831. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 86–88.
[Torquay]
July 24. 1841
There was a blank, dear Mr Horne, in your last note, when you ought to have said something about the cough. I hope the silence meant that you had quite forgotten all the cutting up & boiling—the whole process of your “rejuvenescence”—& that your present suffering is concentrated in the Parliamentary reports. They are enough at a time, certainly. Why Napoleon was better!–
It is an atrocious system altogether, the system established in this England of ours—wherein no river finds its own level but is forced into leaden pipes, up or down—her fools lifted into chairs of state, her wise-men waiting behind them—& her poets made Cinderellas off [sic] & promoted into accurate counters of pots & pans. We need not wonder at the elections. [1] Everything is rotten in the state of Denmark– [2]
Have you seen Miss Sedgewick’s book, & heard the great tempest it has stirred up around you in London, [3] without a Franklin to direct the lightening? [4] She was received from America two or three years since by certain societies with open arms—none ever suspecting her to be “the deil amang them takin’ notes”. [5] The revelation was dreadful– My friend & cousin Mr Kenyon,—admitted to be one of the most brilliant conversers in London,—fell upon the proof sheets accidentally, just half an hour previous to their publication, and finding them sown thick with personalities side by side with praises of his own agreeable wit, took courage & a pen & “cleansed the premises”. [6] Afterwards he wrote across the Atlantic to explain “the moral right” he had to his deed. For my own part, strongly as I feel the saliency of Miss Sedgewick[’]s fault (it struck repeatedly & ungratefully against dear Miss Mitford who had bestowed some cordial attentions upon her sister authoress, & less as an authoress—so she tells me—than as a friend) I am not quite clear about Mr Kenyon’s “right.” The act was .. un peu fort [7] .. in its heroism,—& probably his American admirer may not thank him as warmly as her victims do.
Not that I ever do or could join in the outcry against Boswell & his generation, [8] I like them too well. But there is a line—a limit .. to their communicativeness—& such as pass it, dirty their feet.
Thank you very very thankfully for wishing me away from this place. No—you “do not counsel madness” but the sanest wisdom. Nevertheless nothing is yet fixed. Perhaps I may hear more tomorrow when I shall hear from Papa. I always do on Sundays. I hope the cream passed the Bishop of London yesterday, on its way to Guido– [9]
Truly yours
E B Barrett.
Address: R H Horne Esqr / 36. New Broad Street. / City / London.
Publication: Lyle H. Kendall, Jr., A Descriptive Catalogue of The W. L. Lewis Collection (Fort Worth, 1970), pp. 6–7 (in part).
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library and Texas Christian University.
1. A further reference to the implications of corruption in the electoral process (see letter 827, note 10).
2. Cf. Hamlet, I, 4, 90.
3. See letters 827, 828 and 830.
4. A reference to Benjamin Franklin’s invention in 1752 of the lightning rod.
5. An adaptation of Burns’s line (see letter 830, note 6).
6. Probably an allusion to the cleaning of the Augean stables, one of the labours of Hercules.
7. “A little too much.”
8. A reference to James Boswell (1740–95) and his ilk, who committed their subjects to print “warts and all.”
9. The significance of this remark eludes us.
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