1422.5. RB to Richard Hengist Horne

Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 8.

[London]

[Postmark: 2 November 1843]

My dear Horne,

I throw myself on your generosity—having done an imprudent thing, it may be,—from a fear, very likely, I should not have resolution enough to do a prudent one. When I promised Powell, some weeks ago, to contribute a notice of Father Mathew to his & your projected work, I expressly, and as energetically as I could, stipulated for his and everybody’s absolute secresy as to my share of authorship—had he objected to that, I would have given him a round dozen good reasons why I must insist on it notwithstanding—<beginning with the series of justifications> [1] but he made no objection, and I wrote my paper. This morning a friend—whose name there is no need of introducing here—told me “my secret was discovered,” after the fashion it had been told him by “three distinct individuals”—and I put my paper in the fire. It is because there can be no possibility of your misapprehending my feeling—(thinking, for instance, that I mean repayment of such obligations as mine are to you)—that I the more freely say, I shall find some other & better occasion of testifying my regard & respect for you.

Ever yours

RB.

Address: R. H. Horne Esq / 38 Finsbury Square.

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

1. RB has deleted the passage in angle brackets.

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