5883. RB to Dinah Craik
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 186.
19. Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace, W.
March 26. ’67.
Dear Mrs Craik, [1]
I should have been vexed had my name failed to show, by its presence, how I love & honor all the Taylors: Jane Taylor wrote exquisite things, never likely to drop out of my mind. [2] Thank you for this and all other kindnesses of remembrance.
Ever yours most truly
Robert Browning.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Dinah Maria Mulock (1826–87), novelist (see letter 2909, note 3), married on 29 April 1865 George Lillie Craik (1837–1905) of Macmillan & Co.
2. Jane Taylor (1783–1824), children’s author, co-wrote with her elder sister Ann Taylor (afterwards Gilbert, 1782–1866) Rhymes for the Nursery (1806), which contains “The Star” and its universally known first line: “Twinkle, twinkle, little star.” In a footnote to the title of his late poem “Rephan” (Asolando, 1890), RB wrote: “Suggested by a very early recollection of a prose story by the noble woman and imaginative writer, Jane Taylor, of Norwich” (Norwich was later corrected to Ongar). The “prose story” was “How It Strikes a Stranger” from The Contributions of Q. Q. to a Periodical Work: With Some Pieces Not Before Published (2 vols. 1824). See The Poetical Works of Robert Browning, Vol. 15, ed. Stefan Hawlin and Michael Meredith (Oxford, 2009), pp. 463–466.
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