502. RB to Sarah Flower Adams
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 133.
[London]
Wednesday Mg [8 April 1835] [1]
Dear Mrs Adams,
I grieve to say I can’t be at the Bank this morning to catch a glimpse of you: I fancied I could have got there, but am engaged—my father will be very proud & all that, & I hope you will “see somethink.”– Your letter reached me last Thursday—real & true & many thanks for it—& on Saturday I waited on Murray, or rather Murray’s son, [2] & on presenting the kind puff of Mr S. [3] I learnt, as I had anticipated, that “King Pandion he is dead: & all his Peers wrapped up in lead.” [4] i.e Lord Byron is “no mo” & Poetry “no go.” Mr Fox said much, last sunday, of a Printing-press at work just now in the S. Sea Isles .. do you think Kokey-Pokey-Whankey-Firm would offer terms? By the way, I received a note from Miss Sturtevant the other day, in which among other matters she tells me something about Mr Fox’s expecting me to go & read my work to him & to Miss Flower [5] .. some mistake, I imagine; I was certainly to have that honor, but Mr F was to write & appoint time & place—& I only got Miss Flower’s address last week at Camden Town. I called on Mr Fox at Finsbury last Sunday, & expect to hear from him soon about this business which I want to have over as soon as possible.
My best respects & regards to your Sister & best compts to Mr Fox, should you see him—& believe me to be,
Dear Mrs Adams,
Yours ever truly
R. Browning
Address, on integral page: Mrs Adams.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: University of Texas.
1. The references to Fox suggest that this letter falls between RB’s letters to him (501 and 503).
2. John Murray (1808–92), son of John Samuel Murray (1778–1843), of the publishing firm of John Murray, which was founded in 1768 by John Murray (né McMurray, 1737–93)
3. Probably Charles Sturtevant, who, with his friend Fox, was helping RB in his efforts to find a publisher for Paracelsus.
4. Poems: In Divers Humors, An Ode (1598), lines 23–24, by Richard Barnfield (1574–1627), slightly misquoted.
5. Eliza Flower (1803–46), Mrs. Adams’ elder sister (see pp. 311–312). A gossippy account of RB’s early association with Eliza is given in The Merry Wives of Battersea [1956], by Anna Marie Wilhelmina Stirling.
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