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The sand hills ran down to the river edge, it is true, but there were plenty of shoals and shallows across which I could gallop Pornic, and find my way back to terra firma by turning sharply to the right or left. As I led Pornic over the sands I was startled by the faint pop of a rifle across the river; and at the same moment a bullet dropped with a sharp "whit" close to Pornic's head.
Part of a letter written in the September of '65 from Ste.-Marie may be interesting as referring to the legend of Pornic included in 'Dramatis Personae'. The people here are good, stupid and dirty, without a touch of the sense of picturesqueness in their clodpolls. . . . The little record continues through 1866. Feb. 19, '66.
All we want is that you should tell us which house is the inn that we may receive refreshment for ourselves and our horses." Then there came a voice from behind the door: "There is no inn nearer than Pornic. We are poor people and cannot support one. We pray your highness to depart in peace." "But, good sir," answered James Douglas, "that we cannot do.
A fuller picture of these simple, peaceful, and poetic Pornic days comes to us through Miss Blagden, August 18: . . . This is a wild little place in Brittany, something like that village where we stayed last year. Close to the sea a hamlet of a dozen houses, perfectly lonely one may walk on the edge of the low rocks by the sea for miles. Our house is the Mayor's, large enough, clean and bare.
Bowen asked him to read it," Imogene continued. "Did she?" asked Colville pensively. "And then we discussed it afterward. We had a long discussion. And then he read us the 'Legend of Pornic, and we had a discussion about that. Mrs. Bowen says it was real gold they found in the coffin; but I think it was the girl's 'gold hair. I don't know which Mr. Morion thought. Which do you?
The story of Gold Hair and the landscape details of James Lee's Wife are alike derived from Pornic. The solitude of the little Breton hamlet soothed Browning's spirit. The "good, stupid and dirty" people of the village were seldom visible except on Sunday; there were solitary walks of miles to be had along the coast; fruit and milk, butter and eggs in abundance, and these were Browning's diet.
Gilles de Retz wrote rapidly, rising only at intervals to throw a fresh log of wood across the vast iron dogs on either side of the wide fireplace, as the rain from the northwest beat more and more fiercely upon the small glazed panes of the window and howled among the innumerable gargoyles and twisted roof-stacks of the Hotel de Pornic.
The sand hills ran down to the river edge, it is true, but there were plenty of shoals and shallows across which I could gallop Pornic, and find my way back to terra firma by turning sharply to the right or the left. As I led Pornic over the sands I was startled by the faint pop of a rifle across the river; and at the same moment a bullet dropped with a sharp "whit" close to Pornic's head.
In 1865, the holiday was again at Sainte-Marie, and the weather was golden; but he noticed with regret that the old church at Pornic, where the beautiful white girl of his poem had been buried, was disappearing to give space in front of a new and smart erection of brick and stucco. His Florence, as he learnt, was also altering, and he lamented the change.
When she comes to speak of this work Browning's biographer Mrs Orr is half-apologetic; it is for her "a piece of perplexing cynicism." The origin of the poem was twofold. The external suggestion came from the fact that during one of his visits to Pornic, Browning had seen the original of his Fifine, and she lived in his memory as a subject of intellectual curiosity and imaginative interest.
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