SD1119.1. Richard Hengist Horne to William Johnson Fox
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 4.
2 Gray’s Inn Sq
Gray’s Inn
April 6/40
My dear Sir
Mary tells me you propose an exchange of ‘Sordello’ for Miss E. B. Barrett’s vol of Poems; but I can’t avail myself of the mutual accommodation you kindly intend, because my copy is a presentation from the lady. It is not however a dear book—in the other sense, probably not more than six or seven shillings. It is entitled “The Seraphim; and Other Poems”—Saunders & Otley– Truly you ought to read it, and Lizzie too. As to Sordello I shall buy it in any case—for if we don’t buy each other’s unsaleable books, the Lord above he knows what a huge justification those must be in the public sty, if its inmates en masse, are equally insensible. You could’nt lend me Sordello, could you?—ahem! Not but that I shall buy the book all the same, you know.
Did Mary tell you of the present sad position of Miss Barrett? She seems to be in the last stage of consumption: Has scarcely been three times out of doors these last three years; and is obliged to remain, either in bed or lying upon a sofa all the days—all the nights—which gives one a sense of something beyond, as tho’ one could add and all the days and nights put together, at once. She says to me in a note—alluding to her hope to be able to be brought to London once more for a few weeks in the summer—“But I hope many things (some of them impossible, and the brighter for that) lying here in prison with futurity cut down before my face and therefore I try to make another for myself beyond––‘but,’ says my physician ‘if you want to go to London you must eat some more soup.’ and this is the way we descend.”
But out of many notes, such passages as the above have only occurred twice. She always writes full of spirit, and often of fun; but chiefly speaks of poetry in general, and of Plato, in particular, whose writings she seems thoroughly to understand both in the spirit and letter. I have never seen her (she is now at Torquay) and probably never shall. She is like an Arabian Night’s lady shut up in crystal rock, afar.
Yours truly,
R.H. Horne.
Address: W. J. Fox Esqre / 13 Queen Sq / Westminster.
Publication: Richard Garnett and Edward Garnett, The Life of W.J. Fox (London, 1910), p. 196.
Source: Transcript in editors’ file.
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