4609. John Forster to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 193–195.
46 Montagu Square W
18th February 1860
The last notes I had from you and your dear wife, my old and excellent friend, were a great delight and comfort to me. I had begun to weary and thirst for tidings of you, and it came at last in a refreshing shower. And see how unjust it was of me to think you long in writing—when here I have permitted myself to wait very nearly two months before telling you with what true delight my heart then responded to your continued friendly remembrance of me–
As to this, however, (troubling you with no excuses, though I have very many) how little can I write all I should like to say! Well– I must wait till you come another visit to us—as I heartily hope you soon will—and then we may manage to get that said, and several things beside! There are no friendships like old friendships, my dear Browning—and of all my old friendships there is none that makes such constant and peculiar appeal to me as yours.
All you said, all your kind & noble wife said, of old Landor in these last notes—went to the root of his character and all its weaknesses—to which you are both as tender and generous as such natures as yours would always be. I wrote to him now some four months ago, as probably you know—a long letter—but he has taken no notice of it. I wrote again a month ago—directing my letter to your care at the Casa Guidi, hoping they would forward it to him wherever he might be—that I might reach him on his birthday (30th Jany), when possibly a little more disposed to old friends & kind associations, apart from the self-inflicted miseries of the past twenty months. But neither has he answered this—and I am quite without any intelligence of him.
Meanwhile I acted on your request at the opening of the year, and paid (as I will always in future, until you bid me otherwise) 50£ to Coutts’s [1] to be paid by them to your account at Philipson’s of Florence. I shall assume that in this respect therefore, unless I hear to the contrary, all for the future is as it ought to be: and for such news as you may be able to give me of my old friend, now silent to me himself, I shall always be most grateful. Never think of paying your letters, and remember that I have here an eager welcome for a single line to tell me of you both. Don’t think (I mean) that I expect a long letter from you– And above all don’t wait for any friend to be your postman, because, addressing me at 19 Whitehall Place, [2] the Country pays my letters.
Talking of friendly services in this respect I have to complain of Chapman also, after telling me he should give me notice of a traveller to Rome who would take a packet to you from me, suffered said traveller to depart without advising me a word about it. He has promised me another in three or four weeks, however,—and this will be better so far, that I shall be able to send, with the book already put up for you, [3] another I am now bringing out which will also further remind you of our old studies together, & old times. It is about the Arrest of the Five Members in 1642. [4]
And soon, I see, we are to have more of the true poet utterances of Mrs Browning—about Italy I infer from the title. A wonderful subject—with conflict, of infinite grandeur, beauty, and mystery just at present—not a subject for ordinary but for extraordinary people, and one therefore she has nobly won the right to be heard upon, and listened to, with deepest respect apart altogether (I would say) from even the questionless title of her Genius & Art. Of the Italian people, as they have lately shown themselves, I cannot express the admiration I feel—and lately I have even had to surrender some part of my rooted dislike to Louis Napoleon. In the business of the Pope he has done the work of an Emperor—and if he does not leave this blot of Savoy to blur & deface the page, his Italian Campaign & its results may yet plead trumpet-tongued against [5] his former offences against Freedom.
Give to your dear & true wife* the warmest admiration & love of both of us here (my wife & me) and accept them yourself, my dear Browning, believing me always as of old
Your most affectionate
John Forster
*Whom I mean some day soon to inflict a letter upon!
Address: Italy Affranchi / Robert Browning Esq / Via del Tritone 28 / Rome.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. Coutts and Co., London banking firm founded in 1692. The amount was recorded by RB on 5 February (see “Mr Landor’s Accounts” in vol. 26, p. 394).
2. The address of the Lunacy Commission, to which Forster was appointed secretary in December 1855.
3. As indicated by Forster in a letter to RB (22 May 1860, ms at Berg), this was to be his Historical and Biographical Essays (2 vols., 1858). However, it was later decided to publish a new edition of this work in two stand-alone volumes: The Debates on the Grand Remonstrance, November and December, 1641. With an Introductory Essay on English Freedom under Plantagenet & Tudor Sovereigns and Oliver Cromwell. Daniel De Foe. Sir Richard Steele. Charles Churchill. Samuel Foote. Biographical Essays. Forster thought it better to wait until these were issued, especially since The Debates was “greatly improved.” Both volumes were published by John Murray in November 1860.
4. Forster’s Arrest of the Five Members by Charles the First was published by John Murray the following month. A copy, inscribed on the half-title, “The author to his old friend Robert Browning,” sold in Browning Collections as part of lot 693 (see Reconstruction, A983, now at ABL). “Old studies together” refers to their collaboration on a biography of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, one of the five members (see letter 2374, note 4).
5. Cf. Macbeth, I, 7, 19.
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