5901. RB to Helena Faucit Martin
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 199–200.
19. Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace, W.
Thursday. [9 May 1867] [1]
Dear Mrs Martin,
How gladly I would go to you on Sunday [2] but for an engagement: I have to dine with the Goldsmids! [3] I know the Professor [4] a little and like him very much indeed, finding in his freshness and enthusiasm all the good you describe: and I was sorry to miss a Friday eg: lecture of his a week ago. [5] But how much one misses in this whirling London,—and how vexatious it is that I should so often miss the delight of seeing friends like your husband and yourself! Give my truest & kindest regards to him, however, and remember me always as,—dare I venture to write it honestly down?—affectionately yours
Robert Browning.
Publication: NL, p. 179.
Manuscript: Huntington Library.
1. Dated by RB’s declining an invitation for Sunday, his reference to “the Professor” (see note 4 below), and missing the latter’s Friday lecture “a week ago” (see note 5 below).
2. 12 May. In a journal entry of that date, Mrs. Martin recorded: “Professor Blackie dined with us. He is always fresh and clever … I have promised him a letter to Robert Browning”; see Sir Theodore Martin, Helena Faucit (Lady Martin), (Edinburgh and London, 1900), p. 286.
3. Louisa Sophia Goldsmid (née Goldsmid, 1819–1908) and her husband, Francis Henry Goldsmid (1808–78); see letter 5094, note 2.
4. As indicated in note 2 above, and in the following letter, John Stuart Blackie (1809–95), Professor of Greek at the University of Edinburgh since 1852.
5. Blackie’s lecture, delivered at the Royal Institution on 3 May 1867, was advertised in The Morning Post of that day: “Professor Blackie. ‘On the Music of Speech in the Greek and Latin Languages,’ at nine o’clock” (p. 1).
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