4840. RB to Thornton Hunt
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 8–9.
Rome, Via Felice 126.
Feb: 26. ’61.
Dear Sir, [1]
I wish with all my heart I were as rich as you suppose me—but I never received from your Father more than one Letter—a very long, characteristic & precious letter which, unfortunately, is at Florence. [2] I know not in which of my safest receptacles—and to Florence I do not return before the end of May; nor can I conceive how to get at it sooner. It was sent to me three years ago—me, meaning to my wife as well as myself. She has nothing but her share in that: I have two little notes in England of no importance unless as expressions of kindness from an exquisite poet and noble man. I am happy to find that your impression is that He might have often written to us.
My friend Mr Story tells me that he possesses many letters—at least twenty—of a particularly interesting nature, and valuable as exhibiting your Father in a very advantageous point of view with reference to a proposition made by an American, a Mr Adams, to put his sympathy and admiration into a money-offering—which was declined with all dignity and considerateness. [3] The letters are in America, unluckily—but should you require them on a future occasion they will be much at your service,—I am instructed to say.
Pray believe me,
Dear Sir,
Yours very sincerely
Robert Browning.
Thornton Hunt Esq.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Brown University.
1. Thornton Leigh Hunt (1810–73), journalist and editor of The Daily Telegraph from 1855 to 1873, was the eldest son of Leigh Hunt (1784–1859) and his wife, Marianne (née Kent, 1787–1857).
2. Hunt was preparing an edition of his father’s letters, The Correspondence of Leigh Hunt (2 vols., 1862). The “very long” letter that RB mentions is letter 3949 (31 December [1856–14 January 1857]), which he failed to locate for many years (see The Athenæum, 7 July 1883, no. 2906, p. 15). However, another letter from Leigh Hunt (letter 4099), which seems to have temporarily slipped RB’s mind, was found in time for the 1862 edition (II, pp. 269–271).
3. The money offer, in the amount of $500, was made by Samuel Adams Lee (1829–82), of Washington, Pennsylvania. He edited The Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt (2 vols., Boston, 1857) and co-edited with Hunt The Book of the Sonnet (2 vols., Boston, 1867). See David Kaser, “Leigh Hunt and His Pennsylvania Editor,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 81 (October 1957), 406–414. Thornton Hunt contacted Story and published the one letter the latter had with him in Rome and also a letter he wrote to Thornton concerning Lee and the $500 offer (see The Correspondence of Leigh Hunt, pp. 271–275).
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