Correspondence

5831.  Robert Williams Buchanan to RB

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 144.

Bexhill

Nov. 26th [1866] [1]

My dear Browning–

More & more thanks!— Yes; silence is golden, & shall not answer Mister Gigadibs [2] —& his brothers. — God bless you!

Yours ever

Robert Buchanan

Robert Browning Esq.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Alexander Turnbull Library.

1. The year is based on the stationery, it being the same as that of letters 5816 and 5818.

2. The journalist in “Bishop Blougram’s Apology” (Men and Women, 1855), to whom the title character addresses his monologue. Buchanan refers to the writer of an article, “Authors and Critics,” that appeared in The London Review of 17 November 1866 (pp. 540–541). The writer criticized a letter from Buchanan, printed in The Athenæum (10 November 1866, no. 2037, p. 608), in which he defended himself against a rumor that he was suing a reviewer for calling his dedication in London Poems (see letter 5816, note 2) “one of the most sycophantic prefaces we ever read” (p. 608). Among other disparaging remarks, “Gigadibs” described Buchanan’s letter as one of “insufferable conceit” and as “the snarl of a spoiled pet, upon whose tail somebody has trodden” (The London Review, p. 540).

___________________