SD2272. William Michael Rossetti to Thomas Dixon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 26, 359 (in part).
45 Upper Albany Street,
7 June [1859]
Dear Mr. Dixon,
I have much pleasure in sending you the accompanying portrait of Browning—at least, my pleasure would be great if the portrait were a good one, which it unfortunately is not. It came out in a book published towards 1844—Horne’s New Spirit of the Age—and of course represents Browning as a much younger man than he now is. His hair remains much the same in quantity, but is grizzled, especially in a thick bush which he grows under the chin, not exactly amounting to a beard. The features in the print look rather too small and pinched; and a peculiar hawklike keenness of look is quite missed. It is the only published portrait I know: Woolner did an excellent medallion, and my brother a small water-colour portrait, not less like perhaps, and still more satisfactory in a sympathetic sense. I send you also an envelope written in Browning’s hand (which please keep if you care, as well as the portrait) and one of his recent letters to me, which please return at your convenience.
It relates, as you will gather, to a photograph portrait of Mrs. Browning, which they entrusted to me to get engraved for the new edition of Aurora Leigh; so you may soon see a portrait much less useless than that in the National Magazine, which in all likelihood was utter rubbish. The new engraving has ultimately come such as to satisfy Browning fairly enough, though there were fears at first. Perhaps the likeness will not yet quite correspond with your preconception: Mrs. Browning is an extremely small woman, the reverse of handsome, with fine dark hair and eyes, and an expression of exceeding sensitiveness in the face, and still more the voice.
Yours truly,
W. M. Rossetti
Publication: Selected Letters of William Michael Rossetti, ed. Roger W. Peattie (University Park, Penn., 1990), pp. 105–106.
Manuscript: University of Texas.
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