893. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 198–201.
[London]
Saturday [1–6 January 1842] [1]
My beloved friend,
I had hoped to lay by this morning to my pleasure & a letter to you .. when my aunt changed her mind or had her mind changed & left us today instead of monday. Therefore I have been thinking & saying goodbye goodbye .. the spring of my pen is broken!– George is going too—dear Georgie! Only to be away a week though—but still a parting is a parting—and these things have grown graver to me lately.
Dearest dearest Miss Mitford, I have pondered a week past, whether Dr Mitford or even yourself wd care to have a little of the West Indian Chocolate which we have sometimes. It is scarcely possible to get it in London unless one’s face be set in toward Jamaica—and a week since Papa had some directly from thence. I wd have sent it as soon as the thought struck me—but he said “Stop—wait! wait till we ascertain the goodness of it”—because there’s a doubt—a difference of form & colour from the orthodoxy of Jamaica chocolate. If they adjudicate it good, you shall have it on monday my dearest friend. I do think it might suit Dr Mitford. It is even recommended by the Homœopathists .. & Dr Jephson of Leamington smiles over it. [2] At least three weeks ago, my cousin Isabel Butler [3] a patient of his just now, sent for some to Papa .. in vain at the moment. Oh I shall be so pleased if you, either of you, like it better than I do!
Mr Kenyon has been here again, & I told him without your name in the tale, that I wanted to know “the rights” of Mrs Jameson. I had heard, I said, two stories of her, perfectly different, & didn’t know which to prefer. [4] ‘Well’—he answered—‘tell me your stories, & then you shall hear mine.’ So I told him, and his witnessing third story confirmed the one I told you. She has suffered much, by his account, very much & undeservedly, even from the altar steps down to these poor laborious days at Notting Hill—and as to this Mr Jameson, he is a master-man only in cruelty & takes no eminence from talent or accomplishment. He is only superiorly bad!– Therefore my dearest just & merciful friend, you will think better of one authoress at least in the world, & no longer withhold from her your dear esteem. The rights of her do, you see, turn out to be the wrongs of her. Did you not really like the introductory dialogue to those translations from the Princess Amelia?– [5] Well, but personally, you will be glad, (for I know you), to do her justice .. justice as a wife & daughter & sister. Mr Kenyon says that she wins her way with you, the more you know her. She is very plain—has red hair—but all that vanishes when she talks & you come to know her– The object of her voyage to Canada was conciliation. She hung by a hope to it—which hope broke off like a Canadian icicle. She returned home without having even looked in his face!—— [6]
Dearest Miss Mitford I began these little sheets on saturday morning & have been drawn out of sight of the post ever since. Have you wondered about my silence? Ah I do hope it did’nt look unkindly. I think of you, my beloved friend, long foolscap sheets-full & crossed! Never think I do not think of you.
Tell me how the chocolate seems. [7] They call it good—but it does’nt look quite as I wd have it. The next excellent, which comes within my reach shall go straight to you.
Did you see Mr Hunter’s treatise upon the Tempest? [8] Mr Kenyon ‘caused it to pass before my face’ [9] & I did not complain of the briefness of the vision. I hate (be it uttered in Christian charity!) I do hate all those geographical statistical historical yea, & natural-historical illustrators of a great poet. I hate them & excommunicate them! I dont care a grain of sand on the shore whether Prospero’s island was Bermuda or Lampedusa! Certainly says Mr Hunter, it’s Lampedusa—and he embraces with his title-page a map .. an absolute map of Lampedusa! And we are to put it, my dearest friend, into all our editions of Shakespeare!! The proof is complete! Lampedusa has a troglodytal coast, & Prospero lived in a cave! And there are lime-trees in both places! As if Shakespeare cdnt make lime trees grow any where—out of granite stone if he pleased—and find caves in a wood! As if Shakespeare’s Island was’nt Shakespeare’s island—and as if that was’nt enough for us!–
But listen—here is another discovery! Ariel, the dainty Ariel, that creation of beauty .. who do you suppose Ariel is? Of all the birds in the air & beasts on dry land, which is Ariel? Answer!– “A bee!” A bee!! Do you understand?– “Where the bee sucks, there suck I” [10] —& therefore, says the Shakespearian Ergoteur, [11] —Ariel must be, I think, more like a bee than anything else. Well—now you are surprised, but I have’nt done yet with my natural history. Who do you think Caliban is! I shd guess “a fly”—if I did’nt know—thinking, not merely of an antithesis for Ariel, but of the derivation of Beelzebub or bul, that king of the flies, [12] & of Mr Hunter’s evident tendency to consider Calibanism a species of devilry. But no—it is’nt a fly .. & you will never guess. Who is Caliban? Answer—“a kind of tortoise!” Poor Shakespeare! If he had’nt been twice immortal, how he wd have died miserably in the hands of his commentators! He wd not have lived up to these last lashes.
Mr Hunter is a Unitarian minister, & an execrably ingenious man.
I have been reading too by the same grace .. of dear Mr Kenyon .. Mr Alford’s Chapters on the Greek poets. [13] I dont like them at all. Such criticism, on the surface & of long familiarity with the common eye, the sense of the world has outgrown. It wd have done for those days when poetry was considered a pretty play like skittles, but is not suitable to this now, when its popularity as a toy is passed, & its depth & holiness as a science more surely tho’ partially regarded.
Dear little Flush is quite well, thank you! His illness did not extend over the evening of Christmas day & he recovered just in time to take a little turkey! He is quite well now, & in most abounding spirits,—& goes out most days,—although, when in the house it is as hard as ever to tempt him from the duskiness & solitude of this room. He wont stir out of it with anybody except Crow! They all ‘pay him every attention’ and he recognizes & returns it courteously …, in everything except the presentation of Papa’s snuffbox. But he wont leave the room, unless they have their hats on, for one of them! If Crow happen to be away, I am forced to send for his dinner,—or Mr Flush falls into low spirits for the lack of it. He wont leave me even for that, .. & a few days since, three o clock found him dinnerless yet resolute not to go. He cried a little now & then .. & at last I sent for it!—& he thanked me for my courtesy as emphatically & eloque<ntly> as tail could wag!– How are you, both of you? How is Ben’s mother?
Dearest friend, I do not speak of Mr Kenyon’s movements because I know he was going to write to you. You wont see him this winter! God bless you always.
Your most affectionate
EBB
Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 323–326.
Manuscript: Eton College Library, Folger Shakespeare Library, and Wellesley College.
1. Inclusive dating provided by London postmark of 6 January 1842.
2. Henry Jephson (1798–1878) was a well-known physician, practising at Leamington Spa.
3. Isabella Horatia Butler (1822–46) was the 3rd daughter and 7th child of Sir Thomas and Lady Frances Butler.
4. For EBB’s prior reference to Mrs. Jameson’s unhappy marriage, see letter 886.
5. Social Life in Germany, Illustrated in the Acted Dramas of … the Princess Amelia of Saxony. Translated from the German, with Introduction and Notes by Mrs. Jameson (2 vols., 1840).
6. EBB is misinformed; Mr. Jameson had been pressing his wife, who had gone to Germany in 1834, to join him in Canada and this she did, with some reluctance, in September 1836. However, the hoped-for reconciliation did not transpire, although Jameson did agree to give his wife an annuity of £300 when she left him in 1838 to return to Europe.
7. Miss Mitford told Miss Anderdon that Dr. Mitford disliked the flavour, but that she herself “found astonishing relief from the use of it” (see SD1165).
8. Joseph Hunter (1783–1861) was a Presbyterian minister, antiquarian and author, who devoted much of his adult life to the interpretation of Shakespeare’s texts. In 1839, he published A Disquisition on the Scene, Origin, Date, etc. of Shakespeare’s Tempest, in which he suggested that the play was one of the earliest in the Shakespeare canon, rather than one of the latest, as is generally believed. He also hypothesized that Prospero’s island was Lampedusa, off the coast of Tunisia.
9. Cf. Job, 4:15.
10. The Tempest, V, 1, 88.
11. “Wrangler; disputant.”
12. Beelzebub, the god of Ekron, was described as “the chief of the devils” (Luke, 12:15); to the Jews, he personified the false gods. The name was popularly held to signify “Lord of Flies.”
13. Henry Alford (1810–71), Dean of Canterbury (1857–71), a prolific author, is now best known for his edition of the Greek Testament (1849–61). EBB refers to his Chapters on the Poets of Ancient Greece (1841).
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