1417. Richard Hengist Horne to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 19–20.
[London]
Tuesday Morng [Postmark: 31 October 1843]
Thank you my dear Miss Barrett. I have not eaten—but tasted, here and there, and expect to be greatly pleased with your essay.
I should like occasionally to “consult with you” on one or two points, as this work progresses—but—will you vow most imperturbable secrecy. Not to breathe a syllable?
And when you give me a ‘Counsel’s Opinion’ write it on one side of the note-paper only; for in that case I might very likely apply a wafer to its blank, and pop it down into my m.s as I work on. [1] The truth is,—from the quiet you enjoy, and the obstruction from external turmoils and emergencies (added of course to a certain degree of aptitude in the mind) that when one does agree with you one does it so very completely and fully in most cases that it is a delight beyond description. When you are right, it comes out so clean, clear, finely and fully said—that I could seldom bear to see a word altered. Therefore if I ask you a thing or two—or send you a book or two in the course of the work, will you give me an Opinion?
Have you any love of power? Yes. Very well then—you will not be displeased to hear that your opinions may bear a wider influence, as I expect a very short interval will elapse before our work will be translated into French and German. [2]
Do you like my move of working 2 together sometimes? I think it works well? I have a fancy to place you in harmonious contrast with the Honble Mrs Norton [3] —she is a representative of individualistics[—]you of abstractions—she of bodily form—you of the soul’s aspirations &c &c[.] Shall I do this interjectorily?
Will you give me an auspicious reply in a day or two.
Yours truly
H.
You have not written too much. There! That alone in these days is some fame.
P.S.—I have irrecoverably forgotten what I was going to say.–
Address: Miss E. B. Barrett / 50 Wimpole St / Cavendish Sq.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. Horne did cut up EBB’s mss and insert the pieces in place in his own mss (see Reconstruction, D1282 and D1374).
2. As previously noted, we have found no such translations.
3. Horne did write about EBB and Mrs. Norton in the same chapter in the second volume of A New Spirit of the Age (see pp. 341–344).
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