Correspondence

5594. RB to Rosalind Frances Howard

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 255.

The Athenæum

Monday Eg. [mid-May 1865] [1]

Dear Mrs Howard, [2]

I believe I ought to withstand your kindness,-being not particularly well just now: but it is too pleasant an invitation, and I accept it accordingly.

Yours ever truly

Robert Browning

Publication: None traced.

Source: Transcript in editors’ file.

1. Approximate date suggested by reference to letter 5617, in which RB writes: “Will you tell Mrs Howard that since we talked about Professor Jowett I have visited him at Balliol.” RB and Pen visited Jowett at Oxford from 10 to 12 June (see letter 5605). Also dated by RB’s reference to his health; in letter 5596 he writes of having “all the while … a dull headache that stupefies me at times.”

2. Rosalind Frances Howard (née Stanley, 1845–1921), advocate for women’s rights, was the youngest daughter of Edward John Stanley (1802–69), 2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley, and his wife, Henrietta Maria (née Dillon-Lee, 1807–95). She married the previous October George James Howard (1843–1911), later (1889) 9th Earl of Carlisle.

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