5708. RB to Chevalier de Chatelain
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 53–54.
19 W.C.
Feb. 16. ’66.
My dear Sir, [1]
I am very sensible of your extreme kindness; but I must make a further request to it of pardon for my inability to have the pleasure you would give me. I never go out except on something like compulsion, and for peculiar reasons which,—unless in the case of a very few old friends,—have no reference to any advantage of my own. As your Marot says, “Plus ne suis ce que j’ai été,—et ne lesçaurois jamais être!” [2] In the instance of your Fête, I might add that in all probability I shall be away from home when it takes place: but it is best to tell the whole truth. You see what an owl you have been trying to tempt into the sun!
I thank you much also for your Gazette [3] —and for the conveyance of the book from Mr Westwood: [4] will you do me the additional favor of making my best acknowledgements whenever you write to him?
Pray believe me,
My dear Sir,
Yours very faithfully ever
Robert Browning.
M. le Chevalier Chatelain.
etc. etc. etc.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: University of Texas.
1. Jean Baptiste François Ernest de Chatelain (1801–81); see letter 3588, note 1.
2. “I am no longer that which I have been,—and cannot ever be so!” Cf. Clément Marot (1496–1544), “De Soy Mesme” (1537), lines 1–2.
3. Unidentified.
4. Thomas Westwood (1814–88); see his biographical sketch in vol. 5, pp. 375–376. The book is doubtless The Sword of Kingship, a Legend of the “Mort d’Arthure” (1866). RB’s copy is inscribed: “To Robert Browning, with the faithful remembrances of the Author.” This copy sold in an unspecified lot in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A2447).
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