Chapter 7

1838-1841

First Italian Journey--Letters to Miss Haworth--Mr. John
Kenyon--'Sordello'--Letter to Miss Flower--'Pippa Passes'--'Bells and
Pomegranates'.

Mr. Browning sailed from London with Captain Davidson of the 'Norham
Castle', a merchant vessel bound for Trieste, on which he found himself
the only passenger. A striking experience of the voyage, and some
characteristic personal details, are given in the following letter to
Miss Haworth. It is dated 1838, and was probably written before that
year's summer had closed.

Tuesday Evening.

Dear Miss Haworth,--Do look at a fuchsia in full bloom and notice the
clear little honey-drop depending from every flower. I have just found
it out to my no small satisfaction,--a bee's breakfast. I only answer
for the long-blossomed sort, though,--indeed, for this plant in my room.
Taste and be Titania; you can, that is. All this while I forget that you
will perhaps never guess the good of the discovery: I have, you are to
know, such a love for flowers and leaves--some leaves--that I every
now and then, in an impatience at being able to possess myself of them
thoroughly, to see them quite, satiate myself with their scent,--bite
them to bits--so there will be some sense in that. How I remember the
flowers--even grasses--of places I have seen! Some one flower or weed, I
should say, that gets some strangehow connected with them.

Snowdrops and Tilsit in Prussia go together; cowslips and Windsor Park,
for instance; flowering palm and some place or other in Holland.

Now to answer what can be answered in the letter I was happy to receive
last week. I am quite well. I did not expect you would write,--for none
of your written reasons, however. You will see 'Sordello' in a trice, if
the fagging fit holds. I did not write six lines while absent (except
a scene in a play, jotted down as we sailed thro' the Straits of
Gibraltar)--but I did hammer out some four, two of which are addressed
to you, two to the Queen*--the whole to go in Book III--perhaps. I
called you 'Eyebright'--meaning a simple and sad sort of translation
of "Euphrasia" into my own language: folks would know who Euphrasia, or
Fanny, was--and I should not know Ianthe or Clemanthe. Not that there is
anything in them to care for, good or bad. Shall I say 'Eyebright'?

* I know no lines directly addressed to the Queen.

I was disappointed in one thing, Canova.

What companions should I have?

The story of the ship must have reached you 'with a difference' as
Ophelia says; my sister told it to a Mr. Dow, who delivered it to
Forster, I suppose, who furnished Macready with it, who made it over
&c., &c., &c.--As short as I can tell, this way it happened: