497. RB to Christopher Dowson, Jr. [1]
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 124.
[London]
Sunday Night [February 1835] [2]
Dear Sir,
You are probably by this time aware of the unfortunate state of our friend P___ [3] Mr Walton [4] transmitted your pacquet to me on the score of his being perfectly unable to attend to any communication whatever.––I therefore forward the letters &c
–For myself, I must feel highly honored & obliged by an invitation which I cannot bring myself to decline & which I can as little venture to accept– Cutting the pathetic I must own that “I am not what I have been” [5] & a good deal to do—very indifferent health & very uncertain spirits must incline you to be “merciful to man of mould” [6] i.e. the veriest dirt e’er licked into shape but no less, My dear Sir
Very truly yours
Robt Browning
Best respects to your brother
Address, on integral page: C. Dowson Junr Esq.
Publication: LRB, p. 1.
Manuscript: British Library.
1. Christopher Dowson, Jr. (1807–48). In 1836 he married Mary Domett, the youngest sister of RB’s friend, Alfred Domett. Christopher and his younger brother, Joseph, were both good friends of RB. Dowson inherited his family’s Bridge Dock, was a lover of the theatre, a trifler, and was described as “highly sensitive and nervous,” full of “quips and cracks” (Maynard, p. 106).
2. Of the previous RB letters, only one (letter 473) has a watermark, namely 1831. This present letter bears a watermark of 1832, so the presumption is that it was written later than 473, which is dated March 1833. This, together with RB’s reference to “very indifferent health,” suggests February 1835 as the probable date, as this was when RB had his first serious illness, mentioned in letters 496 and 498.
3. Capt. James Pritchard (1789–1859), an old family friend of the Brownings. He left Sarianna Browning a legacy of £1,000 and various books and papers. In a letter to Joseph Milsand, 5 October 1859, written after Pritchard’s death, Sarianna said that RB had been “strongly attached” to Pritchard.
4. Charles Walton, ship-owner and marine insurance broker, a friend of Pritchard.
5. This is a translation of the first line of the motto used by RB for Pauline, taken from Les Épigrammes (ccxix) of Clément Marot (1496–1544).
6. Cf. Henry V, III, 2, 22. (In these notes, and some others relating to the letters published in Letters of Robert Browning Collected by Thomas J. Wise, we have drawn on material researched by the late Dr.Thurman L. Hood. We here record our debt to his scholarship.)
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