Life and Letters of Robert Browning [15]
their way into the market, and have been bought respectively
by Mr. Dykes Campbell and Sir F. Leighton. I give the more important of them.
It was addressed to Mr. Thomas Powell:
==
Dear Sir, -- I hope the enclosed may be acceptable as curiosities.
They were written by Robert when quite a child. I once had nearly
a hundred of them. But he has destroyed all that ever came in his way,
having a great aversion to the practice of many biographers
in recording every trifling incident that falls in their way.
He has not the slightest suspicion that any of his very juvenile performances
are in existence. I have several of the originals by me.
They are all extemporaneous productions, nor has any one a single alteration.
There was one amongst them `On Bonaparte' -- remarkably beautiful --
and had I not seen it in his own handwriting I never would have believed it
to have been the production of a child. It is destroyed.
Pardon my troubling you with these specimens, and requesting you
never to mention it, as Robert would be very much hurt.
I remain, dear sir,
Your obedient servant,
R. Browning.
Bank: March 11, 1843.
==
The letter was accompanied by a sheet of verses which have been
sold and resold, doubtless in perfect good faith, as being those
to which the writer alludes. But Miss Browning has recognized them
as her father's own impromptu epigrams, well remembered in the family,
together with the occasion on which they were written.
The substitution may, from the first, have been accidental.
We cannot think of all these vanished first-fruits of Mr. Browning's genius
without a sense of loss, all the greater perhaps that there can have been
little in them to prefigure its later forms. Their faults seem to have lain
in the direction of too great splendour of language and too little
wealth of thought; and Mr. Fox, who had read `Incondita'
and been struck by its promise, confessed afterwards to Mr. Browning
that he had feared these tendencies as his future snare.
But the imitative first note of a young poet's voice
may hold a rapture of inspiration which his most original later utterances
will never convey. It is the child Sordello, singing against the lark.
Not even the poet's sister ever saw `Incondita'. It was the only one
of his finished productions which Miss Browning did not read,
or even help him to write out. She was then too young
to be taken into his confidence. Its writing, however,
had one important result. It procured for the boy-poet
a preliminary introduction to the valuable literary patron and friend
Mr. Fox was subsequently to be. It also supplies the first substantial record
of an acquaintance which made a considerable impression on his personal life.
The Miss Flower, of whom mention has been made, was one of two sisters,
both sufficiently noted for their artistic gifts to have found a place
in the new Dictionary of National Biography. The elder, Eliza or Lizzie,
was a musical composer; the younger, best known as Sarah Flower Adams,
a writer of sacred verse. Her songs and hymns, including the well-known
`Nearer, my God, to Thee', were often set to music by her sister.*
They sang, I am told, delightfully together, and often without accompaniment,
their voices perfectly harmonizing with each other. Both were,
in their different ways, very attractive; both interesting,
not only from their talents, but from their attachment to each other,
and the delicacy which shortened their lives. They died of consumption,
the elder in 1846, at the age of forty-three; the younger a year later.
They became acquainted with Mrs. Browning through a common friend,
Miss Sturtevant; and the young Robert conceived a warm admiration
for Miss Flower's talents, and a boyish love for herself.
She was nine years his senior; her own affections became probably engaged,
and, as time advanced, his feeling seems to have subsided
into one of warm and very loyal friendship. We hear, indeed,
by Mr. Dykes Campbell and Sir F. Leighton. I give the more important of them.
It was addressed to Mr. Thomas Powell:
==
Dear Sir, -- I hope the enclosed may be acceptable as curiosities.
They were written by Robert when quite a child. I once had nearly
a hundred of them. But he has destroyed all that ever came in his way,
having a great aversion to the practice of many biographers
in recording every trifling incident that falls in their way.
He has not the slightest suspicion that any of his very juvenile performances
are in existence. I have several of the originals by me.
They are all extemporaneous productions, nor has any one a single alteration.
There was one amongst them `On Bonaparte' -- remarkably beautiful --
and had I not seen it in his own handwriting I never would have believed it
to have been the production of a child. It is destroyed.
Pardon my troubling you with these specimens, and requesting you
never to mention it, as Robert would be very much hurt.
I remain, dear sir,
Your obedient servant,
R. Browning.
Bank: March 11, 1843.
==
The letter was accompanied by a sheet of verses which have been
sold and resold, doubtless in perfect good faith, as being those
to which the writer alludes. But Miss Browning has recognized them
as her father's own impromptu epigrams, well remembered in the family,
together with the occasion on which they were written.
The substitution may, from the first, have been accidental.
We cannot think of all these vanished first-fruits of Mr. Browning's genius
without a sense of loss, all the greater perhaps that there can have been
little in them to prefigure its later forms. Their faults seem to have lain
in the direction of too great splendour of language and too little
wealth of thought; and Mr. Fox, who had read `Incondita'
and been struck by its promise, confessed afterwards to Mr. Browning
that he had feared these tendencies as his future snare.
But the imitative first note of a young poet's voice
may hold a rapture of inspiration which his most original later utterances
will never convey. It is the child Sordello, singing against the lark.
Not even the poet's sister ever saw `Incondita'. It was the only one
of his finished productions which Miss Browning did not read,
or even help him to write out. She was then too young
to be taken into his confidence. Its writing, however,
had one important result. It procured for the boy-poet
a preliminary introduction to the valuable literary patron and friend
Mr. Fox was subsequently to be. It also supplies the first substantial record
of an acquaintance which made a considerable impression on his personal life.
The Miss Flower, of whom mention has been made, was one of two sisters,
both sufficiently noted for their artistic gifts to have found a place
in the new Dictionary of National Biography. The elder, Eliza or Lizzie,
was a musical composer; the younger, best known as Sarah Flower Adams,
a writer of sacred verse. Her songs and hymns, including the well-known
`Nearer, my God, to Thee', were often set to music by her sister.*
They sang, I am told, delightfully together, and often without accompaniment,
their voices perfectly harmonizing with each other. Both were,
in their different ways, very attractive; both interesting,
not only from their talents, but from their attachment to each other,
and the delicacy which shortened their lives. They died of consumption,
the elder in 1846, at the age of forty-three; the younger a year later.
They became acquainted with Mrs. Browning through a common friend,
Miss Sturtevant; and the young Robert conceived a warm admiration
for Miss Flower's talents, and a boyish love for herself.
She was nine years his senior; her own affections became probably engaged,
and, as time advanced, his feeling seems to have subsided
into one of warm and very loyal friendship. We hear, indeed,