902. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 217–219.
50 Wimpole Street.
Jany– 18th 1842
What can you have thought, my dear Mr Horne, of all this loitering with the tragedy? [1] That I was busy pulling apples from your bough myself? & about to add one compliment more to the very flattering & gracious ones of which you tell me, by bringing out a grand new Desert scene at the nearest open theatre I could find? No, indeed! Here it is all safe back for you .. sands & ramparts & all! nothing touched—not even the covetable possessions of the enchantment scene, the old festival table, or the confluence in the desert, of death & victorious music. And thank you, thank you, twice over, for all the–––pleasure is the wrong word–––sensation is not quite right—the emotion, which this fine tragedy has given me.
There are very fine things in it—and I like the great poetic moral of daring in the midst of a stirring & important political crisis, to fix the main interest upon a private grief––of putting away all ‘the pomp & circumstance of glorious war’ [2] for the contemplation of a private affection, & consenting to hear the heart beat through the trumpets,
“Crowns are dust
But love .. love is not dust, & cannot die!”
Still .. was Emenias quite the person to say those words? You do not give us quite time to forgive him .. so as to suppress our malice & not answer “Pray what love are you talking of? what you felt for poor Alsargis, or the new one for that beautiful bold Lady Zenobia who requited you so well, & is now walking at leisure to Aurelian’s good music, with as much sand in her shoes as we wish her”? You know there are such malicious people in the world!!
Yes—I cd find faults in the tragedy after all—rather I cd find fault with the tragedy, to speak more with the modesty natural to me!– The first time I read it, Alsargis seemed to me of too soft & gentle a nature to be worked up with so little obvious provocation [3] into a state & attitude of such resolute violence. I still think that she need not have gone mad when her husband wd’nt stay to supper––indeed I do still think so. Dejected to the last point of dejection, she might be .. but the phrenzy I venture to protest again. I am afraid too, that there is a little, the least possible, approach to conjugal teazing, in some of her early relations to Emenias. You know he really had “a great deal upon his hands”, what with the new arrows & the general state of the war, & was often necessarily absent though too often unnecessarily so. It might be womanly in Alsargis to reproach him incessantly as she does (in a soft low voice certainly) but it is not the best woman-way of attaining the purpose of her tenderness. Forgive me for being wrong—or bold. The last, I must be. And yet one word more. Is your Alsargis a true woman in forgetting [4] her children? Such a woman as your Alsargis could not do it, I imagine even in a phrenzy-fit—particularly when they were in a situation of danger. Do consider, if she ought to do it? or could? [5]
And now after all this courage of mine, I shall crown myself with the pleasantness of at least trying to say how very fine all the movement parts of the tragedy are & how deeply I appreciate them. The scene with the sorcerer, .. I mean when she goes to him for comfort, is very fine & moving—& the actual sorcery-scene, with that exquisite under-tone of falling dews, is one of the most beautiful things of the kind I can remember anywhere, It is real sorcery. I congratulate you upon it. Then there’s the desert scene! the great epitome of the world’s destinies, .. beheld under a picturesque aspect—the death & triumph within two paces, & the wide indifferent wilderness sweeping around both. It is very fine. It has a meaning, as all your poetry has.
What shall you do with this tragedy?– What is to be its fate? Thank you for letting its light fall upon me—but that must not be all. You must not restrain its ‘influences’—indeed you must not!–
I have left myself no time to speak of the Magazine– Yet that story whose author’s name is equally illegible & unguessable, has much beauty.
Thank you earnestly!
How is your Biography? [6] Do tell me.
Ever & truly yours
Elizabeth B Barrett.
Address: R H Horne Esqr / 30– New Broad Street / City.
Docket, in Horne’s hand: 2d Alsargis. / 1842.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: R.H. Taylor Collection.
1. Horne’s docket identifies this as “Alsargis”; if finished, it was never published.
2. Othello, III, 3, 354.
3. Horne made this annotation: “Miss Barrett was too pure and spiritual to see what the married lady saw. H.”
4. Annotation by Horne: “She did not forget them—but regarded them as ‘orphans,’ and had them cared for. H.”
5. Horne wrote, “Yes H.”
6. As a rival to the French Biographie Universelle, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was sponsoring a Biographical Dictionary under the editorship of George Long (1800–79), a classical scholar, one of the founders of the Royal Geographical Society and Professor of Greek at London University, 1828–31. Horne was one of several eminent men invited to contribute articles; he wanted to write on Æschylus, Aristotle and other classical notables, but they had already been allocated to others; he had completed two biographies when the project was abandoned. Seven volumes were published between 1842 and 1844, covering the letter “A” only. (See Always Morning, by Cyril Pearl, 1960, p. 23.)
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