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-Part30_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


by just the circumstance from which some comfort had been expected --

the second postaldelivery which took place every day;



for the hopes and fears which might have found a moment's forgetfulness

in the longer absence of news, were, as it proved, kept at fever-heat.



On one critical occasion the suspense became unbearable,

because Mr. Browning, by his wife's desire, had telegraphed for news,



begging for a telegraphic answer. No answer had come, and she felt convinced

that the worst had happened, and that the brother to whom



the message was addressed could not make up his mind to convey the fact

in so abrupt a form. The telegram had been stopped by the authorities,



because Mr. Odo Russell had undertaken to forward it,

and his position in Rome, besides the known Liberal sympathies



of Mr. and Mrs. Browning and himself, had laid it open to political suspicion.

Mrs. Surtees Cook died in the course of the winter.



Mr. Browning always believed that the shock and sorrow of this event

had shortened his wife's life, though it is also possible



that her already lowered vitality increased the dejection into which

it plunged her. Her own casual allusions to the state of her health



had long marked arrested progress, if not steady decline. We are told,

though this may have been a mistake, that active signs of consumption



were apparent in her even before the illness of 1859,

which was in a certain sense the beginning of the end.



She was completely an invalid, as well as entirely a recluse,

during the greater part if not the whole of this last stay in Rome.



She rallied neverthelesssufficiently to write to Miss Browning in April,

in a tone fully suggestive of normal health and energy.



==

`. . . In my own opinion he is infinitely handsomer and more attractive than



when I saw him first, sixteen years ago. . . . I believe people in general

would think the same exactly. As to the modelling -- well,



I told you that I grudged a little the time from his own particular art.

But it does not do to dishearten him about his modelling.



He has given a great deal of time to anatomy with reference to

the expression of form, and the clay is only the new medium



which takes the place of drawing. Also, Robert is peculiar

in his ways of work as a poet. I have struggled a little with him



on this point, for I don't think him right; that is to say,

it would not be right for me . . . But Robert waits for an inclination,



works by fits and starts; he can't do otherwise he says,

and his head is full of ideas which are to come out in clay or marble.



I yearn for the poems, but he leaves that to me for the present. . . .

You will think Robert looking very well when you see him;



indeed, you may judge by the photographs meanwhile. You know, Sarianna,

how I used to forbid the moustache. I insisted as long as I could,



but all artists were against me, and I suppose that the bare upper lip

does not harmonise with the beard. He keeps the hair now closer,



and the beard is pointed. . . . As to the moony whiteness of the beard,

it is beautiful, _I_ think, but then I think him all beautiful,



and always. . . .'

==



Mr. Browning's old friend, Madame du Quaire,* came to Rome in December.

She had visited Florence three years before, and I am indebted to her



for some details of the spiritualist controversy by which its English colony

was at that time divided. She was now a widow, travelling with her brother;



and Mr. Browning came whenever he could, to comfort her in her sorrow,

and, as she says, discourse of nature, art, the beautiful,



and all that `conquers death'. He little knew how soon

he would need the same comfort for himself. He would also declaim passages



from his wife's poems; and when, on one of these occasions,

Madame du Quaire had said, as so many persons now say, that she much preferred



his poetry to hers, he made this characteristic answer, to be repeated




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