SD2740. Mary Cunliffe to Mary Oakford
Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 315–316 (in part).
[London]
[1865]
We went to an evening party on Tuesday at the Lehmanns and Joachim played splendidly on the violin. He is rather tall, and has a most expressive face, he wears his hair rather long it is dark and curly. Madame Schumann also played grandly on the piano. She plays a good deal of her husband’s music, some of it delightful, but much of it is incomprehensible to the ordinary mind, for you must know that Schumann lost his reason some years before he died, and his mania was a musical one for he spent his time in trying to make discords harmonize, which even a sane man would find impossible, and his wife sometimes plays pieces which were evidently written after his mind had got unhinged, so they are full of strange discords.
There were a great many people at the party, but not a crowd. Mr Ward R.A. and his wife, who is also an artist both put in an appearance: they are both of them fat, goodnatured unartistic looking people, while Millais and Leighton looked like pictures themselves, especially the latter.
Mr Ward whom I had never seen before came up and shook hands with me most cordially, evidently taking me for somebody he knew. I did not undeceive him, so we had a pleasant chat about things in general, and Art in particular. Robert Browning was there smiling pleasantly on the company, also Mrs Proctor making amusing comments as usual.
A young man was there whom I have met at the Hamiltons a Mr Sullivan. He was once a chorister at the Chapel Royal and had a most exquisite voice but unfortunately he sang while it was cracking and so he lost it. He has begun to compose songs which are very much admired. He is a small man with a very dark complexion. Some people think him very conceited, but I have always found him agreeable.
Lady Anne King was there she is a grandchild of Lord Byron. She is a pleasantly looking girl and she is very musical. I could not trace in her face the faintest resemblance to her celebrated grandfather.
I had a long talk with Robert Browning about Florence. He said he lived very much amongst the Italians when he was there and he and his wife knew hardly any English people except the Trollopes and Frederick Tennyson, our Laureate’s brother: Fred Tennyson had cut himself off a good deal from society by marrying a very low born Italian woman. She was very beautiful, and perfectly respectable, but she was unutterably stupid that it seemed an impossibility to teach her even to read. Her husband had tried to teach her, and so had Mr T. A. Trollope, and so had Mr Browning, but all had tried in vain. It did not seem as if she had the capacity to learn.
I asked if Mr Frederick Tennyson had any poetic talent, and if he at all resembled his brother. Mr Browning said he could not say much about his talents, for though he had written some verses, he (Browning) considered them so trashy that he would not advise anybody to read them.
We then talked about a mutual acquaintance we have in Florence a literary man [James Montgomery Stuart], he also married an Italian, the daughter of his lodging house keeper, but she is rather a clever woman and fairly educated. His family however have had little or nothing to do with him since his marriage. Mr Browning asked me if I knew how they were getting on now, and I told him I had heard they had taken a good house in Florence and let it out to English visitors.
Mr Browning remarked “It is a very curious circumstance that people who don’t mind owning to being poor, never like to own they let lodgings. It is always “A gentleman who finds his house too large for him and would feel much relieved to have near neighbours”.—or else, “A gentleman is afflicted with heart complaint and can’t mount the stairs and so he has no use for his upper rooms.”
“If I were poor and had to do it I would stick up a bill outside my door with these words in large capitals “I LET LODGINGS.”
I ventured very much to doubt if he really would do so if it came to the point, but of course I did not say so, but discretely [sic] held my peace.
Publication: None traced.
Source: Author’s typescript (“A Record of Pleasant Memories”) at Armstrong Browning Library.
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