4971. RB to Richard Monckton Milnes
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 241–242.
1. Chichester Road [1]
Upper Westbourne Terr:
Oct. 4. ’61.
My dear Milnes, [2]
True thanks for your kindness & considerateness, & those of Mrs. Milnes. [3] I wish I could profit by your invitation, but there must be no more travelling for me or the boy this year. I am wanting to get him into the steady way of life and work, which our unsettled habits of late have sadly disturbed. We “go no more a-roving,” [4] you are to know; and be sure that, if you care at all about seeing me from time to time, it will be a very pleasant thing for me to look on to, through the cold days coming or come.
By the way, I will mention a thing now to save trouble: on arriving here, friends (Twisleton for one) suggested that I should be introduced to the “Athenæum” by the expeditious method. [5] “There will be no difficulty,” he flatteringly says, proposing to second another man who is to put me forward—and then follows the committee’s part. Looking over the names in it, among a few known to me, yours struck us both as the friendliest and most efficacious. How do you say? Nothing that can vex me, certainly, though much that gratifies me always—witness your invitation—which again thanking you & Mrs Milnes for, believe me
Yours faithfully ever,
Robert Browning.
Publication: T. Wemyss Reid, Life, Letters, and Friendships of Richard Monckton Milnes (London, 1890), II, 78–79.
Manuscript: Trinity College, Cambridge.
1. RB anticipates moving to this address, which, because of the death of Octavius Moulton-Barrett’s wife and child (see the following letter, note 1), was delayed until 8 October 1861.
2. Richard Monckton Milnes (1809–85), later 1st Baron Houghton.
3. Annabella Hungerford Milnes (née Crewe, 1814–74).
4. Byron, “So We’ll Go No More A-Roving,” (Thomas Moore, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, 1830), lines 1 and 11.
5. RB was elected to the Athenæum Club on 4 February 1862 (see James Claude Webster to RB, 4 February 1862, ms at ABL). The “expeditious method” refers to election by committee (rather than election by ballot), as specified under rule 2 in the club’s Rules & Regulations and List of Members (1862), p. 11.
___________________
