1042. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 137–139.
[London]
Nov. 4 1842.
My ever beloved friend,
You are too good, too kind in what you say of any comfort I have had it in my power to be of to you. If it has been comfort in the smallest measure, the recompense to me is great. But you lay the emphasis of your kindness upon everything; and where I feel what an unavailing sympathy mine must at best be, while I lie here & am unable to go to you, you accept wishes for actions! Oh, would that I could indeed be very useful to you. That wd be my aspiration.
It seems to me, my beloved friend, that the tone of your two last letters has been lower,—as if you were worn & exhausted—a natural effect of the long long trial. It is natural too that you should notwithstanding all, desire it to be prolonged: and yet, whenever, whenever, the Divine Will shall end the present form of it, you will feel, you will try to feel, that the change will be a too blessed one for him, for you to wish it otherwise. If he now suffers little, as we have every reason for hoping, yet the enjoyment of life, as life, must be nothing, and the step into the spiritual world will be easy & delightful. We talk vainly of broken ties—I for one, do not believe in them. If the ties of affection are broken, it must be here—here, in the place of change,—& not in the hereafter. I believe strongly that every tie which we call “broken by death” is twice tied, on the contrary, by death,—tied beyond the possibility of any future loosing. And if I do not embrace a favorite view of many besides your excellent Mr Merry, as to the consciousness of the saints overwatching their surviving friends, [1] it is only because I attribute to those beatified spirits, sympathies too quick & warm & tenderly human, to bear to trouble their serenity by the continual spectacle of our sorrows & infirmities.
Is Mrs Niven often with you? I wish so for some friend to be with you, almost constantly—and even if you do not wish it (as is possible enough) I shall not desire it less on that account.
I am not at all surprised at Mr Tulk’s being influential with her. He is a man of imperious influences in many ways. Did I tell you (or did I forget?) that he not merely believes in Mesmer, but professes to deal himself in miraculous sleeps? I am not sure that he would not teach you to read Latin with your stomach, just as well as if you had taken a degree.
So you have knowledge of the Swedenborgians, apart from Westminster? [2] Swedenborg was however something more than a madman; and, which is singular, some more than madmen have fixed their faith on him. Are you aware that Coleridge was a reader of Swedenborg, and almost half a believer? I understand that Mr Tulk has in his possession several very curious M∙S. letters of Coleridge to himself on this very subject, and by no means sceptical letters, [3] —and a treatise in Latin of the German mystic (stolen for me by a friend-thief out of the Tulk treasury a few years ago) had on the fly leaf an inscription in the English poet’s handwriting. [4]
Your dear dear little Flush! How is it possible to help loving that loving nature? and how is it reasonable at all to be ashamed of such a love? I dont often say much to you of my Flushie, but I think more & more of him. You will admit him to be improved as to ears & pretty curling hair, but spiritually he grows dearer & dearer. He will sleep at nights, now, no where except with his head on my shoulder, .. in that one position! and then he will settle himself too soon, before the curtain is drawn or the pillow shook up; & Arabel carries him away & holds him till the right moment—upon which there is a rush, such a rush, & after kissing my face most earnestly, down he drops as if he had fainted, with none of those circular movements common to dogs & called instinctive by Walter Scott, [5] —but down in a moment into my arms,—his head on my shoulder,—& not another movement. That happens every night between eleven & twelve! And in the day, he is Duke Flush more than ever. I gave him the title of Duke Flush because of his rococo ways. If you were but to see him eat partridge from a silver fork—not that I adjudge his Grace to the silver-fork school [6] by any manner of means—but certainly the ‘savoir vivre’ [7] displayed by him on that occasion is sufficiently remarkable. Of course he has given up his ice creams for the season,—and the favorite substitute seems to be coffee—and coffee, understand, not poured into the saucer, but taken out of my little coffee cup, one of the little narrow old-fashioned coffee cups which we shd imagine, in our weak calculations, particularly inconvenient to his nose. Nevertheless his Grace’s pleasure is to do what other people do,—and he sees that I drink out of the cup & not out of the saucer; and in spite of his nose he will do the same. My dear pretty little Flushie! Duke Flushie!
Mr Kenyon told me the other day (I have not seen him since I wrote last to you) that he means to lead a very quiet life, to ‘reform it’ in fact, “altogether” from this time forwards. Do you believe that? Is it credible?
I have been reading Mrs Trollope in the New Monthly. [8] She is very clever there is no denying. But I do wonder whether the educated quakers make use of Thee in the nominative case—whether they make use of such execrable grammar (for instance) as “Thee bee’st”. I never heard a quaker talk, and yet I cd scarcely wonder or doubt at all about it, if I did not observe that Capt Marryat & Mrs Trollope & other writers of at least supposed education, represent their quakers always talking so. Think of a great banker in Philadelphia saying “Thee hast”. Is that credible? [9]
Yes—Dr Channing was a great man. Orthodox or not,—and I fear that he was an Arian at least,—he knew & taught the full deep love of God in the Gospel better as well as more eloquently than most English bishops. Such a splendid writer! I have a deep respect for his memory [10] —and this, shd the Christian Church generally profess. God bless you dearest dearest friend! You shd have recd the grapes, which are not I fear quite so good as they were.
Ever your own affectionate
EBB–
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 67–69.
Manuscript: Folger Shakespeare Library and Wellesley College.
1. In The Philosophy of a Happy Futurity (1839).
2. Mr. Tulk lived at Westminster.
3. Two letters from Coleridge to Tulk on the subject of Swedenborgianism, written in 1820, can be found in The Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs (1971, V, 9–10 and 17–19). A memoir by Sophia Augusta Cottrell (née Tulk) contains an interesting account of her father’s friendship with Coleridge (see Reconstruction, L81).
4. This memento of Coleridge did not appear as part of Browning Collections.
5. See chapter 4 of Woodstock; or, The Cavalier (1826).
6. The name given to a popular class of novel, ca. 1825–50, in which a principal topic was the life-style of the wealthy and fashionable and the social etiquette that governed their movements. T.E. Hook and Bulwer-Lytton were two of its practitioners.
7. “Good breeding.”
8. The Barnabys in America appeared in The New Monthly Magazine in instalments between April 1842 and September 1843.
9. John Williams, “who had amassed a very handsome fortune as a Philadelphia banker,” is present with the Barnabys at a dinner party in chapter 30. Mrs. Trollope has him say: “Wife, thee must come with me to ask yonder foreign lady [Mrs. Allen Barnaby] to go to thy parlor with thee”; and to Mrs. Barnaby: “Thee hast not told me thy name” (pp. 319–321 in the November issue). EBB had read Marryat’s book, A Diary in America, With Remarks on its Institutions (1839), in 1841 (see letter 864). It contained chapters on the country’s religions and language.
10. William Ellery Channing had died on 2 October. EBB had called him “obviously & prominently an extraordinary man” (Diary, p. 155).
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