4243. RB to Charles Stephen Francis
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 25, 234–235.
Le Hâvre,
Sept. 19. ’58.
Dear Sir,
You cannot fail, I am sure, to have charged me, with inattention or remissness in replying to your letter of last year: [1] but many unfortunate circumstances conspired to prevent my effecting the principal business of it, and procuring you a photograph of my wife. Here it is at last—a very satisfactory one, we all think <by M. Cyrus Macaire>: [2] she sate for it yesterday—or rather, for the original, [3] of which I beg you to accept a repetition. The hideous libel which circulates in England & America as “engraved from a medallion” was taken five years ago, [4] and there are some others of still earlier date. What you receive, is the sun’s simple truth without a hair’s breadth of retouching. The original is a little more distinct in details—but an engraver will have no trouble, I suppose, in making them out by the copy: the corner of the mouth is darkened, and the space between the hair and chin looks more like a white rag of some sort than the mere blank that it should be; the right eye, too, is a black mass—iris and pupil confused—and the hands are undefined. Still, the whole is a decided success, and is the only approach to a likeness extant. Mr Warnod, [5] the Artist, engages to transmit it to you by the “Fulton.” [6]
We have to thank you for the copy of the small edition of the poems [7] —very pretty, legible and portable it seems—but gross errors abound, unfortunately. My wife pleads guilty to the inadvertence—it was a six-days work, no doubt. We never received the American edition of Aurora Leigh. Whatever is sent to Messrs Chapman & Hall reaches us, though slowly enough. (P.S. I find the book is in London, after all.)
We leave this place for Paris, to-morrow—return to Florence in a week or two, and propose to winter in Rome: we were sent here to get the good out of as much of your Atlantic as reaches Hâvre: you will be pleased to know that my wife’s health is decidedly improved. She begs me to give you her best respects and thanks together with those of
Yours very faithfully
Robert Browning.
Pray be so good as to specify place and date in the engraving—and to acknowledge the receipt of the portrait at your earliest convenience. I enclose you an autograph, in case you wish to make use of it.
Address, on integral page: C. S. Francis Esqr / 554. Broadway, / New York.
Publication: The Critic, April 1903, 318–319 (in part).
Manuscript: Columbia University.
2. The text within angle brackets was inserted as an afterthought between the lines. An engraving of this photograph appeared in The Critic, April 1903, p. 321; it is reproduced facing p. 241. The Macaire brothers, Louis Cyrus Macaire (1807–71) and Jean Victor Macaire-Warnod (né Macaire, 1812–92), produced the first photographs of ocean waves and became known for daguerreotype portraits, seascapes, and interiors. Cyrus Macaire built a studio on the breakwater at Le Havre in 1857.
3. This photograph (technically, an ambrotype) was made by the Macaire brothers on 18 September 1859 and later engraved for the fourth edition of Aurora Leigh (1859); see Reconstruction, F25. Heretofore, based on RB’s interpolation in the previous line, this photograph has been attributed to Cyrus Macaire solely. But considering RB’s mention of Macaire’s brother below as “the Artist” and in letter 4246 as “a clever man” who “executed” the photograph, we have attributed the original (sent to Chapman) and the copy (sent to Francis) to both brothers.
4. RB refers to the medallion executed by Marshall Wood in November 1853 and later engraved for the March 1857 issue of The National Magazine (see letter 3286, note 17).
5. i.e., Jean Victor Macaire-Warnod. He added Warnod to his name in 1847.
6. The Fulton, American side-wheel steamer, built in 1855, “from Havre en route to New York, with the English, French, and German mails and passengers, will leave Southampton for New York, on the 20th instant” (The Hampshire Advertiser, 9 October 1858, p. 4).
7. The pocket edition (32 mo.) of Poems (3 vols., New York, 1857), published by C.S. Francis & Co., bound in blue and gold. This copy sold as lot 435 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A352).
___________________
