4594. William Allingham to EBB & RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 162–165.
[Lane, Ballyshannon, Ireland]
Feb 2nd 1860
Dear Mr & Mrs Browning
This comes (from Ireland observe) as postscript to a letter of yesterday which was finished & sealed & sent off in the midst of annoyances & interruptions, & as I now find to my horror with not enough postage stamps upon it, anymore than enough inside of things which I wanted to say.
I agree in not caring much about the ‘King’s Idylls’ feeling, at best, like the man who got rich, & had two puddings o’ Sunday [1] —in truth my Tennyson is he of the Locksley Hall volume. [2] Several new magazines have persuaded him into contributing—at least for the nonce, & (one hears) for a guinea a line; so we have had in Once-a-Week ‘The Grandmother’s Apology’ [3] —sketch of common life in black chalk,—in Macmillan’s Magazine ‘Sea Dreams,’ in blank verse, stockbroking with marine background—& now in the Cornhill, ‘Tithonus’, [4] a few bars of the old ’Ænoneian music. There is an excitement in expecting & reading anything from such hands—yet I recall Mr Browning’s antipathy to ‘contributing’ & see that its joys have drawbacks for the writer. I certainly thought too, at the time, that he might have left ‘Riflemen form!’ [5] to be sung by the other T (Martin Farquhar) [6] to whom certain wise people attributed it. As far as one can see into the dark cloud, another Poet’s (I am not thinking of Tupper now!) faith in L Napoleon is thoroughly justified.
For my own humble part I can make nothing of current politics & politicians. I wrote in the Daily News for War with Russia, [7] & am ashamed ever since, not from having changed opinion, but from seeing that I never had any on the subject worth a farthing. But—For Italy & Freedom! of course, let men go as they will, & in spite of one Thomas Carlyle (great as he is) who thinks the Austrians should stay, because they have made good roads.
Here, all green Irelanders are furious with the Emperor whom they adored 3 months ago. They are collecting money for the Pope in every little Chapel. On the other side is the party who look on all Catholics as Americans do on Niggers. I meet no one who is not with one or other of these two parties. What a queer country to live in, when one comes to think of it! I wonder shall I ever get to live elsewhere. London is extremely tempting,—but—on conditions of spending 7 hours per diem in Thames Street (the Custom House) [8] & 2 in omnibuses? I have been rather ill ever since my return from holiday, having caught a bad cold in the Rotterdam Steamer, but it is now going off I hope. Circumstances too are somewhat depressing here in our house, my father, [9] long an invalid, is now wholly confined to bed & has had to resign the managership of a Branch Bank which he has held 25 years. The worst of this is, having to leave a large house to which he & his have been so long accustomed. Why write these things here? perhaps to indicate how welcome a friendly letter comes.
It is a comfort to see that, at 70, & after long illness, my father’s mind is just what I always remember it.
Probably you have seen Morris in Italy, [10] whither he went with his wife, [11] (and I think the amiable Edward Jones, who designs Holbeinesque [12] fantasies like few). His wife Morris first saw by accident at Oxford, when he & Rossetti were there painting the Hall which you have heard of, & which I lament to say is still part unpainted & threatened to be given over to vulgar hands for completion. [13] She is a most beautiful creature, witness Rossetti’s sketches, & more I know not save that she was of humbler rank than Griselda’s self [14] (being of Oxford too, & in our day). Morris’s wonderful house is rising somewhere, but not at Greenwich. [15]
Mr Ruskin is in London. He sent me his ‘Two Paths’ [16] the other day, & had previously written one of his kind offhand notes to ‘The Editor’ of the book of select poems saying he ‘never saw so beautiful & rich a gathering.’ He was last year at Cologne, Dusseldorf, Dresden, Berlin, Nuremberg, Munich (which he calls frightfully ugly)—saith ‘Rauch is a humbug & German artists in general worse than Rauch’. [17] Summa ‘saw not one piece of admirable Modern Deed in Iron, Stone, Wood or Paint.’
Yesterday I slipt in ‘et me ama!’ [18] —not the best grammar for a double letter, but the meaning was good, though somewhat presumptuous. At least do not forget sometimes one who thinks of you very often–
W Allingham
We have ugly cold weather here half frost, half rain. I wonder where you are now, & still more, is there any chance of your coming to England or France in 1860.
Address: Tuscany / Robert Browning Esqre / Casa Guidi, / Florence. / Via Belgium. Redirected: Roma. [19]
Publication: Letters from William Allingham, ed. Helen P. Allingham (London, [?1913]), pp. 9–10.
Manuscript: R.H. Taylor Collection.
1. Cf. George Colman (1732–94), The Man of Business, A Comedy (1774), Act I: “It was not so in my old master’s time. Never out of the regular channel; sure and moderate profit; quiet, sober living; a plain joint and a pudding on week days, and, perhaps, two joints and two puddings on Sunday!” (p. 6).
2. Alfred Tennyson, Poems (2 vols., 1842). “Locksley Hall” appeared in volume two.
3. In the issue of 16 July 1859 (see letter 4498, note 5).
4. “Tithonus” was published in The Cornhill Magazine of February 1860 (pp. 175–176).
5. Allingham refers to “The War,” published in The Times of 9 May 1859 (p. 10), which incorporated some of the earlier “Riflemen Form!” (see letter 4417, note 18).
6. Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–89), writer and poet, whose Proverbial Philosophy (1838) brought him wealth and fame. According to the ODNB, Tupper’s “suspicion of the French resulted in fervent championship of the volunteer rifle corps, whom he encouraged with a sheaf of verses and articles (1859).”
7. “Peace and War. An Ode” in The Daily News of 20 February 1854, p. 2.
8. At 20 Lower Thames Street in the City of London.
9. William Allingham (1789–1866), of Ballyshannon.
10. Morris did not visit Italy until 1873.
11. Jane Morris (née Burden, 1839–1914) married William Morris (1834–96) on 26 April 1859 in Oxford, the city of her birth. The daughter of a stableman, “little is known of her childhood, but it was clearly one of poverty and deprivation” (ODNB). In 1857 she was spotted in an Oxford theatre by D.G. Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones and began modelling for them and, later, Morris.
12. A reference to Hans Holbein (the younger), (1497?–1543), German artist, best known for his portraits of Henry VIII and his court, including Sir Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, etc. Allingham may have particularly in mind Holbein’s Dance of Death series of woodcuts.
14. In the last tale in Boccaccio’s Decameron, Griselda, a poor man’s daughter, is selected by the Marquis of Saluzzo to be his wife. He makes repeated and outrageous demands in order to test her patience and loyalty. The story is also told in “The Clerk’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales.
15. The Red House; (see letter 4259, note 11).
16. The Two Paths: Being Lectures on Art, and Its Application to Decoration and Manufacture, Delivered in 1858–9 was published by Smith, Elder & Co. in May 1859.
17. Allingham had seen a specimen of Rauch’s work at Potsdam (see letter 4546, note 14).
18. “And love me!”
19. Transcript of envelope in editors’ file.
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