5747. RB to Alfred William Hunt
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 79.
19 Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace, W
April 29, ’66.
My dear Sir,
I made use yesterday of the Ticket, with which your kindness furnished me, and saw—what you please to call in your note—“the Drawing.” [1] I feel proud indeed, and something better, that any poem of mine should have associated itself with the power which conceived and executed so magnificent a picture,—I weigh the word and repeat it. My own “marsh” was only made out of my head,—with some recollection of a strange solitary little tower I have come upon more than once in Massa-Carrara, in the midst of low hills,—for I wrote at Paris: [2] somebody ought to beat me now!
I venture to add, that I was much impressed by your other admirable performances,—“Harlech,” [3] for instance, and the “Tarn.” [4] Pray let me give you my hearty thanks for all these good and great things, and be remembered by you as
Yours ever truly
Robert Browning.
A.W. Hunt Esq.
Address: Alfred W. Hunt Esq. / 21. Old Elvet, / Durham.
Publication: NL, pp. 172–173.
Manuscript: Huntington Library.
2. Two other sources indicate that RB wrote “‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’” in January 1853 at Rome (see The Poems of Browning, Vol. 3, ed. John Woolford, Daniel Karlin, and Joseph Phelan, 2007, p. 240).
3. The Athenæum of 19 May 1866 described “Harlech, from Llandecwyn” as “a rich study of mist and veiled sunlight among mountains” (no. 2012, p. 677).
4. The previous editors give its full title as “Stickle Tarn, Langdale Pikes” (NL, p. 173n).
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