5184. RB to Julia Sturgis
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 208.
19. Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace.
March 3. ’63
My dear Mrs Sturgis, [1]
If I could make you any return I pleased for all your goodness to me & mine, I don’t know that it should be other than helping you to go to Rome just as you are now going by yourself—alas! But I wholly sympathise with your enjoyment before hand,—really share & am the better for it. No Italy for me—this many a day to come! Still, there are good things in London,—and no better thing than kind friends like you. I will gladly avail myself of your offer to carry a little parcel to the Storys [2] —having thro’ stress of work & engagements, missed yesterday’s Courier: it shall be left at Lowndes’ Square [3] by Wednesday afternoon. You must have thought me stupid for refusing to go & be happy for the Christmas week at Mount Felix [4] —but you did not fancy me ungrateful, I am sure. The Boy keeps the liveliest recollection of his pleasant day or two. We shall go to Paris on the 14th for a fortnight, to see my Father.
I charge you with no message to the Storys as I mean to write: but do bid Mr Sturgis remember me a little, as I shall not forget his goodness easily: and say a word on the part of my Boy & myself to your sons. [5] I have just succeeded in entering Robert for Balliol, Oxford—if God please that, four years hence!
And now, good bye & the best of journeying! It can hardly fail to be so, this delicious next month: & take all other good wishes from
Yours faithfully ever
Robert Browning.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
2. The Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets, published on 9 March. This presentation copy to the Storys has not surfaced.
5. Henry Parkman Sturgis (1847–1929), Julian Russell Sturgis (1848–1904), and Howard Overing Sturgis (1855–1920).
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