Correspondence

997.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 58–59.

[London]

August 22. 1842.

My beloved friend you distress me much by the description of your new sad anxiety. [1] Oh that I could do more than my affectionate & most sympathizing prayers & thoughts can do, towards giving you some help & comfort. But my hands are tied while my heart goes out to you in full devotion. Tell me my dearest friend, if there is anything which appears to you possible for me to do,—& do a little justice to an affection which wd fain prove itself beyond words,—by trusting it beyond them.

There is one thing which occurs to me but which quite trembles to put itself forward so as to solicit your notice. And yet I do not see why I shd fear to ask you to receive from me what under similar circumstances I wd take from your hands in a moment .. & I never cd understand why it shd be found harder to act upon rights of love than to talk & feel upon them. And all this preface to a bagatelle .. but it must be telle. [2]

So dearest Miss Mitford, I have just to say to you that if twenty pounds wd be of the slightest use to you, they are here—lying by me & of no use to me,—& shall be sent to you instantly & without the admission of anybody into the aside. Thro’ the love & loss of precious friends I have shares and fund-deposits which Papa takes such kind care of in reference to my ‘ill-odour’ [3] of imprudence & a possible futurity, that he does not let me touch more of them than what he trusts me with for pocket-money [4] —& I mention it only to prove to you that you deprive me of nothing, not even of pocket-money, in receiving this poor £20 which I have just recvd from Mr Dilke. [5] All the harm you will do is the making me glad & proud, overmuch perhaps, .. that you wd make use of me as a friend,—and indeed I am quite aware that I myself do use a friend’s impertinence in offering such a trifle to your thoughts. But your being just now in peculiar circumstances makes it appear just possible to me that the suggestion … gives me courage in fact to write this multitude of words upon naught & to hope & trust that you will not be displeased with me for writing them.

May God grant that since the last post[s]cript, your dear patient may have rallied & rewarded your watchfulness. I do not say—“Leave off watching—spare yourself!” because there are necessities of Love as well as of Life, & I know that you of all in the world, cannot deny them. But I know also & grieve to think, that you are wearing yourself out .. injuring your health, trampling under foot your spirits,—& that I cannot help it. This is grievous indeed.

May God bless & comfort you & help you availingly, as only He can, o my beloved friend.

My “aside,” aside!– And let the word be “send it”—& let the word live on between you & me. Am I not

yr own

EBB?–

Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 19–21.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Miss Mitford told Miss Harrison how Dr. Mitford “lost, first, the use of three fingers of his left hand, then of the whole arm, then of the side.... It takes five women to attend to him, and two men, besides myself” (Chorley, I, 298).

2. “Such.”

3. Jonson, “An Epitaph on Master Vincent Corbet” (1640), line 18.

4. EBB had received legacies amounting to several thousand pounds from her paternal grandmother and her uncle Sam (see vol. 1, pp. 285 and 289).

5. In payment for her articles on The Book of the Poets.

___________________

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 3-29-2024.

Copyright © 2024 Wedgestone Press. All rights reserved.

Back To Top