5343. RB to Moncure Daniel Conway
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 23–24.
[London]
Tuesday Mg [8 March 1864] [1]
My dear Mr Conway,
I don’t think that Tennyson is in Town still: he was at that House whither we walked together on Friday week—and a great surprise was his presence: but I heard that, for some reason or other—nobody ought to know anything about his apparition, which would be brief moreover: he goes to friends’ houses, and is hard to catch.
With respect to the early sheets, they are of course only for American use [2] —if one “favoured” (as they politely call it) an English Journal at the expense of its fellows, author and publisher would have to pay for it. [3] You can, of course, get your article ready and manage that it appear almost simultaneously with the book’s self—and I am sure I shall be happy to see & profit by it. [4]
You must get Howell at the Museum: it is not a very common book, as the “Letters” [5] which are everywhere.
The delay in writing was caused by my wanting to give you more satisfactory information: but you know the good will of
Ever yours most truly
Robert Browning.
Publication: NL, pp. 160–161 (as [May 1864]).
Manuscript: Yale University.
1. Dated based on RB’s reference to “Friday week” (26 February), on which day he had been invited to meet Tennyson (see letters 5339 and 5342).
2. i.e., for the Boston publishing firm of Ticknor & Fields. RB sent proofsheets of “the better half” of Dramatis Personæ (1864) to James Thomas Fields three days later (see letter 5346).
3. RB left Conway the proofs of Dramatis Personæ on 26 April (see letter 5363).
4. Conway’s review of Dramatis Personæ appeared in The Morning Star of 2 June 1864, p. 3. For the full text of this review, see pp. 337–340.
5. Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ: Familiar Letters Domestic and Forren (1645) by James Howell (1594?–1666); see letter 746, note 1. A 1726 edition of this work, signed “Elizabeth B. Barrett,” sold as lot 773 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A1261). The previous editors suggest that the not “very common book” is Dendrologia: Dodona’s Grove, or the Vocall Forrest (1640), which we cannot confirm. A copy of the third edition (1645), inscribed on the title-page “Elizabeth B. Barrett” and “Robert Browning,” sold as lot 772 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A1260).
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