Correspondence

953.  William Charles Macready, Jr. [1] to RB

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 329–330.

[London]

[May 1842] [2]

My dear Mr Browning

I was very much obliged to you, for your kind letter. I liked exceedingly the Cardinal and the dog. [3] I have tried to illustrate the poem, and I hope that you will like my attempt. [4] Illus. I cannot go to school because my cough is so bad.

I remain your affectionate friend

W. C. Macready.

Publication: BN, No. 3 (Fall, 1969), p. 34 (in facsimile).

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

1. “Willie” (1832-71) was the Macreadys’ eldest son.

2. Based on RB’s own statement (see below) this letter preceded no. 961.

3. This letter and no. 961 were preserved together in a single envelope, which also included the following note, made by Sarianna Browning after RB’s death: “In May, 1842, Macready’s eldest little boy was confined to the house by a cough. To amuse him, Robert wrote two poems which the child was to illustrate—‘Crescentius, the pope’s Legate’ and the ‘Pied Piper’– At first, there was no thought of publishing them, but I copied the Pied Piper and showed it to Alfred Domett who was so much pleased with it that he persuaded Robert to include it in the forthcoming number of Bells and Pomegranates– ‘Crescentius’, he did not publish till the last, in Asolando– These are the boy’s illustrations.” Both Mrs. Orr (p. 122) and DeVane (pp. 127 and 534) give this date for composition.

RB himself, in a letter to Furnivall on 1 October 1881, also states that both poems were specifically written for Willie, “The Cardinal and the Dog” being first. However, that cannot be true, as his draft of this poem, in the margins of p. 611 of his copy of Nathaniel Wanley’s The Wonders of the Little World (now in the editors’ possession) is dated 27 February 1841, well before the illness which is supposed to have prompted composition; RB’s statement—or lapse of memory—is all the more surprising as he offers to send Furnivall a copy of the poem “when I can transcribe it from the page of the old book it remains upon.” “The Cardinal and the Dog” was not published until 1889, when it was included in Asolando; the text then contained significant changes from an undated facsimile reproduction, in RB, Sr.’s hand, printed in The Bookman, May 1912, pp. 68–69, which itself differed slightly from RB’s original draft (see Reconstruction, E45 and J68).

4. Willie’s three drawings are now at ABL (see Reconstruction, H89). They are reproduced facing page 331.

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