1426. Cornelius Mathews to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 34–35.
New York.
Nov. 6th. 1843.
My dear Miss Barrett.
Having made several recent praiseworthy efforts to clear my debts of correspondence, I might be perhaps allowed to stay my hand for a while from the writing of idle letters: but the temptation of a friend[’]s visit to London overcomes my self-denial, particularly as I want an opportunity to tell you that, at his special instance & request I have ventured to furnish him with a Letter of introduction to Miss Barrett. [1] I hope your health & convenience will allow you to see him: but do not suppose you have me now by my representative, for the gentleman (Mr. Charles Welford by name) although residing in & sailing from America is English by birth: at this time a Bookseller in New-York, [2] of the Antiquarian order, a mighty master of literary gossip & ritual, I hope, you will find him pleasant and a by no means unfavorable distillation of the English Character through the American. He can answer you whatever you wish to ask about our Literary Folk, great & small. Something about Copyright too & such matters if needs be. It may interest you in Mr. Welford that it was at his store that the first copy of your Poems was, I think, ever seen, in America & that he has long been most curious & most anxious to see you.
I hailed with great pleasure, I assure you, the Announcement of a New Spirit of the Age from Mr. Horne. He will, I am convinced, make it a most satisfactory work: and it is of a kind that hits my fancy greatly. It will partake I suppose of the plan of Hazlitt’s, treating of the leading Characters of the Time, Literary, Political &c. I hope, for in this lies the chance of a work of this kind that it shows, as in a new mirror, how shadows come and so depart– I hope therefore he will find a place for some of his younger brethren, who have grown to a good stature within the last few years: and, for that, some of the younger Sisters too. You will, should I am sure, have a place there of course: Will he cross the Atlantic? Will he summon Spirits (a greater feat than Gl[e]ndower’s) from beyond the vasty Deep? [3] He might at the distance of England & with something of the obscure that hangs about all things American, need a Cis-Atlantic Eye and hand to help him in fixing the worthiest on the pedestals. He runs the risk, relying on report and newspaper authority, to miss some of our best and truest men & to make sure only of certain flaming politicians & circulating-library authors. It is to be thought on. I sent a copy of “Poems on Man” to Mr. Horne to your care; [4] which I trust he has duly received: and am sorry that my Publishers cast the Publication of my Octavo Idleness (that is of all my idle writings, so to speak) a week too far ahead to allow me to send him a copy complete, which I will take care to do at the earliest opportunity. No more at present but that you should believe me, my dear Miss Barrett.
Most Truly Yours
Cornelius Mathews
To
Elizabeth B Barrett
London.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. This letter was folded and enclosed with Mathews’s letter of introduction (no. 1427), which provided the address for both.
2. Charles Welford (1815–85), an English bookseller and writer who migrated to America about 1833, was at this time a junior partner in the New York firm of Bartlett and Welford. He later (1864) returned to England to represent Scribner, Welford Co.
3. Cf. I Henry IV, III, 1, 52.
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