3636. Dante Gabriel Rossetti to RB

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 276–277.

[London]

Tuesday evening [25 September 1855] [1]

My dear Sir

I am going to take a great liberty,—or rather to propose doing so, if you will allow me. May I bring my brother [2] with me on Thursday evening? He has looked forward as long as I have to the possibility of some day knowing yourself and Mrs Browning, and would feel as much pleasure as I do in it, which I assure you is saying not a little.

In case you will kindly allow us to come together, I need not trouble you for an answer to this, but will construe silence in the affirmative; remaining meanwhile

my dear Sir

yours very sincerely

D. G. Rossetti

Robert Browning Esq

Address: Robert Browning Esq / 13 Dorset Street / Baker Street.

Publication: Rossetti, 2, 67–69.

Manuscript: Huntington Library.

1. This letter is postmarked 26 September 1855, a Wednesday.

2. William Michael Rossetti (1829–1919), art and literary critic, literary editor, and one of the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. In Some Reminiscences of William Michael Rossetti (2 vols., 1906), he recalls: “I saw Browning in London, during the continuance of his married life, some half-dozen to a dozen times. … The most memorable meeting was on 27 September 1855, at the temporary residence of the Brownings, 13 Dorset Street, Marylebone Road, when Tennyson read Maud aloud, and Browning read Fra Lippo Lippi” (I, 235–236).

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