1422. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 28–30.
[London]
Nov. 3. 1843.
I do not hear from you & am wondering why & how. I am not easy about this Mr Reade, & his secret informations, & at your believing for one moment that I was faithless enough to be capable of sinning against a confidence reposed in me. [1] The absolute impossibility of his speaking to the end you understood, with any grounds for so speaking, (unless you yourself gave the tenure of them to him or others) I wish I cd make as plain to you as it is to me. It is absolutely impossible.—— I said to Flush, .. “Only you cd betray me—Are you the traitor?” and he looked at me with dilated earnest steady eyes, & then kissed both my hands,—as if to assure me of truth and fealty. So as Flush did’nt tell, nobody else from this room did. Once, with my living voice, have I named your book,—and that was to Mr Kenyon, when I tried to get the information for you about Macauley: and once, in my correspondence, to Miss Mitford,—after she made the observation I told you of in my last note, <& to the simple effect I told you.> [2] By the way I hope you cd read that last note,—I was so vexed & so hurried as I wrote it!—& I hope you believed in my absolute innocence as you read it, from the very hurry & vexation, of which the traces must at least have been natural.
Yesterday I had a letter from Miss Mitford, & I opened it trembling, lest I shd read something more of Mr Reade’s informations. No—not a word. I think I must be right in my suggestion that you mistook what he meant to refer to—& that he meant to refer to me, written about, rather than writing. Or else (which has occurred to me since) he may have mistaken some expression of Miss Mitford’s (i e understood by it what she did not mean to express) about my ‘being in the work’,—& have fallen upon the truth, so, by accident. Any way, I am very sorry that you shd have sent him explanations by express,—because, you see, Mr Reade has the habit of repeating other people’s sayings, beginning with their poetry, & he is not likely to stop for us. Besides men always do talk—dont they?—they cant keep a secret,—can they? That is my remark.
I had a letter from Mr Mathews of New York yesterday, with a cancelling of the dishonor of the editor of Graham’s,—in consequence of which he (Mr Mathews) says, that he has smoothed his brows & sent to that magazine, the copy of Orion, which I sent for the purpose– He does not however say a word about my other proposition. [3] Probably he has not had time since the quarrel, to enter into another treaty—and I am not myself quite so anxious about it, fearing to draw you into a scrape. Mr Mathews is delighted with Orion,—& is going to send you soon, some poems of his own, as homage from the west. He desires me to make known generally that a Copyright club for the protection of authors poor & honest, is being established at New York, & that Mr Bryant is president, & he, Mr Mathews, secretary, and that we are all to be protected most effectually.
Write & tell me that you believe me to be honest, .. not “honest honest Iago,” [4] but in a better sense.
I am vexed for myself—vexed for you—& vexed, in a compound relation, for your thoughts of me. It is abominable for a person to be so discreet as I have been—& all in vain—there is no poetical or any other kind of justice in it!–
As to Mr Reade .... But really I am too cross about him to speak of him.
A gentleman with whom I am personally unacquainted, sent me a few days ago a little book which he had written upon “predestination.” [5] As you are fond of ‘dogmas’ I will lend it to you. Yesterday I wrote to thank him; &, referring to his note for the address, I read Highlands. Immediately I began to rage & roar in the spirit about Mr Reade [6] —— which was very improper, considering that I had just been writing controversy upon predestination.
Mr Merry, by the way, is a man of excellent intentions, & I have a high esteem for him. Also I once before had some correspondence with him on the subject of another little work from his hand, called “A happy futurity” [7] ——but then it was long ago—& I had quite forgotten since, that he lived at Highlands.
Yours faithfully, dear Mr Horne–
& by no means faithlessly–
EBB–
Address: R H Horne Esqr / 38. Finsbury Square.
Publication: EBB-RHH, I, 171–176.
Manuscript: Gardner Museum.
2. Bracketed passage is inserted above the line.
3. That Horne might write for American magazines (see letter 1222).
4. Othello, V, 2, 154.
5. Merry’s book, acknowledged in letter 1420.
6. It was while on a visit to Merry at “The Highlands” that Reade disclosed his awareness of Horne’s new book (see letter 1418).
7. The Philosophy of a Happy Futurity (1839), which EBB said “pleased me much” (letter 733).
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