SD1886. Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 263–265 (in part).
[London]
Sunday, 25 November 1855
Dear Allingham
I’m quite ashamed of the long delay in answering your letter, especially when I remember (as such things generally happen) that on receiving it I sat down to answer on the spot, & was only compelled by some accident to postpone it—of course no further than the same evening. I believe that must be a good month ago. …
I have just come back from a 10 days trip to Paris, in pursuit of various things and persons. The Brownings are there for the winter, on account of the cholera at Florence, and had previously been some time in London where I saw them a good many times, and indeed may boast of some intimacy with the glorious Robert by this time. What a magnificent series is “Men & Women!” Of course you have it half by heart ere this. The flurry & skurry in our own circle & everywhere on the announcement of Maud, & the comparative stagnation even among those I see, & complete torpor elsewhere, which greet this my Elixir of Life, are awful signs of the times to me: “and I must hold my peace!”—for it isn’t fair to Browning (besides indeed being too much trouble) to bicker & flicker about it. I fancy we shall agree pretty well on favorites, though one’s mind has no right to be quite made up so soon on such a subject. For my own part, I dont reckon I’ve read them at all yet, as I only got them the day before leaving town, and couldn’t possibly read them then—the best proof to you how hard at work I was for once,—so heard them read by William;—since then read them on the journey again, & some a third time at intervals; but they’ll bear lots of squeezing yet. My prime favorites hitherto (without the book by me) are Childe Roland, Bp. Blougram, Karshish, The Contemporary, Lippo Lippi, Cleon, & Popularity;—about the other lyrical ones I cant quite speak yet, & their names dont stick in my head; but I’m afraid the “Heretic’s Tragedy” rather gave me the gripes at first, though I’ve tried since to think it didn’t, on finding the Athenæum similarly affected.
8 Jan. 1856 …
I broke off at the last sheet in mid-Browning. Of course I’ve been drenching myself with him at intervals since, only he gets carried off by friends & I have him not always by me. I wish you’d let me hear in a speedy answer (there’s cheek for you!) all you think about his new work, & it shall nerve me to express my ideas in return:—but since I have given up poetry as a pursuit of my own, I really find my thoughts on the subject generally require a starting point from somebody else’s to bring them into activity; & as you’re the only man I know who’d be really in my mood of receptiveness in regard to Browning, and as I can’t get at you, I’ve been bottled up ever since M & W came out. By the bye, I dont reckon William—the intensity of fellow feeling on the subject making the discussion of it between us rather flat. I went the other day to a 1d reading room—a real blessing, which now occupies the place of Burford’s Panorama, and where all papers & reviews whatsoever are taken in. There I saw two articles on Browning—one by Masson—really thoroughly appreciative but slow—in The British Quarterly;—& one by a certain Brimley of Trin: Col: Cam: in Fraser—the cheekiest of human products. This man, less than two years ago, had not read a line of Browning, as I know through my brother; and I have no doubt he has just read him up to write this article; which opens nevertheless with accusations against R.B. of nothing less than personal selfishness and vanity, so plumply put as to be justifiable by nothing less than personal intimacy of many years. When I went to Paris, I took my copy of Men & Women (which had been sent me the day before) with me, & got B. to write my name in it. Did you get a copy? We spoke often of you—he with great personal & poetical regard—I of course with loathing. I enclose herewith a note which reached me before the book, containing emendations. Copy them, if you please, & return the note. I spent some most delightful time with Browning at Paris, both in the evenings and at the Louvre, where (& throughout conversation) I found his knowledge of early Italian Art beyond that of any one I ever met—encyclopædically beyond that of Ruskin himself. What a jolly thing is Old Pictures at Florence! It seems all the pictures desired by the poet are in his possession in fact. At Paris I met his father, & in London an uncle of his & his sister, who it appears performed the singular female feat of copying Sordello for him, to which some of its eccentricities may possibly be referred. However, she remembers it all—even Squarcialupe, Zin the Horrid, & the Sad dishevelled ghost. But no doubt you know her. The father & uncle—father especially—show just that submissive[,] yet highly cheerful & capable, simplicity of character, which often I think appears in the family of a great man, who uses at last what the others have kept for him. The father is a complete oddity—with a real genius for drawing—but caring for nothing in the least except Dutch boors—fancy the father of Browning!—and as innocent as a child. In the New Volumes, the only thing he seemed to care for much was that about the Sermon to the Jews. At B’s house at Paris I met a miraculous French critic named Milsand, who actually before ever meeting Browning knew his works to the very dregs—and had even been years in search of Pauline—how heard of I know not—& wrote a famous article on him in the Revue des Deux Mondes, through which B. somehow came to know him. I hear he has translated some of the Men & Women, which must be curiosities. In London, I showed Browning Miss Siddal’s drawing from Pippa Passes, with which he was delighted beyond measure, & wanted excessively to know her. However, though afterwards she was in Paris at the same time that he & I were, he only met her once for a few minutes: she being very unwell then & averse to going anywhere; & Mrs. B. being forbidden to go out & so unable to call. What a delightfully unliterary person Mrs. B. is to meet. During two evenings when Tennyson was at their house in London, Mrs. Browning left T. with her husband & William & me (who were the fortunate remnant of the male party) to discuss the universe, & gave all her attention to some certainly not very exciting ladies in the next room. I never was more amused in my life than by Tennyson’s groanings and horrors over the reviews of Maud, which poem he read through to us, spouting also several sections to be introduced in a new edition. I made a sketch of him reading, which I gave to Browning, and afterwards duplicated it for Miss S. His conversation was really one perpetual groan, & I am sure, during two long evenings I spent in his company, he repeated the same stories about anonymous letters he gets, &c. at the very least 6 or 8 times in my hearing, besides an odd time or two as I afterwards found, that he told them over to members of the company in private. He also repeated them to me again, walking home together. All this to the intense wonder of Browning, who as you know treats reviewers in the way they deserve. T. actually insisted that for twelve years after his first publication, no notice whatever was taken of him, & seemed rather annoyed at anyone recollecting to the contrary. Of course there was something most delightful in the genuineness of all this, and he is quite as glorious in his way as Browning in his, & perhaps of the 2 even more impressive on the whole personally.
One of his neverended stories was about an anonymous letter running thus (received since Maud came out): [“]Sir, I used to worship you, but now I hate you. I loathe & detest you. You beast! So you’ve taken to imitating Longfellow. Yours in aversion .... .... ” and no name, says Alfred, scoring the table with an indignant thumb, and glaring round with suspended pipe, while his auditors look as sympathising as their view of the matter permits. He has an irreconcileable grudge against a poor moke of a fellow called Archer Gurney, who he swears must be the author of the letter, having treated him before to titbits something in the same taste. …
Have you reviewed Browning anywhere, or shall you? Hannay has my copy for a similar purpose, but I see no fruit coming of it. In B.’s note enclosed, the portrait referred to is one of himself by Page, an American living at Rome, which he has confided to my care with some idea of its going to the R.A. After much delay, I have only just got hold of it, & am much disappointed in it, so shall advise its non-exhibition, as a portrait of Browning oughtn’t to be put out of sight or kicked out. I have done one in water-colours myself which hangs now over my mantelpiece & which every one says is very like. Next time I have the chance ,I shall paint him in oil & probably Mrs. B. too with him. Ruskin, on reading Men & Women (& with it some of the other works which he didn’t know before) declared them rebelliously to be a mass of conundrums: and compelled me to sit down before him and lay siege for one whole night: the result of which was that he sent me next morning a bulky letter to be forwarded to B. in which I trust he told him he was the greatest man since Shakespeare. …
What do you think of Browning being able to read the Mystake? [i.e., The Mystic (1855) by Philip James Bailey.] Could you?
Yours affectionately
D G Rossetti.
Publication: Rossetti, 2, 77–84.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
___________________
