2092. RB to Frederick Oldfield Ward
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 11, 160–161.
[London]
Sunday Nt [9 November 1845] [1]
Thank, thank, thank you, my brave Ward: I will lay all your praises to heart, taking them for the incitements they are meant to be. I read your note on coming home last night after our post-time—and with it came another with a like enquiry about “the play” [2] (tho’ with no such superfluity of kindness and geniality as the invitation contained in yours) and to that, as to yours, I must answer that my hands are tied by the circumstances of the case: for having received two capital tickets for the first representation, and having signified to the same quarter whither my acknowledgments were sent, my wish to be present this time, I wait the pleasure of the higher powers. If I can get to you .. will I not!
Here is a kind note from Winter too– [3] Will you not defy distance one day and come dine, both of you .. at a couple of days notice, for safety’s sake?
Ever yours,
R Browning.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Conjecturally dated by RB’s reference to “the play.”
2. RB is referring to Dickens’s amateur production of Every Man in His Humour, the second performance of which was scheduled for 15 November. The play had first been presented on 20 September (see letters 2035 and 2041). RB attended the 15 November performance and commented on it to EBB in letter 2099.
3. Andrew Winter, whose London direction appears as both 7 Bolton St., Piccadilly and 337 Strand in RB’s earliest extant address book (see vol. 9, p. 394).
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