4700. William Allingham to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 59–62.
London (for Ballyshannon)
2 Argyll Place, Regent St
June 23d/60
My dear Mrs Browning
Your most welcome letter [1] found me in London, on a month’s visit, and on the point of writing to you again on the strength of my budget of metropolitan news. First of all let me thank you for the Poems before Congress—were there nothing else, your outspeaking will do everybody immense good, & I for one am unfeignedly grateful for it—though unable to form any opinion upon L N, beyond thinking that most public men when weighed against him kick the beam. [2] But Garibaldi!—I have given him my twenty shillings, that’s all I can say. The Curse for a Nation pleases me most I think, & by the by I wrote (in common no doubt with many others) to the Athenæum pointing out their mistake. What rather surprises me is that you shd be at all surprised at your reception: no nation seems to me (Irishman, recollect!) less fair & unselfish nationally than England.
The Rifle movement (wrong or right) is brisk everywhere (in England—for they won’t trust us in Ireland) and all public resorts are dotted with blue, green, & grey uniforms: review of 25,000 of them next Saturday by the Queen in Hyde Park. [3]
Now for smaller matters. Gabriel Rossetti was married 3 weeks ago to Miss Siddall [4] whom you have heard of—once a ‘model’, with a talent for drawing, & long very sickly as she still is I am sorry to hear. They are supposed to be in Paris. Gabriel’s manner of working is not altered. Holman Hunt’s Christ found by Mary in the Temple is a great hit—bought by Gambart for £5500 (exclusive of money to be paid for right to engrave) [5] and shown at a shilling in Bond St to crowds after crowds. Gambart gets these shillings. Its size is perhaps about 4½ feet by 2½—the Rabbis seated in semicircle from the left corner to the centre, talk & look at the chief group, Joseph Mary & Christ standing towards the right corner; an inner court is seen behind, & at the left side through the open door a warm clear sky & distant hills—the colouring is luminous & prismatic, the finish surprising. Hunt is a lion at present—with a red beard—bears (no pun) his success well, & deserves it. He is very tired of hearing about his picture, & a good deal of the picture itself, being gone forward to other plans. He has had a struggle against fortune. Millais, a prosperous paterfamilias (4 children) [6] has gone to Perth again for the summer with his household. I had a day of him in London, & thought him much matured & improved; he has a tendency to hasty production, & knows it, so I hope will correct it. Tis tempting to be able to earn £15 or £20 anytime by a slight sketch on wood.
Of Tennyson I know nothing at first hand—he is at Farringford—his wife has had hooping cough, but all are now well. I met Miss Tennyson (who lives at Hampstead with her mother) [7] last night. Mr Milnes is fat & well & seen everywhere. He has a Scotch Chatterton [8] (only the poetry is still a question) under his kindly protection just now—a weaver’s son who came up from Dunbartonshire last month with poems in his pocket, trudged about London in the wet weather from one disappointment to another, & at last lay down in pleurisy, to be attended by a doctor that Milnes sent. I visited this Scotch youth—Gray [9] —on Friday, abed in a top front room in Stamford St, Waterloo Bridge, & found his pale face & large eyes very like Keats. He is thought to be recovering, & takes things in a very quiet practical Scotch way.
Carlyle I saw a day or two ago, smoking on his backgreen—he says he is 20 years too old for writing Frederick, [10] but must go on. Not that (as rumoured) he has found Fritz less satisfactory on looking closer at him. Mrs Carlyle looks ill, but is in good spirits & talk. Ruskin’s 5th vol of Modern Painters is out, [11] & he gone to Switzerland.
Tom Taylor (who most hospitably keeps a room for me in his beautiful house at Clapham [12] —or I should say Mrs Taylor does so) is as usual doing twenty things at once with great fluency—among the rest is Captain of Volunteers. Their little son [13] (14 months) a pleasant & jolly baby, is king of the house, & plays on the best piano with his feet.
What more? I shall as usual forget some chief part of my intentions. O! Penini’s bust at Munro’s—charmingly & delicately like, much liker & younger than the photographs of it. I wish I could see Penini before he has left my old friend too far behind—not that he will be able to quite escape me, even in a beard. But what can have happened [to] the photograph that should have come in your letter? [14] Have the Holy Father’s police extracted it? The loss is a real vexation, & worse, as irremediable, that of your preceding letter.
On the other hand the news of Mr Browning’s growing Poem [15] is of the best one has heard for many a day, & I have been shining in the eyes of certain faithful, by the reflected light of the yet unrisen new planet. Woolner is busy & flourishing. London talks of Garibaldi, of the Lords & Paper Duty [16] of Riflemen & of Mr Hume the Spiritualist—who by the by brought up a ghost the other evening at some grand house; who intimated that he was old Jones Lloyd, Lord Overstone’s father, [17] that he was in Heaven & being asked how he liked it, said “better than he expected”, one of the best ghostly replies I have heard of. Thackeray is as usual, but richer, & moving to a large new house near Kensington Gardens [18] (£7000 per annum). [19] Do you know that the Irish “Nation” warmly applauded Poems Before Congress. [20] I must end this disjointed chat, hoping to receive a letter in the Summer or Autumn in my Irish solitude, and remaining always affectionately yours,
W. Allingham.
I am writing an Irish poem on tenant right &c—metre of Crabbe—promising?! [21]
Young Edward Jones is just married to a little Miss Macdonald, [22] I think it is. You, or Mr Browning, have seen E Jones, friend of Guinevere-Morris? [23] Mr Hawks [24] <wh>om you know of is just starting for Italy.
I go back to silent little Ballyshannon (save for the constant moan of the waterfall) next week. Do send me a letter during the summer– You cannot conceive the gift it is. I came to London 4 weeks ago thinking myself rather seriously ill, but find I was not so, & am now nearly as usual. If you were in Paris I would go to see you—nay, you should certainly see me some day in Siena were my rope long enough.
Address: Italy / Mrs Browning, / Casa Guidi, / Florence.
Publication: Letters from William Allingham, ed. Helen P. Allingham (London, [?1913]), pp. 10–12.
Manuscript: National Library of Ireland and R.H. Taylor Collection.
2. i.e., are lightweights. “To kick or strike the beam: (of one scale of a balance) to be so lightly loaded that it flies up and strikes the beam; to be greatly outweighed” (OED).
3. Queen Victoria reviewed numerous brigades of volunteer riflemen on the day of this letter. The Times of 25 June 1860 reported that “the total number [of volunteers] on the ground was considerably above 20,000” (p. 9).
4. Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddall (see letter 3633, note 2) were married on 23 May 1860 at Hastings, Sussex.
5. “The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple” (1854–60) was acquired by Ernest Gambart (1814–1902), Belgian-born art dealer and publisher. According to the ODNB, the £5,500, “a record sum at the time for any contemporary painting,” included the right of engraving. The painting is now at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
6. They were Everett (1856–97), George Gray (1857–78), Effie Gray (1858–1911), and Mary Hunt (1858–1912). The Millais’s later had four more children.
7. Elizabeth Tennyson (née Fytche, 1780–1865) resided at Hampstead in the house of her daughter Emilia (“Emily”) Jesse (1811–87) and son-in-law Richard Jesse (1815–89). The only unmarried Tennyson daughter at this time was Matilda Tennyson (1816–1913), who evidently lived there as well.
8. Thomas Chatterton (1752–70), poet who achieved some fame before his untimely death from accidental poisoning.
9. David Gray (1838–61), Scottish poet, befriended by Richard Monckton Milnes. His best known poem, “The Luggie,” was published posthumously with other poems in 1862.
10. The History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great (6 vols., 1858–65).
11. Published by Smith, Elder & Co. on 18 June.
12. Built by the Taylors on Lavender Sweep, the house was “a gathering place for politicians and artists” (ODNB).
14. The photograph of RB, promised in letter 4675.
16. England had maintained a tax on paper since the reign of Queen Anne. On 12 March 1860, the House of Commons passed a bill to repeal that tax (see The Times, 13 March 1860, p. 8). Two months later, however, the House of Lords voted overwhelmingly against it from fear of a decrease in government revenues (see The Times, 22 May 1860, p. 8).
17. Samuel Jones Loyd (1796–1883), 1st Baron Overstone (1850), banker, was the only child of Reverend Lewis Loyd (1768–1858), a nonconformist clergyman and banker, and his wife, Sarah (née Jones, 1759–1821).
18. “In March 1860 Thackeray purchased 2 Palace Green, Kensington, and after having it completely rebuilt, the family moved in during March 1862” (ODNB).
19. Presumably, Allingham refers to Thackeray’s income. It is not certain, however, how much “per annum” he was making at this time. According to Peter L. Shillingsburg, during Thackeray’s editorship of The Cornhill Magazine, his income from Smith, Elder & Co. fluctuated between £297 and £470 per month (see Pegasus in Harness: Victorian Publishing and W. M. Thackeray, Charlottesville, Virginia, 1992, pp. 105–106). Thackeray himself stated in a letter of 4 May 1860: “The Magazine goes on increasing, and how much do you think my next twelve months’ earnings and receipts will be if I work? £10,000. … We are going to spend 4,000 in building a new house on Palace Green, Kensington” (The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray, ed. Gordon N. Ray, Cambridge, Mass., 1945–46, 4, 185).
20. A review of Poems Before Congress in The Nation (Dublin) of 28 April 1860 (p. 554) included this praise: “At times in these poems she is grand, sonorous, and her thoughts move to the old majestic music, solemn and beautiful as ever. But at times, also, she is fierce, terrible, scathing in her denunciations of the enemies of liberty and progress.” For the full text of this review, see vol. 27, pp. 393–395.
21. Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland (1864), first published in Fraser’s Magazine, November 1862–November 1863.
22. Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833–98) married at Manchester on 9 June 1860 Georgiana Macdonald (1840–1920).
23. Referring to William Morris’s The Defence of Guenevere (1858); see letter 4152, note 5.
24. Probably Sydney Milnes Hawkes (1821–1905), barrister and journalist, a supporter of Italian unification and known to have travelled to France and Italy on behalf of Mazzini. At the time of this letter, he was estranged from his wife, Emilie Hawkes (née Ashurst, afterwards Venturi), also a supporter of Mazzini, who had filed for divorce on 2 September 1859 and who was currently in Italy (see letter 4627, note 11).
___________________
