3803. RB to James Thomas Fields
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 247–248.
Paris,
June 18. ’56.
Dear Mr Fields,
I hope & believe that no other business I could transact for you but just this business of the photograph would have been so shamefully delayed. I was kept in a state of uncertainty, for weeks together, as to whether I must not go to London at once on pressing concerns. That is over, happily: and one very hot day a fortnight ago I literally ran & got done for. [1] It is on its way in M. Bossange’s packet: [2] I can only say that the artists are the first in repute here but they retouch & so far spoil, if friends’ evidence may be received. I am unable to give an opinion but three or four competent judges agree that the eyes are good, the nose thickened overmuch, the mouth coarsened to match, the folds of the coat capital. I am responsible for all that Orson-like hair & beard, [3] —both of which wanted trimming & got it next day. Still, there’s inevitably something like,—a clever engraver might help the rest a little, perhaps.
My wife sends the verses with kind regard to Mrs Fields and apologies for with[h]olding them so long. [4] I duly received your copy of “Men & Women”—capitally “got up:” [5] I shall make some corrections in the next edition and send you the same. [6] “Sordello” takes a weary time to do thoroughly—but I hope to complete & give it you in the course of the year: it ought to be greatly improved & probably is.
Will you have the goodness to forward the enclosed to Mr Francis? He wrote a kind & liberal note to my wife four months ago—& by some inexplicable blunder we only got it a week since. He repeats his offer of £75 for a poem of 8000 lines. We accept it cheerfully—but mention that six months’ more hard work have increased the number to something like 10,500—and submit to his consideration whether he would be wronging himself to make the sum up to a round & useful £100. It shall be left to himself, of course. We go to London in a few days—& stay, say, three months at 39 Devonshire Place. Thence for the winter to Italy, which my wife absolutely requires after laboring as she has done. I rejoice in your assurances of the “warm welcome” given to “Men & Women” by your generous people. Ever yours, faithfully,
(my wife going along with) Robt Browning.
Address: Etats-Unis d’Amérique / James T. Fields Esq. / Boston, U.S.A.
Dockets, in Fields’s hand: Browning. Recd July 2 / a[nswered] / July 29; The enclosed refers to Browning’s Photograph likeness / which I shall have engraved for “Sordello” when it / is ready. J.T.F.
Publication: Ian Jack, “Browning on Sordello and Men and Women,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 45 (Summer 1982), 197.
Manuscript: Huntington Library.
1. In the shop of photographers Mayer & Pierson on 2 June at 5 Boulevard des Capucines. However, as RB indicates in a letter to Fields (20 October 1856, ms at Syracuse), the photograph was lost. According to Michael Meredith, “it unexpectedly reappeared in New York in its original mount” some 130 years later (Meeting the Brownings, Waco, Texas, 1986, p. 76). On the verso RB inscribed: “for James T. Fields Esq. Boston. U.S. Taken at Paris, June 2. 1856.” The photograph is now with Meredith. It is reproduced as this volume’s frontispiece.
2. Hector Bossange (1795–1884), publisher and bookseller, was the son of Martin Bossange (1765–1865), who had founded the Bossange publishing house in Paris. Upon his father’s retirement in 1837, Hector took over as head of the firm. He invested heavily in transatlantic trade and had offices in America and Canada.
3. In the fifteenth-century French romance “Orson and Valentine,” twin brothers are abandoned in the woods as babies. They become separated when one—Valentine—makes his way to the court of King Pippin and becomes a courtly knight, while Orson is brought up among bears, becoming a “wild man” of the woods.
5. The American edition of Men and Women was issued by Ticknor and Fields as one volume in an attractive brown binding on 8 December 1855 with an 1856 imprint.
6. There was only one English edition and one American edition of Men and Women.
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