2081. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 11, 149–150.
[London]
[ca. 3 November 1845] [1]
Well, dear Mr Horne, I do not go to Italy—& I have been in the worst of humours, which has just been the cause of the deepest of silences. I have been “set on edge” all over, .. if you can guess what that is,—& shall not recover from it for a long while, if ever. Is the world, we live in, worth living in, I wonder? Yes—surely. And as long as one thinks so, it is the vainest of weaknesses to go on grumbling:—perhaps some day soon I may have had enough of it– In the meantime, it is not as lightly with me as I speak .. altogether … and I have been broken & bruised & shaken—all the rhymes in me jostled apart—: which will be found good for me in the end, when the last great settling is made, by light of the last star down in the silver socket.
And now for the “memento” you ask for—not a memento mori—or I might have bequeathed you my skull .. who can tell?– While I have it on however, I cant consent to give away any of the hair on it to you, though you ask me so gracefully—but I cant give it to you,—cant, for some bad or good reason .. peradventure because I am a prude, & would not do such a thing except to my female friends or my brothers or claimants of a like force. When the brown has “all turned grey,” [2] I may suddenly grow more generous, you may suggest—but for the present you must set me down a prude .. if you think so. Yet I send you a ‘memento,’ .. a pen .. the sword of your profession & mine, you know—& let it be a sign & seal of my esteem & regard for you .. if you will let it be so,—& of my earnest wishes for your success by means of it—— Shall this “memento” be accepted? <This amber .. to draw straw-thoughts of me?> [3] Some day, (not now) we shall stand face to face as friends I hope & believe, & I trust to your kindness, from now to then, to put the best possible interpretation on all that is idiomatic in me– The rattling of my chains here may well make me wild & dizzy at moments–
Tell me how the ballads get on, & if you have any new literary scheme–
I remain
Truly yours
Elizabeth B Barrett.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: R.H. Taylor Collection.
1. Dated by EBB’s reference to this letter in letter 2111 where, in response to a request for a lock of hair, she tells RB, “it is just three weeks since I said last to an asker that I was ‘too great a prude for such a thing.’”
2. Perhaps EBB is alluding to Donne’s “Loves Usury” (1633), line 4.
3. Bracketed passage is inserted above the line.
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