789. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 6–8.
[Torquay]
[mid-January 1841] [1]
My dear Mr Horne,
So you write me down ‘dozing’ in courtesy for a worse word: and indeed I scarcely know another to recommend to you—yet it has not been ‘dozing’ either—no—nor long-drawn consideration. The truth is I have felt afraid of you, & do—and one day being the image of another to me, while the fear made me delay sending you my fancies, I lost account of the time spent in delaying, took saturday for monday still, & built up so a dozing reputation. And indeed I upon my ‘rock’ have less time for anything good than is supposable. Half the day, all the morning, I am just able to read lazily in that low ‘spiritless lack lustre state’ [2] which shows the quenched embers of opium & things of the sort, said to be necessary for me just now,—& the uncomfortable uncertain excitement before & afterwards though pleasanter as a sensation, is more congenial to dreaming (‘dozing’ if you please dear Mr Horne,) than to any steady purpose of thought or fixed direction of faculty. So far to account, in part,—in some degree—for the rough sketch I send you being “very unlike a whale”. [3]
But it was thrown on paper, directly I read your reminder—‘A first form’ indeed I didnt wait any more—& if the coaches do, in the snow, it is’nt my fault– Your letter came to me most reluctantly a day too late, & mine may ‘copy its paces’. [4]
Thank you for the reproof from Hazlitt—the paragraph ‘to suit’—for the beauty & gentleness of the rebuke. Yet you & he cd both have written as finely & more congenially upon the opposite evil of compromise—of temporizing as to objects, & being indifferent as to means [5] —that ‘fat weed’ [6] of the day, & perhaps of the world on all days. More of us, you will admit, do harm by groping along the pavement with blind hands for the beggars brass coin, than do folly by clutching at the stars ‘from the misty mountain top’ [7] : And if the would be star-catchers catch nothing, they keep at least clean fingers.
This applies to nothing, you will understand, except to the passage from Hazlitt—suggestively.
And talking of beggar’s coins,—will you believe me—(you must [8] believe me—) that I never thought until I had finished my letter to you about the petition, of my own self having something to do with the proprietorship of Drury Lane, by virtue of five shares given to me when I was a child? I really never thought of it– But I thought afterwards that if you ever came to guess at such a thing, why you might infer me into basenesses. The shares never reminded me of their being mine by one penny coming to my hands, nor are likely to do so—the national theatres being as empty of profit as of honor. But if it were otherwise, oh you could’nt suspect me of being warped by such a consideration– You will trust me that half cubit of probity, without another word.
Tuesday.
Dear Mr Horne—I was not quite well & was forced to break off writing—& begin anew today. You will think me an eighth sleeper now. [9] Dont scruple to say what is in yr mind about the subject. Remember you suggested Greek instead of modern tragedy as a model for form. –My idea, the terror attending spiritual consciousness, the men’s soul to the men, is something which has not I think been worked hitherto, & seems to admit of a certain grandeur & wildness in the execution. The awe of this self consciousness, breaking with occasional sudden lurid beats through the chasms of our conventionalities has struck me, in my own self observation as a mystery of nature—very grand in itself—& is quite a distinct mystery from conscience. Conscience has to do with action (every thought being spiritual action) & not with abstract existence. There are moments when we are startled at the footsteps of our own Being, more than at the thunders of God.
Is it impracticable?—too shadowy, too mystic, for working dramatically?
Think of Faust.
You cd do anything!
But you are judge as to what is to be done or tried. Say yes or no—& I am prepared for ‘no’, most. [10]
Ever truly yours
EBB–
Did you ask Miss Mitford about the petition? You know she is personally interested in the theatres—has a play waiting to be acted: & I am sure she wd sign the petition gladly.
Publication: EBB-RHH, I, 54–56 and II, 62–64 (in part).
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. Dated by the further reference to Horne’s petition, the subject of the previous letter.
2. We have not located the source of this quotation.
3. Cf. Hamlet, III, 2, 382.
4. We have not located the source of this quotation.
5. From the context, it is possible that Horne had quoted from Hazlitt’s essay “On Thought and Action.”
6. Hamlet, I, 5, 32.
7. Romeo and Juliet, III, 5, 10.
8. Underscored three times.
9. A reference to the “Seven Sleepers,” Christian youths walled up in a cave (see letter 589, note 3).
10. Horne replied that “the subject could be worked dramatically, i.e., in the spirit, everything breathing of stage-action being quite out of the question” and that he “would devise the characters, interlocutors, chorus and semi-choruses” etc. (EBB-RHH, II, 64).
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