1752. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 210–214.
50 Wimpole Street
November 4. 1844
My dear Mr Horne–
I am inclined to rush into the danger of the two and eight pence, [1] yet will restrain myself if I can manage it. Certainly, if my letter was “full of reproaches,” (which I did not intend) yours is full of mistakes, which I wd fain correct to your mind & ear in as direct a manner as possible. And so, .. to begin with the first mistake .. & the “sort of letter you know I want, in the way of description & so forth”.. I beg to say that I want nothing of the sort, in the way of description & so forth. I wanted a letter from you & about you—and now that I have got one, I want another—but there’s nobody in the world who cares less for letters of set description or set anything than I do,—& nobody who, in hearing from his or her friends, is fonder of simple slovenly “personal talk” than I am. Therefore if you wd but just write to me a little oftener & tell me what you are doing & thinking & the rest, you will be safe from my “reproaches” & deserve to be safe from them. As to want of kindness, I never said (did I?) that you wrote me unkind letters—and if I ever did, I shd ask you to forgive me the thought & word, after reading all these kind expressions which have touched & gratified me in this letter. Indeed I am certain that if, on one or two or three occasions, (so small that I have lost the needle .. which just pricked!) [2] I seemed out of sorts or temper with you for a moment, the cause was (confessedly to myself the half hour afterwards) my irritability & not your fault in any degree in the world. I never observed any “hardness” or “coldness” about you. I never observed that you wrote with reserve. Only I who am apt to write with too much unreserve, & to be rather headlong both in feeling & expression, may have appeared to you to express only half my crossness on some occasions, & to keep a good deal of it behind in the form of suspicion. But clear your mind of any such thoughts– I was not vexed with you for coldness &c, .. because I never thought you cold. I was not vexed with you for not coming to see me when I agreed at last to see you—though I might have said to myself as much as, .. “What! all this fever of mine for nothing!”. I was not vexed. I admit frankly that I ought to have consented to see you at once,—especially as you were about to leave England. What can one do, but repent of one’s sins? I confess it was wrong of me—I am very sorry I did it– Forgive me for it, & come & see me soon to make it quite up. And in the meantime, use that creative imagination of yours, in imagining how a person, naturally very excitable, & by illness & long seclusion, rendered morbidly so, comes to tremble at the thought of a footstep & a face associated with some of her most earnest feelings of admiration & regard. “The affectionate escape,” it might be—I will not deny it. But you are not on that account to be “hurt”, & to call it a comedy—it might have more tragedy in it than comedy—and it depreciated my regard for you, least of all. Still, I was wrong—& I confess it—& I wont do it any more, even if you give me an opportunity– Your next mistake relates to the Spirit of the Age,—which, you say, was supposed to “displease the house,” because I said I could get it at the library––Oh—most logical inference!– The truth is that I fancied you might have only a few copies to give away, & more than a few friends to whom you wished to give them,—& simply I did not like to let you give the book to me as a matter of course, without saying a word to show the non-necessity of the gift. Do you not perceive that there was a reason in the circumstances, for my being inclined to delicacy? But when the second edition was being prepared, you wrote to me that you “wd trust me to the end, & let me see the preface in proof”—I wrote back a, “Pray do!” & not a word more did I ever hear of it until Miss Mitford offered to let me read “Mr Horne’s reply to his critics.” [3] Of course I thought that you were vexed with me for persisting to think as you know, of the expediency of that reply,—but that, from some reason or other, you had changed your mind, to my exclusion,—was as plain as a prairie.
What an amazing letter of wrangling, I am writing to you, to be sure. You will wish that I wd please be in a more agreeable humour & desist from explaining away all possible mistakes. If we were walking on the banks of the Ahr, [4] such work might be lawful; but as it is, “it smells to Heaven.” [5] I hope (for a last crowning mistake) that I am mistaken in fancying through all the kindness of your kindest of letters, you are a good deal out of spirits,—& disinclined to come back to England. Is it true? Tell me. I think you are depressed for some reason. Is it true? Tell me.
As to your frantic imaginations concerning me, I assure you I have a sort of engagement to go up the Rhine some day, & I am so much better on essential points that sometimes I think or dream I may [6] do it. And then, as you remind me, Miss Martineau is a great landmark to show how far a recovery can go!– She can walk five miles a day now with ease, .. and is well, she says—not comparatively well—but well, in the strict sense. You may say so in the third edition of your Spirit of the Age. Moreover she has an apocalyptic housemaid (save the mark!) [7] who, being clairvoyante, prophecies concerning the anatomical structure of herself & others, & declares “awful spiritual dicta” concerning the soul & the mind & their future destination,—discrim[in]ating (says Miss Martineau) “between what she hears at church, & what is true.” [8] A lively child, whom I once had pastime with, used to rhyme, singing to herself
“What will this world come to?
(Answer) A little bit of glue!”
and really I am inclined to take up the verse when I hear of the loosening of the soul to the end of its tether, while it runs into the spiritual world & returns again to this. I am credulous & superstitious naturally, & find no difficulty in the wonder—only precisely because I believe it, I wd not subject myself to this mystery of the will of another, & this induction into things unseen. My blood runs the wrong way to think of it. Is it lawful—or if lawful, expedient? Do you believe a word of it? Or are you herissé [9] with scepticism, like Papa?
With this letter, goes your copy of the Poems to Dr Southwood Smith [10] —and I must tell you how grateful I feel to your correspondent, who gives me so generous a sympathy,—& also to “Lizzie”– May I ask, who the correspondent is? & who Lizzie is? [11] or is the enquiry (as I said of Mesmerism) both unlawful & unexpedient? Such words are worth thousands from the official critic, who while he praises one most, thinks chiefly of himself. (I speak of the genus criticum, & not of individuals.) Yet I have little inclination to depreciate the critics, who have treated me very kindly. Ainsworth, the Metropolitan[,] the New Monthly, Tait, .. and Blackwood (last & greatest beyond any comparing) have all according to their measure, been kind & generous to me– For the newspapers, .. besides those I mentioned, the Examiner sounded a clarion for me—I am well pleased altogether. [12] And I have had a long & most kind letter from Harriet Martineau in approbation—& from Mrs Jameson—& a kind note from Mr Landor & others– Now I do beseech you, by whatever regard you may feel for me (in which I am ambitious to believe) to write to me a kind letter too, .. that is, a sincere letter. Do not fancy yourself obliged to write compliments to me—surely our friendship has outgrown such mere green wood. I promise not to enact the archbishop of Granada, [13] if you speak the truth to me. That the books I send you, are full of faults, I know. Will you tell me what the chief faults appear to you to be? A remark, you once cursorily made to me about deepening my shadows, I hope you will see that I have borne in mind,—though more may be yet done in that way. If I did not alter everything you suggested in “Pan”, I could give you reasons, some literary & some otherwise, which you wd not take to be inadequate. Your criticisms will not be thrown away upon me, if you think me worthy of an opinion apart from all conventionalities of a vain courtesy & gallantry,—but will be useful long after the pleasure of praise has ceased to touch me. The ‘Drama of Exile,’ the longest poem, has been thrown aside by nearly all the official critics as inferior to the rest—and perhaps as a whole, it is unsuccessful. “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship” appears the popular favorite. Oh—for life & strength,—to do something better & worthier than any of them! I feel as if I could do it!–
Tell me if you are writing– Dear Miss Mitford had the great kindness to come to see me three or four days ago for a few hours, & we had all the gossip possible to women, upon various subjects, you among them. She is looking well, & full of her old vivacity, .. so charming, because no one knows distinctly whether it comes from the head or heart. She did not tell me that she had heard from you; .. and I didn’t tell her that I had heard from you,—we could’nt, you know. We “reasoned high” [14] as to whether you might not have fallen low—completing your descent down the Drachenfells, [15] & explaining your silence. Well—and she tells me (being the treasurer of your secrets!) that you are going to write a poem upon Montezuma, [16] —& that I am to be silent as night [17] on the subject, for fear of some wandering poet catching up the subject. So I am silent as midnight, .. except to yourself!—and now relate to me if you are writing of Montezuma or of whom, or of what. By the way, Mr Mathews of New York tells me again & again, that he has sent to you in London, copies of the American editions of your ‘Spirit of the Age’, & wishes to hear if you ever received them—not an unnatural wish. I pray you explain! And then, he wants your tragedies, which are yet unknown, it appears, across the seas.
The only other news I have to tell you (how insolent of me to talk of “other news”, .. as if I had told you any!) is the proselytism of Mr Newman of Oxford to the Church of Rome. He has been some time in getting to Rome, but he went in the direct line all <***> [18]
Publication: EBB-RHH, II, 157–161 (in part, as 7 November 1844).
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. Rates of foreign postage (in this case to Germany) were based on weight. EBB knew her letter would not be less than 1/2 oz. (8 pence) but hoped it would not exceed 1 oz. (1 shilling and 4 pence). A letter above 1 oz. and not exceeding 2 ozs. cost 2 shillings and 8 pence. The envelope, not extant, would show the cost.
2. Cf. Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece, 318–319.
4. A tributary of the Rhine.
5. Hamlet, III, 3, 36.
6. EBB has written “may” above “shall,” which she probably meant to delete.
7. Cf. I Henry IV, I, 3, 56.
9. “Bristling.”
10. Horne had previously received correspondence care of his friend Southwood Smith (see letter 1448). Horne’s copy of EBB’s Poems (1844) is now at Alexander H. Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand (Reconstruction, C72).
11. We have not identified these persons.
12. For the text of these reviews, see Appendix III.
13. Presumably a reference to Luis de Granada (1504–88), Spanish cleric and religious author; he was not an archbishop, having declined the archepiscopate (see letter 1584, note 6).
14. Paradise Lost, II, 558.
16. There is no evidence that Horne ever wrote such a poem.
17. Cf. Milton, Samson Agonistes, 87.
18. The following notice appeared in The Morning Chronicle for 4 November 1844, (p. 2): “A letter has also been received from the Rev. J.H. Newman, of Littlemore, addressed to the Rev. Isaac Williams … intimating that he can no longer continue a member of the English church.” In a letter dated 6 November 1844, Newman wrote to his friend the Rev. John Keble: “My dear Keble,—I write you just a line in consequence of reports about me which are afloat, and which may make you anxious. They are altogether unfounded.” Correspondence of John Henry Newman with John Keble and Others … 1839–1845 (1917), ed. at the Birmingham Oratory, p. 340.
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