Correspondence

3846.  RB to Thomas Woolner

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 39.

39. D. Place.

Friday Night [22 August 1856] [1]

Dear Woolner, [2]

We go to Ventnor to-morrow for a short while: I should be sorry indeed if you called for nothing some unlucky evening: we shall be back in a fortnight at farthest. Of course you can leave any thing here.

Ever yours faithfully,

Robert Browning.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Yale University.

1. Dated by RB’s reference to the Brownings’ departure for Ventnor, which took place the following day.

2. Thomas Woolner (1825–92), sculptor and poet, was a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He had exhibited at the Royal Academy at an early age, but he made his reputation with a marble bust of Alfred Tennyson (1857). Woolner completed a portrait medallion of RB before the Brownings returned to Italy (see letter 3864, note 2). RB’s last sentence may possibly refer to it.

___________________