4543. RB to Lady William Russell
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 74–75.
Rome. Via del Tritone 28. [1]
Dec. 9. /59.
Dear Lady William,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
And now, what things befall, what chances reward one, sometimes, after no hunt at all! You shall hear my good fortune.
I was sitting, a week or two ago, with a friend—an old resident in Florence—my eye fell on a certain drawing of a face that I don’t think I can ever have sate there without observing—hung as it has been any time these twelve years, to my own recollection—level with the eye of my friend, whose great love, he always told me, is for beautiful faces: I believe I visit him, moreover, oftener than I visit anybody else.
Some impulse made me break my twelve years’ silence. “Who is that?” “Lady William Russell.” When I had said a little of what I felt, he added: “And you can see Lord William in the next room.” And I did; but the drawing was less finished for one thing. Do you remember Seymour Kirkup? And how came he to possess the picture? I have no doubt he will allow me to have a photograph made from it—for which it is well adapted.
This Kirkup is far older than his years (which exceed seventy), & it may go away any day to a stranger—who will value it, fast enough—but simply call it “Somebody Kirkup knew once”. But I shall not lose sight of it. I am vexed that when Odo was in Florence this summer I could not apprise him of what “lay like an undiscovered isle Besouth Magellan.” [2]
Publication: None traced.
Source: Transcript in the possession of Michael Meredith.
1. The following extract from RB’s letter, in the hand of Sidney Colvin, is affixed to the verso of the subject of this letter: a framed sketch of Lady William Russell drawn in Rome, 1823, by Seymour Kirkup. Kirkup presented the sketch, and the pendant of Lord William, to their son Arthur Russell in 1866. The sketches are now with Meredith.
2. Cf. Robert Burns, “To W. S*****n, Ochiltree” (1786), lines 39–42: “She lay like some unkend-of isle / Beside New Holland, / Or whare wild-meeting oceans boil / Besouth Magellan.”
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