酷兔英语
    当前位置:
  1. 首页
  2. 文章
  3. 娱乐英语
  4. 原版小说
  5. 正文

Life and Letters of Robert Browning-Part25_Mrs.Sutherland Orr(1828-1903)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共2页
I believe, according to your dictionary. It made me laugh



and think of you directly. . . . Robert has been sitting for his picture

to Mr. Fisher, the English artist who painted Mr. Kenyon and Landor.



You remember those pictures in Mr. Kenyon's house in London.

Well, he has painted Robert's, and it is an admirable likeness.



The expression is an exceptional expression, but highly characteristic. . . .'

==



==

May 19.



`. . . To leave Rome will fill me with barbarian complacency.

I don't pretend to have a ray of sentiment about Rome.



It's a palimpsest Rome, a watering-place written over the antique,

and I haven't taken to it as a poet should I suppose.



And let us speak the truth above all things. I am strongly

a creature of association, and the associations of the place



have not been personally favourable to me. Among the rest, my child,

the light of my eyes, has been more unwell than I ever saw him. . . .



The pleasantest days in Rome we have spent with the Kembles, the two sisters,

who are charming and excellent both of them, in different ways,



and certainly they have given us some excellent hours in the Campagna,

upon picnicexcursions -- they, and certain of their friends;



for instance, M. Ampere, the member of the French Institute,

who is witty and agreeable, M. Goltz, the Austrian minister,



who is an agreeable man, and Mr. Lyons, the son of Sir Edmund, &c.

The talk was almost too brilliant for the sentiment of the scenery,



but it harmonized entirely with the mayonnaise and champagne. . . .'

==



It must have been on one of the excursions here described that an incident

took place, which Mr. Browning relates with characteristic comments



in a letter to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, of July 15, 1882. The picnic party

had strolled away to some distant spot. Mrs. Browning was not strong enough



to join them, and her husband, as a matter of course, stayed with her;

which act of consideration prompted Mrs. Kemble to exclaim



that he was the only man she had ever known who behaved like a Christian

to his wife. She was, when he wrote this letter, reading his works



for the first time, and had expressed admiration for them;

but, he continued, none of the kind things she said to him on that subject



could move him as did those words in the Campagna. Mrs. Kemble would have

modified her statement in later years, for the sake of one English



and one American husband now closely related to her. Even then, perhaps,

she did not make it without inward reserve. But she will forgive me,



I am sure, for having repeated it.

Mr. Browning also refers to her Memoirs, which he had just read, and says:



`I saw her in those [I conclude earlier] days much oftener than is set down,

but she scarcely noticed me; though I always liked her extremely.'



Another of Mrs. Browning's letters is written from Florence, June 6 ('54):

==



`. . . We mean to stay at Florence a week or two longer and then

go northward. I love Florence -- the place looks exquisitely beautiful



in its garden ground of vineyards and olive trees, sung round

by the nightingales day and night. . . . If you take one thing with another,



there is no place in the world like Florence, I am persuaded,

for a place to live in -- cheap, tranquil, cheerful, beautiful,



within the limits of civilization yet out of the crush of it. . . .

We have spent two delicious evenings at villas outside the gates,



one with young Lytton, Sir Edward's son, of whom I have told you, I think.

I like him . . . we both do . . . from the bottom of our hearts.



Then, our friend, Frederick Tennyson, the new poet, we are delighted

to see again.



. . . . .

`. . . Mrs. Sartoris has been here on her way to Rome, spending most



of her time with us . . . singing passionately and talking eloquently.

She is really charming. . . .'



==

I have no record of that northward journey or of the experiences of






文章总共2页
文章标签:名著  

章节正文
Copyright © 2023 Qeto All rights reserved.
商务合作 | 联系我们 | 关于我们 | 版权声明 | 隐私条款 | 如果智培

京ICP备05059198号-1 京公网安备 11011202003401号