1346. Richard Hengist Horne to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 270.
36 New Broad St
Augst 2/43
My dear Miss Barrett, About a fortnight ago, I asked you not to engage “deep in work.” [1] My reason, as you wd apprehend, was because I was about to propose work. But alack! since I wrote “something has happened” and I find myself unable to do what I had wished. Did you guess what I was after? It was––I suppose I must tell you, and had better do so at once, or I should be compelled by the next post––it was––the fact is, it ought to have been propounded long since, and I confess to the bad figure I cut in the delay––Oh I dare say you know very well what I am going to tell you, so I need not.
The troublesome something was simply an unexpected, and rather heavy reduction in the dividends of a certain mining company, which has called upon me for work of a very prose kind to make up the deficiency. Otherwise I had been about to ask you if––I may as well tell you, after all, because of the return of post––if you would proceed at once with “Psyche,” and we would finish it off hand, and publish it, as soon as finished. I had got out all the papers ready—and gone over them. So, you see, at all events, the idea, and the intention, are alive in your tiresome friend
H.
Address: Miss E. B. Barrett / 50 Wimpole St / Cavendish Sq.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
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