4581. Thomas Woolner to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 145–147.
27 Rutland St
Hampstead Road N.W.
Jan: 19. 1860
My dear Mr Browning
As you were so good as to say I might introduce any friend of mine to you, I now take the liberty of introducing my friend Mr Wilson from Australia, [1] who is delighted at the hope of seeing you. He is half proprietor of the “Argus” [2] paper in Melbourne, which is the “Times” of the South and he established the paper and edited it, and now after doing good service to the Colony for many years and having made a fortune thereby he has come Northward for the purpose of studying European civilization and resting on his oars awhile; he was very kind to me when I was in Australia, [3] as he always was friendly to anything he believed tended to the culture of the colonials, and now I am naturally anxious to do him a good turn. He is a man of sterling worth, and I think that you will like him, and I should be exceedingly obliged if you would put him up to anything which a stranger would not be likely to find out for himself during a short stay in a place, which you easily can if you chance to have the leisure, as you know such a vast deal about Florence. I know that you always have plenty on your hands, and, therefore should not have dreamed of troubling you with an introduction, only that Mr Wilson is too high[-]minded and gentlemanly to bore you, as I fear is often the case with many who are introduced to you, he was anxious to have some intercourse with a few persons who know somewhat of him, as he would not be likely to meet with many acquaintances on his travels. I have also given him a letter to Edward Lear [4] the landscape painter, at Rome.
I had the pleasure of hearing of you and Mrs Browning thro’ Allingham not more than two months ago: it was a great pleasure to me; for I hear of you generally 3rd or 4th hand, and as it is so long since I saw you, you both seem to have become to my mind almost as two great Myths, and Penini is a little myth. I have been hoping every year that you would at least visit us for a few months of the Summer, but it has always proved that England, even with all its richness in every way and its manifold associations, has been too weak to tempt you from the Golden Florence– I wish that Florence were less lovely or England more beautiful, so that you could be tempted occasionally to honor us with a ray of light—in fact I feel quite jealous of those foreign countries that take you up bodily and claim so much of your pen.
I do not know that I have any news of worth to tell you. Friends are much as usual.
I went and spent all Xmas week with the Tennysons, [5] they were pretty well, the children strong and blooming; he is very well contented with the reception of his ‘Arthur’ poems, as he may well be for they have sold to nearly 20,000 one edition. [6]
A new poem of his has just appeared in MacMillan’s Magazine, [7] which contains some grand passages, but as a whole work of art is scarcely so well fused into an artistic whole as his generally and nearly always are.
I have not seen much of Gabriel Ros[s]etti lately, but believe he is working at some large paintings for Llandaff Cathedral. [8]
William I often see and can report him as usual—calm, clear, pleasant and true.
Holman Hunt is close upon finishing his large picture, [9] it can now be reckoned by hours nearly. When I saw it last I was more struck with it than by any picture I ever saw by a living Artist; and I consider that this picture will place the English school a peg or two higher than it ever stood before. How I should like you to see it! I feel sure you would say it was one of the finest works of art you have ever seen.
I have often lately seen your friend Miss Bonham Carter [10] who is staying at Hampstead, nursing her cousin Miss Nightingale. [11] I have often mentally thanked you for your kindness in introducing me to her, for I have received much pleasure from my visits to her family, and her own society is charming! I think her one of the most delightful ladies of my acquaintance.
I am now busy finishing in marble a bust of Sir William Hooker, [12] and am awaiting a block of marble, to commence a group, life-size, which I have already modelled for Thomas Fairbairn [13] of Manchester, and very soon I expect to begin a bust of Professor Sedgwick of Cambridge [14] who has a remarkably fine head, when done it will be placed in the Fitzwilliam Museum. My bust of Tennyson [15] is placed in the vestibule of The Trinity Library—: not at all a bad place.
I will not occupy more of your time, but will conclude hoping you will give my kind respects and remembrances to Mrs Browning; and for me, ask the little poet if he remembers me and if so give him my love.
Ever sincerely yours
Thomas Woolner.
Address: Mr Robert Browning / Casa Guidi / Via Maggio / Florence / Favored by Mr Wilson.
Publication: The Argus (Melbourne), 7 April 1928, p. 6.
Source: Transcript at Bodleian Library.
1. Edward Wilson (1813–78), a journalist involved in radical politics from an early age, emigrated to Australia in 1842. His Rambles in the Antipodes (1859) describes his travels through Australia and New Zealand. He had recently visited England to take advice on his failing eyesight.
2. Wilson bought The Argus in 1848 from William Kerr, who had founded the newspaper two years earlier.
4. Edward Lear (1812–88), landscape painter and nonsense poet. He is listed in the Brownings’ address book of this period (AB-4) at 9 Via Condotti.
5. At Farringford, their home on the Isle of Wight.
6. The first printing of Idylls of the King (1859) consisted of 40,000 copies, “the price being seven shillings. Of these over 10,000 were sold in the first week” (Charles Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, 1949, p. 319).
7. “Sea Dreams. An Idyll,” Macmillan’s Magazine, January 1860 (pp. 191–198).
9. “The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple”; see letter 3952, note 11.
10. Joanna Hilary Bonham Carter (1821–65); see letter 3060, note 4.
11. Florence Nightingale spent the autumn of 1859 at Montague Grove in Hampstead (see Mark Bostridge, Florence Nightingale: The Making of an Icon, New York, 2008, p. 350). Not long after her return from the Crimea, she began suffering from a chronic, undiagnosed illness and was bedridden for many years.
12. William Jackson Hooker (1785–1865), botanist and director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, from 1841 to 1865. The bust, commissioned by Henry Christy (1810–65), was completed the following month and later accepted for the Royal Academy exhibition of 1860. While in the R.A.’s keeping, however, the nose of the bust was accidentally broken off. Woolner “patched up the nose with borax” for the exhibition (see Amy Woolner, Thomas Woolner, R.A., Sculptor and Poet: His Life and Letters, 1917, p. 192).
13. Thomas Fairbairn (1823–91), industrialist and art collector. The group “Brother and Sister” (also entitled “Deaf and Dumb” and “Constance and Arthur”), representing Fairbairn’s deaf-mute children, Constance and Arthur, was displayed at the International Exhibition of 1862. At Woolner’s request, RB composed an eight-line poem, “Deaf and Dumb,” for the exhibition catalogue, though it never appeared there. It was first published in volume six of Poetical Works (1868).
14. Adam Sedgwick (1785–1873), geologist. Woolner's bust, completed in 1860, is in Trinity College Library, Cambridge.
___________________
