3812. RB to Richard Monckton Milnes
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 2–3.
39 Devonshire Place,
Friday Eg. [?4] [July 1856] [1]
Dear Milnes,
I heard from Tennyson that you would “receive” next day, but got no invitation, I assure you. I shall be very <glad to> breakfast with you on Wednesday [2]
Both of us hope to see a little of Mrs Milnes before <we> go.
Ever yours faithfully,
Robert Browning.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Trinity College, Cambridge.
1. Date provided by the reference to Milnes’s breakfast (see note 2 below).
2. Presumably, the breakfast hosted by the Milneses that took place on Friday (not Wednesday), 11 July 1856, at their house, 16 Upper Brook Street, Mayfair. Nathaniel Hawthorne was among the many distinguished guests, and he afterwards recorded his impressions of the Brownings, whom he met for the first time (see SD1942). The other guests were Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne (1780–1863); George Ticknor (1791–1871); Florence Nightingale’s mother and sister, Frances Nightingale (née Smith, 1788–1880) and Frances Parthenope Nightingale (afterwards Verney, 1819–90); Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–59); John Gorham Palfrey (1796–1881); Henry Montagu Butler (1833–1918); Edward Henry Stanley, styled Lord Stanley, later 15th Earl of Derby (1826–93); George Frederick Samuel Robinson, Viscount Goderich, later 2nd Earl of Ripon (1827–1909); Charles Ludovic Marie, Prince de Polignac (1827–1904); and Arthur John Edward Russell (1825–92). See Hawthorne, 22, 80 and 567.
___________________
