5930. Robert Bulwer Lytton to RB

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 221.

[London]

[early July 1867] [1]

My dearest Browning

I send you the Emerson [2] with many thanks and many appologies [sic]. I have been in bed ever since I saw you, & still am with a Quinsy! & it is this that has prevented me from coming to see you as I had hoped to have done

faithly

RBL

Address: R Browning Esq.

Publication: BBIS-10, pp. 224–225.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

1. Dating suggested by Lytton’s mention of Emerson (see note 2 below), his being “in bed ever since” he saw RB, and by reference to letter 5944 in which Lytton writes of a “slight operation.” RB and Lytton’s most recent meeting probably took place in late May or early June (see letter 5915), and the operation occurred sometime prior to 17 July (see letter 5944). Consequently, we place this letter between those two dates.

2. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s May-Day, and Other Poems (Boston, 1867) was published in April by Ticknor and Fields. The English edition, issued by George Routledge and Sons, was listed among “New Publications for the Week” in The London Review, 8 June 1867, p. i.

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