2755. RB to Richard Hengist Horne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 15, 167–171.
Florence,
Dec. 3. ’48.
Dear Horne, nobody puts into every scrap they write, so much of their own self (pure, “drawn from the wood” [1] ) as you, to my thinking– Your note was, and is, a true delight to lay to heart: I don’t much care about your straitnesses for the passing moment,—you seem so strong and fit to bear them, and of course be all the happier after. Does not the old wise book say “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than the stalled ox” [2] .. with the devil to carve it, or something to that effect? The main vexation is when, wanting money, you have to break up your mind’s Cellini plate into dollars, as our poor Duke is said to have done—but you touch & spoil none of it while you dig in the garden,—rather you keep it the safer—(if you don’t, rather, add to its value .. but here the figure breaks down woefully.) By this, however, times must be mending,—the cholera having barked at the door, not really bitten,—is it not so? Yes, I saw your “Judas” advertised, and reviewed in the Athenæum, [3] —one of the best subjects, it strikes me, possible for poet—the one extract I read was admirable,—and the plot & purpose admirable. I shall have a great read of it, whenever the lucky day comes. I wish I could have referred you to a pamphlet of the last century called something like “Remarks on the life <or character?> [4] of Judas,”—with striking things, as I seem to remember them—an anonymous letter to Lord Lyttelton who had printed remarks on the life of St. Paul, [5] —I remember for certain that one tradition concerning the end of the traitor is that he settled in Portugal and founded a family still flourishing there!—and sure enough there are the D’Ajudas,—I wish ’em joy of it! Now of me & mine: you spoke (and very kindly) about an advertisement—it chronicled only the decease of my father’s mother-in-law [6] —thank God! Indeed, Florence is only some ten days & nights’ journey from London, and were there a real need like the very hint of that, I should leave here at a day’s notice. I only heard of Mrs Adams’ death by the papers [7] —what you seem to tell me,—of which I was altogether ignorant, knowing none of her friends now,—is sad indeed. I will mention a matter to you—knowing your delicacy, and trusting in your discretion, to do a thing for me, or not to do it—as you see or know best—simply here is the matter. I knew the Flowers when I was five or six years old,—earlier I do think—when I got older, perhaps at twelve or thirteen, I wrote a book of verses [8] which Eliza read and wrote to me about,—I wrote back,—then came the acquaintance with Fox, if meeting him one evening be worth that name,—but she gave me his opinions at second hand, and more letters came of it: then in a few months (for one grows fast at that age) I saw the proper way, and put my blessed “poems” in the fire– I lost (soon after) sight of Eliza,—but when, years after I began again, and printed a little thing, “Pauline”,—I could not but send it to Fox, my old praiser—thence fresh generosity from him, and reacquaintance with the Flowers, & one day Eliza told me to my amazement & discomfort that she had “still by her some where, safe,” all the letters I had written to her—“never being used to destroy a scrap of any such thing”—moreover producing on some occasion or other, a sort of album-book in which were entered “poem” this & “poem” the other, duly transcribed from my delectable collection aforesaid [9] —“I grinned & bore it”—promising myself to speak about it some day, so as not to offend; alas, a few more years have gone by, and poor E.F has left us only her strange beautiful memory! I heard it at Pisa, and, three or four months after, wrote a note to Mrs Adams—a few lines, but they must have shown how I felt, I think– I added, (thinking it would be best to say and get done with it) that I should be glad to have my letters back—just mentioning what Eliza had told me, as an excuse for the seeming absurdity of not being sure all such boyish rubbish had not been at once properly disposed of—(and it is on that account, that I tell you the matter in detail)– No answer ever came to this—and I don’t think I had written a week before a letter arrived from you, describing a horrible raking up of the correspondence in general—then I was glad I had written, and, in due time, angry at the silence,—since there was no over delicacy to respect in the undertakerers of all that dead mournful ware—so I meant to wait till I returned to England and then see to it.* But here comes this second end of poor Mrs A.—and who is the person to deal with now? So I write all this, that in any possible conjuncture that may happen, you may know my exact mind on the matter, <just at the time when one word would be worth a hundred after,—> [10] and act for me—since in your goodness you offer to do so at need. I should have been vexed and uncertain what to do, perhaps, had Mrs A. been projecting one of those hateful memoirs &c but nobody is left now to occasion that feeling, and make one hesitate at availing oneself of the law, which overhauls these ungodly appropriations, I believe. There,—this to your secrecy, dear Horne, unless you see good reason—for the letters &c are purely nonsensical as could not but be, at the age of the inditer,—and it does seem so ludicrous to suppose they were not pitched into the fire at the time they came to hand,—but that, unluckily, I know they were not—then the verses, which nobody had ever a right to copy, they being lent her by a friend to whom I confided the volume, [11] —who has not heard of these things being raked up, a long day off, when one dies &c?
—Well, another tack—by this you will have seen Phelps’ fortune with my play: [12] he surprised me some weeks ago by asking to play it, and I just hear that it was to be done last wednesday. As nothing worse can well come than did come, I care very little about the event,—always wishing Phelps well, of course, and the play, too, for one or two friends’ sake moreover, yours preeminently, staunch supporter of mine that you always were. My new edition .. but you will see I have done my best at correcting enough & not too much. [13] Now I will turn you over to my wife—bidding her tell you something of our summer ramble to Ravenna & Loreto– She is quite well, & we sit here over the log-fire hearing the wild news go in & out,—don’t expect me to write about that! Of Powell, poor wretch, I heard nothing since the Athenæum noted his handsome sale of manuscripts & letters, mine among others– [14] Well, he is a finished creature of the kind, that you & I and one or two more have been privileged to see, with his head carried <erect in impudence> [15] four feet above the water, and sixty feet of a floating body on the water’s top, with no propelling power visible, and the whole wonder going past us as with some determined purpose, straight to the father of the family, the devil “that old serpent.” [16] I find poor Sherman, one of the witnesses, [17] is rather like to be invited to “the Fleet” [18] than to the Admiralty, and Gurney is another victim, but “que diable allaient-ils faire à bord de cette galère?” [19] Goodbye, dear Horne: My true regards to Mrs Horne, whom we shall see face to face some day, I trust. Don’t be long in writing. I would tell you more about our ways (sure of your sympathy always) but that my wife has the readier pen—we have been obliged with quantities of Father Prout, these last two months—and one or two American visitors—otherwise we know no English-speaking people—and so much the better—for one could not make them exquisitely happy by one’s best gifts of speech or writing as I made a friend of ours yesterday, a Vallombrosan monk, by giving him a silver threepence and twopence I had providentially by me. “O certainly I shall not refuse, so beautiful they are, so beautiful.” He did the honors to us at the convent last year, but is now come down to the city-monastery, because of the toothache the cold gave him.
Ever yours
RB.
*Understand that I never fancied that any use would be made of my stupid scrawlings in that business—or any other, by Mrs A.—but simply was nervous at the possibility of some packet’s being lost, given away, let lie in unknown hands for a time, and then turning up to bother one’s survivors & make them ashamed of one—and all for what?—for having played at verses and letters, instead of cricket & trapball!
Publication: LRB, pp. 19–22.
Manuscript: British Library.
1. A term applied to beverages from a barrel rather than a bottle.
2. Proverbs 15:17.
3. A review of Horne’s Judas Iscariot appeared in The Athenæum for 29 April 1848, no. 1070, pp. 431–432; it contained one long extract and two shorter ones. The reviewer has been identified as John Abraham Heraud in the marked file copy of The Athenæum now at City University (London).
4. Bracketed words are interpolated above the line.
5. Perhaps RB is referring to Observations on the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul in a Letter to Gilbert West, Esq (1747) by George Lyttelton (1709–73), 1st Baron Lyttelton (1756). We have been unable to trace a work on Judas as described by RB.
6. i.e., his father’s step-mother, Jane Smith Browning (1771–1848), who had married Robert Browning (1749–1833) in 1794. Her death was announced in The Times of 6 July 1848: “On the 4th inst., at Hatcham-terrace, New-cross, in her 78th year, Mrs. Jane Browning, relict of Robert Browning, Esq., late of the Bank of England” (p. 7).
7. Sarah Fuller Adams (née Flower, 1805–48) had died on 14 August. A notice of her death appeared in The Athenæum of 9 September 1848, no. 1089, p. 909. Below, RB refers to her sister Eliza Flower (1803–46).
8. Called “Incondita” by RB in letter 579.
9. Horne was unable to retrieve this “album-book” or the letters (see letter 2765). The former, containing a copy of “Incondita,” was acquired by RB in 1866 (R. & E. Garnett, Life of W.J. Fox, 1910, p. 107), probably soon after he had asked Eliza Bridell-Fox to find and return “a few utterly insignificant scraps of letters and verse” (letter dated 21 July 1866, ms at Huntington). Mrs. Orr states that these “scraps” were destroyed by RB “after his return to England” and that the copy of “Incondita” was still extant in 1871, though later it too was destroyed (Orr, pp. 31–32 and 35).
10. Bracketed passage is interpolated above the line.
11. The “friend” who lent “Incondita” to Eliza Flower was probably Ann Sturtevant (later Wood, 1796–1852), a mutual friend of the Flower sisters and the poet’s mother (see John Maynard, Browning’s Youth, Cambridge, Mass., 1977, p. 428).
13. RB’s prefatory statement in Poems (1849), dated December 1848, explains that “Many of these pieces were out of print, the rest had been withdrawn from circulation, when the corrected edition, now submitted to the reader, was prepared. The various Poems and Dramas have received the author’s most careful revision.”
14. There is a short article in the issue of The Athenæum for 5 August 1848 discussing “the sale of the curious Library and MSS” of the late Rev. David Thomas Powell of Tottenham that took place on 31 July 1848 (no. 1084, p. 771); but we are unable to associate it with RB’s comments.
15. Bracketed words are interpolated above the line.
16. Cf. Revelation 12:9.
17. William Sherman is listed in AB-2 at 2 Leadenhall Street which was the business address of John Chapman and Company (shipowners), Thomas Powell’s former employer. When it was discovered, in 1846, that Powell had been defrauding that firm through check forgery and embezzlement, he was dismissed, though not prosecuted. Possibly, Sherman had knowledge of this prior fraud and had been called to give evidence to that effect in a court proceeding. However, we have been unable to trace such a proceeding (see Wilfred Partington, “Should a Biographer Tell?” The Atlantic Monthly, August 1947, pp. 56–63).
18. A reference to the debtors’ prison of that name on the east bank of the Fleet River (now running underground) in London. Described by Dickens in The Pickwick Papers, the prison was torn down in 1846.
19. “What the devil are they doing on board that galley?” Cf. Molière, Les Fourberies de Scapin, II, vii. “Gurney” is Archer Thompson Gurney (1820–87). We have been unable to determine the exact nature of either his or Sherman’s victimization.
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