SD1648. John Westland Marston to Helena Faucit Martin

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 366 (in part).

[London]

April 26, 1853

It is little to say, that you delighted us,—that would be true of any of your performances. I mean, that, if Browning had been present, he would have seen his Colombe as he imagined her—with all those additional developments which poetic acting gives to poetic thought, when translating it into life. Lovely as a dream, and real as a fact, we shall long remember your Duchess. But the play needs not only an audience of poets before the stage, but a company of poets upon it.

Text: Sir Theodore Martin, Helena Faucit (Edinburgh and London, 1900), p. 240.

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