5152. Dante Gabriel Rossetti to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 173–174.
16 Cheyne Walk
5 Jan 1863
My dear Browning
Many thanks indeed for the “Selections,” [1] which have not long reached me on my return from a working trip to Newcastle on Tyne. [2] But indeed, concerning this book, all your lieges of oldest standing will feel some pangs of selfishness. “Had I,” each will say “but had the doing of it!” For not even the poking of one’s own fire, perhaps, is so peculiar & unapproachable a privilege, as the insight into one’s own Poet. All I can say this new year, is, may you live to see another generation or two of such jealousies grow up around you, and may the subject matter increase proportionately both for them & those that follow them. This is almost a better wish for Pen than even for yourself: to him also pray give my love—
Affectionately yours
D G Rossetti
Robert Browning Esq
P.S. How about those old pictures to the framing of which I was to see for you. [3] When are you going to send them me for the purpose? I fear (& am sorry) that old Minister [4] did you out of his treasures after all.
Address: Robert Browning Esq / 19 Warwick Crescent / Harrow Road / Bayswater.
Publication: Rossetti, 3, 18.
Manuscript: Princeton University.
1. See letter 5135, note 4. The present whereabouts of Rossetti’s copy is unknown.
2. Rossetti was in Newcastle to paint the portrait of Maria Leathart (née Hedley, 1840–99), wife of James Leathart (1820–95), lead manufacturer and art patron.
3. RB lists the “old pictures” in letter 5154.
4. John Minister (1798–1876), of 8 Buckingham Street, Strand. Years later, W.M. Rossetti remembered him as “a retired old gentleman … who had a deal of antiquated and capital furniture, and from him he [Gabriel] bought largely with a free hand” for the furnishing of 16 Cheyne Walk (Dante Gabriel Rossetti: His Family-Letters with a Memoir, 2 vols., 1895, I, 229).
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