5927. RB to Frederic Chapman
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 220.
[London]
Friday Mg [28 June 1867] [1]
Dear Chapman,
I have no objection, of course. [2]
Yours truly ever
RB
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Folger Shakespeare Library.
1. Dated by RB’s note being written on a letter dated “Tuesday 25th,” with Chapman’s note following RB’s on the same letter, dated 29 June 1867.
2. RB’s note was written on the 3rd page of the following letter: “Tuesday 25th, / Miss E. Spooner [3] will be greatly obliged to Messrs Chapman & Hall, if they will give her leave to put in a book of extracts [4] she is making 2 poems of Mrs. E.B Browning, The Romance of the Swan’s Nest & The Rhyme of Duchess May —She will be much obliged by an answer, here, as she is staying with her brother in law the Bh. of London [5] --” Below RB’s note Chapman responded to Miss Spooner in the affirmative.
3. Elizabeth Spooner (1815–86), third daughter of William Spooner (1779–1857), Archdeacon of Coventry (1827–51), and his wife, Anna Maria (née O’Brien, 1792–1846).
4. Living Voices: Selections Chiefly from Recent Poetry (1873). The volume includes eight poems by EBB: “A Year’s Spinning,” “That Day,” “Change upon Change,” “The Rhyme of the Duchess May,” “The Lay of the Brown Rosary,” “My Heart and I,” “The Romance of the Swan’s Nest,” “A Child Asleep”; and three by RB: “In a Year,” “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix,” and “Incident of the French Camp.”
5. Archibald Campbell Tait (1811–82), Bishop of London (1856–68), who married in 1843 Catharine Spooner (1819–78), Elizabeth Spooner’s younger sister.
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