5637. Alfred Tennyson to RB

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 4–5.

Farringford

Oct 11th/65.

My dear Browning

Very welcome is The nosegay, not only for ‘the love in the gift’ [1] —which makes me who am physically the most unbumptious of men & authors—proud: but also for its own very peculiar flowerage & beautification, for which I think I have as high a respect as any man in Britain. I stick it into my buttonhole & feel Bulwer’s cork heels added to my boots. [2]

My wife always remembers you—and another. I too when last at Paris took a long look at the Hotel Douvres thinking of the former time

ever yours affectionly

A Tennyson

Publication: Tennyson, 2, 406.

Manuscript: Berg Collection.

1. See the preceding letter, note 3.

2. According to Robert Bernard Martin in his Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart (Oxford, 1980), Edward Bulwer-Lytton “was a joke in society for his chamois-tipped pink boots with three-inch cork heels to give him height” (p. 297).

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