SD1182. Charles Dickens to John Forster
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 369–370 (in part).
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25th November 1842
Browning’s play [A Blot in the ’Scutcheon] has thrown me into a perfect passion of sorrow. To say that there is anything in its subject save what is lovely, true, deeply affecting, full of the best emotion, the most earnest feeling, and the most true and tender source of interest, is to say that there is no light in the sun, and no heat in blood. It is full of genius, natural and great thoughts, profound and yet simple and beautiful in its vigour. I know nothing that is so affecting, nothing in any book I have ever read, as Mildred’s recurrence to that “I was so young—I had no mother.” I know no love like it, no passion like it, no moulding of a splendid thing after its conception, like it. And I swear it is a tragedy that must be played; and must be played, moreover, by Macready. There are some things I would have changed if I could (they are very slight, mostly broken lines); and I assuredly would have the old servant begin his tale upon the scene; and be taken by the throat, or drawn upon, by his master, in its commencement. But the tragedy I shall never forget, or less vividly remember than I do now. And if you tell Browning that I have seen it, tell him that I believe from my soul there is no man living (and not many dead) who could produce such a work.—Macready likes the altered prologue very much. …
Text: The Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. M. House, G. Storey, et al. (Oxford, 1965–2002), 3, 381–383.
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