1330. Benjamin Robert Haydon to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 250–251.
London
July 20th 1843
My dear Friend /
So you think the predominant vice of humanity is not hatred of superiority—that when a young Man was persecuted for his zeal in early life & successfully resisted it, there could not remain any desire in his persecutors to catch him if they could in his maturity, & give a gripe that should make him remember; now as I know the World better than you, pray pardon me.
Before you were born the old cry of Conspiracy was raised against me– I do not believe in any conspiracy, for I believe them to be such rascals they would be afraid (of each other) to conspire, But I believe Power to be so Detestably revengeful that dancing on the ashes of an enemy would only w[h]et its appetite–
I have got into a scrape by my Ardor,—By the way do you know the Life of Henry Ardor, [1] a Friend of mine a capital Life—shall I send it? Can you send me your Epic– [2] I never saw any Miniatures of Miss Gillies–
Do not you think I am so weak as to believe in a conspiracy– I am only perfectly sure my Cartoons are fine things, & that the Judges must have remembered to forget them[.]
Yours &
B R Haydon
Tell me when it would not be an annoyance to you & the family to send for my box–
Many thanks for protecting it—& my Immortal Jars.
Address: Miss B. Barrett / 50 Wimpole St.
Publication: EBB-BRH, pp. 132–133.
Manuscript: University of Vermont.
1. The August issue of The Civil Engineer and Architect’s Journal (pp. 274–277) contained an assessment of the cartoons by one Henry Ardor, preceded by a summary of his life. Reading this, it is apparent that “Henry Ardor” was Haydon himself, although Ardor “died of joy in the 57th year of his age” upon the opening of the cartoon exhibition, “the realization of all his struggles.”
2. Orion, which EBB tells him, in the following letter, he may keep.
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