929. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 268–274.
[London]
March 24 1842.
I write to you my beloved friend in the full gladness of receiving your letter—beyond hope—this morning. Is my beloved friend such a sceptic as one question seems to say? “Do you really care for my gossipping letters”! Care for your letters! what,—I? What am I then? (there’s the elementary question in philosophy to meet yours!) what am I, that I shd not care for your letters!
If I do not empty my heart out with a great splash on the paper, everytime I have a letter from you, & speak my gladness & thankfulness, it is lest I shd weary you of thanksgivings! For no other reason, be sure! Your letters have been my palm trees in the desert, my nosegays from the garden, my “sweet south” [1] & singing nightingales, since the first day they came to me. Even Crow’s face shines with reflection from my face when she gives them to me—& if Flush is the bearer, as he very often is, it seems to me that he wags his tail & shakes his ears ten times for once under another burden. Your letters—do you know what they are worth, that you should ask me such a question! Why if they were not yours—but that is an impossible hypothesis—why if I did not love you—but that is another—take the letters up in a pair of tongs as an abstraction & hold them in the air, .. what spirit in the world wd not leap high to catch them? Do you not know their price & delightfulness .. as bare letters? Surely you must guess a little at their value! You who care for Hayley’s, must devine the higher light. Still—if they were dross, I shd care to have them because I love you—and if you were naught to me, I shd care to have them because they are so far from dross.
Quæry. Did nobody ever, in all the world except me, my beloved friend, admire your letters loud out to you? I am curious. They on the other hand, are curiously excellent, true to the keynote of your published works but often gifted with a tone both higher & sweeter. The compass of mind is surely greater in the letters—& the expression can scarcely be called less uniformly happy in them. They often make me wonder at the remembrance of what you once told me about the labour you use “in composition”. Why this—in this letter of yours ..,—is “composition” in the sight of our eyes & to the attesting of our intelligences—this, which ran from under your fingers while you wrote it! We want no better composition from you after all—& wherefore shd you give greater elaboration? Over this very composition & the rest of its order, editors & booksellers will be quarrelling a hundred years hence,—& readers rejoicing. Miss Mitford’s letters will go down to Prince Posterity [2] with her Village & Belford Regis & other of her writings. In the meantime let me beseech of her to believe that a commoner in Wimpole Street cares as much for them now with this living earnest heart, as His Royal Highness of the future ever can!–
We have—that is, Papa has—Miss Seward’s Letters [3] (to turn to a very different & lower subject) & you shall have them .. if you will promise to tell me what it is in them that I liked when I ought to have known better. I have read them three, four .. peradventure five times. There is an attraction somewhere, however out of sight may be the loadstone.
Richardson’s correspondence has charmed me [4] —“charming” being the right word, since I verily & indeed believed myself wrapt up close in the domestic brocades of the Harlowe family, all the time I spent in reading it. His own letters are letters out of his romances to the very crossing of the t[’]s—and they seem capable of eliciting a Miss Howe [5] out of any sprightly correspondent he may be pleased to magnetize with the waving of his pen. Lady Bradleigh [sic] is delightful––I dont wonder that he tired himself with pacing up & down Hyde Park in his desire to catch a glimpse of her! [6] That he didn’t fall in love with her in all gravity, I wonder at more. I read that volume with quite a romance-palpitation. Thank you, thank you for telling me of the book, which I never even heard of before .. or at least never with sufficient interest, to remember its entity. It is altogether to you that I owe this new pleasure!–
What I grumble at—if I had’nt something to grumble at, this world of ours wd’nt be grumbledom—is that Mrs Barbauld shd have thought it necessary to cut down the mss to fit her particular box. Why the materials might have filled twelve volumes instead of six! Oh those sensible editors! what harm they do in the world! If they shd treat your letters so!–
And that reminds me of your requirement of Hayley’s editor—that he shd cut away all the epithets & blow away the Della Crusca!! [7] My dearest friend! I start back before such a proposition! I beseech you to whisper it very softly into the ground & plant it up with clay the next time you are tempted to pronounce such a word– In my mind, that race of editors is far too much given to take liberties already! They do not want your encouragement to address their “improvements” to any text open to their attack—while the whole world of books is their oyster, which with their swords they open!– [8] Be the texts of all authors, from Shakespeare to Hayley, sacred from the touch of all editors!– “Aroint ye”—ye, who are no witches!– [9]
I have written to Mr Townsend—(owing him an acknowledgement for his pretty azure poem, & having had previously a dumb devil from the Athenæum—) & ventured to take some notice of the expectation he expressed to you. My dearest Miss Mitford, you were quite right as kind, in saying to him what you did. I have no power to touch the Athenæum with my finger, in the behalf of the thing nearest my heart. Neither do I covet the power,——which may be said aside. Therefore indeed he must go to Mr Darley—&—between you & me—if he depends for tender mercies upon Mr Darley, I am very sorry for him. [10] Mr Darley has added to his doctrine lately, his hopeful doctrine of the extinction of Dramatic Genius now & for ever in England, [11] a doctrinal codicil on the exhaustion of the poetical faculty generally. Did you observe what is written in a late article upon Art—a leading article in the Athenæum journal, & bearing obvious marks of what Hayley wd call the ‘Darleyan hand’? Did you observe what is set down there on the being-worn-out-edness of this England! That the poets we have had, we have had—& are now superannuated to any poetical purpose whatever!!– [12] Is’nt it too bad that a Literary Journal shd freeze up our hearts’ blood with such theories? I am very angry indeed.
I like this waste of the public money upon bishops of New Zealand!! & of Jerusalem!! [13] as little as you do, & have ventured to be open with Mr Townsend & tell him as much. The utter absurdity (to say nothing at all of money) of forcing out the forms & ceremonies of this Parliament church, out among the savages, I cd even cry over in utter vexation. Think of the lawn sleeves & the mitre, beautifying a “spiritual lord” under circumstances of such utter incongruity. A bishop of New Zealand!– No—let them send missionaries, simple men with simple words—& I wd not grudge them the monies from Glasgow or elsewhere. Spiritual wants are crying wants—more touching perhaps to such as know the price of spiritual comfort than any cry of the bare body; & particularly, when we recollect that to such as do not know that, the physical cry is moving. But let those who are sent, be missionaries. The bishops are impotent, have been found to be impotent, in all situations of the kind—& as I ventured to tell Mr Townsend, the martyr soul of poor Williams was the true Bishop-Soul for the south seas. [14]
There is great sweetness in his little poem to be sure—a few lines together which one smiles over to oneself as for pleasure. Still—what a subject! I do not mean it theologically—but what a subject for a poet!– He says the sermon ran into rhythm—which was a reason for the preacher of the sermon preaching it rhythmically, but none at all for Mr Townsend’s singing the subject-matter of the preaching over again. I must join you in regretting it!–
Ah—but you will not join with me. You will make me out to be wrong—& so, no wonder that I shd tremble over an ideality of wrongness, such as may be mine! Still—you will let me struggle for an admission (will you not?) that a work without unity is a defective work—& that a work which leaves no sovereign impression, cannot have unity. The reader’s impression is the transcript—may it not be called so?—of the author’s conception—or rather of the poet’s—since the principle refers essentially to works of the imagination. Should there not be a sovereign impression? Should the impression not be a transcript? It appears to me that when the Greeks talked about unity .. they meant something of this sort—& something as far as possible from the French interpretation. [15] And it appears to me—to me who dare to babble thus about criticism with your face turned toward me & yr opinion against me––that all the chief works of art from Shakespeare’s to your Mr Haydon’s must evolve a thought for either reader or spectator. If we looked at nature as the angels do, we might say so of nature too (as indeed we may of particular portions of nature)—but the difference between art & nature is, that we see the whole of art, as the chief angels may, nature—& that each great work of art is a universe suited to the finite embrace of our souls & whose full meaning is evolved in their embrace. Am I mystical past bearing? Have patience with me my beloved friend! And have patience too while I remark in relation to your remark, i.e. that the necessity for an idea is as bad as a necessity for a moral,—that I object far more to the base mean stupid kind of morality enforced by the moral-mongers than I can do to their principle. Tell me—has not Clarissa a moral? though she perished by tenfold agonies, the moral wd stand firm! Has not all life, all Nature a moral .. if we cd discern it always! Has not Shakespeare a truer moral than Miss Edgeworth? [16] I think so.
And oh! have patience with me once more when I dare to whisper that exactly in the unity of conception which appears to me the great accomplishment of the artist, Walter Scott appears defective. Forgive me for thinking—& precisely for that reason—lower of him than you do! You know,—you have heard me (with a shudder,—with many a shudder!) speak a whole octave below your enthusiasm on the subject of Scott’s genius. Well—behold the reason of it, at last! He is a great writer—but not a poet—a maker—in any high sense! Not at least in my humblest of doxies!–
Can you pardon me? Yes! But you did’nt—nevertheless—answer a question I asked you at the end of one of my last letters—the question .. whether you did’nt sometimes think me opiniative or ted .. whether you didn’t think I was “too bold” for a cloth of frieze! [17] Ah! I feel the needle pricking me through the tender silence!– And so, no more of unities—which have indeed done harm enough in the world without my taking them up in my bravery.
Half way in this letter—dear Mr Kenyon came suddenly again!—beyond hope & expectation as I had seen him four & twenty hours before: & his coming prevented the going of all this writing to you. He has dined with Lady Morgan, & seems to be almost under a vow, never to dine with her again. Dont tell anybody. It was whispered to me—& I whisper it back to you—a confidence in both relations:––but he was disgusted, heart-startled at the hardness & worldliness of the talk at dinner. Clever, he said it was—very clever—but of the cleverness which comes by speaking one’s soul out “without regard to any social or moral restraint”—the subject, during dinner, the poor people who were to come afterwards—& who, coming, were all welcomed with extended hands, as very dear friends, whom it had been a pleasure to cut up (not “into little stars”) [18] in their absence. Lady Morgan said to him—“Oh—you have shut your house to us! you wont let us in at all now”—to which he answered that he used to receive ladies at his house but had grown shy & given it up. Before the evening ended the resolution was shut & locked.
It is late—I must shut & lock too. Thank you for letting me see Miss Harrison’s graceful & feeling lines. [19] They are just that, I think—without showing much power or originality. It is a touching subject taken into the heart! How are you? how is Dr Mitford? And the dear little poney? My Flushie has just had an escape from the jaws of Mr Chichester’s great dog [20] —he shrieking & screaming & clinging to Arabel’s arms! My poor Flushie!
God bless you! your kindness is too too great! God bless you–
Ever your EBB
Not a word of the Corn Law letter. [21] It is very able. What is your mind about the new tax? That Sir Robert Peel! He is “subtlest of the beasts of the field”. [22]
Address: Miss Mitford.
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 367–373.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. See letter 668, note 3.
2. Swift’s A Tale of a Tub (1704) was dedicated “to His Royal Highness Prince Posterity.”
3. Letters of Anna Seward Written Between the Years 1784 and 1807 [ed. Archibald Constable], 1811.
4. Edited by Anna Letitia Barbauld (née Aikin, 1743–1825), the correspondence was published in six volumes in 1804.
5. The Harlowe family’s “domestic brocades” are recounted in Clarissa: or, The History of a Young Lady (1748); about a third of the work is written in the form of letters. Anna Howe was Clarissa’s particular friend.
6. Lady Dorothy Bradshaigh (née Bellingham), the wife of Sir Roger Bradshaigh, corresponded with Richardson from 1750 until his death in 1761 and was the model for Charlotte Grandison in Sir Charles Grandison (1753). In an early letter, Richardson tells her how “I walked up and down … the path between the trees and the Mall, my eyes … looking for a certain gill-o’-th’-wisp … Yet, she cannot be come, thought I … And so continued walking, expecting, and sometimes fretting, till the Mall was vacant of ladies” (Correspondence, 1804, IV, 372).
7. John Johnson (d. 1833), who edited the correspondence of his cousin William Cowper (1817), also edited Hayley’s Memoirs (1823). Discussing Hayley’s style, he spoke of “that exuberance of feeling, which … impelled him to invest with endearing epithets, every person and every thing, of which he had occasion to speak—an impulse … prejudicial to the development of his conceptions as an author” (II, 221). The Accademia della Crusca was founded in Florence in 1582 with the object of sifting impurities from the language (“crusca” means bran); EBB obviously feels that an editor should not blow away the chaff represented by such “endearing epithets.”
8. Cf. The Merry Wives of Windsor, II, 2, 3–4.
9. “Avaunt, begone.” Cf. King Lear, III, 4, 124.
10. See letters 906 and 918 for EBB’s earlier references to Townsend’s poem, “New Zealand.” EBB’s comments make it apparent that he had hoped for her intercession with the editor of The Athenæum to get it reviewed. Darley, of course, was the magazine’s critic who had earned EBB’s censure for his reviews of Ion and Chaucer, Modernized. He did not notice Townsend’s poem.
11. The review of Ion (The Athenæum, 28 May 1836, no. 448, pp. 371–373) included Darley’s dismissive comment: “the Drama is not dead, for then were there some hope of its resurrection: it is annihilated!”
12. For an extract from Darley’s article, see letter 927, note 3.
13. An episcopal council in 1841 had recommended the foundation of a series of colonial sees, of which New Zealand was one of the first. For the consecration of its first bishop, see letter 906, note 7. Palestine, “which in the events of the last 12 months has been brought before Christendom” (The Times, 11 October 1841), was another new see. Michael Solomon Alexander (1799–1845), born and raised in the Jewish faith, was baptized in 1825 and ordained in 1827. From 1832 to 1841, he held the Chair of Hebrew and Rabbinical Literature at King’s College, London. He was consecrated as the first Bishop of Jerusalem on 7 November 1841, arriving there to take up his duties on 21 January 1842.
14. John Williams (1796–1839), “the most successful missionary of modern times” (DNB), spent the years 1817 to 1833 visiting various islands in the Pacific. In 1834 he returned to England, travelling to different parts of the country to address meetings sponsored by the London Missionary Society, one of which EBB attended (see letter 946). Returning to the New Hebrides in 1839, he was killed and eaten by the natives on 20 November 1839.
15. See letter 816, note 2.
16. EBB contrasts Shakespeare’s illustrations of the universal human condition with Miss Edgeworth’s attention to specific issues (e.g., the relationship of children and servants, mentioned in letter 856).
17. See letter 594, note 3.
18. Cf. Romeo and Juliet, III, 2, 22.
19. See SD1171.
20. J.H.R. Chichester, a lawyer, was the Moulton-Barretts’ neighbour at 49 Wimpole St.
21. The Corn Laws kept prices unduly high, especially in times of bad harvests (see letter 540, note 3). A letter in The Times, 12 March 1842, signed “C.C.” and addressed to Sir Robert Peel, the Prime Minister, proposed a sliding scale of duties to alleviate the injustices of the current legislation, import duty to be high when domestic prices were low, but to decrease progressively as the domestic price rose.
22. Cf. Genesis, 3:1.
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