5785. RB to Edward Twisleton

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 106–108.

19. Warwick Crescent,

Upper Westbourne Terrace, W

June 29. ’63 [sic, for ’66]. [1]

My dear Twisleton,

I should certainly have suggested Woolner, of myself: I know little of Scott [2] but by report,—and that is favorable. Surely no better couple could be pitched upon.

Thank you for your previous letter. My father would undoubtedly have been interesting to you, had you known him. He sank under a complaint which would have subdued a man of half his years, tho’ they wanted only three weeks of being eighty-five in number. He retained all his faculties to the very end,—retained too the sweetness of soul,—I can’t find another word,—which belonged to him from the beginning. His utter indifference to death seemed so remarkable that the doctor felt his pulse to be quite sure that he really was aware of his condition,—while my father, in turn, wondered in his naïf way at the other’s surprise: There was a consultation with—Vigla, the emminent surgeon,—and he never asked, nor cared to hear, what they said or thought. He was desirous I should not be sent for—. “Why disturb him? Give him my love!” I was telegraphed for, however, and arrived just twenty-four hours before the end. He told me he was “perfectly happy.” His sufferings, thro’ the strength of his constitution, were sadly prolonged: but the soul was itself to the last: I think his last word to me, as I was fanning him, was—“I am so sorry to fatigue you, love!” I can never remember in the whole course of my life a more selfish thought or less kind word from him than that—not since he used to carry me in his arms, humming rather than singing, to the tune of “In my cottage near a wood,” either Anacreon’s Greek, or “Persicos, odi, puer, apparatus” [3] in a translation, I fancy, of his own

“Persian pomp, my boy, I scorn:

Why this fading crown compose?

Seek not on what lonely thorn

Summer leaves her latest rose.”– [4]

But all I meant to tell you was simply that he escaped all the degradation of old age: his very hair,—never greyer than mine now—was perceptibly growing black again, as my sister made me <observe at the> end of last April.—when I visited him as usual. He was then in much bodily pain,—indeed it was already the first stage of what is now completed: but, at my request, he wrote an historical notice of the life of one of the Popes [5] in seventeen pages of his old hand-writing.

You gave me some good Greek: this is what occurred to me at Paris from Hesiod.

Νηρέα δ̓̓̓ ἀψευδέα καὶ ἀληθέα γείνατο Πόντος

πρεσβύτατον παίδων· αὐτὰρ καλέουσι γέροντα,

οὕνεκα νημερτής τε καὶ ἤπιος͵ οὐδὲ θεμίοτων

λήθεται, ἀλλὰ δίκαια καὶ ἤπια δήνεα οἶδεν·

Θεογονία. 233. [6]

But that is only of his denotements.

You must forgive all this—but I write on the anniversary of another ill day of mine, five years ago. [7] I saw poor Lord Brougham [8] also—and was struck at his decrepitude,—saw him recently, that is.

Ever most truly yours

Robert Browning.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Harvard University.

1. Correct year provided by RB’s references to the death of his father and to EBB’s death five years earlier.

2. Perhaps William Bell Scott (1812–92); see letter 2444, note 9. We are unable to clarify the purpose of this paragraph.

3. Horace, Odes, I, 38, 1.

4. Cf. Horace, Odes, I, 38, 1–4.

5. Either Formosus or Stephen VII; see letter 5684, note 6.

6. “Pontus begot Nereus, unerring and truthful, the oldest of his sons; they call him the Old Man, because he is infallible and gentle, and does not forget established customs but contrives just and gentle plans” (Hesiod, Theogony, 233–236, trans., Glenn W. Most).

7. EBB’s death on 29 June 1861.

8. Henry Peter Brougham (1778–1868), 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux.

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