967. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 1–2.
[London]
Saturday night– [ca. June 1842] [1]
March. March. March– [2]
That is the word of command. The mystic number is 4, four. Hanover Street[,] Hanover Square.
I fell into precisely the same estate of darkness & doubt,—altho’ so well experienced in dear Miss Mitford’s handwriting, that on a fair computation of our respective stupidities (your’s & mine) there can be no doubt of my superior density & intensity by a thousand & one degrees. Oh—do send me your law! I made George do mine & date it from the Temple, to gain in terribleness.
Your opinion, your legal opinion, on the other hand is terrible to me. [3] I hope you are not a lawyer .. ‘to signify’. The misfortunes to my poor dear friend is great—for Colburn will of course immediately annul his present agreement to give her two hundred & fifty pounds for those three volumes (entered into on the ground that the two reprinted ones were from the limited circulation of the London Annual, “as good as MS”—) if this Mr March shd march on in his evil ways. And it does seem to me monstrous (law or not law) that a copyright given to a certain periodical shd be made to serve in another & without leave asked!! Why by the same reason, Mr Colburn may print pretty little books every two years, out of the salient articles contributed to his New Monthly Magazine!! Why, by the same reason, .. & if all our copyrights belong to Mr March, neither Miss Mitford nor anyone of us can have a right to re-publish a word we put into Finden, .. even though Mr Colburn shd offer us a guinea a letter for it!– Are you Daniel?—I am Œdipus! [4]
When the postman’s stroke came, I said to myself “a letter from Mr Horne”. Do you know why I thought so?—because Mrs Orme was in the house; & this is thrice or this is four times, that you & she have come together–
I am very very sorry for what you tell me—but I was ashamed of the government & of the parliament long before. [5] The most moral part of the newspapers lately, has been the Roehampton murder– [6]
Oh that biography!—will it never come to an end? I am so anxious for his miscellany [7] —so more anxious, the more I think of it!—& so persuaded that you wd not regret the achieving of it. Oh for the time you might be so dramatic as you pleased you know—& your drama there wd make broader way than between the scene-shifters. Do you know Mr Browning? I do not—but I respect his powers enough to feel some regret that he shd wait at patiently at the stage door as if Apollo & Mr Macready were one & the same– [8]
Ever yours dear Mr Horne
EBB
Is there any railway road to yr forest at Epping? [9] & how & where is it to be reached? Do tell me– Not that I am going there!!
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. Horne’s reply to this letter is mentioned by EBB in letter 977.
2. EBB has spaced this line across the top of the page, employing three differing scripts. In a letter of 1 June to Miss Harrison, Miss Mitford spoke of asking her “kind contributors” to write to “Mr. Marsh [sic] … the presumed clerk of some person, house unknown, to whom Messrs. Finden have assigned the copyright” to make clear that he, March, would be held legally responsible for any infringement of copyright (Chorley, I, 294–295).
3. EBB explains to Miss Mitford, in letter 977, Horne’s fear that, in the absence of a specific written agreement to the contrary, the receipt of payment for a work might be held to constitute a de facto transfer of copyright.
4. This sentence has been squeezed in, as an afterthought. EBB contrasts Daniel’s bearding of the lion in his den with the self-imposed exile of Œdipus in an attempt to avoid the confrontation with his father foretold by the oracle.
5. Taken to be a reference to Parliament’s failure to take action on Horne’s petition for the repeal of the Theatre Act of 1737 (see letter 767, note 3).
6. Daniel Good was tried on 13 May for the murder and dismemberment of Jane Jones on 3 April at Roehampton. Found guilty and sentenced to death, he was hanged on 23 May.
7. We cannot clarify this reference to a miscellany.
8. Apollo was held to be the god of all the fine arts.
9. The Northern and Eastern Railway’s line to Broxbourne, opened in 1840, skirted the western edge of Epping Forest. There was a station at Cheshunt, some six miles west of the village of Epping.
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