795. RB to Edward Moxon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 16.
Monday Mg [ca. February 1841] [1]
My dear Mr Moxon,
I was not fortunate enough to find you at-home this morning when I called for the purpose of begging your advice about a work of mine I want to publish: [2] I have removed, you must know, deeper into Uninhabitableness than Camberwell even, and may call on and miss you, therefore, next week as this: do I draw too largely on your kindness if I say I shall be in Town on Wednesday—and at Dover St by 1. o-clock? Of course you would not dream of setting aside the least important engagement you may happen to have for that hour.—but if this mention of my purpose should merely postpone a ride or walk for a few minutes, it will greatly oblige
Yours very truly,
Robert Browning.
New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey. By the way, there is famous horse-way to this Chaos-and-Old-Night Quarter; [3] Hills and trees of a sort—which will be green presently: we have a garden too: why should I despair of inducing you to come over and talk of all and every thing except “a work of mine I want to publish”?
Publication: BN, No. 9 (Fall 1972), 36–37 (reproduced on page 32).
Manuscript: Harvard University.
1. Dated by the move to New Cross and the impending publication of Pippa Passes.
2. Pippa Passes, published in April 1841.
3. Cf. Paradise Lost, I, 543. This is probably intended as a further reference to New Cross, some three miles from London, being “deeper into Uninhabitableness than Camberwell even”.
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