4479. RB to Mary Mackenzie
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 26, 274–276.
Siena,
Aug. 30. ’59.
I will not lose a minute, dearest Mrs Mackenzie, [1] in trying to repair my stupid fault of delaying to write in answer to your letter—(the first)—& yet you will see in a moment that it was simple stupidity & nothing worse. My wife has been seriously ill: we left Florence, the instant she could be removed, for change of air—and I am happy to say that her recovery, tho’ very slow, is not doubtful—tho’ she has not left the room, (—I might say, the chair) for exactly a month. She is weak—can see no one—but will regain strength in the next few weeks, it is to be hoped. Now, I really felt unwilling to write to you in the middle of this anxiety of mine—&, you see, the end is, you have imagined some reason in your own letter,—so entirely kind & worthy of you—to account for my silence. What did you ever write that could deserve such blame as you give those expressions of “impatience &c”—not one of which, I do assure you, ever occurred in your letter? —The fault has been wholly mine—for I have written to more than one person since I left Florence, on what seemed more urgent reason—but I felt so exceedingly delighted to hear of your success at last, that I wanted my voice to sound, when I did raise it, a little more jubilantly than was possible under all my troubles .. for I have had others than those involved in the state of my wife, tho’, of course, trifling beside it: for instance, I am,—have been the last six or seven weeks, and am to be forever, I apprehend,—the guardian of poor Mr Landor: he is here, a few yards’ distance from this house, in a little villa I have taken for him: his wife & children were behaving very badly & he took refuge with me,—comparatively a stranger; the whole business has been strange & perplexing, but I had no alternative but to help him as I best could—and it ends in his Brothers regularly putting him under my charge with a proper provision for his comfort (their behaviour being as generous and good as the wife & children’s was the reverse). All this has taken much time & thought to arrange: & now let me put it away for a moment, & repeat my congratulations of the truest & the heartiest on your having at length brought your work to a conclusion [2] —& so satisfactorily! Have you indeed a “conceit that this is your best copy?”—you that so abominably depreciate your works?– Then, I know what I shall find it!. If you have a moment to spare in Florence and incline to see Gordigiani’s Copy—it will be easy: you can also see—a thing which would particularly please me—the portraits of my wife & myself. His address is Via Tedesca, 44. By the way, I hear but indifferent news of Mr Page: his picture seems to have been little more successful in London than in Paris—& is now on its way to America– [3] I don’t know with what prospect, considering the ambiguous end of the former one– [4] You may have forgotten that he painted a “Venus” for New-York. I have scarcely said a word, in my hurry not to miss the next post: will you write a word to me when you leave Rome? I should like to meet you when the diligence arrives if possible. My wife desires her kind love. Give my own true regard to Kinny—& always know me, dearest Mrs Mackenzie to be
yours affectionly
Robert Browning.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Scripps College.
1. Mary Mackenzie (née Wood, 1800–90); see letter 4146, note 2.
2. Perhaps a copy of the “B[eatrice]. Cenci” mentioned in letter 4320.
3. When William Page visited London in the summer of 1859, he took along some of his paintings, including “Venus Guiding Aeneas and the Trojans to the Latin Shore,” which he exhibited in a temporary studio at 74 Newman Street. Favorable notices of the “Venus” appeared in The Athenæum (16 July 1859, p. 88), The Literary Gazette (30 July 1859, p. 118), and The Art-Journal (August 1859, p. 259). The Athenæum of 20 August carried a follow-up word on the painting: “We hear that Mr. Page’s clever and ambitious picture, ‘Venus guiding Æneas and the Trojans to the Latin Shore,’ which we were the first to call attention to a few weeks since, is to be sent off to New York on Thursday next” (no. 1660, p. 248).
4. The only “former” Venus we have traced for this period is “Venus Rising from the Sea” (1856), which was bought for the Boston Athenæum by a group of subscribers for $3,000 (see Garnett McCoy, “William Page and Henry Stevens: an incident of reluctant art patronage,” Archives of American Art Journal, 30, 1990, 14). Evidently, it was exhibited in New York and Philadelphia before reaching Boston (see letter 3773).
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