5202. RB to Paolo Emiliani Giudici
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 224.
19. Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace.
Apr. 7. ’63.
My dear Sigr Giudici,
I return you the “Perseveranza” [1] with my most grateful acknowledgements.
I ought to observe that in supposing the “Curse for a Nation” addressed to England, you only make the same mistake as the English critics: it was written and published in America, some years before its appearance in the “Poems before Congress”—being prompted by its author’s hatred of slavery: The English critics, being angry on other grounds, either could not, or would not see its true destination. [2] It was included in a volume referring to Italian and European politics, because, just before at the famous Ostend assemblage of American diplomatists, [3] resolutions had been passed that it would be proper for America to interfere thenceforward in questions of European policy—and this was an admonition to set their own house in order.
I cannot easily say how much pleasure your visit, and the hope of occasionally seeing you, have given
Yours very cordially & obligedly
Robert Browning.
Publication: David J. DeLaura, “A Robert Browning Letter: The Occasion of Mrs. Browning’s ‘A Curse for a Nation’,” Victorian Poetry, 4 (Summer 1966), 210–212.
Manuscript: University of Texas.
1. La Perseveranza, a daily newspaper (1859–1922) founded in Milan. We have been unable to trace Giudici’s commentary on EBB’s “A Curse for a Nation.” This poem was first published in The Liberty Bell of 1856 and later collected in Poems Before Congress (1860).
2. See for example the reviews of Poems Before Congress in The Athenæum (17 March 1860), The Atlas (24 March 1860), The Critic (24 March 1860), and The Daily News (29 March 1860). For the full text of these reviews, see vol. 27, pp. 358–365.
3. RB refers to the Ostend Manifesto, a document signed on 15 October 1854 that advocated the transfer of Cuba from Spain to the United States, either by purchase or, if Spain refused to sell, by conquest. The manifesto was composed and signed by the American ministers to Great Britain (James Buchanan), France (John Young Mason), and Spain (Pierre Soulé), who met first at Ostend then Aix-la-Chapelle. It was hoped by pro-southern and pro-slavery factions that Cuba would enter the union as a slave state.
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