5945. RB to James Martin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 231–232.
19. Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace. W.
July 18. ’67.
My dear Sir, [1]
I have just received a note from Mrs Hedley in which she tells me that you have kept, and will give me again, the letters of my wife. This piece of kindness does not surprize me at all, but makes me as grateful as you could wish. I never saw one of them,—but they do injustice to the writer, (I well know that) if they fail to put in evidence some little of the deep affection she felt for you and yours—and was never at a loss to express and explain to me. How I remember letters that came to Pisa, in early days when such marks of sympathy were of more value than you could well know—yet, I suppose, you did know somehow, since they were written, and brought all the good possible just then.
I have been six years here, and, to a certain degree, done what I hoped to do. The boy is a strong well-conditioned fellow of eighteen, about to go to Oxford, very like his mother in face, it is thought. There never was an autumn that came & went, but I had a desire to go and see you for a day at Great Colwall: [2] circumstances always prevented me,—took me abroad, indeed; it is no use regretting what was necessary. But if I live & have leisure next year,—as may probably be the case, I shall hope to shake your hand again. You know I can understand what I avoid speaking of. [3] I felt no words could help in my own case.
Don’t, pray, trouble yourself to write a word in reply to this—this which is itself but the reply, and a poor one, to your very kind deed. Take any way, at any time, of sending the letters safely, and be sure of the gratitude and, I shall dare say, the true affection of, my dear Sir,
Yours ever
Robert Browning.
I shall send you a couple of photographs—the boy was taken a year ago: [4] the other thing gives a bad idea, I am told, of the erection, [5] —but still an idea. I add a third, which I cannot be sure that you have. [6]
Docket: Ansd 22.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. James Martin (1778–1870); see vol. 2, pp. 342–343.
2. Sic, for Old Colwall, Herefordshire, the Martins’ estate, which adjoined Hope End.
3. RB refers to the death of James Martin’s wife, Julia (née Vignoles, 1792–1866) at Old Colwall on 24 December.
4. A photograph taken in April 1866 at the studio of C.L. Leblanc, Paris. It is reproduced, upper left, facing p. 176.
5. i.e., a photograph, by Longworth Powers (1866), of EBB’s monument in the Protestant Cemetery, Florence. It is reproduced facing p. 177.
6. A photograph of EBB by Fratelle D’Alessandri, Rome, 1861, variant A, which is reproduced in vol. 29, facing p. 176. See Reconstruction, F46.
___________________
