SD2245. Frederick M. White to Editor of The Athenæum
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 26, 353–354.
Aylesbury,
March 8. [1859]
To avoid delay, may I ask you to insert a few lines, in reference to a paragraph in your “Weekly Gossip” of last week, implying that my sister, Madame Mario, has dishonourably used the names of Mr. and Mrs. Browning in her lectures in America on the Italian question. First of all, my sister was not “the translatress of Orsini’s Memoirs”—a book, by the way, in which he expressly repudiates all sympathy with that portion of the Italian Party with which she is well known to be connected. My sister did translate his “Austrian Dungeons,” published immediately after his arrival in England, when no one interested in Italian matters would have scrupled to aid him in stating his case to the English public. Secondly, my sister was not “appointed the almoner of Mr. Landor’s 100l. prize for Tyrannicide,” though she did receive from him a donation of 5l., in answer to an appeal expressly for legal objects, and sanctioned by much more distinguished names than hers. As to the more immediate subject of accusation, your paragraph does not afford me the means of referring to the letter of Mr. and Mrs. Browning, nor have I any communication on the subject, but I venture on her behalf to deny the imputation of “unscrupulous invention of testimonials.” In the face of Mrs. Browning’s avowed admiration of Louis Napoleon, it would be too absurd to quote her as an authority on those points on which the Italian democratic party is divided—the more so if the imputation of sympathy with Orsini’s later acts were not wholly untrue. I venture to state that my sister has not quoted Mrs. Browning as approving her sentiments—unless, possibly, by citing a few lines from “Casa Guidi Windows,”—and it would be strange indeed if this could be construed into the serious offence which you have thought fit to lay to her charge. I observe, in the New York papers announcing her arrival, a statement that she is introduced by several distinguished literary men and women in England, but the names of Mr. and Mrs. Browning do not occur, and even if they had, no one can be answerable for the publication by a too eager reporter of facts which, though it would be indelicate to publish oneself, there was no reason to conceal. In private intercourse my sister may have mentioned that she had enjoyed the friendship of Mr. and Mrs. Browning, but I feel confident that these gifted and generous persons never meant to raise without foundation a doubt of her personal integrity.
I am, &c.
Frederick M. White.
Text: The Athenæum, 12 March 1859, pp. 357–358.
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