5867. RB to Francis Gledstanes Waugh
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 173.
19. Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace,
Feb: 21. ’67.
My dear Sir, [1]
I feel, really deeplier than I can trust myself to say, the kindness of you, and those like you, who cared to give me an honor which, in the wish, is abundantly given. I was told that “the movement originated with the young men.” How it took me by surprise, my friends know. I had my own fancies as to whether such a distinction might be altogether fairly bestowed on a stranger,—but thought, and still think, that I had only to concern myself with the very bestowal,—not the right or wrong of it, into which it was hardly my business to enquire. Accordingly the decision of the Council, which seems just and fair, by no means implies any slight to me, nor alters the gratifying view I continue to take of the case,—indeed, it removes the single untoward circumstance involved therein,—the unpleasantness of competition with the actual candidates. I have mentioned something like this already to one of those gentlemen who signed the “Memorial”—but I gladly repeat what will never be out of my mind. Be assured that I shall go on, doing my best to “profess poetry” after my old unauthorized fashion, and not the less cheerfully after such an assurance that my “lectures” somehow find their way to quick eyes and warm hearts at your noble old Oxford.
Pray believe me ever,
My dear Sir,
Yours faithfully and gratefully
Robert Browning.
F. Gledstanes Waugh Esq.
Address: F. Gledstanes Waugh Esq. / Exeter College, / Oxford.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Scripps College.
1. Francis Gledstanes Waugh (1846–1902), at this time a student at Exeter College, Oxford, and doubtless one of the “young men” who proposed RB for Professor of Poetry.
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