3120. RB to Arthur Hugh Clough
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 226.
58 Welbeck St
Septr 25. ’52.
My dear Sir, [1]
I fear it will be impossible for me to get rid of a pressing engagement that I have for this morning, in time to return here & see you—greatly as I should like to do so. If you can call on Monday between 2 & 5 I shall be fortunate indeed. [2]
Yours very sincerely,
Robert Browning.
Address: A. H. Clough Esq. / 7 Caroline St / Bedford Square.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Bodleian Library.
1. Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–61), poet, was educated at Rugby and Balliol College, Oxford. His death led his friend Matthew Arnold to write Thyrsis (1866). EBB had read and admired Clough’s “The Bothie of Toper-Na-Fuosich”; see letter 2821.
2. Clough was sailing for America in late October and was probably asking RB for letters of introduction or advice on obtaining them. A diary entry by Crabb Robinson for 27 September 1852 reads: “I breakfasted with Kenyon—Procter with him. He delighted me by telling me that he had heard of Clough from Browning, and was quite ready to give him letters to Ticknor and others in America” (Henry Crabb Robinson on Books and Their Writers, ed. Edith J. Morley, 1938, p. 719). One of the “others” Kenyon provided an introduction to was Charles Eliot Norton; see SD1617.
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