5000. James H. Stone to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 9–10.
Baltimore Md
Decemr 23. 1861
Mr. Robt Browning
London
Engd
My dear Sir,
While I dared not intrude upon the sacred privacy of your grief before this, yet the sympathy of a stranger was warmly felt, when the announcement of your great loss came to us across the Ocean. But a little while before, my own sorrows had stirred the ever responsive kindness of your saintly wife, to such words of consolation, as she only could utter; the tenderness of which fell upon us, as a message from Heaven. My poor record of thanks went back to her, reaching their destination perhaps, as a last prayer, falling at her feet, then commencing her own journey, for that Heaven which she pointed to us.
We loved Mrs Browning while living, and her memory is precious to many Americans. We had eagerly read her every word uttered, and her kind deeds, are known to all of us. That she should have written such words of goodness to me by letter, and marked my dear darling dead boy’s grave, by such a tender poem, speaks in volumes for the heart that dictated it all. It was “Only a curl” [1] we had, and God knows it was dear to us, but it is doubly hallowed now in our sight, mutely speaking as it does of the twain who have died. And now My Dear Sir, let me, for the sake of “the dearly loved and dead,” offer our heartfelt sympathy for you, and her “own little son,” who have been left here a little while without her, whom we know, has gone to the home of the blessed. We beg you to accept these assurances of our remembrance, and to feel that our emotions are shared here by thousands, who have not the opportunity of this expression to you.
In conclusion, may I refer to the fact that there is one more kindness, you can do me, and if by any other, as well, I would here be silent. We want an engraving (or other likeness) of Mrs B. to place side by side with other loved ones.
Will you select such a one, best approved by yourself, and have it forwarded by proper agency, in one of the Ocean Steamers to new York, addressed as here-below designated.
I know that you will forgive the request, and pardon me fully for this further tax upon you.– We look with a pleasurable anxiety for the new issue of all those writings, that will live, with the author’s fame, for ever, first in greatness, in tenderness, and purity of conception.–
At all times, Dr Sir, Yr obliged
& faithful Snt
James H. Stone [2]
I enclose draft £5. for the object named above.
please have package marked
James H. Stone
Baltimore. Md.
Care Taylors Richards & Co.
New York.–
and let the agent advise me pr mail of shipment.—
Publication: None traced.
Source: Author’s copy at Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Stone printed this poem by EBB on a single sheet for private distribution and dated it “Baltimore, June 16, 1861.” A copy of the printing, with the original manuscript (see Reconstruction, D694), and the source of this letter were presented to the Armstrong Browning Library by Stone’s grandson, James H.S. Fair, in 1951. “Only a Curl” was first published in The Independent (New York), 16 May 1861, and later collected in Last Poems (1862).
2. James Hollyday Stone (1828–68); see letter 4870, note 3.
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