System Number: 11005
Date: 14 May 1865
Author: R. W. McLeod Fullarton[1]
Place: London
Recipient: JW
Place: [London]
Repository: Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, Leeds
Document Type: ALS
18 Westbourne Square
14th May 1865
Dear Sir,
It is not presuming on our short boyish acquaintance, when 17 years ago[2] we visited together Roslin Hawthornden, that I send you the inclosed [sic] few verses: but in the hope that you may find expressed in them thoughts that may have arisen in your own mind, when painting a picture fitted to give so much pleasure to the few and so little to the many! [p. 2] from which, with all its beauty, that comeliness which takes the vulgar eye purposely excluded 'that, seeing, they may see, and not percieve [sic]! Such as they are, they at least express the emotions of one who has looked upon your work not I think without appreciation, certainly with high admiration.
I am dear Sir
Yours most truly
R W Fullarton
[p. 3] On seeing Whistler's 'Little White Girl'[3]
O fair ill-favour, where in ambush lie
Beauties untold, ineffable! Oh rare
To find what others find not, nor to share
Our admiration with the vulgar eye,
Which when it sees her, what can it descry?
The faulty feature, not the faultless air,
The leaden casket not the jewel fair,
That Croesus' wealth would not avail to buy.
Sweet unapparent beauty, known to none!
Like the invisible odour that the rose
Hides in her virgin breast, till that the sun
With golden finger bids her heart [unclose?]
Else unrevealed; to one touch only, one,
She opens, and her fragrance overflows.
8.5.65.
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Notes:
1. R. W. McLeod Fullarton
R. W. McLeod Fullarton (1835-1896), QC, was a barrister and collector [more].
2. 17 years ago
In the summer of 1848 JW visited the Isle of Wight and then went to school near Bristol. Fullarton may have been a fellow pupil. Hawthornden Castle is visible above Roslin Glen in Midlothian, Scotland.
3. 'Little White Girl'
Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl (YMSM 52); another poem was written by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), poet and critic [more] (see #05620, #05621).