Correspondence

5700.  RB to Frederic Leighton

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 48.

The Athenæum

Feb. 13. ’66.

My dear Leighton,

I am rejoiced to find that you come to your chance here very soon—possibly this year, certainly next year at latest: [1] you will receive due intimation and must provide yourself with a new proposer & seconder: the Secretary [2] tells me that the proposer’s name is the efficacious one: let us bethink ourselves on that point.

De Mussy [3] won’t come up before ’71, I find.

Poor I.R.C. [4] was blackballed last night, I regret to say: it must have happened thro’ the pretentious and provoking preamble—for which he was not answerable, of course.

Ever affectionately yours

Robert Browning.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

1. RB refers to membership in the Athenæum Club, to which Leighton was duly elected in 1866.

2. James Claude Webster (1830–1908); see letter 5017, note 3.

3. Henri Guéneau de Mussy (1814–92)—see letter 5296, note 8—was elected to membership in the Athenæum Club in 1873.

4. Unidentified.

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