5151. RB to Nina Lehmann

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 173.

[London]

Tuesday. [ca. 1863] [1]

Dear Mrs Lehmann, [2]

You load me with goodness, & I shall go to see you next minute I can, but on Thursday I am unluckily engaged– I say “unluckily”—so demoralized am I, in my ways of dining out, all through your indulgence!

Thank Mr Lehmann also, if you please, & believe me

Faithfully & obligedly yours

Robert Browning.

Publication: BBIS-24, p. 36.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

1. Dating based on the stationery’s “1862” watermark.

2. Jane Gibson Nina Lehmann (née Chambers, 1830–1902), eldest daughter of Robert Chambers (1802–71) and his wife, Jane Anne (née Kirkwood, 1809–63). In 1852 she married Frederick Lehmann (1826–91), German-born merchant who later represented Middlesex, Waterford, and Evesham in Parliament. He was a brother of the artist Rudolf Lehmann (1819–1905), who drew portraits of the Brownings in Rome.

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