable Painter expects as much, and will understand my purpose whatever may be the issue. I am sure, he will care no more than he ought for poor criticism, and profit to the full extent by any samples of the better sort that Providence may allot him,—a bad place is the one visitation I would avert if I could,—but I can’t, and will perceive that I can’t, and so “here goes” the Picture to its place, under your good auspices, as early on the proper day as you can manage, please! It is to be described in the catalogue as the portrait of “Robt Browning, painted at Rome, ’54, by William Page of New York.” [3] You have been so kind to me that I can believe you will take this trouble and make light of it—but I grudge that you should not do a little for the love of that fine & rare Page, as, if you knew him, you assuredly would. You say nothing about the state of the painting—if it have blackened at all, or bettered by exposure—if the untoward crack be obtrusively visible—if any damage have accrued from the casing and canting from ship to rail,—or else no news means good news. The frame was chosen by a pupil of Page’s in conformity with his directions: I thought it suitable.
Well, you don’t come here—tho’ you tantalise one with hints how much a good thing might be. It snows while I write—but the weather has been well nigh Italian hitherto. Try and be with us in the Spring,—do, now! My wife is better in consequence, and has transcribed six books of her poem,—seven thousand, four hundred and seventy three lines,—which, I suppose, I have no right to tell you seem strangely original, courageous, deep, and fascinating to me. There are two books more to compose, but no harm can befall the poem now. I want particularly that you should bid Allingham be generous in his construction of our silence, and sure of our kindest remembrance of him spite of that—“that” was ugly we know to our sorrow. I did see the two reviews you mention—and was much gratified by that in the “Britsh Quary” [4] It could not fail to be of great service. The critic in “Fraser” don’t mean what he says, I very well know,—but there are two matters of an interest to me quite extraneous to his criticism, on which I advise him to express himself less ambiguously the next time he professes to consider my books [5] . How is Ruskin, I am anxious to know and will write. With true greeting to your Brother, take my wife’s best regard with that of
Yours faithfully ever,
Robert Browning.
Publication: W.H. Arnold, Ventures in Book Collecting (New York, 1923), p. 210 (in part).
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Year provided by reference to the return address.
2. Frederick Marryat, Percival Keene (1842), I, chap. 14.
3. The painting was rejected by the Royal Academy.
5. The reviewer was George Brimley; see letter 3716, note 5. According to Robert Bulwer Lytton, RB was “justly annoyed” at the review in Fraser’s Magazine, “in wh. he expected to find a concession from the pen of [Charles] Kingsley” (see SD1899).
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