1621. Richard Hengist Horne to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 6–7.
[London]
Thursday [6 June 1844] [1]
Thank you, my dear friend, you are right. I had better not do much with the article. But the complaints made against it, have hitherto been all on the safe side for the friendship. It would have borne more about the poetry, had it been said at once. I therefore reserve the rest, for a possibly enlarged edition at no very distant time. At present, I sh’d like to have the “Dead Pan” to see if I can do something with it.
I return your Preface—and the proof—the latter not read, (I can only read, just now, with a definite object of work) but glanced over. I caught sight of some fine stuff—in the good old Saxon sense of stuff, [2] and think your Imagination has made some great advances. You aim high, and justify it.
I should be too sorry to think or fancy that Tennyson was at all in the state of mind of many others of the ‘New Spirit.’ It is not his habit to write notes—he hardly ever does write a note. I never expected it. But from some, I thought it w’d have been friendly; and when (on the contrary) I learned that they were not pleased and had a considerable coldness towards me, I thought as poorly of them (as men) as they deserved.
I sh’d tell you that Browning, Milnes, Marston, Miss Mitford, Leigh Hunt, Bailey (“Festus”)[,] Southwood Smith, Hood, and Miss Martineau, [3] were all I know, in the kindest state of feeling towards me, on the appearance of the book—and afterwards. Nor do I expect any change in them. I have had notes from, or conversations with, all of them, recently. But there is an evil clique at work, and several have been “made to see” that however highly praised, the faults mentioned were injurious &c &c[.] So, I believe it is thus with Dickens, and Talfourd, and Bulwer. I have reason to think that Mrs Shelley and Carlyle are not displeased—rather the contrary. The former has <…> [4] reason. So, I th<…> I am even, and <…> about Tennyson. Macauley is angry, no doubt—and as for Henry Taylor—we may swear. Robert Montgomery has expressed himself ready to shake hands with me—and his wife and sister,—merry girls!—have requested a mutual friend to introduce them to me! I can’t stand this—can I?—I mean, I cannot meet them.
Thus, affairs stand at present. The end is not yet.
<…> time, no one knows, or will know, <…>, and most kind and <…>
Yours truly
R.H.H.
Address: Miss E. B. Barrett.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. Dated by the following letter, which is EBB’s response.
2. i.e., the matter or substance of a work (OED).
3. For an extract from Miss Martineau’s letter, see SD1208 in vol. 8.
4. Here, and in the subsequent omissions, loss of text is due to part of the manuscript being torn away.
___________________
