Dato: 10. august 1845
Fra: Robert Browning   Til: Elizabeth Moulton Barrett Browning
Sprog: engelsk.

Sunday Afternoon [August 10, 1845]

How good you are to the smallest thing I try and do - [...]

Let me tell you an odd thing that happened at Chorley's the other night: I must have mentioned to you that I forget my own verses so surely after they are once on paper, that I ought, without affectation, to mend them infinitely better, able as I am to bring fresh eyes to bear on them - (when I say 'once on paper' that is just what I mean and no more, for after the sad revising begins they do leave their mark, distinctly or less so according to circumstances) - well, Miss Cushman, the new American actress (clever and truthful-looking) was talking of a new novel by the Dane Andersen, he of the 'Improvvisatore,' which will reach us, it should seem, in translation, via America - she had looked over two or three proofs of work in the press, and Chorley was anxious to know something about its character. The Title, he said, was capital - 'Only a Fiddler! - and she enlarged on that word, 'Only', and its significance, so put: and I quite agreed with her for several minutes, till first one reminiscence flitted to me, then another and at last I was obliged to stop my praises and say 'but, now I think of it, I seem to have written something with a similar title - nay, a play, I believe - yeas, and in five acts - 'Only an Actress'- and from that time, some two years or more ago to this, I have been every way relieved of it'! - And when I got home, next morning, I made a dark pocket in my russett horror of a portfolio give up its dead - and there fronted me 'Only a Player-girl' (the real title) and the sayngs and doings of her, and the others - such others! [...]

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