SD2788. Aubrey Thomas de Vere to William Allingham

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 228 (in part).

Currah Chase, Adare

Ireland

Sept 29. 1865

My dear Allingham

Did I ever send you a copy of my Father’s Drama, ‘Mary Tudor’? I remember sending you a volume that contained two earlier Plays of his;—but if you have not “Mary Tudor” I should like to send you a copy of it.

How have you been getting on? It seems a long time since I have heard of you or from you. I hope your seaside residence agrees with your health and spirits.

What number of copies of Laurence Bloomfield have been sold? I have very often heard it spoken of & always in very high terms. I trust you are writing still, & that we shall soon have something more from you. One of the most remarkable turns that literary things have taken of late is the sudden popularity of Browning’s Poems. His publishers told me that in 15 years he had hardly sold 15 copies of them: & all at once they have leaped up into popularity so great that I hear the young men at the Universities run after him more than Tennyson. Can you tell me what is the real merit of “Atalanta in Calydon”?

Yours ever Aubrey de Vere.

Publication: Letters to William Allingham, ed. H. Allingham and E. Baumer Williams (London, 1911), pp. 174–175.

Manuscript: University of Illinois.

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