SD2885. Diary Entry of Frederick Lehmann
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 359–360 (in part).
[London]
[Sunday] [?17] [March 1867] [1]
The … quarrel was between Robert Browning the poet & John Forster the well known Editor of the Examiner & biographer of Dickens. These two men had lived for years in the closest intimacy. Forster’s great literary judgment, his willingness to take trouble & his passionate desire to be consulted about all the ventures of his literary friends, made him for many years a kind of Court of Appeal on all literary matters. I believe he had during many years prepared all Browning’s & Mrs Browning’s works for the press. However valuable such aid & interference may have been to Browning while he was living in Florence, it may have become irksome when Browning took up his domicile in London. Forster exercised a kind of patent right or ownership over Browning. It was an understood thing that on Sundays Browning had to dine with F. & that any one wanting Browning to dinner on Sundays would only secure him after some diplomatic negotiations of which one of the fundamental conditions was that Mr & Mrs F. were to be invited together with B. Forster was kind but ponderous. Browning nervous & sensitive & probably unable to tolerate this kind of literary bearleading. There may have been other combustible materials but at any rate nothing brought about a sudden or violent conflagration. At a dinner at my brother in law’s Mr Benzon’s So Kensington Palace Gardens Browning & Forster had been nagging at each other for some time till B. spoke of the incredible neglect which had lately occurred at Marlboro’ House where when the Princess of Wales had suddenly been taken very ill, no carriage could be got to fetch a doctor. Forster at once ridiculed the story as a foolish invention. B. gave chapter & verse adding that he had it from Lady William Russell[.] F. retorted that he did not believe it a whit more on account of that authority[.] Suddenly B. got very fierce & said “Dare to say one word in disparagement of that lady[”]—seizing a decanter while he spoke—[“]and I will pitch this bottle of Claret at your head.[”] Forster seemed as much taken aback, as the other guests & Mr Benzon who had gone out of the room for a moment with Sir Edwin Landseer & on returning with him, found Browning standing up in a kind of frenzy with a decanter in his hand ready for action—had the greatest difficulty in realizing the situation. I soon made him hurry every one from the room but all attempts to bring about an immediate apology & reconciliation were in vain. A kind of peace was however patched up before Forster’s death.
Publication: Memories of Half a Century, a Record of Friendships, ed. R. C. Lehmann (London, 1908), pp. 112–114.
Manuscript: Princeton University.
1. The event described occurred soon after the illness of the Princess of Wales, 19 February 1867 and following RB dining with Forster at Palace Gate on 10th March, with Lytton and his wife (see letter 67:35). The relationship between Forster and RB was partially restored after RB wrote a letter of condolences to Forster in December 1868 on the death of his sister.
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