961. William Charles Macready, Jr. to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 350.
[London]
May 18th 1842
My dear Mr Browning
I have finished the rest of the illustration of the Pied Piper, which I hope you will like as well as the others but I am sorry to say I do not think them so good as the Council chamber, or the other one that I did. Illus. Illus. [1] Hoping that they will be as great a success as the others
I remain your affect friend
William C. Macready Junr
Address: R. Browning Esqr
Publication: The Times Literary Supplement, 15 September 1921, p. 596.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. This letter and no. 953 were preserved in a single envelope bearing 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.” The drawings for “The Pied Piper” are now at ABL (see Reconstruction, H88). They are reproduced facing pages 350 and 351.
Sarianna’s statement that “The Pied Piper” was shown to Domett is suspect, as all the evidence points to his having sailed for New Zealand before Willie’s illness prompted composition. RB himself, in a letter to Furnivall on 1 October 1881, states that the “more picturesque subject” was only attempted after Willie made his “clever drawings” for “The Cardinal and the Dog”; if RB’s memory of these events is correct, it would not have been possible for Domett to have seen the poem before leaving England.
“The Pied Piper” was published in November 1842 in Dramatic Lyrics, the third in the Bells and Pomegranates series, with the sub-title “A Child’s Story. (Written for, and inscribed to, W.M. the Younger.)”
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