[Postmark: May 13, 1846]
Dearest, dearest, I shall be with you to-morrow and be
comforted — and will tell you all about everything. I am a
little tired (but very well, altogether well, singularly so) — and
I do feel a little about to-night’s affair, though you may not.
You, indeed, to judge me by yourself ! But, after all I do not
greatly care . . I can but get up and stammer and say
‘ thank you ‘ and sit down again, like my betters, — and — as I
say and say,— you are at the end of everything . . so long
as I find you ! I hoped that Tennyson was to have been
Poet-respondent — but Moxon says ‘ no ‘ . . and, moreover,
that the Committee had meant (and he supposed had acted
upon their meaning) to offer me the choice of taking either
qualification, of Poetry or the Drama, as mine . . but they
have altered their mind. As it is . . observe — (you will find
a list of Stewards in last Athenæum) — observe that they
are all Bishops or Deans or Doctors . . and that all will be
grave and heavy enough, I dare say. So I shall try and
speak for about five minutes on the advantages of the Press
over the Stage as a medium of communication of the Drama
. . and so get done, if Heaven please !
I saw Tennyson last night — and . . oh, let me tell you
to-morrow. Also, Severn, I saw . . Keats’ Severn, who
bought his own posthumous picture of Keats, and talked
pleasantly about him and Shelley (Tennyson asked me
‘ what I thought of Shelley ‘ — in so many words). Moxon’s
care of him, — Tennyson, not Severn, — is the charmingest
thing imaginable, and he seems to need it all — being in truth
but a long, hazy kind of a man, at least just after dinner . .
yet there is something ‘naif’ about him, too, — the genius
you see, too.
May God bless you, my dearest dearest, — to-morrow re-
pays for all —
{152|Your} {Letters|own} {of|R} {Robert|} {Browning|} {May|} {u|}.