SD836. Edward Moulton-Barrett (father) to Samuel Moulton-Barrett (uncle)
Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 335 (in part).
London
Novr 15. 1837.
My dear Sam
I wrote you a few hasty lines by the Margaret Thomson, expressing very faintly my feelings on the receipt of your letter of the 29th August. It is not so much the amount of your gifts, splendid as they are, nor the mode of doing the thing, grateful as that is, but the assurance which it conveys to me, that I & mine are dear to you; this conviction is indeed a balm, & full answer to my frequent prayers that we should stand in relation to your affections, where I knew we once stood, & where I now trust we shall abide. Thanks my dear Sam from Ba & me, & I am sure I may say, from every Child of mine, for these things will not only add to our outward comforts, but to all our delightful feelings within, & thus have you contributed to our happiness, & may the pleasure you speak of as fortaking, in ministering thus to our comforts be long your possession, indeed I have an inward trust that such will be the case, that you will get over this disease & enter upon a new lease of health & usefulness. Oh, may God grant it in his mercy! I waited upon Mrs R. Scarlett & according to your desire paid her the £200, & for which I took a Memorandum from her of acknowledgement. Your Bill for £1590.11.10 has been presented & accepted in due form, so I trust this disagreable business is at last disposed of.
Your Bedstead & accompaniments, Chairs & Looking Glasses, spoons & Cookery will all go out with some Books in the Garland Grove, Captn Pengilly, the Clock & other Books will follow. I am sorry that I can get no conveyance at present for the Bricks on the terms specified by you, but if I cannot be more successful between this & Selby’s sailing, I know he will take them; Pengilly would have taken them, but he already had on board, when your letter arrived, 50,000 for Mr Gordon, & he had no space for more. Selby has promised to get the anchor, he says it may be bought cheap, but it must have necessarily a Chain to Attach it the Buoy to it, and we dont know the depth of Water outside the Reef, however we must get it long enough & the superfluous links may easily be struck off.
Ba is quite gratified at your encomiums on the weeping Queen, & will avail herself of your hint in sending the best Print extant of a likeness of her, but it is understood in Feby next that a very superior one will be published, that she will also send you. This supreme Lady is getting golden opinions from all, from some of sincerity, others by constraint, & seeing a Queen’s as well as a King’s Name is a Tower of strength, I think it will go far to neutralise a good many Votes in our coming Parliament, who by nature are Tories. I am glad to see by some returns in Jamaica that your House of Assembly is getting more liberal.
Sturge unquestionably has created a great sensation here by his exforté statements, but I dont think that any other results will be the consequence thereof, than the granting of a Committee, when I doubt not such counter statements will be made as to satisfy the Country; the misfortune is however the keeping up of the constant excitement among the Negroes & the doubts |again| of the Planters, & thus throwing every obstacle in the way to the due understanding of the relative position between the Parties & the gentle transition that would otherwise take place as the period of 1840 approached–
I opened your letter of the 26th Sepr before that of Mr Farquharson on the subject of a Compromise, & of R. Barretts great anxiety about it, & certainly hoped from the Contents of yours, that something had moved R.B. to consider his nephews interest, as well as, tho’ late, if not from feeling, yet from some little sense of justice to us, he was disposed at length to cease to prosecute; but judge my astonishment, when I read his letter, a copy of which Mr Farquharson sent me, offering, but in a more objectionable manner, the same terms whic<h h>e offered me, & which I sent you, in August 1826, before we obtained the late decision. I tell you he is incorrigible, & to compromise wi<th> such an one is impossible; what he understands by compromise is to give him every thing. At the same time I must acknowledge, & I have told Mr F. so, that he had a great temptation held out to him to demand the terms he did, & I am the more surprised that the latter should have written the Note he did to R.B., as well as held previously the conversation with him, when from your letter to me, you say you had informed Farquharson that it was clearly to be understood, in treating about a compromise, that no more sacrifices were to be made by me except barely paying my own expences. Would you believe this good but injudicious man, after talking with R.B. who insisted upon James Clarke being paid by me £8000, with a long arrangement about other Sums to liquidate the latter’s demand, and a further statement of a proposed arrangement between Sam Barrett & James Clarke, with all of which we had nothing to do, but nether James Clarke’s Agent, began a Note to R.B., his object being to exclude the consideration of J.C. altogether & which should have been done at first at the conversation, by desiring R.B. to send him the lowest terms on which he would submit to a compromise state the sum of money to be paid by Mr E. Barrett, without any allusion &c &c– This was not surely the way to bring R B to reason, on the contrary he has been supplied with the best apology to satisfy his Nephew & his Nephew’s friends that only let him hold out & they will obtain all they want, for see what our opponents’ Agent has written, & altho’ Mr F. said he was unauthorised, this disclaimer will avail nothing, for it may fairly be argued Mr F. would hardly have said thus much if Mr S. Barrett had not intimated something to him, whenever he gathered sufficient to act. I consider this a sad business, but it cannot be helped now. If you cannot act, Pray leave it to Anderson—Farquharson evidently knows nothing about it– Of course R.B.’s demand is a full answer to Sir J Rowe & Middleton’s notion that nothing remains between us but the Costs to settle–
Your goodness shall be looked after–
Yrs my beloved Sam
Most affectionately
E M Barrett
Address, on integral page: S. M. Barrett Esqre / Cinnamon Hill / Little River / St James’s / Jamaica.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Eton College Library.
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