SD1243. John Kenyon to Anna Brownell Jameson
Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 12, 369 (in part).
40. York Terrace
Feby 6: 1846
Dear Mrs Jameson
Hermitess as you are, we neither see you nor hear of you but—thro’ the Athenaeum—from your “pensive citadel.” This note hopes to penetrate within it, as an introduction to the one from Miss Clarke which I enclose, and I have three volumes of Mr Fauriel’s poesie Provencale for you which I will send for you whither so ever you may direct. Let me hear.
Miss Clarke writes me one of her clever notes, and as fervent as clever, on the subject of Mr Fauriel’s work. It is an amiable trait of your womanhood to be bit by the “specialatés” [sic, for spécialités] of your friends and to think that they are to make a “ferore” with all the rest of the world as with you. But clever as a writer may be, there must be little new to be said now a days on Troubadours and Trouveres—and that “little new” not much worth—and for the mere manner of saying it—tho of the best—that will attract few readers, in England at least, from our present great politicial [sic] questions.
Great Britain is not, just now a leisurely “faculté des lettres.”
Who will care among Us—[(]whom I have no doubt that Miss Clarke exceedingly despises) for one resurrected long of a forgotten (probably justly forgotten) Rhymes of six centuries ago—and volumes have been written on this matter already, and out of these volumes can you or any of your friends repeat by heart any six consecutive lines of their (translated) verse– In saying all this I perceive that I am rather answering Miss Clarke’s note, than writing fitly—to you; so I will cease & spare you.
J Kenyon
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
___________________
