963. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 352–354.
[London]
May 21. 1842–
I am longing to hear from you my dearest friend,—longing & wondering why I dont! You spoil me for all common delays—you spoiled me—I am spoilt! That’s done! and the next thing is that you must go on with kindness upon kindness as fast almost as breath follows breath, or I shall be “low fantastical’[’], [1] & getting up all sorts of distresses for suppositious causes! It certainly does seem to me a long time since I heard from you! Certainly I wrote last! Is’nt it? Did’nt I? Certainly I am half uneasy at your silence! That’s a certain ‘certainly’.
Mr Kenyon knows all the kindness you invite him to—but he is not going into Devonshire, he is not going to Scotland, and he is going to the continent! There’s a change of plan! He remains in London until August, & then he sets off with Mr Bezzi, .. sees his brother at Vienna, helps his companion to four days’ vision of his family at Florence, & returns home at the close of eight or nine weeks. No! I am not very sorry! He was bent on going somewhere—and eight or nine weeks spent in Scotland & Devonshire might as well be over the Alps—and then, besides,—August is further off than June is. I shall be sure to miss him very much whenever he goes, he has been so kind in coming to see me. I see him most weeks, once at least! That is very kind—considering what a milky way of habitable stars he revolves in day & night without stopping.
My dear Arabel is down stairs again & pretty well, except some weakness from the meazles, & a tendency to a swelled & painful face—and I am beginning to hope that we may see no more victims marked for seclusion.
Mr Kenyon & I were longing so for you, two days ago when he was sitting in this room. “Oh!” he said “how I do wish she were here—living in London! We might all pet her & do all the honor we could to her, & enjoy her delightfulness! Instead of that, she must, in some degree at least, be thrown away upon the society round about Three Mile Cross! in a degree she must!” Of course I said yes & yes & yes to it—and so that’s the way in which we modest people wish you to belong to us as the only relative position in the world not altogether unworthy of you.
Oh you wont thank us for such wishes! You wd rather be in the Silchester woods,—with that proper gratitude for our orizons, for which I give you credit.
In the meanwhile these meazles came just when they should not. I dare not even wish for you in this house .. as a sleeper in the rooms up stairs .. with this possible probable almost necessary infection in the air of them. I cudgel my brains [2] for a hope apart from a risk to you, & do not dare to take one up. What can be done? How is Dr Mitford? How are the geraniums? How do you think of it all?
Dont let me forget to tell you that Tennyson’s new volumes rapt me in Elysium. [3] New, they are not altogether—the first of them containing every poem of those formerly published which the poet intends to [let] live. Of the new poem[s] we may say, there is less of the quaint peculiarity, more individuality, more power in the sense of nervous utterance, more thought under the obvious ordinary forms, & less of that high ideality which distinguished the old Tennyson lyrics, & includes always however occultly a higher degree of philosophic thought than the critical world wotteth of. That is my doxy about the poems—the poet being divine as I always felt him to be .. by his step—as the Greeks detected the godship of their gods– [4] Well! but what I wanted to tell you was that one of his idyll’s .. perhaps the most beautiful of all—nay, certainly the most beautiful of all, was by the author’s confession in a note, “suggested .. by a pastoral of Miss Mitford’s”—or “by one of Miss Mitford’s pastorals”. [5] It made my heart leap up to see your name—as ‘at a rainbow in the sky’! [6] I think it will please you a little. I think within myself that fancying myself you, it wd please me a good deal—I think such a godship of Tennyson!!–
The story is your beautiful one of the son marrying against his father’s consent—and of the manner in which his child after his death, is adopted & embraced, after a Ruth-scene in the corn-fields. [7]
Mr Wordsworth goes out of town on friday; but it is only for a week or two to Harrow, & his intention is to return. He has been holding his court royally in London—breakfasting five or six times every morning, & taking evening refreshments as polyglottically. His wife bent over his chair, as Mr Kenyon stood by some evenings ago, & said, stroking his “sublime gray hairs” [8] gently .. “Ah William—you are tiring yourself”!– Do you not like to hear it?
To pass to a lower personnage altho’ still a royal one, I was glad to be told two days since by one of my brothers who had it as a true tradition from somebody called “a silver stick in waiting” a Colonel Read, [9] that the only gentleman with whom the queen shook hands at her last drawing room was Ld Melbourne. And her eagerness of joy was obvious both in the act & the manner! Poor queen! there may be good in her yet: and it is a merit (for a queen) to be cordial to a friend in adversity—! To do another thing attributed to her by silver stick .. i.e. hating Sir Robert .. is a merit in anybody. [10]
I had proofsheets of my Book of the Poets’ review sent to me last week, with a command to send it back next wednesday. If the Athenæum shd have it on saturday, I shall certainly intrude my insolence upon you as in the case of my Greeks—because it is more than a review & accomplishes Mr Dilke’s desire to me of attempting a survey of the English poets. [11]
Dearest dearest friend, how I do trample on your forbearance with wooden shoes [12] & on every possible occasion. Bear with me still—love me so as to make it possible. Do write to me. The longer I think of the silence the blacker it looks. Surely you received my last long letter?
God bless you ever & ever! I am sure I am yours so
EBB.
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 414–417.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. A reversal of Shakespeare’s phrase (Twelfth Night, I, 1, 15).
2. Cf. Hamlet, V, 1, 56.
3. In ancient mythology, Elysium was a place of bliss in the infernal regions, where the souls of the virtuous found themselves after death. EBB’s enthusiasm for Tennyson was reflected in an essay she wrote and sent to Horne in December 1843 as the basis for a chapter in A New Spirit of the Age. He cut up her autograph and pasted it in place in his own manuscript; it is now at the University of Virginia (see Reconstruction, D1374). The essay was included in the 1900 Porter and Clarke edition of EBB’s works (VI, 322–325).
4. Æneid, I, 405.
5. A note at the end of the volume states that “The Idyl of ‘Dora’ was partly suggested by one of Miss Mitford’s pastorals” [“Dora Creswell” in Our Village].
6. Wordsworth, “My heart leaps up when I behold” (1807), line 2.
7. See Ruth, 2:2–23.
8. We have not located the source of this quotation.
9. The Times of 20 May 1842, reporting a reception held the previous day to mark the Queen’s birthday, listed Col. Reid of the 2nd Life Guards, Silver-Stick-in-Waiting, as one of the gentlemen present.
10. As noted previously (letter 944, n. 14), Victoria had been distressed when her close and affectionate relationship with Melbourne had, of necessity, been interrupted when his administration was ousted by Peel’s.
11. The first part of EBB’s essay on The Book of the Poets appeared in The Athenæum of 4 June 1842 (no. 762, pp. 497–499). It was continued in the issues of 11 June (pp. 520– 523), 25 June (pp. 558–560), 6 August (pp. 706–708) and 13 August (pp. 728–729).
12. EBB may have had in mind Goldsmith’s “I hate the French, because they are all slaves and wear wooden shoes” (“The Distresses of a Common Soldier,” Essays, 1765, XXIV).
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