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Life and Letters of Robert Browning-Part17_Mrs.Sutherland Orr(1828-1903)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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addressed to Mr. Thomas Powell, and which I have referred to

as in the possession of Mr. Dykes Campbell.



`The Lost Leader' has given rise to periodical questionings

continued until the present day, as to the person indicated in its title.



Mr. Browning answered or anticipated them fifteen years ago

in a letter to Miss Lee, of West Peckham, Maidstone. It was his reply



to an application in verse made to him in their very young days

by herself and two other members of her family, the manner of which



seems to have unusually pleased him.

==



Villers-sur-mer, Calvados, France: September 7, '75.

Dear Friends, -- Your letter has made a round to reach me --



hence the delay in replying to it -- which you will therefore pardon.

I have been asked the question you put to me -- tho' never asked



so poetically and so pleasantly -- I suppose a score of times:

and I can only answer, with something of shame and contrition,



that I undoubtedly had Wordsworth in my mind -- but simply as `a model';

you know, an artist takes one or two striking traits



in the features of his `model', and uses them to start his fancy

on a flight which may end far enough from the good man or woman



who happens to be `sitting' for nose and eye.

I thought of the great Poet's abandonment of liberalism,



at an unlucky juncture, and no repaying consequence that I could ever see.

But -- once call my fancy-portrait `Wordsworth' -- and how much more



ought one to say, -- how much more would not I have attempted to say!

There is my apology, dear friends, and your acceptance of it will confirm me



Truly yours,

Robert Browning.



==

Some fragments of correspondence, not all very interesting,



and his own allusion to an attack of illness, are our only record

of the poet's general life during the interval which separated



the publication of `Pippa Passes' from his second Italian journey.

An undated letter to Miss Haworth probably refers to the close of 1841.



==

`. . . I am getting to love painting as I did once. Do you know



I was a young wonder (as are eleven out of the dozen of us) at drawing?

My father had faith in me, and over yonder in a drawer of mine lies,



I well know, a certain cottage and rocks in lead pencil

and black currant jam-juice (paint being rank poison, as they said



when I sucked my brushes) with his (my father's) note in one corner,

"R. B., aetat. two years three months." "How fast, alas, our days we spend



-- How vain they be, how soon they end!" I am going to print "Victor",

however, by February, and there is one thing not so badly painted in there --



oh, let me tell you. I chanced to call on Forster the other day,

and he pressed me into committing verse on the instant, not the minute,



in Maclise's behalf, who has wrought a divine Venetian work, it seems,

for the British Institution. Forster described it well --



but I could do nothing better, than this wooden ware --

(all the "properties", as we say, were given, and the problem



was how to catalogue them in rhyme and unreason).

I send my heart up to thee, all my heart



In this my singing!

For the stars help me, and the sea bears part;



The very night is clinging

Closer to Venice' streets to leave me space



Above me, whence thy face

May light my joyous heart to thee its dwelling-place.



Singing and stars and night and Venice streets and joyous heart,

are properties, do you please to see. And now tell me,



is this below the average of catalogue original poetry?

Tell me -- for to that end of being told, I write. . . .



I dined with dear Carlyle and his wife (catch me calling people "dear"

in a hurry, except in letter-beginnings!) yesterday.



I don't know any people like them. There was a son of Burns there,

Major Burns whom Macready knows -- he sung "Of all the airts",



"John Anderson", and another song of his father's. . . .'

==



In the course of 1842 he wrote the following note to Miss Flower,

evidently relating to the publication of her `Hymns and Anthems'.






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