5186. RB to William Wetmore Story, Emelyn Story & Edith Story
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 210–213.
19. Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace.
March 5. ’63.
Dearest Friends,
Of the few words I shall be able to write,—what use in giving any to excuses and beggings for pardon? I do seem to know that you understand my first satisfying people outside—& then sitting down quietly with the inmates of my soul’s little house. The long letter from Mrs Story was wholly a comfort & delight: how shall I get another if I say nothing in reply? Yet you see how foolish I am. But I have been unwell, bilious, full of cold & cough, with work of various kinds to occupy me for hours and hours, and a continued press of engagements—going out as I do every evening—& you remember what that means. However I wanted this to be, have got it, & like it. I don’t reckon among engagements the time I am able to spend with Ly William—the pleasure is complete there, & unattended by the slightest drawback: I dine with her, sit with her, & go away (as I did last night) only the more anxious to return (as I hope to do this evening.) She is certainly much better,—takes a little exercise in a sort of go-cart, can sit up to dinner,—for the rest, is the perfectly delightful person you know,—or rather, more so, by virtue of the six months more of her that I have been allowed to enjoy. So now, no more of company, but all of you. First, true congratulations about Story’s book: Chapman showed me his stock the other day,—but a hundred or less copies unsold,—said he should produce a new edition, having one vol: still in type—but of this you must have heard—as of the various reviews which have been unanimous in their chorus of praise. [1] He engaged to send you these thro’ the Foreign Office and I hope has done so. I told you about my endeavoring to correct the text of the Evil Eye, [2] in the space of four hours—all, as I was given to understand, between us & the public: had I guessed that weeks would intervene—(why, I don’t know)—I would have tried to verify the notes which are “shaky.” It is very pleasant to observe, as I do continually that you are in mind though no longer in sight—everybody speaks most cordially and expresses interest in the forthcoming works. I hope & trust the “Saul” may be all I have a right to believe. A letter from Odo Russell to his mother spoke of it in the highest terms—a letter that arrived yesterday. I want not to forget to tell you that in a profoundly stupid lecture which (to my amazement and discomfiture) I heard Cardinal Wiseman deliver some time ago, [3] —he made one good point, by praising the ethnological science which came in aid of art in the case of the “Sibyl” [4] —“O si sic omnia!” [5] for he was deplorably long, wonderfully wrong, and anything you like but strong—all of which you will see when you see the printed Discourse. [6] I had faith in his tact, you know.
Pen is quite well—except for a rather obstinate cold & cough (I caught mine of him,)—and continues to give me great satisfaction. I have just succeeded in entering him for residence at Balliol, Oxford, in 1867, if we live & do well. It is the best college in Oxford, by all testimony, being Jowett’s—a reading college exclusively—and conferring great honor on those of its inmates who distinguish themselves. His name was most kindly put down simultaneously by Jowett & Dr Scott, the Master, each signifying to me his intention of being useful & kind to Pen when he should need it. I believe I have done the best in the course I decided on: he learns more than at school, seems to enjoy himself quite enough, and proves really so good, conscientious & respectable, that I am content with things as they are. He is much grown, since you saw him. Last sunday, he & I, stepping into a carriage on the underground railway [7] found—Macpherson! [8] —who could hardly believe Pen to be the boy of two years back. I daresay your boys are as much advanced: do you still hold to your project of sending them to Eton? It will bring you to England, for one good thing. How do they get on? Any news of the poor Abbé? And Edie, “out” now [9] —is she enjoying herself? Now, be constant to the old tradition, and continue to do me all the good & kindness, while I simply accept & gratefully do nothing: tell me all about everybody & every thing: as for Macpherson, he seemed to have much of Rome in his beard & hair– I felt unwonted love for him—& so it is with the many people I meet,—whom I knew there and fancied I never could care three straws about. In a week, we go to Paris i.e. on the 14. till the end of the month: then we stay four months [10] & then,—not to Italy, alas! How kind Mrs Sturgis has been you can hardly imagine. She asked us to spend the Christmas week there,—it was only too pleasant to be possible: I had engagements of old standing. I write to you now through her goodness in apprising me of her departure. I wish her all the delight she deserves—and you will do your utmost to help in that. I send with this a little book, [11] not to be published for a fortnight yet. You got, no doubt, the little thing [12] I sent, thro’ the Foreign Office, for Edie. My old books are getting printed, and so slowly that I shall not be able to bring out the new book [13] till Autumn: wanting to draw a distinct line between past & present.
Everybody is crazy—literally—about the entry next Saturday of the Princess: [14] the crowd will be enormous– I heartily wish I were out of it all—but must place Pen, and, being caught in the current, may as well see with a good grace: Pen goes with Ly de Grey,—I go to Devonshire House, [15] —which comes of not caring for a thing. The weather has been magnificent for the last day or two, but can hardly last, I fear.
And now I’ve done—little enough, but, as I began by saying, the more will be your charity to answer. Give my love to all friends, acquaintance, indifferents and enemies, if I have any. Pen is away, but I know what I ought to say for him. Landor is quite well though he had a significant attack two months ago or more: he wrote to me on the occasion of his completing his eighty-eighth year,—just one of his old letters! [16]
Good bye, dearest friends,—all three, or all five of you, be assured I always think of you and never without comfort and perhaps hope—hope for the years at the end.
Affectionately yours meanwhile, then
and ever,
Robert Browning.
Thanks most heartily for the Roba di Roma: [17] which I received since writing last.
I scribble what you will read, hard as the pen can drive, & never return to it—take it & forgive it so.
Publication: BAF, pp. 115–119.
Manuscript: Keats-Shelley Memorial Association.
1. Reviews of Story’s Roba di Roma (1863) had appeared in three of the more important periodicals by this time: The Athenæum (24 January, no. 1839, pp. 115–117), The London Review (7 February, pp. 150–151), and The Saturday Review (21 February, pp. 243–244). All three pointed out flaws and mistakes, including the author’s failed attempts at humor, but generally praised his powers of observation and his selection of subjects. After finding Story’s “etymology of primavera … supremely ridiculous,” the reviewer in The London Review wrote: “It is much pleasanter to thank him for the really valuable additions he has made to our acquaintance with the social life and domestic habits of the actual Roman population. The scenes which have grown so familiar to him … are depicted … with a graphic power, and a hearty human sympathy” (p. 151).
3. On Friday, 30 January 1863 (see letter 5158, note 3).
4. In calling for an “exacter study of national types” in art, Cardinal Wiseman said: “As to Sculpture, the Exhibition which has just closed presented two remarkable statues in the Roman court, in which this study has been carefully attended to. I allude to Mr. Storey’s [sic] Cleopatra, and African Sibyl; in both of which the artist (an American) has endeavoured to preserve the national type of the Egyptian features, but at the same time to impart the character and expression of more classical models. I believe we may consider that the effort was successful, and embodied a happy thought, realized in sculpture for the first time” (Points of Contact between Science and Art: A Lecture Delivered at the Royal Institution, January 30, 1863, 1863, pp. 54–55).
5. Cf. Juvenal, Satires, 10, 123–124, trans. Susanna Morton Braund: “Si sic omnia dixisset” [“If everything he said had been like this”].
6. Points of Contact Between Science and Art was issued by Hurst and Blackett on 14 March (see The Athenæum, 14 March 1863, no. 1846, p. 350).
7. The first underground railway in London, which was steam powered, opened on 10 January 1863 and ran from Bishop’s Road Station (now Paddington) to Farringdon Street Station.
8. Robert Turnbull Macpherson (1814–72); see letter 3307, note 3.
9. Edith Story (afterwards Peruzzi, 1844–1917) turned 18 the previous August.
10. i.e., in London.
13. Dramatis Personæ (1864). Volume one of Poetical Works (1863) was issued in May.
14. Princess Alexandra of Denmark (1844–1925), eldest daughter of Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (1818–1906), later Christian IX, King of Denmark, and his wife, Louise, Princess of Hesse-Cassel (1817–98). Princess Alexandra married on 10 March 1863, Prince Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (1841–1910), later Edward VII, at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. The celebration of Princess Alexandra’s entry into London took place on 7 March 1863.
15. The expansive London residence of the Dukes of Devonshire, located on Piccadilly. The current resident was William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire (1808–91). The house was sold by the 9th Duke in 1918, and six years later it was demolished.
17. A copy of Roba di Roma (2nd ed., 1863) sold as part of lot 1116 in Browning Collections; present whereabouts unknown (see Reconstruction, A2218).
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