1105.5. RB to Henry Fothergill Chorley

Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 6.

[London]

Thursday Mg [?1843] [1]

My dear Chorley,

“Let me say Amen to that”—(kind Invitation)—“lest the devil” (of contrariness & self willedness) “cross thy prayer” (—aforesaid invitation) “in the likeness of a Jew” [2] —or, doubt, fitly so typified, as to your right to invite away at me so unremittingly. However, what with you and yours, & Carlyle & his—you certainly have me at your foot now—& at your house on monday: my poor “brin de consolation” [3] —is that I do forego this other next-best house’s call for the same day, which reaches me by the same post—which let me make haste & tear up—lest I remember, I shall see you on Saturday too!

With best respects to Miss Chorley,

Ever yours faithfully,

RBg

Publication: None traced.

Source: Transcript in editors’ file.

1. Conjecturally dated by the stationery bearing a circular blind emboss stamp with the Prince of Wales’s feathers, in use by RB during 1843–1846. The letter is likely to have been written early in their friendship. See also letter 1487.

2. Cf. The Merchant of Venice, III, 1, 19–21.

3. “Bit of consolation.”

___________________