838. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 100–101.

[Torquay]

August 4. 1841.

My dear Mr Horne,

I am so sorry to hear of the obstinacy of this cough of yours. Why do you not get away from London and keep moving about? Continual change of air, says Dr Scully,—my physician who says everything of that sort wisely,—is the specific for hooping cough at its advanced stage—that is, when it lingers as yours does. Surely you should not allow the winter months to surprise you coughing!– And surely (pardon my impertinence) it wdnt be much harder to go round London in a circle, if it were only from village to village, previous to the settling down in chambers, than to settle immediately.

For my own part I am gasping still for a permission to move too—but Papa has gone suddenly into Herefordshire, and I am almost sure not to hear for a week. Some thing however must soon be determined,—& in the meantime, being tied hand & foot & gagged, I am wonderfully patient.

Did you hear of Mrs Orme’s kind proposal about coming here? It was very kind—& I felt it so—even as an impossibility.

If you have no “vow in Heaven”, [1] never to answer a question,—will you tell me whether the Monthly Chronicle is extinct, & why? [2]

Truly yrs

EBB–

Address: R H Horne Esqr / 36. New Broad Street / City / London.

Publication: EBB-RHH, I, 31–33.

Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.

1. Cf. The Merchant of Venice, IV, 1, 228.

2. The Monthly Chronicle, edited by Bulwer-Lytton and Robert Bell, ceased publication with the June 1841 issue. EBB comments in letter 842 on Horne’s explanation of its demise.

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