Frontispiece: epigraph from Browning
Book 1, Page 1
Transcription
The page is otherwise blank. In the lower-left third, two underlined cursive lines (in pencil) frame a quoted couplet, with the attribution at the right:
"All that the old duke had been, with out knowing it ———
This duke would fain know he was, with out being it." ———
From “The Flight of the Duchess” by Browning
AI Notes
The album’s first inscribed page — a couplet from Robert Browning’s ‘The Flight of the Duchess’ (1845), used as the volume’s epigraph. The page is otherwise blank cream paper.
The lines reproduce, with minor variations of capitalization and word-spacing, the closing couplet of Section IX of Robert Browning’s “The Flight of the Duchess” (1845). Browning’s original reads “All that the old Duke had been, without knowing it, / This Duke would fain know he was, without being it.” The transcriber preserved the album’s lowercase “duke” and split spelling “with out”. The cursive is in pencil, in the compiler’s hand (Amy FitzSimons Walker).