5138. RB to John Frazer Corkran
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 161–162.
19. Warwick Crescent,
Harrow Road.
Nov. 29. ’62.
My dear Mr Corkran, [1]
I hope you know that the delay in answering your letter was only caused by the need of doing it to some purpose: first of all, I could only see Chapman yesterday afternoon, he having been at Brighton: he consents to take & publish your volume, [2] will bring it out at once, do all he can for it & you, & so he bade me tell you, which I do with hearty sympathy: he had somehow confounded it with something else which you withdrew & published or were to publish elsewhere, I think—but he looked up the matter & into the book again & comes to the good decision which I give.
I wish with all my soul I could also tell you there has been any success in the other attempts to which you so kindly & over-apperetiatingly [sic] refer: I did twice see an eminent literary man who engaged (I am sure sincerely) to try his utmost & let me know the result: but I hear nothing from him. What he would have been able to procure would have been a literary appointment as correspondent to, or writer of leaders for a Newspaper: and that would prove much more trying, without being a whit more certain than the one you have in view, and which I can hardly think you will fail to accept: for certainly your friends need not in that case discontinue watching for any decidedly superior thing that might turn up—relieved from the thought that “while the grass was growing &c”—and in the mean time you will have breathing-time and opportunity to look about you—besides which, should the appointment last, you will be able to use all your literary ability with excellent effect as an assistance to the main business: you will see & consider this, of course, without my poor pointing-out—which is only to show my real anxiety that you should succeed as you deserve.
All regards to Mrs Corkran & your circle,—I write in great haste but am no less,
Yours ever faithfully
R Browning.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. John Frazer Corkran (1807–84); see letter 2982, note 9.
2. Bertha’s Repentance: A Tale (1863) was published by Chapman and Hall the following April.
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