SD1768. Elizabeth Clementine Kinney to Newark Daily Advertiser
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 374–375 (in part).
Florence, August 4, 1854.
We had the pleasure not long since of attending a soirée musicale here, which gratified at once the sense of harmony and our national pride: the chief contributor to this “concord of sweet sounds” being an American composer of remarkable promise, Mr. Boote, whose quartette, performed by four of the best instrumentalists in Italy, furnished the rarest regalement of the evening. …
Every department of art has now its worthy American representative in Italy. We have just seen a painting executed by Mr. Page, our artist at Rome, which might be mistaken for a perfect work of one of the old masters, were it not signalized as modern by being the actual portrait of Robert Browning; or rather, were it not Robert Browning himself: not sitting up to be painted—not forcing the canvas to say poet; but in reality that very poet, in life-like repose—straining at nothing, yet indicating the possibility of any thing. We had heard many exceptions to Mr. Page’s theory of color; but, if such be the results, long live his theory, and long live he to practice it! Indeed, this picture, while unlike any one of the ancient schools, is worthy of either of them: its finish is exquisite, and its tone a pleasant harmony, which lingers as a charm on the senses when the painting is removed from sight. The friends of Mr. and Mrs. Browning at Florence, have been much mortified and grieved by an article in the New York Home Journal of July 15th, ridiculing their personal appearance and manners. This, though in itself too low and frivolous to merit attention, is noticeable as having been introduced into a paper conducted by a brother poet, and that too, as extracted from the private correspondence of an American lady at Rome; thus allowing itself as much out of place as the editor was out of good taste and feeling in giving it such unnecessary conspicuity. But what surprises us more, and touches him nearer, is the home-thrust which he has given his reputation for gallantry, in this double offence against the fair sex, exposing the exterior imperfections of one—and she a woman whom angels might name with reverence—to jeering dolls and sneering fools, and at the same time laying open the private shallowness of another to public view. Nor does his after-hit at “common observers” mend at all his own disabled sense. “Lack of second-sight” indeed must those have who see only in Mrs. Browning the frail form, shattered by disease, on which the strong workings of genius, and beatings of a true woman’s heart have left deep traces in advance of time; or who cannot see in her eye—that fitting outlet of her large and comely soul—the beaming of a moral beauty as far surpassing mere superficial charms, as the beauty of her heavenly countenance will surpass that of the lesser angels—(if angels they should chance to become)—whose puny sneer dared ridicule the plain bodily disguise of one who walked “humbly and softly” on earth, though in reality head and shoulders above all queenly women; whose physical voice was too feeble a medium for the prophet-tone of a spirit which found only utterance through her pen, and echo in truest bosoms. One, too, who never soiled that pen by the venom of malice—who had emphatically “the law of kindness ever in her heart and on her lips,” out of which came never cursing, but blessing and love for all. How can we wonder that such spirits shrink from promiscuous intercourse; or, that when they are induced, against their will, to go into ungenial society, they should there “answer the fool according to his folly,” and be mistaken by such for fellow triflers! Why should the stores of learning which enrich the minds and works of Mr. and Mrs. Browning—such universal intelligence, such powers of conversation as he possesses, be cast as pearls before the common herd? Why should not Mrs. Browning’s instinctive modesty, or her silence in the presence of babblers, be mistaken by such for stupidity? Her works speak herself; though on their blank leaf—as a caution to these casual observers, who must of necessity be casual readers—should be written:
Stay! come not here with unanointed eyes,
And hope that inner temple to behold
Where Beauty dwells in phases manifold.
Come not, unless your liberal thought can rise
To Freedom’s heaven, this poet’s native skies:
Come not, without the key, of antique mould,
To her great wealth of lore and fable old;
Nor lampless search the deep that in her lies.
But you, who have a truth-lit spirit, come!
You, who that superhuman power can see
Which turns the meanest thing beneath Heaven’s dome
To gold, thro’ its divinest alchemy,
Come—kneel to Genius, enter Feeling’s home,
And own the Godlike in Humanity.
Miss Hosmer, the young American sculptress, named also in this publicly “private” letter—as “the real lioness of Rome,”—is too true a pupil of art not to be modest as she is natural; and she would blush to see herself set up in type—“As bold as a lion” against those whom she reveres as having entered the temple, at whose vestibule as yet she toils and hopes. From what we have seen of her unaffected simplicity and earnestness, we doubt not that she would sit at Mrs. Browning’s feet and learn of her, as of one who knows how to make the human soul speak through artistic form. Miss Hosmer has taken a villa for the summer in the environs of Florence, and will here occupy herself with drawing out compositions to mould later into clay. Her drawings are said to be full of feeling and classically beautiful. She has already made several successful busts; also the study for an ideal statue, which will occupy next winter at Rome. Being but twenty-two years of age, what she has done is remarkable and full of promise which cannot fail to be realized, her genius being united to an intrepid will and executive force seldom met with in so young a person. She is wholly devoted to her art—rises at six, works all day, and to lose no time the feminine art of the toilette, adopts such modes as utility, not the French modiste invents; never suffering pre-occupation with what people may think, or who will call her eccentric, to distract her mind from the one purpose of her life. Her only amusement is riding on horseback, which she does after the most independent sort—alone, and some idea of her enduring energy may be based on the fact that she has just made the journey of ten days, from Rome to Florence on her pet horse. In fact, the “American sculptress” needs no cavaliere servant as gallant or swordsman—she can work her own way through the world—fight it, if necessary—and so she will do, we believe, in the higher and more difficult world of art.
Text: Newark Daily Advertiser, 26 August 1854, p. 2.
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