3211. Bryan Waller Procter to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 122.
13 Upper Harley Street
Cavendish Square
June 11. 1853.
My dear Browning.
The bearer of this Letter is Captain Eastwick. [1] He is an East India Director—a very intelligent & most agreeable man– He is moreover the gentleman who gave my son his Indian Cadetship. [2] His own personal qualities are more than sufficient, I am sure, to induce you to shew him what is best worth seeing in your City of Residence. Should I be mistaken in my surmise, then I must ask you to give him a welcome for the sake of your friend
B. W. Procter.
Kind regards to Mrs Browning
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. William Joseph Eastwick (1808–89), son of Captain Robert William Eastwick (1772–1865), of Thurlow Square, London, and his second wife Lucy (née King, 1765–1824), was educated at Winchester and “went out to India in 1826 as an ensign in the Bombay Army” (The Times, 1 March 1889, p. 13). In 1846, five years after returning to England, he was elected a director in the East India Company and later served as a member of the first India Council. He is listed at the Hôtel d’Italie, Florence, in the Brownings’ address book of this period (AB-3).
2. Eastwick, according to records in the India Office, nominated Procter’s son, Montagu Mitchell Procter (1833–85), to be an officer in the British Indian Army.
___________________
