Correspondence

906.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 227–229.

[London]

2 Febr– 1842

Thank you my beloved friend for Mrs Niven’s note & all the dearnesses of your own letter. Be sure that I am conscious of the full worth of her good opinion—& not the less so, that I know her only through you! The note itself too wd be ready to help one to a pleasant impression if that were lacking. As it is, I will ask you to let it, the note, stay with me (may it?) as an earnest of an acquaintanceship to come, which you have taught me to lay up on my shelf among agreeable possible futurities!–

Still I cant consent to give away my Prometheus to such “..... uses” [1] as the perfectibility of science—I cant indeed! Do you see how science is taking away all the earth from under our feet, & ploughing up the violets? We shall not have a foot’s breadth of ground soon, to stand on & look up from, to the sky. Science has taken more than enough as it is; & I will not hear of her touching this noble Prometheus with her forefinger. He is hung up safe out of her way—& prefers his old vulture to the new patent .... (what grand name shall we find for a perforating engine?),—at his tormented side. [2] Oh no, no, no! Be on my side, my dearest friend, & dont consent to it. Science may triumph gloriously to the freeing of the elements—& let her do it. But what are the elements after all? The symbol is no glory to Prometheus.

Surely he is the sign of this great ruined struggling Humanity, arising through the agony & the ruin to the renovation & the spiritual empire. I cant consent to desecrate him with the badge of a lower symbol. Be on my side. And dont let your accomplished friend think me very bold for all this rebellion.

In the meantime—oh do you think me obstinate? Something in your last letter made me half tremble—fancying it. You know, Mr Kenyon used to call me ‘perverse’—but ‘obstinate’ is a worse word still—& then I dont think I cd be very obstinate before a wish of yours. My dearest friend, your kindness is dearest to me—your generous praises & encouragement are as dear as … not your love, but love of the common sort. Well then—being sure of that, the inference is plain that I wd not cast your advice over my shoulder .. even for good luck, as people do or used to do with salt,—& the very reverse of good luck wd such a foolish action bring me! No no– Not obstinate! I plead against the thought of it. I will do what I can to satisfy you, & when I can do it. I will indeed!

In regard to Psyche, you will admit that I could’nt break with Mr Horne after an agreement & a commencement, .. nay, a promise to come to the work when he is free from a certain Biographical dictionary which enchains him now. [3] It wd not be a kind act—it wd be something worse, I think, than simply unkind. I may not do this duality of a poem at all even now––that is quite possible. But then I must not take a step towards the possibility. And if it is done .. why my dearest friend, I shall not be all my life in doing it .. not intentionally at least. And I will promise you the privilege of losing your place & knowing where to find it. Oh I wish I had shown you the full-length plan—it may not be half as bad as you fancy!

In regard to the dramatic, we do not want the thing strictly so called– Mr Horne is a poet—is he not? You admit that—I know you do.

I am up to the crown of my head in the Athenæum & the Greeks just now—but afterwards there may be a long interregnum between the end of my prose & the beginning of Psyche, & I must think out some subject, perhaps with a Napoleon in it, [4] to dart down upon in that free interval! Oh how kind you are to care so much, to care at all, for my writing at all. God bless you my beloved friend!–

This collection book or selection book sacred to female writers, this blue book as people are sure to call it, is another instance. —That you shd care for me!–

Of course I wd not refuse any poem I had by me, & I have plenty of short mss half written & half blotted .. but Mr Dion Bourcicault (is that right?) has not asked me .. which is a necessary preliminary on more occasions than those of quadrilles & marriages. I cant get in amongst you without being asked, can I? & being shut up here, have no possible means of hinting my willingness delicately, by hysterics or otherwise. [5] Seriously, the probability is that he wont apply to me at all. There will be so many crowded names—& if he goes to France for them .. ! By the way, why not embrace, while he was about the plan of the sort, (honi soit qui mal y pense) [6] why not include all the female writers of Europe. Germany Spain & Italy wd fill as many pages as our England—& it wd give a completeness & interest to the work.

Dear Mr Kenyon has come back & has been to see me. It is very kind of him. I fancied him rather out of spirits. Oh—it might be fancy!

Did I tell you that your Mr Townsend sent me some sheets of a new poem of his to look at, ten days ago? It is on a strange subject!– The departure & farewell sermon of the Bishop of new Zealand, who appears to have been his pastor in England—positively the sermon turned into verse—the identical sermon! Yet there is the sweetness common to Mr Townsend—& more clearness! It is in the course of publication. [7] You will like everything but the subject!

The apotheosis of the Charleses in the book you speak of, [8] made me smile—but such things ought to make us frown. Yet how shall we marvel,—with that service upon the martydom (!!!) left, in scorn & desecration of every sensible opinion & sacred feeling, within the leaves of what is called the National prayer book?– [9] Who can wonder at Puseyism? or at any laudation from reverend lips of that “most religious king” Charles the second. [10] His pretty dogs were the best of him. Thank you for my Flush’s pedigree!

Your own

EBB

Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 341–344.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. i.e., “base uses” (Hamlet, V, 1, 202).

2. Prometheus, as punishment for offending Jupiter, was chained to a rock on Mt. Caucasus for 30,000 years, where a vulture fed upon his liver, which never diminished though continually devoured; he was, however, delivered from his chains after 30 years by Hercules.

3. See letter 902, note 6.

4. Napoleon and Joan of Arc were both mentioned as possible subjects in letters 873 and 874.

5. Dion Boucicault (1820?–90), originally Bourcicault, the Irish actor and dramatist, was apparently planning an anthology of selections from contemporary women writers, and had invited Miss Mitford to contribute; she obviously felt that EBB should be included in such a work. EBB’s reference to it as a “blue book” anticipates the application of the pejorative “blue-stocking” to its contributors. As far as is known, nothing came of the project. The reference to “hysterics” is an allusion to Miss Pardoe’s behaviour while in Reading (see letter 903).

6. “Shame to him who evil thinks,” the motto of the Order of the Garter, founded in 1349.

7. The poem was published by Robert Benton Seeley and advertised for sale at 2s.6d., but we have been unable to trace a copy. George Augustus Selwyn (1809–78) had been consecrated Bishop of New Zealand on 17 October 1841, and had sailed to take up that post on 26 December. Townsend may have known him while Selwyn was a curate in Windsor in the 1830’s.

8. As EBB speaks of only one book, it seems reasonable to infer that it was Historical Sketches of Charles the First, Cromwell, Charles the Second and the Principal Personages of that Period (1828), by William Dorset Fellowes.

9. By Act of Parliament, a special prayer was added to The Book of Common Prayer in 1662 for inclusion in the service on 30 January every year, a “day of fasting and humiliation,” the anniversary of the martyrdom of Charles I. This prayer, together with three others mandated by Parliament to commemorate important events, remained there until 1859.

10. One of the special prayers mentioned above was required to be delivered on 29 May, which marked both the birthday of Charles II and the date of the Restoration. He personally was renowned for his easy morals, which set the standard for his court, hence the implied sarcasm of EBB’s quoting the Prayer Book’s description of him.

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