5302. RB to Moncure Daniel Conway
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 320–321.
19. Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terr:
Dec. 14. ’63.
My dear Mr Conway,
Mr Fields is too lively in his fancies: I have promised to let him have the Poems [1] sufficiently in advance of publication here to enable him to get them out as soon in Boston,—also, if it can be without prejudice to my copyright, to allow some two or three pieces to appear in his Magazine: [2] but I shall not even go to press for some weeks, nor transmit sheets before the whole is so registered in London as to protect myself—from English hands of course. I shall be very glad to see your article, you know. [3]
Mr Lewis [sic] is now in his new house, [4] —he was in the miseries of moving when you wished to see him: as you have his declaration of great willingness to see you, [5] and all obstructions are at an end,—why not call forthwith? Do so in a week, & it shall go hard but I will have preceded you and revived his memory as to the circumstance—should it be needful, which I do not suppose. My time is taken up sadly—I wish I could at once fix such a day for a walk as you are good enough to desire: but better things may be expected.
Make my true regards to Mrs Conway, [6] & always remember me as
Yours faithfully
Robert Browning.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Columbia University.
1. Dramatis Personæ (1864).
6. Ellen Conway (née Dana, 1833–97), daughter of Charles Davis Dana (b. 1806), a Cincinnati businessman, and his wife, Sarah Pond (née Lyman, b. 1809). The Conways married at Cincinnati on 1 June 1858.
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