Correspondence

1021.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 98–99.

[London]

Oct. 12. 1842.

My beloved friend, of course I accede to the changes. They seem to me in some part for the better clearly—& even were it a contrary case, why the verses belong to you & not to me. Here is my second attempt. [1] Send it back, if you love me & if it does not satisfy you altogether. I am nervous, I believe, with the fear of doing harm instead of good—& so I do harm. But I am willing & anxious to do good believe me.

The other unhappy sheets, supposing them to lie under your hand I shd like to have again: that is, when you have copied the two poems adopted, the Introduction & the Duchess of Orleans. Ah—and this reminds me of yr quære to the last line, of ‘faltered’ for ‘answered’. If you ask me, the first word, I mean ‘answered’ appears to me simpler & more effective. Alter it however directly, shd you lean towards the other. [2]

In these new poems, a few double rhymes have escaped me—but they came so naturally that I cd scarcely say ‘no’. Miss Landon overflows with ‘double rhymes’—& I do not quite understand the objection. [3] Whatever nevertheless you object to in what I have written, here is my hand ready to write it again, or all. Do not, my beloved friend I beseech you, punish me for my stupidity by letting me vex you.

Shd the unhappy MS. not be under your hand, do not seek for it. It is certainly as well in the fire as anywhere.

I dread to ask how it is with you. “Pray for you”! Do I love you? Could I help praying? May God bless you tenderly! The new sickness in the house is vexatious—but do not let it trouble you– Keep away from that my dearest friend! If a word shd ever be said of me, give him my love, & say how eagerly I wd receive a blessing from his lips. Ah—you are happier than I have been!—even if you part with him so! In all my dreadful partings, I heard no farewell, no last words—never! The silence & the bereavement made known themselves. No last look for me! But then, except in loving, I did not deserve it as you do.

Your own

EBB.

Am I not grave enough to Herr Dobler. [4] A little touch of playfulness seemed almost necessary to the subject—but I will do it again, if you wish.

Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 42–43.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. The enclosure is no longer with the letter.

2. Miss Mitford did make the alteration; the final couplet in the printed text read: “She wept and faltered / ‘Come to Love’.” Hélène Louise Elisabeth, Duchess of Orléans (1814–58), had been widowed on 13 July 1842 when her husband, the son of Louis Philippe, was killed in a fall from his carriage.

3. A double or feminine rhyme carries the accent on the penultimate syllable (“To be or not to be, that is the queʹstion”); a single or masculine rhyme has the accent on the final syllable (“Now is the winter of our disconteʹnt”). EBB’s defence of her usage is contained in a letter quoted by Horne in an article in The Contemporary Review of February 1874 (pp. 447–461).

4. Miss Mitford’s criticism pertains to the verse included with letter 1016.

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