1619. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 1–5.
[London]
Saturday Night [1 June 1844] [1]
My dear Mr Horne I know a part & only a part of the thunder & lightning,—but far too much, with my window shut down. The Westminster Review I never see, & was, only the other day, wishing to see this particular number, because I took for granted, from some false impulse, that you wd have justice done if not honour, on the pages of it. [2] Well! You are brave. Natures made to triumph, are also strong to suffer. And when the tide recedes, you will be found on your feet. I may assure you truly that I have read the various reviews in question (such of them as I have read) with pain & indignation, .. & also with another modification of feeling still more depressing. The New Monthly’s bitter word .. “Carlyle is said to have knocked a window out of his century” [3] &c, .. made me feel stung to cry out “me, me .. adsum quæ feci”! [4] Oh—if harm was done to the book by good intentions! If occasion was given to the stone throwers by the stone-builders!
Turn it however as we may,—although the book is assuredly unequal, & shows marks of wanting unity in some of its important departments—although if you had had more time, & the work to yourself, you wd have made a better & stronger & more proportionate book, … still, the slaying fault, we may both be very sure is by no means in the book, but in the envy, malice & all uncharitableness on every side of us. It is the elemental matter which produces the storm, & not the oak-wood which it rages in. Why we shd be surprised, or startled, I do not know. I, for one, felt from the beginning & must certainly have told you so, that you had undertaken an office of dread & horror, & that you wd have all the world against you, with ground teeth & foaming lips. The vanity of a man is the vulgar form of his sensibility,—&, as all the gods know, some men have no other sensibility. It is as hard to praise a vain man, as to blame him—& if you dont praise him at all, you dont gain much by it. To write a New Spirit of the Age is an aspiration towards martyrdom unnecessary & supererogatory in a poet & a dramatic poet … in an “unacted dramatist’[’]! [5] You might have had your share of the world’s cruelty without it, we shd think. Only you are so aspiring!
“Let them rave.” [6] That the book does not deserve their abuse we know as well as they themselves do: & there is no need to know better. What turns against it, is simply the worm—or the friend of the worm, wormy, & right wormily! [7]
And were it otherwise, this book is an accident of your literary life. You are not to live by it—you have other books to live by. This book, although worthy of all our respect for the thought & talent expended in it, & especially for the honesty & high mindedness everywhere obvious in it,—is certainly not [8] worthy of being the subject of one over-anxious or painful thought in your mind … Orion’s!
“Let them rave” I say—and that reminds me,—If you have no objection, will you tell me that Tennyson is not among the “waiters to see.” I shall be glad to know that he is not one– If he is not satisfied I shall be surprised, but if he “waits to see” I shall be thunderstruck still more.
Do not waver in the second edition for any of their cries of dumb beasts. [9]
For EBB,—she has only to be grateful to you— Oh—one feels so stupidly constrained in speaking of oneself .. why shd it be so?——
Bear in your mind, then, with regard to me that I thoroughly understand the fulness both of your kindness & your integrity,—& that there are circumstances under which I cd be happy to respect you more for depriving my vanity of a pleasure. You are my friend I hope—but you do not on that account lose the faculty of judging me or the right of judging me frankly. I do loath the whole system of personal compliment as a consequence of a personal interest—& I beseech you not to suffer yourself ever [10] by any sort of kind impulse from written or extraneous influence otherwise, to say or modify a word relating to me. The notice [11] as it stands can be called “inadequate” only in one way, .. that you enter on no analysis of my poetical claims in it. In every other respect you know it is extravagantly laudatory .. you have rouged me up to the eyes– In fact the intention of being kind is so visible in that article, that if I had read it as relating to another person I shd have been quite sure of the person being in some way personally connected with you.
Now, mark! If in the second edition you do enter on the subject of the poetry [12] .. what is likely to be the end of it? You have spoken kindly of my poetry sometimes, but I do not know your precise estimate of it. I say .. I do not know—but I may perhaps have my thoughts on the subject, .. my fancies—for I too (like Mr Westwood) can look a little way into a post: & there is a dreadful possibility (at least) in my eyes, that you may be led to say something to please me which might be said in violence to your colder judgement– Not that you wd do so consciously! I know you wd not. But I wish you to bear in your mind .. first .. that under circumstances which are conceivable, .. it wd be better to leave the notice as it is—or secondly that in any case of your approaching the subject of my poetry, you will please me best by speaking out the truth as it occurs to you,—broadly, roughly, .. coarsely, .. in its whole dimensions. I set more price on your sincerity than on your praise, & consider it more closely connected with the quality called kindness. Recollect that these people who offer a pin to me that they may prick you with it in passing, do not care a pin for me. ‘The New Monthly’ who says so courteously of me “all Greek & passion,” [13] wd probably say “all twaddle & trumpery” if it was reviewing me. I understand that fully! If I wanted any kindness, I shd go to you & not to them! And now I want kindness .. the rarest of all nearly .. which is truth–
This is a preface to what I am going to reply to your request about the proofs &c. How it is possible for me to translate all “my principal poems” into prose for your information, I am sure I dont know– But,—the preface being understood … & the conditions .. viz that you do not suffer yourself to be driven into a violent resolution of trying to say certain things, .. & that I am not expecting such things to be said, .. I will send you whatever I can in the way of proofs. My private opinion is that you had better leave the notice unenlarged—& I am most grateful to you as it is. But if you enlarge it, you must speak out the whole truth, .. as Orion sees it & from that height!, [14] .. or I will not be instrumental in helping you to information.
Through this multitude of words, you will come to my thought—which is not spoken in modesty, but in pride. I turned about your note in all sorts of ways, before I cd make up my mind to write fully. Now, mind! Your best compliment to me is the truth at all times, without reference to sex or friendship. I excuse the unbonnetting. You are Orion,—& I can estimate you—& neither of us mind the buzz of these wasps.
You must understand, .. that it is miserable, .. to stand before you as somebody “noticed inadequately,” who desires another obolus in the second edition, for the sake of “Dead Pans,” &c.! It is dreadful! The very thought of it has made me feel reserved towards you about my new book.
Yes—Leigh Hunt’s Godiva I have—but unfortunately I lent it to somebody a few days ago. Can you wait for it? & how long can you wait? I fancied that in your notice of Tennyson’s, you had intentionally waived any comparison– Yet Hunt’s has the palm I fancy. I think by recollection, that it has. [15]
‘Dead Pan’ is not printed yet—so I cant send you a proof of him. He is to be in my second volume, & I have only just begun my second. I can send you some old proofs of various parts of both,—& will, if (among other promises) you will promise not to show them or speak of having seen them. I hope my book will be out in a few weeks now. It fags me & over excites me too much. Perhaps you will think me ‘improved’—perhaps—. I seem to myself to have more strength. I only wish that souls & bodies wd draw together.
I wish that in this second edition of yours, you wd give Mary Howitt room to take her full stature. She appears in the book simply as MRS Howitt, William’s wife—whereas his reputation has grown from the stem of her’s. [16] Her prose is inferior—but her poetry will live I think. Then Mrs Trollope is too hardly treated for justice– At the end of my paper! & of your meekness.
Ever & gratefully yours
EBB
Publication: EBB-RHH, II, 17–26 (in part).
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Dated by Horne’s reply (letter 1621).
2. For the text of this article, in the June issue of The Westminster Review, see vol. 8, pp. 394–405.
3. In the May 1844 issue of The New Monthly Magazine; for the text of the review, see vol. 8, pp. 390–393.
4. “On me, on me—here I am who did the deed” (Æneid, IX, 427, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough).
5. EBB quotes from the review of A New Spirit of the Age in the June 1844 issue of The Westminster Review (for the text, see vol. 8, p. 404). Although Horne’s first dramatic works were published in 1837, and his tragedies were stated to “have much force and fire” (DNB), none of his plays was acted in his lifetime.
6. This phrase forms the 4th and 7th lines of each stanza of Tennyson’s “A Dirge,” included in Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830) and Poems (1842).
7. Cf. III Henry VI, II, 2, 17. In this and subsequent Shakespearean quotations, the line numbers correspond to those used in The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston, 1974).
8. Underscored three times.
9. EBB is alluding to remarks in The Morning Chronicle (see vol. 8, pp. 388–389).
10. Underscored four times.
11. i.e., Horne’s article on EBB.
12. Horne did not expand his comments on EBB’s poetry in the second edition of A New Spirit; however, he deleted the reference to EBB’s being “in darkness almost equal to that of night”; he changed “six or seven years of this imprisonment” to “five years”; and he added: “Miss Barrett is rich in the memory of early experiences, but more rich in imaginations and etherial aspirations [than Mrs. Norton], and would shrink from the contemplation of unrefined realities.”
13. In the May 1844 issue (for the text, see vol. 8, p. 391).
14. EBB suggests that Horne, the author of Orion, should be as detached as the distant constellation of that name.
15. We have been unable to find any evidence of Leigh Hunt’s poem “Godiva” prior to its appearance in the March 1850 issue of The New Monthly Magazine. Perhaps here, and in letters 1624 and 1625, EBB and Horne are referring to Hunt’s essay, “Godiva,” which appeared in The Indicator (27 October 1819, pp. 17–19). Horne mentioned Tennyson’s poem, “Godiva,” in the chapter on Tennyson in A New Spirit, but made no mention of Hunt’s “Godiva” in either edition of A New Spirit.
16. Horne made only minor changes in the chapter on William and Mary Howitt in the second edition of A New Spirit. Regarding Mrs. Howitt’s poetry, he said “Many of her finest poems are scattered abroad in annuals and magazines. They would make a most delightful volume if collected, and one which the public would not be slow to appreciate.” Mr. Howitt’s assistance in the translation of the Bremer novels is given less prominence in the second edition.
___________________
