5613. RB to Unidentified Correspondent

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 265–266.

19 Warwick Crescent

Upper Westbourne Terrace, W.

June 25. ’65.

Dear <…>, [1]

Pray do not think me as ungrateful as I must seem in having never been able to profit by your series of kind invitations. I felt sure yesterday that I should at last find myself at <…>: but some friends, [2] on the point of leaving England, required my attention. After all, the loss has been mine, as you very well know: pray allow me to repair it in some measure by remaining

Yours faithfully ever

Robert Browning.

Publication: None traced.

Source: Transcript in editors’ file.

1. The recipient’s name and what was probably his residence below have been effaced.

2. Presumably the Storys. In letter 5615 RB declines an invitation in order to “see an old Roman friend whose last evening it was.” Mr. and Mrs. Story sailed for America aboard the Persia on 1 July 1865. Their daughter, Edith, stayed behind with the Sturgises at Walton-on-Thames.

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