SD2241. Frederic Leighton to Augusta Leighton

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 26, 352–353 (in part).

Rome

[ca. March] 1859.

… It is my particular object an[d] study to go to no parties, in the which I have succeeded admirably. I go often to Cartwright’s in the evening, that don’t count; now and then to Browning, now and then to the play, see a good deal of Lady Hoare; and that reminds me that Hoare sent you some game the other day, which, however, was returned, as you were not forthcoming. By-the-bye, when I say I have made no acquaintances of interest, that is not true; Odo Russell, son and brother of my friends, Lady William and Arthur Russell, and our diplomatic agent here, is a great friend of mine, and particularly sympathetic. I see him often at Cartwright’s, who is his alter ego; also I know and like Miss Ogle, whom wrote that (I hear) exceedingly remarkable novel, “A Lost Love.” She is a country clergyman’s daughter in a remote corner of Yorkshire, and wrote this book when she had, I believe, never lived out of a circle of “kettles.” She is not young, but agreeable and quaint. …

Text: Emilie I. Barrington, The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton (London, 1906), II, 38.

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