5158. RB to Henry Bence Jones
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 178.
19. Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace.
Jan: 15. ’63.
Dear Sir, [1]
I beg to return my best thanks to the Managers of the Royal Institution for the honor they have done me by their Invitation [2] —by which I shall be happy to profit. [3]
And pray let me thank yourself, very cordially, for your own kindness in the matter– I had hoped to say, rather than write this—hence the delay in acknowledging your letter.
Pray believe me,
Dear Sir,
Yours very faithfully
Robert Browning.
Dr Bence Jones.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection.
1. Henry Bence Jones (1813–73), physician and chemist, was secretary to the Royal Institution from 1860 until his death.
2. The Royal Institution in Albemarle Street was “founded in 1799 by Benjamin Thompson … for ‘diffusing the knowledge and facilitating the general introduction of useful mechanical inventions and improvements, and for teaching by courses of philosophical lectures and experiments the application of science to the common purposes of life’” (The London Encyclopædia, ed. Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert, 1983, p. 676). Among some of the Institution’s more famous professors were Michael Faraday, T.H. Huxley, and Ernest Rutherford.
3. The invitation was for the Royal Institution’s lecture of Friday evening, 30 January, presented by Cardinal Wiseman, “On the points of contact between science and art” (The Morning Post, 31 January 1863, p. 6). See letter 5186 for RB’s estimate of the lecture.
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