SD2954. Diary Entry of William Allingham
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 379.
[London]
8 February [1868]
To Warwick Crescent. Browning in his study, with proof sheets of his new edition in six vols.
Tennyson and the Magazines; The Spiteful Letter, B. said, ‘I like the kind tone of it, but I think it gives a wrong view about Fame. What absurdity to say, “Wait a little and all will be past!” You cannot say that of anything in life.
Our echoes roll from soul to soul
And live for ever and for ever.
I like that better!’
Then we sat down to a luncheon-dinner. R. B., Miss B. and self. B. said the Secretary of the A. Club [James Claude Webster] had posted his name as a defaulter, tho’ the subscription had been duly paid by his banker. ‘I’ll come down on him like thunder! It’s not good to have the reputation of being an easy-going man. I’ll ask him how this blunder came? “Blunder, sir?” he says—upon which I open fire!’
B. shows me, in bird’s-eye view only, the ms. of a new Poem to be printed in July.
I go, meaning to walk to Chelsea and call on Rossetti. R. B. says he will walk with me and seems inclined to come on and see R. ‘How long will it take?’ We cross Kensington Gardens, but opposite S. Kensington Museum R. B. finds he can’t come further.—‘Give my love to Rossetti.’
[The source for the following addition to this entry is a typescript in the Violet Hunt papers in the Ford Madox Ford Collection at Cornell, Box 63, Folder 10 (presumably, Miss Hunt had access to the manuscript of the Allingham diaries—now missing): Luncheon—dinner at browning’s warwick c. Allingham Miss B To Swinburn[e]’s review of Mat[t]hew Arnold Browning says “When I cam[e] to ‘fluteplayers’ Tennysin [sic] and then ‘hornblowers[’] (myself) I made an elpigram [sic] / And now in turn see swinburne bent / Above his favourite instrument / He strikes the trembling wire / Let horn and flute at once be mute / Before the new lascivious lute / Little man and great lyre / I had him there! l-y-r-e[”].]
Text: William Allingham, A Diary, ed. H. Allingham & D. Radford (London, 1908), pp. 173–174.
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