Correspondence

980.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 22–25.

[London]

June 30. 1842–

My beloved friend you are as much oppressed by your ‘Importans’ [1] as ever was the queen with the white hands! and I for my own part wd willingly take up Scarron’s—

 

Je voudrais en effet

En être souffletè– [2]

were it only for the approximation pre-supposed in the punishment. Well! whatever may come of it, I cant be silent—you see I cant—beyond the two days beyond—your delightful ‘lettre de cachet.’ [3] It has exiled me from my good resolutions. I find myself writing, writing again—& teazing you over the heads of from fifty to sixty living persons, to say nothing of signs manual.

I could thank you down ten pages for your letter with the storm in it, [4] & Mr Mainzer’s choral visitations, [5] for the calm! I walked step for step with you in that tempestuous wandering, & enjoyed the excitement without the wetting—which was perhaps as well for me. For me to stand in the rain just now out of pleasure & adventurousness wd be a sort of invocation of the Devil—a reading of the Lord’s prayer backward [6] —a daring of evil influences beyond what is at all tolerable as good. But a few years since, how I used to do it—how I rejoiced in doing it! A hundred times, in the country, when the rain was raining water-spouts, continuous Niagaras, have I jumped out of the ground floor-window, to enjoy, till my breath stopped, that natural shower bath. Can anything be more exhilarating than the sense of being rained upon from Heaven!– A pouring rain with the sunshine threading it as in April, ‘close & silent’ [7] as I said myself in the verses which were happy enough to please you. Do you remember how Bacon,—not least great in that feeling,—bared his head reverently in the rain,—so to do homage to “the descending Spirit of the universe?” [8]

All of which is very pretty sympathy as coming from one friend to another who has been caught in a thunderstorm & soaked to the skin!– But you did not catch cold,—you were not the worse you said at all,—& so I let myself take as much pleasure from the story of your adventure, as the enchantment of the story teller “did in such case make & provide”.

In the meanwhile, after all my fine words, be sure that I shd not have been half as brave as you under similar circumstances. Rain is one thing—& thunder & lightening another—& totally different in their effects upon me. Are you ....… let me find a respectable word for it .... nervous in a thunderstorm. Do you grow pale & silent? does your heart beat? No—say no! I know it is no. But it is so with me. I never feel the sublime of that particular elemental concussion until it is all over. I am cast down instead of elevated—frightened in short. ‘Frightened’ is the plain proper word for it!– [9]

Dear Mr Kenyon has gone away. He came on Sunday to say good-bye—but I had just gone back to bed with a heavy depressing headache, & so I missed the goodbye. He told Arabel that he shd be back again in a fortnight certainly—which I can scarcely be very glad of as it will be only to prepare for the longer absence on the continent. Still I am not like you—I applaud “the design” of the continental wandering– And I think that under certain circumstances I shd extremely enjoy doing the exactly same sinful thing. Think of the German pine woods! & again, those of the Appenines!– Think of the Alpine glories—thrusting into the sun’s face their everlasting snows! Who wdnt be the better for bathing in beauty his senses—his soul? I wish I were with you at this moment, in the heart of the Brockens! [10] —while you perhaps simply wish me there!–

At the end of the fortnight my dearest friend tell me if you have read Wordsworth’s last volume, & whether you can give me any hope of being right in being pleasantly surprised with the tragedy. [11] Of course as a whole & as a tragedy it fails—but still am I right in standing up for certain grandeurs & noblenesses?. Mr Kenyon says that not only Mr Harness but a wilderness of critics, [‘]‘blossoming as the rose” [12] compared to me, will have it that there is no modification of badness—it is bad as bad can be. I am sorry,—& not convinced. And Mr Dilke has flattered me by proposing that I shd review the volume—so that I shall have to speak my thoughts louder than the natural pitch of my voice. [13]

George is on the circuit—dear fellow!– Oh this hot weather—the concatenation of wigs & hot courts & legal opinions & no business! how oppressive it all must be to him!

I doubled back the leaf just now & caught a glimpse of my graphic & ‘by no means common’ expression about the Alps—& it made me smile as it wont do you, at the remembrance of a story which Mr Kenyon told me of the late American minister. Ld Aberdeen had just come into office, & the point was doubtful how far he wd make himself agreeable to Mr Stephenson. [14] Said the latter sublimely—“Let him put on airs with me! I shd like to see it! I would just take two steps backward—draw myself perpendicular up!—and look at him as cold as the snows upon the everlasting hills”!– [15]

There is the story of which my “everlasting snows” reminded me. It is transplanted from Mr Kenyon’s & my confidence into your’s & mine. Pray do not let it go farther.

Of the same Mr Stephenson it is narrated that since his residence in England, he looks at everybody as cold as the snows on the everlasting hills—and as high too. Did you know him?

Give my love to Dr Mitford—& ‘in the interstices between the intersections’ [16] of visitors & letters, oh remember how tenderly & truly I am your

EBB–

Mr Kenyon is gone to the lakes, this time! It is so hot–

My dear little friend, Mary Hunter, has been a pupil of Mr Mainzer, & is his most enthusiastic admirer. She was his pupil at Brighton. Have you seen his ‘Musical Athenæum?’

Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 429–431.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. “Consequence; importance.”

2. Paul Scarron (1610–60), poet and novelist, was the first husband of Mme. de Maintenon, who became, after his death, first the mistress and then the wife of Louis XIV. In his poem “À Madame de Hautefort” (Œuvres de Scarron, 1786, VII, 138–140), he writes of “that incomparable Queen” with “a pair of such white hands.” He feels so “full of veneration” that he “would, in truth, be slapped by them” in order to enjoy their nearness. EBB slightly misquotes the couplet.

3. An arbitrary order for imprisonment.

4. Letter 978.

5. Joseph Mainzer (1801–51), composer and music teacher, left his native Germany in 1833 because of his political beliefs; after stays in Brussels and Paris, he settled in England in 1839, where he founded a periodical, Mainzer’s Musical Times. His most popular work was Singing for the Million (1841).

6. One of the rituals of the Satanic Black Mass.

7. Line 35 of “The House of Clouds,” modified when it was reprinted in Poems (1844).

8. John Aubrey (1626–97), writing of Bacon in his Brief Lives, said that “In April, and the Springtime, his Lordship would, when it rayned, take his Coach (open) to receive the benefit of Irrigation, which he was wont to say was very wholesome because of the Nitre in the Aire and the Universall Spirit of the World.”

9. Several accounts of EBB’s behaviour in storms are to be found in Diary (e.g., pp. 35, 52 and 54).

10. The Brocken, at 3,747 ft. the highest of the Harz Mountains, was the setting for the witches’ sabbath on Walpurgisnacht, the night before 1 May.

11. The tragedy was “The Borderers,” included in Wordsworth’s Poems, Chiefly of Early and Late Years (1842).

12. Cf. Isaiah, 35:1.

13. In an unsigned review in The Athenæum of 27 August 1842 (no. 774, pp. 757–759), EBB found many of the poems “touching and beautiful” but commented that “We do not say that the finest of Mr. Wordsworth’s productions are to be found or should be looked for in the present volume; but the volume is worthy of its forerunners, consistent in noble earnestness and serene philosophy”. She found “strong black writing” in “The Borderers” and said the announcement of its publication, some 50 years after its composition, had caused “the most faithful disciples to tremble for the possible failure of their master. Perhaps they trembled with cause.”

14. Andrew Stevenson (1784–1857), Speaker of the Virginia House of Representatives 1827–34, represented the United States as Minister to the Court of St. James from 1836 to 1841. George Hamilton-Gordon (1784–1860), 4th Earl of Aberdeen, had served in Wellington’s and Peel’s administrations. When Peel was returned for a second term in 1841, Aberdeen again became Foreign Secretary and in that capacity was responsible for improving Anglo-American relations.

15. Genesis, 49:26.

16. A reference to Johnson’s famous definition of a net (see letter 516, note 4).

___________________

National Endowment for the Humanities - Logo

Editorial work on The Brownings’ Correspondence is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This website was last updated on 3-28-2024.

Copyright © 2024 Wedgestone Press. All rights reserved.

Back To Top