788. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 4–6.
Torquay
Saturday [9 January 1841] [1]
Nothing of the “tragic subject” today, dear Mr. Horne: I am going to get into a scrape instead.
I tremble to do it, take a long breath before I begin, and then beg you to excuse me about the signature, and forgive me, if possible, afterwards.
Have I done it? Is it all over with me? Oh! I feel the shadow of the great Gregory hand, to match the foot, even at this distance! [2]
As to the petition, [3] the justice of the claim lies upon the surface, and its policy not much deeper: and therefore in wishing, & predicting to you all success, I need not stir from the common sense of the question. You are sure to gain the immediate object, & you ought to do so, even though the ultimate object remain as far off as ever, & more evidently far. There is a deeper evil than licenses or the want of licenses—the base & blind public taste. Multiply your theatres & license every one.— Do it to-day. And the day after to-morrow (you may have one night) there will come Mr. Bunn, [4] & turn out you & Shakespeare with a great roar of lions. Well! .. we shall see.
You know far more than I do, & you seem to hope more: If the great mass in London were Athenians, I might hope too.
But I do not like giving my name to anything about the theatres. It is a name unimportant to everybody in the world except just myself for whom the giving of it would be the sign of an opinion—& I shd not like to give it in any one thing favorable to the theatres. At their best, take the ideal of them, & the soul of the Drama is far above the stage—& according to present and perhaps all past regulations in this country, dramatic poetry has been desecrated & drawn down from the sphere of her shining into the dust of our treading, yes & too often forced to desecrate & draw down morally in turn, the stage. When the poet has his gods in the gallery, what must be the end of it? Why that even Shakespeare shd bow his starry head oftener than Homer nodded, and write down his pure genius into the dirt of the groundlings, for the sake of the savour of their “most sweet voices”, [5] & even so be outwritten in popularity for years and years by his half-brother noble geniuses Beaumont & Fletcher, because they stooped still lower.
Well, but, dear Mr. Horne, if you shake your head ever so much over this, & call me ever so many names .. dont let them be hard ones—dont be really angry. I can’t afford to let you be angry with me. People will have their fancies and perversities. Grant me mine. If the name you asked for were not “bosh,” I shd be still more sorry than I now am, to say ‘no’ to your asking. And yet even now, even as it is, I didn’t like writing, either yesterday or the day before—nor do I today!—
The Monthly Chronicle has not reached me yet. I am eager for the added scene of Cosmo.
And glad, dear Mr. Horne, that you cd like anything in the volume where there is more to forgive than like, for even the kindest.
Ever truly yours
EBB–
Address: R.H. Horne Esqr / 2– Gray’s Inn Square / Gray’s Inn / London.
Publication: EBB-RHH, I, 45–49 (in part) and The Contemporary Review, December 1873, pp. 154–155.
Source: Annotated copy of EBB-RHH text, in the hand of H. Buxton Forman, at Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. Although the manuscript of this letter is missing, an annotation by H. Buxton Forman in Horne’s copy of EBB-RHH (now at Morgan) indicates that it was postmarked 10 January 1841.
2. Horne makes a number of references to Gregory’s hands and feet in his play; see, for example, letters 756, note 6; 762, note 10; and 765, note 9.
3. Horne’s petition for amended legislation regarding the monopoly of the patent theatres (see letter 767, note 3).
4. Alfred Bunn (1796?–1860), the husband of actress Margaret Agnes Bunn (1799–1883), was the manager of two of London’s three patent theatres, Drury Lane and Covent Garden, and strenuously opposed any change in their legal status. A bill to abolish the patent theatres had been approved by the House of Commons in 1833, but Bunn was instrumental in securing its rejection by the House of Lords.
5. Coriolanus, II, 3, 172. In this and subsequent Shakespearean quotations, the line numbers correspond to those used in The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston, 1974).
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