What I Remember, Volume 2Trollope, Thomas Adolphus
History
What I Remember, Volume 2
Trollope, Thomas Adolphus
Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Trollope, Thomas Adolphus, 1810-1892
She translated a number of the curiously characteristic _stornelli_ of
Tuscany, and especially of the Pistoja mountains. And here again it
is impossible to make any one, who has never been familiar with these
_stornelli_ understand the especial difficulty of translating them. Of
course the task was a slighter and less significant one than that of
translating Giusti, nor was the same degree of critical accuracy and
nicety in rendering shades of meaning called for. But there were
not--are not--many persons who could cope with the especial
difficulties of the attempt as successfully as she did. She produced
also a number of pen-and-ink drawings illustrating these _stornelli_,
which I still possess, and in which the spirited, graphic, and
accurately truthful characterisation of the figures could only have
been achieved by an artist very intimately acquainted _intus et in
cute_ with the subjects of her pencil.
She published a volume on the Tuscan revolution, which was very
favourably received. The _Examiner_, among other critics--all of them,
to the best of my remembrance, more or less favourable--said of these
_Letters_ (for that was the form in which the work was published, all
of them, I think, having been previously printed in the _Athenaeum_),
"Better political information than this book gives may be had in
plenty; but it has a special value which we might almost represent by
comparing it to the report of a very watchful nurse, who, without the
physician's scientific knowledge, uses her own womanly instinct in
observing every change of countenance and every movement indicating
the return of health and strength to the patient ... She has written a
very vivid and truthful account." The critic has very accurately, and,
it may be said, graphically, assigned its true value and character to
the book.
I have found it necessary in a former chapter, where I have given a
number of interesting and characteristic letters from Landor to my
wife's father, to insert a deprecatory _caveat_ against the exuberant
enthusiasm of admiration which led him to talk of the probability of
her eclipsing the names and fame of other poets, including in this
estimate Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The preposterousness of this
no human being would have felt more strongly than Theodosia Garrow,
except Theodosia Trollope, when such an estimate had become yet
more preposterous. But Landor, whose unstinted admiration of Mrs.
Browning's poetry is vigorously enough expressed in his own strong
language, as may be seen in Mr. Forster's pages, would not have
dreamed of instituting any such comparison at a later day. But that
his critical acumen and judgment were not altogether destroyed by the
enthusiasm of his friendship, is, I think, shown by the following
little poem by Theodosia Trollope, written a few years after the birth
of her child. I don't think I need apologise for printing it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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