1023. RB to William Charles Macready
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 103.
New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey.
Thursday, Octr 13. [1842] [1]
My dear Macready,
I managed to get to the Theatre this evening for the first time: and how impressed I was by your admirable Faliero [2] I wished to take up some couple of minutes in telling you, with perhaps another thing or two, at the play’s end— [3] on presenting my card at the Stage-door for that purpose, I was first of all informed (as civilly as could be) that “you never admitted anybody till you were dressed”—but as, in reply to my enquiry, they also said, “no new regulation on the subject had taken place since last season,” I still begged that my card might be sent up: this being done, I waited some time longer, and at length got my card again with the assurance that your dresser “dared not” present it. [4] Now, either I have unwittingly been singularly intrusive at times for some years past—in which case, I am sorry,—or some novel order has been issued by you, and if so, it is precisely because I am sure it must be a most proper one, that I write at once with a real friend’s anxiousness that some better mode of enforcing it may be hit on. For I cannot imagine how somebody with something to say (instead of myself with next to nothing at all) could have helped himself or you under such circumstances: and since there must be plenty of such people, I think it my duty to write, and at once.
I trust Mrs Macready and your Sister are well—I could not see them anywhere. You must be well.
Ever, my dear Macready,
Yours most truly,
Robt Browning
Publication: NL, pp. 28–29.
Manuscript: Yale University.
1. A pencil annotation on the back of the letter reads: “Browning, October 13, 1842.”
2. Macready was playing the lead in a revival of Byron’s Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice (1821); it was one of his favourite rôles.
3. One word obliterated, apparently by RB.
4. Entries in Macready’s diary during this month lead to the conclusion that he had ordered RB’s exclusion. On 5 October, after the first performance of the Byron revival, Macready noted: “Forster, Maclise, and all my people came into my room.” On the 6th: “Dickens, Maclise, Forster and Mr. Longfellow … came into my room” and on the 24th, he recorded backstage visits from Serle, Dickens, Forster, Emerson Tennent, Stanfield and Maclise (Macready, II, 185–186).
___________________
