5623. Lady William Russell to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 271–272.
[London]
[Postmark: 14 July 1865]
Will Voltaire, “laver le Linge Sale” de Frederic? [1] —— I find it thus––– à la Clarendon [2] —— false Quantity–––. I make it prose–––to be versified Quadraginta mihi jucunda Messes tecum fili si memini fuere, quarum dulcia non mixta amaris [3] ———————(Paraphrase)––these Words Must come in——————
Then follow, the original–––
Si vitare velis acerba quædam — —
Et tristes animi cavere morsus [4]
&c &c &c — —
This July 14th is my last “Evening at home”
_________
So I hope you will come early [5] You will meet Cartwright——
Address, on integral page: Robert Browning Esq / 19 Warwick Crescent / upper Westbourne Terrace / —W.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. “‘Wash the dirty linen’ of Frederic.”
2. When Voltaire left Potsdam in 1753 after a residence of three years as chamberlain to (and friend of) Frederick the Great, he took with him, among other tokens of friendship, a privately printed volume of the monarch’s poetry, “Œuvre de Poésies, in which,” writes Carlyle, “are satirical spurts affecting more than one crowned head: one shudders to think what fires a spiteful Voltaire might cause by publishing these! This was Friedrich’s idea;—and by no means a chimerical one, as the Fact proved; said Œuvre being actually reprinted upon him, at Paris afterwards (not by Voltaire), in the crisis of the Seven-Years War, to put him out with his Uncle of England” (Thomas Carlyle, Frederick the Great, Vol. 4, 1864, XVI, 12, 443). Lady W., as she was wont to do, may be facetiously substituting “Clarendon” for Carlyle. We cannot otherwise explain the reference to the 4th Earl of Clarendon (see letter 3755, note 12), who at this time was a member of Palmerston’s cabinet as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster.
3. “I have had forty pleasant summers with you, son, if I remember, their sweets were not mixed with bitters.” Cf. Martial, Epigrams, XII, 34, 1–2, trans. D.R. Shackleton Bailey. Perhaps, Lady W. had written this for her son Arthur Russell (1825–92), who had turned 40 on 13 June 1865.
4. Cf. Martial, Epigrams, XII, 34, 8–9: “Si vitare voles acerba quaedam et tristis anime cavere morsus” (“If you wish to avoid certain sournesses and guard against painful heart-bites”).
5. Underscored three times.
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