4187. RB to Edward Chapman
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 25, 126–127.
Florence,
June 5. ’58.
My dear Chapman,
Will you do me, & my wife a great favour? An old friend of ours, Mr James Montgomery Stuart has just gone to London: [1] he is very able, very learned,—and variously learned too,—with as many ready accomplishments as if he were not learned: He is well known to distinguished persons in more countries than one—perfectly versed in German, Italian & French contemporary literature—& with the best will to turn all these good gifts to account, he cannot get on at all here, because vine-bearing & olive-bearing soils don’t want his wares– Yet he wants something for his large family. He writes those clever letters to the Morning Post from “their own Correspondent”: I should really think him fit for any amount of popular magazine-work, reviews and lectures &c—and, if any of you really care about Italian politics, he is better able to make them intelligible to the public’s capacity than anybody else. He has influential friends in England & Scotland, but “while the grass grows (in Scotland)” &c &c[.] [2] —Now for your concern in all this—surely you will get him any work you can, will not you? Help him to any Review or Magazine? He has letters to Editors sundry—but I know nothing of Editors, & trust rather in you– There! I shall not see you this year, I fear: my wife is in less than her usual health, & I am forbidden to take her to London—tho’ counselled to try the Atlantic breezes on the French Coast: whence you’ll soon enough get my accustomed half-yearly reminder.
Yours ever R Browning.
Publication: NL, pp. 106–107.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. James Montgomery Stuart and his family left Florence for London on 1 June (see Simonetta Berbeglia, “James Montgomery Stuart: A Scotsman in Florence,” Exiles, Emigrés and Intermediaries: Anglo-Italian Cultural Transactions, Amsterdam, 2010, p. 124).
2. Cf. the proverb “While the grass grows, the steed starves.”
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