19, Warwick Crescent, W.
March 25th, 1884.
My Dear Professor Masson,—Nothing can be kinder than all your proposed arrangements. My son arrived two days ago, and, unfortunately, is obliged to return to Paris next week in order to finish work begun there—and he will be detained too long to allow of the visit which he would otherwise delight in paying you and for the invitation to which he desires me to offer you and Mrs. Masson his grateful acknowledgments, being well aware of what a privilege he is forced to deprive himself.... I shall bring the Oxford D.C.L. gown and provide myself with a Hood in Edinburgh.
So, with repeated thanks for all your goodness, and looking forward with much pleasure to the approaching festivities, and even more in the opportunity to converse, believe me, my dear Professor Masson,
Yours Very Sincerely,
Robert Browning.
Miss Rosaline Masson, the Professor’s daughter, has described how Browning sat before the fire the evening of his arrival, in an armchair, his hands resting on it, while he spoke with sympathetic pride of his son’s work, and told how the son, who had studied so much abroad, had once announced to Millais his intention of going to Egypt to paint, and that Millais had replied that he would not give up his months in the highlands of Scotland for any years in Egypt.
The Massons had as their guests for this great commemoration the Count and Countess Aurelio Saffi, the Count bringing with him his gorgeous Bologna gown, in which he had the resplendence of a figure in a stained glass window.
The week was a most enjoyable one to Mr. Browning. Receptions and dinners made up a round of festivity, and when he was asked by his hostess if he objected to all the adulation he received, he replied: “Object to it? No; I have waited forty years for it and now—I like it.”
After his return to London he sent to Mrs. Masson two manuscripts of Mrs. Browning’s, her translations of “Psyche and Pan” and of “Psyche Propitiating Ceres,” and to Professor Masson a letter from Leigh Hunt to himself, which the Professor had wished to copy,—the original which he sent being written on sheets of different colors held together with colored embroidery.
Browning wrote to his host that he had read with delight his two lectures on Carlyle, and that “the goodness of that memorable week” was never long out of his mind.
The letters written to Mrs. Bronson offer almost a panoramic picture of his life over all these closing years. Alluding to a studio that he had taken for the temporary accommodation of his son’s pictures and busts, Mr. Browning resumes: