799. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 23–25.
[Torquay]
Monday. [15 February 1841] [1]
Then let it be ‘Psyche Apocalyptic’. Your reasons are abundantly good–.
Now dear Mr Horne, see how we have been beguiled. The necessary name Psyche drew me towards the propriety of holding a certain Greekness in the other names—& this draws you into fixing upon Greece for a locality. Well—you are right. Only we need not be very local—need we? To tell you the truth, I had never thought about locality—or at least about our’s being other than some new-new-world Island—or continent– But let it be Greece—the Spirits will murmur to our feet the more readily.
As to the time being olden, there are the objections you perceive, & which are insurmountable, & which we need not (happily) try to surmount. Indeed the endeavour wd eeclipse [sic], cloud over, the high summits of our subject.
Let it be, if you please, two hundred years ago—or something less, or something more.
But now, I am unreasonable & covetous. You say ‘If we have the antique time, we may have a Chorus of Satyrs.’ I want the modern time, & the Satyrs besides. ‘Want’ is too strong a word. But I am inclined to the Satyrs—I lean to them. There is something “high fantastic” [2] in them—& deeply contrastive to the Heavenly Spirits. Their ‘dark earth’ [3] falls with heavy suggestive noises. Your woods inspired you with the Satyrs.
Yet after all, there are certain objections which I glance at reluctantly .. such as the difficulty of sustaining the right satyrical tone, in the universal harmony. If we have them for a chorus, we must keep them for a chorus. Do think about it, dear Mr Horne– You know so much more of artistic effects than I do. My private instinct is after all & certainly, to venture with them.
I write on the same day on which I received your letter. That letter ought to have reached me yesterday—and the roads & posts being in such disorder, I am afraid by any delay on my part, to risk over passing the ‘three or four days’ from last saturday. And thinking longer wd scarcely change my present thoughts.
I thought once today of sending you the Athenæum.– But no—I wont– It is not worth reading, & less, being vexed about. It is not fair criticism—or criticism indeed, at all. [4]
So you acquit Mr Darley, on the strength of Ethelstan [5] – My hand aches while it holds on to my first opinion. [6]
But I have not read Ethelstan. ‘Becket’ Miss Mitford lent to me, with what appeared to me at the time, some excessive praise. I read it through, acknowledging its power of a certain class—but daring to think it quite deficient in concentration & passion, the brain & heart of the drama. [7] Was this wrong? If so, I was wrong altogether,—as unmoved by all the reading, as this paper .. if my pen & breath were turned from it.– Is it not true besides, that the blank-verse construction wants harmony & variety—from the imperfect management of the pauses? No—I could not be an enthusiast for Becket,—& Ethelstan, I never saw.
But Mr Darley is a poet—& has done very fine things in lyrical raptures.
What do you think the ‘critic’ (whoever he is) says cruelly as to the ‘Innocents.’ Why that when we meet the great poet in the spiritual Hereafter, he may vouchsafe us the touch of his hand (through good-nature) in testimony of our excellent intentions!!—but that there can be no further communion, because his place is not ours!! [8] —graciously intimating, you see, that our place is some fathoms farther down, in some low recess of Tophet– [9] Is’nt this worse than any massacre of Herod .. who was satisfied with murdering the body?——
The Tableaux with your ‘Fetches’ is in London with Papa .. all the books I write in, being his of right—& I cant look at Friedrich’s speech. [10] I have groped in my memory for it ever since.
Oh yes—of course you must often have seen Psyche “in visions of the night [11] .. when deep thoughts fall upon men”. [12] Good night now, dear Mr Horne! I must try, at least, to get to sleep–
Ever yours
EBB–
Address: R H Horne Esqr / 2. Gray’s Inn Square / Gray’s Inn / London–
Publication: EBB-RHH, II, 96–98 and 106 (in part).
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
1. Envelope is postmarked 16 February 1841; the previous day was a Monday.
2. Cf. Twelfth Night, I, 1, 15.
3. Shelley, Prometheus Unbound (1820), II, 1, 149.
5. Ethelstan; or, The Battle of Brunanburh: a Dramatic Chronicle (1841), Darley’s new work.
6. i.e., that Darley was the author of the critical review of Chaucer, Modernized in The Athenæum.
7. EBB had commented on Darley’s Thomas à Becket in letter 763.
8. The review included this passage: “When these ‘mere moderns’ meet Chaucer [in another world], a recognition there will be, a friendly shake of the hands, perhaps, for intentional kindness, but nothing to infer intimacy or to encourage it. Kindred spirits live together, and where Chaucer is, his modernizers cannot be.” (For the full text, see pp. 389–391.)
9. A place of fire and destruction, equated with Hell (see Isaiah, 30:33)
10. Presumably EBB’s reference is to his speech after Juliana, his betrothed, dies, and before he jumps to his own death (p. 62 of the 1840 Findens’ Tableaux).
11. Genesis, 46:2.
12. Cf. Psalms, 92:5.
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