1407. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 1–3.
[London]
Friday [20] Octr 1843. [1]
Thank you my dear Mr Horne—I am glad to be excused the Political Œconomy. [2] Yet if I had done it, I had done it—and you wd have probably had some exceedingly “original views” .. something to make the Œconomists stare wonderfully & think of a new æra. Being out of my depth I shd certainly be profound. You wd have had to go to Mr Fox to know what I meant, & Mr Fox could’nt have told you—for, I should have had this in common with Jeremy Bentham that it wd be necessary for somebody to translate me. Well!—you see what you have lost, in my “great large hand”! [3] Ah!—but, (as you said to me about the portrait) if you repent, you cant have it otherwise now! You have done for yourself—and I close with the proposition about Wordsworth & Hunt.
In respect to Miss Mitford, you & I were talking collaterally, & should as soon have come together as parallel lines. You thought I was praying for the introduction of her portrait, whereas I never thought of the engravings but of the literature,—my impression being that you meant to pass her over “in solemn silence” [4] as defunct. Since you mention her honorably, we are at one—& I admit at once that her portrait being before the public in various degrees of likeness, any additional expense on that head wd be superfluous. You mention her—& it is enough—& in mentioning you must not superannuate her. [5] She is not very much above fifty,—looking older than her actual age,—& has a far better right to a place in the book according to the principle of the book, than the Campbells[,] Rogers’s, Wordsworths &c–
As to the question you put to me, her Belford Regis should probably take rank as her best work. It has most power; & most character; & is somewhat less uniformly soft & green than ‘Our Village’ is. The Village however is by association my favorite. If read by snatches, it comes on the mind as the summer air & the sweet hum of rural sounds would float upon the senses through an open window in the country, & leaves with you for the whole day a tradition of fragrance & dew– Both works are composites of separate papers; & the only unity (except indeed that of place) is in the cordial & cheerful spirit of the writer– She is in fact a sort of prose Crabbe in the sun, [6] —but with more grace & less strength,—& also with a more stedfast look upon scenic Nature—never going higher than the earth to look for the beautiful, but always finding it as surely as if she went higher. She is ‘matter of fact’ she says—which may be so—but then she idealizes matter of fact before she touches it—& thus her matter of fact is as beautiful as the matter of phantasy of other people. Who wd not go & gather lilies of the valley with her from the Silchester woods? Indeed if the world were as she paints it, we should all choose to live out of doors,—& nobody catch any cold!——
Her last work (except the prose in Finden) is ‘Country Stories’, a sort of codicil to the Village & Belford Regis,—and she did begin a novel which I am afraid, from the long loiterings, will never be ended. [7] Her ‘Dramatic Scenes’ you probably know—as well as her tragedies. In my own mind, & Mr Kenyon agrees with me, she herself is better & stronger than any of her books—& her letters & conversation show more grasp of intellect & general power than wd be inferable from her finished compositions—I do not know whether you are of our opinion– In her works, however, through all the beauty there is a clear vein of sense, .. & a quickness of observation, which takes the character of a refined shrewdness. Do you not think so? And is she not besides most intensely a woman, and an Englishwoman?
Very well! I will be ‘good as I am fair’ [8] .. i.e. by courtesy– And I will be very courteous to your right honorable printers who cant be at the trouble to turn over a leaf or read from anything except large paper & an inch of margin on each side! Very well! they shall have their will—–altho’, to be sure, I have been in the habit of writing for the press on the ordinary long notepaper, & on both sides a page, & never heard a printer’s murmur.
And thank you for your praise, .. always welcome be sure!,—& for the trust you put in me.– Only, … I shall never do the thing so well at large as you have done it in small. Your rhymes are exquisite judgments.
And so ‘in confidence deep as the grave’
Ever yours
EBB.
“How I do go on in the dark”! To be sure I do. The dark, you know, is my particular province .. even without the political economy. That wd have made me a Princess of darkness. Surely, by the way, Mr Chorley’s book was after 1833. I never remember dates; but surely it was [9] <***>
Publication: EBB-RHH, I, 147–153 (as 2 October 1843).
Manuscript: State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
1. This letter responds to Horne’s of the same date (no. 1406).
2. i.e., being excused the paper on Miss Martineau (see letter 1406, note 1).
3. EBB is quoting from Horne’s letter (no. 1406).
4. We have not located the source of this quotation.
5. At this time, Miss Mitford was two months short of her 56th birthday; EBB was either not aware of her true age, or was confused by Horne’s comments in the previous letter about Miss Martineau’s age. Although Horne did not allot Miss Mitford a chapter to herself in A New Spirit, he did include a passing mention of her works (I, 188).
6. The Village (1783), by George Crabbe (1754–1832), depicted the harsh effects of poverty and disease on rural communities.
7. Although first mentioned in 1836 as a projected work, Atherton, and Other Tales was not published until 1854.
8. We have not located the source of this quotation.
9. Chorley’s The Authors of England was published in 1838.
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