408. EBB to Hugh Stuart Boyd
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 2, 293.
Hope End
April 1st [1831] [1]
My dear Mr Boyd,
I think I may as well, & perhaps better, write a few words to tell you that the scene in the garden, which we were talking about, was the produce of some body’s inventive genius. I have to say also, what I forgot to mention yesterday, that a vote of three thousand, six hundred pounds, has been made or is thought of being made in the House of Commons to Mr Babbidge, for his thinking machine. [2] They intend to erect a house for it, & to apply it to the purposes of the government; and the expenses of the erection & purchase, are estimated at 12000 pounds. I thought you might like to hear something of this.
I detailed as well as I could your port wine & roast goose logic, for the benefit of Papa who very much approves of your side of the question & thinks your manner of defending it “very fair”. Indeed we all agreed that you roasted your antagonist,—tho’ his likeness to your illustration ends there!——
Now I was going to end this note: but I cant do so without telling you that you annoyed me a little yesterday,—& that thinking of what you said, has annoyed me more. How you could possibly think that I would say one thing to Mr Curzon, & another to you (& that other not the truth!) would be a wonder to me, if it were not in some measure solved by the assurance which it brings with it, that up to this present time you can have known nothing at all about me. And this knowledge is nearly as disagreable as your charge. If I had wished to do what you charged me with, you might have doubted whether my folly or my disingenuousness was the greater: and now I may doubt whether that supposed folly & disingenuousness, or your ignorance of me, is the greater. Happily something is greater than either,—& that makes me forgive your charge yesterday, (on condition that you never think of such a thing again, except when you are in sackcloth & ashes) & remain, besides,
Yours very affectionately
E B Barrett.
Address, on integral page: Hugh Stuart Boyd Esqr
Publication: EBB-HSB, pp. 121–122.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by reference to the report in The Times regarding Charles Babbage (1791–1871), mathematician and inventor.
2. The project mentioned here, which was never completed, involved an elaborate calculating machine. The debate on the Civil List, which included this item, was reported in The Times, 29 March 1831.
___________________
