5260. RB to William Wetmore Story & Emelyn Story
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 274–276.
London, 19. Warwick Crescent, Upper Westbourne Terrace.
July 17. ’63
Dearest Friends, It is the old story—you have sent a beggar a heap of money, and you don’t surely expect him to send you money again: you gave me two wonderful letters—for Edie’s counts as one to me also—and I know I felt as grateful as your hearts could desire. All the same, I would, or Pen would, have written at once, had not Edie’s account of your doings puzzled us—“you were to leave for Leghorn at the end of the week” (no use in writing to Rome, then!) “and perhaps go to Switzerland”—(nor use in trying to catch you at Leghorn, consequently.) Pen began to write a long while ago & I enclose his lucubration. I at last bethought me of Mrs Sturgis & wrote to her for your address [1] —& it comes this morning after a week’s delay because she had hurt her arm: this scrap shall go to beloved Siena therefore—where I am better contented to fancy you than elsewhere: I cannot remember which the Belvidere [2] villa is—tell me exactly—but I will not prompt you—sure, that when you do gratify us again it will be in the old way—the best of all talking and writing, to my taste. We stay here till the end of July—then go to Paris, & I think to the same place as last year [3] —the extreme quiet and rusticity are so good in their kind. I am very tired with work and play, as it is counted, and want some weeks for myself. Probably Mrs Bracken and her boy (of Pen’s age) will go with us again. I attribute much or at least something of Pen’s good health and continued growth to the sea-change. He is quite well, long past the poor pony which, to avoid an accident, I gave away lately. [4] He certainly satisfies me on the whole—without more love for lessons than (at bottom of my heart) I should like, he learns respectably, and, I expect, as well as a schoolboy with half the difficulty. Best of all, he is as simple and truthful as boy ever was—really all I wish in that respect. His rowing does him infinite good: & he cuts us no bad figure in his white dress, managing a boat like a feather to perfection. Well, this has been a busy season. I have gone out constantly, but not too much of my experiences stay in my head—except a general feeling of thankfulness and wonder at people’s kindness. Lady W. will be your first object of interest—very dear, & exceedingly clever, as well as admirably patient under her prolonged imprisonment: I much fear the summer is slipping away, and will hardly find her prepared to make the effort of leaving home—indeed she has not yet even left the house: it is no doubt discouraging to go through real pain on the chance of finding oneself the better—but unless the effort be made, how is any strength to come? The general health seems sadly affected by this vile indoor life. Still, one sees little of this late of an evening, when visitors and their contribution of news bring out the old colour and quality,—and you know how pleasant that is. Another invalid here is no less than A. Tennyson—who is kept in bed by an ambiguous sort of rash, eruption—suppressed hay fever or irregularly-acting vaccination,—the learned don’t know: [5] I saw him and found him his fine self, two days ago [6] —affectionate and simple as ever. He has poems which will be printed soon—of one, “Enoch” [7] (the Fisherman or Sailor) friends speak highly. Ruskin is back from Switzerland, & well: I see him now & then with Dickens, Ristori [8] (I sate with her twice at dinner lately)—and a few others you would care to know,—and plenty you may guess.
I sent all your photographs to the proper people, except Ly Ashburton’s—she has not been in town and I keep it till the last thing, at all events– Thank you most heartily for mine—beautifully true, and charming in themselves, they are, Edie’s excepted,—the solitary one,—which is very different from Edie in the groups—still we are grateful for it & every thing. At Paris we shall probably get Pen done again—you shall of course have it, though I don’t pretend to compete with you in generosity: the boys look capitally, and are evidently doing as well as possible. I never expected you would come to England this year—and for reasons, wholly independent of me, I could not go to Italy this summer: but next year I must go, if I live. I confess, I never think of seeing you again satisfactorily till the end of things here—till a few years more go by—and they do go like a dream—that it should be already two years, all but a few days, since I left Italy! I hope to end my life in the land I love best—and what with work and troubles of great & little degree, five or six years will pass, if I don’t pass them—so one day a very aged person will come knocking &c as in the storybooks! Meantime, William will have become very famous. I quite believe in what you tell me, and others tell me—and that the Saul will be a noble work and great success. The other works, [9] —did you not say they were to come to England?
If you are your old selves you, one, all or each of you will first of all write to me here—up to July 31: thenceforward, to Paris, (R.B / 151. Rue de Grenelle, Faubourg St Germain,)—all letters will be forwarded to me,—from Paris, that is, and I will so enjoy them, and the thoughts of you all, as I sit in the room overlooking a few cottages, and the church, and so to the sea! Edie’s letter, with its account of Litzt [10] was delightful. She must write more. Who lives at the old Villa,—ours? [11] And at Landor’s—& Orr’s, if you are really not there. And the people—who is there dead, or just the same? Tell me, won’t you: Last Sunday who came here but Annunziata: she called in Paris on my sister for my address: I was out—she left word she would call on Tuesday or Sunday—so it will be on Sunday. She is with Ly Duff Gordon. [12]
Remember—but I must have said this before—you cannot tell me the number of flies that buzz in your window without interesting me– I believe if you made mere crosses on the paper, I could read the sheet full. Landor wrote yesterday, [13] —was very well: he has been ill, dangerously so—but seems likely to bear up against his eighty nine years. All love to you all, now & ever from yours affectionately
Robert Browning.
Publication: BAF, pp. 124–128.
Manuscript: Keats-Shelley Memorial Association.
2. Sic, for Belvedere, the same villa as Villa Orr (mentioned below) by another name.
3. Ste. Marie, near Pornic, Brittany.
5. Tennyson was trying to recover from a rash on his leg that may have been the result of a small pox vaccination administered at Farringford in May. He stayed at Little Holland House from late June to July 10th, then at the Francis Turner Palgraves’ for at least three weeks (see The Letters of Alfred Lord Tennyson, ed. Cecil Y. Lang and Edgar F. Shannon, Jr., Cambridge, Mass., 1981–90, 2, 333–340, and Gwenllian F. Palgrave, Francis Turner Palgrave: His Journals and Memories of His Life, 1899, p. 83).
6. i.e., Wednesday, the 15th. However, in the following letter, RB writes that he saw Tennyson on Thursday; i.e., the 16th.
7. Enoch Arden was published in August 1864.
8. Adelaide Ristori (1822–1906), the premier Italian actress of her time. One of the dinners RB mentions took place at the home of Julie Salis Schwabe (1818–96). Also in attendance were Mary Mohl, Richard Monckton Milnes, and Julia Wedgwood (see SD2650).
9. One of these was probably “Sappho” (see letter 5212, note 3), which was described in an article entitled “Art in Rome” that appeared in The Athenæum of 6 June 1863. Also mentioned were “Saul” and “Judith, Upon Making her Prayer Before Slaying Holofernes” (1863): “Mr. Storey [sic] has a grand and colossal statue of Judith. The moment is supposed to be just before she slays Holofernes … Her left hand and her face are lifted towards heaven as in prayer; whilst in her right hand, from which the full, loose sleeve has fallen back, she holds a sword. The figure is draped in a long robe. This noble work is well adapted to, and would adorn, a public building” (no. 1858, p. 748).
10. Franz Liszt (1811–86), Hungarian piano virtuoso and composer.
11. Villa Alberti, where the Brownings stayed in the summers of 1859 and 1860. Landor was close by both summers in Villa Graziani.
12. Lucy (“Lucie”) Duff-Gordon (née Austin, 1821–69), wife of Sir Alexander Cornewall Duff-Gordon (1811–72), 3rd Baronet of Halkin, civil servant. Lady Duff-Gordon is listed in RB’s address book of this period (AB-5) at 34 Hertford Street.
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