5551. RB to Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 220.

19 Warwick Crescent

Upper Westbourne Terrace, W.

Feb. 17. ’65.

Dear Miss Coutts,

Pray let me thank you for the honor you did me by the invitation, which I had hoped to accept and enjoy last night—but it happens that, a short while since, my son caught the measles; and though I am assured by the Doctor that there is no possibility of my infecting anybody, yet it seemed as if I had no right to make people even “nervous”—people, that is, of whose antecedents I am ignorant.

I shall be allowed, therefore, to wait a few days before I venture to call and attempt to recover the pleasure I reluctantly gave up last night.

I am, dear Miss Coutts,

Very faithfully yours

Robert Browning.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Scripps College.

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