Correspondence

5722.  Anthony Trollope to RB

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 62.

Garrick Club

9 March 1866

My dear Browning.

Our dinner is at St James hotel, Piccadilly, Francatelli’s, [1] at 7. pm on Wednesday next. Do come to us. Your coming will not be taken, nor is our wish for you to come, intended as in any way, binding you to anything more on our behalf than the light of your face on our little dinner. Not but that we are most anxious for your stouter assistance if at any time you can give it to us. I think we shall have a nice dinner.

Yours always

Anthony Trollope

Publication: The Letters of Anthony Trollope, ed. N. John Hall (Stanford, 1983), I, 334.

Manuscript: Library of Congress.

1. Charles Elmé Francatelli (1805–76), chef and writer on cooking, “managed the kitchen at St. James’s Hotel in London’s Berkeley Street from 1863 to 1870” (ODNB). An Englishman of Italian ancestry, Francatelli “trained in Paris under Antonin Carême, the founder of French haute cuisine” (ODNB).

___________________