Note 18 — Chapter I · ToC
Reading edition
A visitor to Leighton's "private view" wrote him the following suggestions:—
13 Chester Terrace, N.W., Easter Monday.
Dear Mr. Leighton,—Pardon intrusion. I thought much of your beautiful pictures after my yesterday's visit, and I anticipated a struggle with the difficulty you mentioned of worthily naming them.
Don't think me impertinent for volunteering the result. It seemed impossible without verbal description to explain the sacred subject to the profane imagination, while a prose translation of its sentiment must be heavy and subversive of romance.
I think, were I fortunate enough to own the picture, I would call it "Not Yet," and I would put some little lines in the catalogue, which, for aught any one knows, might have come from some volume of rhyme, and which should explain that it is a story of a dream, and that the rejection is not final: something in this spirit, only better:—
"Not yet—not yet— Still there is trial for thee, still the lot To bear (the Father wills it) strife and care, With this sweet consciousness in balance set Against the world, to soothe thy suffering there. Thy Lord rejects thee not." Such tender words awoke me, hopeful, shriven, To life on earth again from dream of heaven.
For the beauty at the fountain I once thought the best title might be some couplet like the following:—
"So tranced and still half-dreamed she, and half-heard The splash of fountain and the song of bird."
But my wife, from my description of the picture, suggested a name better suited to the "suggestiveness" of the work:—
"Lieder ohne Worte": don't you think it rather pretty?
In the multitude of counsellors some one says there's wisdom, and this liberty we take with you may beget some thought that had not struck you.
I have Mr. Cockerell's commands to express to you the gratification his visit afforded him and his sense of your kindness and attentions.—I am, faithfully yours,
Ralph A. Benson.
Another friend wrote of "Lieder ohne Worte," adding a poem suggested by the "Francesca":—
Trinity House, E.C., 8th April 1861.
My dear Leighton,—If you did not paint better than I write you would not be the man of abounding promise that you are.
What I meant to say was that Law and Restraint are healthy life and the infraction of them ghostly death and dissolution, and that meaning is in your picture, whether you know it or not. Your "dæmon" may have put it there, but then you can trust your dæmon.
Still, best love to the little girl at the fountain, who knows that though Speech may be silver, Silence is Golden.—Ever yours, with many thanks,
Robin Allen.
Fred. Leighton, Esq.
Leighton's "Francesca di Rimini."
"That day they read no more." Virtue grows faint, One hand lies powerless, the wife's sweet face Is half-convulsed by loss of self-restraint. Outstretched to resist, remaining to embrace, The extended arm will clasp her guilty lover, And all the bright, pure world beyond for her be over. Their very forms grow blurred and change their colour Into dim snaky wreaths of purple pallor, Fading away with Honour's fading Law Into the pale sad ghosts that Dante saw; Which we too see, crowned with departing glory, When Leighton's genius deepens Dante's Story. R.A.
6th April 1861.