5145. RB to Frederic Chapman
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 166.
19. Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace
Dec. 16. ’62
My dear Chapman,
Many thanks for the Account & Cheque: also for the Books, [1] —nothing can be prettier. I bade Robert select for me, and he showed practicality by deciding that “Red would take the eye in a shop window”—so, red let it be. [2]
If you could really call on me without too great trouble to yourself, I should be very glad. I shall be at home to-morrow at 2. oclock—and would gladly arrange with you about both the “Selection” & the proposed Essays: [3] I don’t grudge at all my walk your way—but, somehow, you are too good to me at Piccadilly, [4] we forget matters, and I go away no wiser than I came! The sight of the canal here will sober our talk.
Ever yours faithfully
Robert Browning.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Presumably advance copies of his Selections, published on the 22nd.
2. The color of the cloth binding for Selections from the Poetical Works of Robert Browning (1863).
3. The Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets (1863), published by Chapman and Hall the following March. These two sets of EBB’s essays originally appeared in “Some Account of the Greek Christian Poets” (The Athenæum, 26 February and 5, 12, 19 March 1842) and “The Book of Poets,” a review of an anthology of that name (The Athenæum, 4, 11, 25 June and 6, 13 August 1842).
4. The offices of Chapman and Hall were located at 193 Piccadilly.
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