Correspondence

1475.  EBB to Richard Hengist Horne

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 116–120.

[London]

Dec. 29. 1843.

Yes my dear Mr Horne,—I cannot refuse the Carlyle subject, [1] & more especially as you do not require any systematic review, and as the filling up will rest with you. Nevertheless it is positively true that I am so full of business that Papa wd laugh at me if he stood near, he who always laughs whenever I say “I am busy”—laughs like Jove with superior merriment. As if people cd possibly be busy with rhymes & butterflies’ wings!–

The fact is that there is no chance for my book to be out before yours, even if I wished it,—& very little more chance for me to have a single proofsheet ready to send to you, although I seriously wish it, during the time in which it could be available to you. A volume full of mss had been ready for more than a year, when suddenly, a short time ago, when I fancied I had no heavier work than to make copy & corrections, I fell upon the fragment of a sort of Masque on ‘The first day’s Exile from Eden’; or rather it fell upon me, & beset me till I wd finish it. I cannot tell you even now whether I shall end by printing it,—only if I do print it, it must take a first place in the book,—so that everything has come to a stand until it is finished & I decide. [2] From the twenty lines I found, I have run into a thousand already—blank verse & lyric intermixtures & in the dramatic form—a masque, I shall call it—and after all, nobody in the world may ever see it except myself; & I reserve my judgment on it. The object is the development of the peculiar anguish of Eve—the fate of woman at its root—& the first step of Humanity into the world-wilderness, driven by the Curse. You know Milton leaves the first parents in Eden—through Eden they “take their solitary way”– [3] I meet them flying along the great Sword-glare. [4] Then I have voices of Eden Spirits in farewell, and lyrical reproaches of Spirits of the Earth & Animal Nature. The wanderers find themselves in an earthly Zodiac—shadows of Fallen Life answering to the starry Shapes of those Twelve Signs of which Orion knows—& terrifying the Exiles in the desert when the first exile-sun has gone down, with a vision of future desolation. At last Christ appearing pacifies & reconciles—and the Heavenly Zodiac, shining out, chases the earthly one underneath, & leaves nothing but the starlight on the ground– This is a sketch, not very definite. Besides there is a Satan & an Angel Gabriel, & some choral angels. Tell me how it strikes you? Is it likely to be aught or naught? It is better in the doing than in the saying—as I have said it here,—of course—but still I doubt. The principal interest is set on Eve—the “first in the transgression.” [5]  First in the transgression has been said over & over again, because of the tradition,—but first & deepest in the sorrow, nobody seems to have said, or, at least, written of, as conceiving.

All this you have led me unaware into ruffling you with .. perhaps. When I began to write to you today I did not think to say more of myself than the earnest thanks with which I overflow, for your great kindness in considering what was best for me & trying to compass it. If I shd have a proof in time, be sure that I shall be too ready to send it to you. When do you publish? In despair of having a proof, I have almost a mind to send you a ms lyrical poem called ‘Pan Departed’ which is short enough & happy enough to have had some m∙s. reputation because Mr Kenyon took it into his head that it was “the best thing I ever wrote or ever should write” (which is’nt true I hope) & chaperoned it about wherever his kindness could reach. It is a contra to Schiller’s Gods of Greece; & I make amends for having the worst of the poetry, by having the best of the argument. Well—but I must hope for the proofs– There may be time yet– Thank you in every possible case!–

Only .. supposing that you shd be able with honesty, upon seeing the proof, to speak well of anything in it,–—would it not approach (my book coming out after yours) to betraying our confederacy? Mr Reade wd be sure to say that I wrote that particular part myself, you know.

With many thanks I return the proof. It is excellent indeed—& there is a passage about Douglas Jerrold which is full of beauty. [6] Thank you many times. You will see marked, at the beginning, where I differ from you on the subject of the employment of wit in Satire, which department of poetry you certainly seem to me to overlook. All the great satirists have been “on virtue’s side,” [7] or on what they took for virtue’s: and if they sometimes struck the lash out recklessly, it is no argument against their having generally an intention. Satire in its old form & uses, by the way, seems to have died out of our literature—I mean poetical satire. Who wd read a Dunciad now? or even a “golden book” of Juvenal [8] —if Juvenal were here to write another?–

So you think I never read Fonblanque or Sidney Smith—or Junius perhaps? [9] You flatter me, Mr Horne! Mr Kenyon calls me his “omniverous cousin”—I read without principle. I have a sort of unity indeed—but it amalgamates instead of selecting—do you understand? When I had read the Hebrew Bible from Genesis to Malachi right through, & was never stopped by the Chaldee—& the Greek poets & Plato right through from end to end, .. I passed as thoroughly through the flood of all possible & impossible British & foreign novels & romances, with slices of metaphysics laid thick between the sorrows of the multitudinous Celestinas. [10] It is only useful knowledge & the multiplication table I never tried hard at– And now—what now? Is this matter of exultation? Alas no! Do I boast of my omnivorousness of reading, even apart from the romances? Certainly no! Never—except in joke! It’s against my theories & ratiocinations—which take upon themselves to assert that we all generally err by reading too much, & out of proportion to what we think. I shd be wiser, I am persuaded, if I had not read half as much—shd have had stronger & better exercised faculties & shd stand higher in my own appreciation. The fact is that the ne plus ultra [11] of intellectual indolence is this reading of books– It comes next to what the Americans call “whittling.”

By the way, did you receive Mr Mathews’s book? and “what is your thought like?” [12]

Yes, the essay in this proof of yours is excellent. Still it does strike me that you raise Douglas Jerrold a little above his natural level, & depreciate Fonblanque & Sidney Smith a little below theirs, by classing the three together—him with them I mean– And then,—is Fonblanque praised enough for the most brilliant writer in Europe? for his power both argumentative & epigramatic? and especially for his unequalled adroitness in literary allusion and quotation? His wit covers as many sins as his charity might: and if I were Ld Brougham, I believe that I shd think so still.

Would it be possible to strengthen an expression or two in respect to Fonblanque? or impossible? & undesirable?

Then I doubt, notwithstanding my carpings at the Strictlands & Stickneys, whether you shd not put their names into your book after all. They have a certain popularity—more popularity perhaps than if they had genius—& both of them deserve praise in their departments– Besides Agnes Strictland stands on the high ground of history, to claim your attention: and Sarah Stickney is the actual Mrs Ellis (or I am mistaken) who gives twelve editions of instructions to the “Women,” “wives,” “Daughters,” (& “Grandmothers,” says Punch) of our common England. [13] Now albeit you may opine in your secret soul, that the race of Mrs Ellis’s disciples runs the risk of being model-women of the most abominable virtue, you cant help I think, in the meantime, without exposing your book to a charge of imperfection, making mention of a voluminous female writer who has carried works through a dozen or more editions. Judge if you can help it. Also it seems to me that you shd mention Miss Lawrence—& certainly Miss Costello who is a highly accomplished woman & full of grace & the sense of beauty. [14] Mrs Ellis is a poetess, by courtesy—are you aware?– And looking over a book-catalogue this morning I saw Agnes Strictland’s name attached to a “Demetrius & other poems” whereof I never heard before. [15]

Have you a portrait of Mrs Somerville? [16] I hope so.

So this Revd Robert Montgomery is to have stripes instead of honor? Well—the false gods shd be put down.

I send the paper on Milnes–

Truly yours

EBB–

Mrs Orme says—“If you write soon to Mr Horne, tell him that I am better, & that I have the guitar.”

Address: R H Horne Esqr

Publication: EBB-RHH, II, 145–156 (in part, as 20 December 1843).

Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum and Pierpont Morgan Library.

1. EBB’s specific contributions to the paper on Carlyle can be seen in Appendix IV (pp. 353–359).

2. In the preface to Poems (1844), EBB says she decided on publishing “A Drama of Exile” after “considerable hesitation and doubt” (I, v).

3. Cf. Paradise Lost, XII, 649.

4. Cf. Genesis, 3:24 and “A Drama of Exile,” line 548.

5. Cf. I Timothy, 2:14 and “A Drama of Exile,” lines 546–547.

6. Douglas William Jerrold (1803–57), the author of the popular comedy Black-Eyed Susan (1829) and a prolific contributor to The Athenæum, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and Punch, was one of the subjects of A New Spirit of the Age (I, 277–304). EBB may have had in mind the reference to Jerrold’s “passage through early life, of a kind sufficient to have made a score of misanthropes, and half-a-dozen yet more selfish Apathies,—[which] only served to keep alive his energies, and to excite him to renewed indignation at all the wrongs done in the world, and to unceasing contest with all sorts of oppressions and evil feelings” (I, 294).

7. Cf. Goldsmith, “The Deserted Village” (1770), line 164.

8. Pope’s The Dunciad (1728) satirized literary vices, in particular dullness. Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis, 60?–140?) was the author of satires attacking the vices and dissipations of his contemporaries.

9. Albany Fonblanque (1793–1872), a journalist, became proprietor of The Examiner in the 1830’s. He republished many of his articles written for newspapers and magazines as England Under Seven Administrations (1837). Sydney Smith (1771–1845) was one of the founders of, and a principal contributor to, The Edinburgh Review. Both shared the chapter in A New Spirit with Jerrold. Junius was the anonymous author of a series of letters in The Public Advertiser in 1768–1772 critical of the Duke of Grafton and other members of the administration; his identity has never been conclusively established, but the writer is now thought to have been Sir Philip Francis (1740–1818), one-time secretary to William Pitt.

10. Celestina was a character in The Spanish Bawd (1631), a translation by James Mabbe (1572–1642?) of a play by Fernando de Rojas (ca. 1465–1541). EBB uses the name here in a collective sense.

11. “The utmost limit.”

12. Poems on Man (1843), mentioned in letters 1389 and 1405.

13. Sarah Ellis (née Stickney) “acquired considerable literary fame, chiefly in connection with … works on the women of England in their various relations” (DNB). We have not found the remark in Punch to which EBB alludes.

14. EBB presumably means Hannah Lawrance, mentioned in letter 1468. Louisa Stuart Costello (1799–1870) wrote Songs of a Stranger (1825) and a number of other works. Horne did not include either woman.

15. Miss Strickland published Demetrius in 1833.

16. Mary Somerville (née Fairfax, 1780–1872) displayed in her writings a “grasp of scientific truth … combined with an exceptional power of exposition [that] made her the most remarkable woman of her generation” (DNB). However, she was not included in Horne’s subjects.

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