SD2244. William Michael Rossetti to William Allingham
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 26, 353 (in part).
14 Upper Albany Street, London, N.W.
6 March [1859]
Dear Allingham,
… It is you I have to thank for procuring me the honour of supervising the engraving of Mrs. Browning’s photograph portrait for the forthcoming Aurora Leigh. I have had some very welcome pleasant Browningian letters on the subject. The portrait came a long while ago, and I put it into the hands of Barlow who engraved Millais’s Huguenot. The day before yesterday the proof-engraving reached me, and I can see that my office of reviser won’t prove a sinecure: I only hope the final result will satisfy, or come near to satisfying, Browning. (Please to keep this close, as any rumours that the engraving, in its present stage, is not quite the thing, reaching Browning’s ears, might create a panic.) But, between you and me, the photograph itself is far from right (I fancy you saw it): Mrs. Browning looks as if she was hiding behind her long pretty black locks, like a King Charles’s spaniel behind its hanging ears, and peering out with something between shamefacedness and a leer. In point of likeness, a good deal is right, but difficult to be translated in engraving without personal acquaintance …
Yours always truly,
W. M. Rossetti
Text: Ruskin: Rossetti: Preraphaelitism; Papers 1854 to 1862, ed. William Michael Rossetti (London, 1899), pp. 224–225.
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