4665. RB to Isa Blagden
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 320.
[Rome]
[10 May 1860] [1]
Dearest Isa,
I have only a minute, to tell you that Saulini’s [2] price for a copy of the portrait in cameo is—25 scudi for any size under the original, unless for a very small one, for which he would ask 20 scudi—and there is to be nothing at a lower price,—this exclusive of the setting, of course.
I have ascertained that Story will not make casts of the bust [3] —as the existence of one would deprive him of any power over the work,—anybody could reproduce it to any extent. He has recd a letter from Miss Cobbe on the matter of a photograph, but will reply himself.
All thanks for your dear little letter—I don’t know where we shall go, and am unable to make up my mind for many reasons—but probably Siena will be the place, unless it is beset by visitors,—so keep our counsel: [4] for the accom[m]odations are limited and one acquaintance too many would be too many indeed– If we could go on the sly, my Isa, you & yours ever
RB
Publication: B-IB, p. 344.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. RB’s discussion of the cameo indicates that this letter accompanied letter 4664.
2. Tommaso Saulini (1793–1864), cameo carver, is listed in Murray’s A Handbook of Rome and Its Environs (1858) under “Engravers of Cameos.—Principally on shells: Saulini, No. 8, Via della Croce, perhaps the best in Rome for his portraits in cameo—he also engraves in pietra dura” (p. xxii).
3. Of Theodore Parker; see letter 4664, note 3.
4. RB refers to the Brownings’ desire to avoid the Eckleys.
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