5636. RB to Alfred Tennyson
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 4.
19 Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace,
Oct. 10. ’65.
My dear Tennyson,
When I came back last year from my holiday I found a gift from you—a book: [1] this time, I find only the blue & gold thing which, such as it is, you are to take from me. [2] I could not even put in what I pleased—but I have said all about it in the word or two of preface, as also that I beg leave to stick the bunch in your button-hole. [3]
May I beg, too, that Mrs Tennyson will kindly remember me? I stood and looked—with remembrances enough of you both [4] —at the Hôtel de Douvres three days ago.
Ever affectionately yours
Robert Browning.
Publication: BBIS-22, p. 32.
Manuscript: Tennyson Research Centre.
1. Enoch Arden, etc. (See letter 5460, note 1).
2. A Selection from the Works of Robert Browning (1865); see letter 5532, note 2. RB’s presentation copy to Tennyson is inscribed: “Alfred Tennyson—from RB. Oct. 10. ’65” (see Reconstruction, C541).
3. RB’s preface reads: “It is the wish of Messrs. Chapman & Hall, who now publish my poems, that a little gathering from the lightest of these should be tied together after the pretty device of my old publishers, Messrs. Moxon. Not a single piece here belongs to the Selection already issued by the former gentlemen, which was, perhaps, a fair sample of the ground’s ordinary growth; this, such as it may prove, contentedly looks pale beside the wonderful flower-show of my illustrious predecessor—dare I say? my dear friend: who will take it, all except the love in the gift, at a mere nosegay’s worth.”
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