SD2470. George Goodin Moulton-Barrett to Hepworth Dixon

Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 29, 294.

7 Delamere Terrace,

Harrow Road

July 10/61

Dear Sir

I have just read the article in the last Athenæum upon my late sister Mrs Browning; and while thanking you for the kind spirit it evinces towards her, permit me to correct some errors contained in it relative to her & my father–

You describe him as a middle class merchant, whose sympathy for imaginative culture was limited.

I feel assured that this statement was not made for the purpose of sustaining an argument, but I think it right to state that it is not in accordance with fact–

My father at no period of his life was a merchant, first, middle, or any other class; sometime after he left Cambridge, he purchased an estate in Herefordshire, where he resided many years. In regard to the latter part of the above quoted sentence, I may say, that though he was not learned in literature, yet he had read not a little, & entertained a lively sympathy for intellectual cultivation–

With reference to the supposed influence of Mr Kenyon & Mr Boyd, whom you call Burgesses, upon the mental culture of Mrs Browning, I beg to say, that she neither saw or corresponded with Mr Kenyon until after she had attained the age of thirty,—& that though Mr Boyd was a great Greek scholar, yet for his love of Greek, he set aside nearly all other literature.

The fact is that if ever there was a mind self taught & self sustained, my greatly lamented sister’s was one–

May I beg that you will take an early opportunity to correct these inaccuracies—

I am dear Sir

Yours truly

G G Barrett

Hepworth Dixon Esqre

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

___________________