1412. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 11–12.
[London]
[?30] [October 1843] [1]
Ah my dear Mr Horne, you will conclude (for you may conclude although I cannot!) you will conclude from certain facts, that I am very like a broom!—not Ld Brougham, .. who only does a little of everything,—& not a wheeled brougham, .. which will stop when it is bidden—& not a new broom, .. which sweeps clean & has done with it—! but that bewitched broom in the story; which, being sent to draw water, drew bucket after bucket, until the whole house was in a flood. [2] Montaigne says somewhere, that to stop gracefully is a sure proof of high race in a horse. [3] I wonder what not to stop at all is proof of, .. in horse man or … woman.!–
After all I am not improving my case by this additional loquacity. And the case is bad enough perhaps .. viz—that you asked me to write four or five pages for your work, & that I have written what you see!– Well—take the sheets. I make you a present of them to cut into pieces .. abbreviate in any possible way, .. or put into the fire altogether, shd your judgment suggest that stronger measure– Indeed I did not mean to write so much—I did’nt think of writing your whole book for you!–
Oh—of course! You are free to interpolate as well as to cut down. In fact the papers are as much yours as if you had written them; & I sign over my personality in them to you herewith. Would, it were better worth the having!
Ever truly yours
EBB–
Publication: EBB-RHH, I, 146–147.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. Dated by letter 1406, in which Horne asks EBB for “four or five pages” on William Wordsworth and Leigh Hunt, and by no. 1417, in which he acknowledges receipt of her “essay.”
2. Goethe’s “Der Zauberlehrling” (“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” 1797), later set to music by Paul Dukas and now known to millions through Walt Disney’s “Fantasia.”
3. Essayes … by Michael, Lord of Montaigne, Done Into English by John Florio, 1613, bk. I, ch. 9, p. 42.
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