3762. RB to Edward Chapman
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 178.
Paris, Rue du Colisée 3.
[12 April 1856] [1]
My dear Chapman,
Will you have the goodness to give the Bearer of this, Miss Meriton White, a copy of “Men & Women”? [2]
I received a Magasine [sic] last month which I ought to have thanked you for at the time. Also, I received your cheque thro’ my Uncle, all very duly and pleasantly. How do our affairs go on? Any news would be news indeed; but I hear from America, every now & then,—& Fields wrote the other day, repeating that there was a great success there,—funny, if it were so, would it not be?
My wife’s poem gets on capitally: I can answer .. that is, to those who mind what I say .. for six books, of between 7 & 8000 lines & the other two will be ready in time—one is about done, in fact. We hope to be in London in June.
The weather is true Spring: many noticeable folks are here: I spent the evening before last at Dickens’ with Macready. Milnes, my old friend, was here for a pleasant fortnight. But the great sight just now is our Italian Ristori in “Medea.” You’ll have it in London, I dare say.
Goodbye, my dear Chapman, I don’t tell you much, but you tell me nothing at all,—so, reform. With kind remembrances to your Nephew, [3]
Yours faithfully
Robert Browning.
Since writing this, I have been instructed to plague you with a commission from my wife: will you have the goodness to get “Bossut’s French Grammar” and “Miss Corner’s Child’s History of France,” [4] and send them here by the book post? Not forgetting to put the whole to my account.
Address, on integral page: E. Chapman Esq / 193 Piccadilly.
Publication: NL, pp. 89–91.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. Dated by RB’s reference to spending “the evening before last at Dickens’.” In letter 3759 EBB writes that RB “was at Dickens’s last night.”
2. We have been unable to trace the whereabouts of this presentation copy.
4. Doubtless a recent edition of The History of France: From the Earliest Period to the Present Time. Adapted for Youth, Schools, and Families (1840) by Julia Corner. Bossut’s First French Grammar was advertised in The Examiner as recently as 16 July 1853 (p. 463) under the heading “Phillips’s First Books for Children.” Sir Richard Phillips (1767–1840), writer and publisher, began producing cheap editions of instructional books for children in the early part of the century. The language primers were published under the pseudonym “M. L’Abbé Bossut.” An article in Notes and Queries (16 November 1867, p. 394) indicates that Phillips first issued this book as Little French Grammar in 1805.
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