1047. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 146–150.
[London]
Nov. 14 [sic, for 12]. 1842– [1]
My beloved friend,
The natural beginning for my letter of today ought to be “do not think too ill of me” (so silent as I have been for more days than I care to think!) and yet I say “do not think too well of me” instead—so kind, so over-kind, are your constructions of the very little I have it in my power to do for you. I thank you then for your kindness: & my thanks are more called for by the occasion. Ah—how bitterly I feel sometimes my powerlessness of doing you any real good! It is a comfort to hope that you know how I wd do it if I could!—& how I love you not the less warmly because unavailingly.
And now to tell you why I did not write. I have been overpowered with sadness & headache, & the heartache-feeling of … “If I do write to her I shall only do her harm”. My poor dear friend, Dr Scully! He is gone! died last saturday, after the fluctuating painfulness of a three months’ illness. And there, has broken the last thread which connected me with that fatal place, [2] —there, is embittered the last association—and now from the largest association to the least, all is bitterness in relation to it. Oh, if I believed in local curses, I shd know where to find mine. Think of living for two years in a place [3] & of gathering nothing from it but grief—& speaking advisedly I say nothing. For to be silent of what is indeed with me unspeakable,—the only two faces which I was obliged to see professionally & which associated themselves subsequently with kindness & gratitude, are both darkened by death! [4] A strange coincidence of sadnesses! And I liked the place once!—I really did—after the first gloom of my arrival there, which struck to my heart strangely (I thought at the time) as if I felt grief in the air!– No strangeness is it, that the place should now be dreadful to me. The very name sounds like another word for sorrow. And I smile sometimes at my own weakness of verbal superstition, when I catch myself shunning the articulation of the name, & saying “when we were in Devonshire” for “when we were at Torquay.”
Well! I frown at myself this moment, for a change,—having no manner of business to talk of such things to you. And just that I might’nt, I wd not write three days ago! Noble consistency of purpose!—which reminds me to agree with you in your just distinction between feebleness & tenderness of nature. Still I do fancy that Coleridge meant something more by “the woman” [5] than you recognize in the gentleness & courtesy & lovingness of your sportsmen & countrygentlemen. I do fancy that he meant something more—a certain softness of nature, an impressionableness, a sensibility too near the surface. All honor to your countrygentlemen! altho’ I dont pretend to care so much about them as you do!
Because my vanity was flushed to the top of her forehead, I wrote to you like a goose, about Mr Westwood’s letter—& then in the very next paragraph, came my defence of obscure writers, which, as I naturally stand in your mind as representative of the host, you considered a defence of myself in particular! Just as if I had said, “You see how Mr Westwood understands me like a-b-c. So do you consider me a b c for the future”. When I looked my letter through, the idea occurred to me that you might take just such a view as you have taken,—and I was half inclined to write it all over again—only it was late, or I was lazy, .. “or something” .. as people say when they are eloquent & make excuses. But now, do try to believe me my beloved friend, that I never meant to imply, that I never thought, conjectured, or dreamed by night or day, either in or out of a fit of vanity, that you did not estimate my poetry up to its full worth, or indeed not far above its full worth. You have praised me too generously——there is the fault! And if it did not almost seem too like self-praise to say so, I might well assure you that your kindness in telling me openly & plainly of my defects, is more precious to me than any other part of it. I wrote to you of Mr Westwood, .. like a goose as I said, … just because it pleased me to hear of my poetry’s having what he called household influences, anywhere—& because while I write to you, everything falls to the tip of my pen—and so it was that the paragraph about obscure poets came next. And this, you will believe—and wont believe (oh to think of such a thing!) that I meant to reproach you for not praising me enough,—with Mr Westwood’s clapping from the sidebox!!–
Yet I remain in my chains. I feel bound! If I were not myself an obscure poet, I would go on to defend some who are called obscure—but then you would fancy (you cdnt help it perhaps) that I meant all the time to defend myself. So I wont say any more—I really am self-convicted & penitent—I really am. I really will moreover try to be clear, & give you the praise of it. But still .. still .. there are two sorts of obscurity. And I do hold that some of the very finest passages in Wordsworth & Coleridge, wd pass with the majority of readers & be stigmatized in reviews (had their time to come over again) as obscure, peradventure, as incomprehensible: and that Æschylus the sublimest of the sublime Greeks, is apart from Greek & mythology & all allusions of the time, the obscurest poet in the world, .. with the exception of … we will say .. Mr Browning! Do you remember what Coleridge has said in prose, of obscure poets? [6] I wish the book were within my reach. But it is’nt. And indeed considering that I meant to say nothing, I have said quite enough.
I wonder sometimes whether my letters are all in riddle me ree—and whether you have to call in K. & Ben as counsel, to determine the meaning of the longest sentences. Mr Townsend’s letters, you have probably observed, are far darker than his verses. There is no comparison between them.
Such a headache as I have had these three days! But it is better today—and this writing to you has done good to my spirits already. I feel far lighter & more cheerful.
You are too good to me, my beloved friend! and indeed I accept it as a very high compliment that your dear faithful loving Flush shd put you the least bit in the world in mind of me! That is a very high compliment—& dearer, believe me, than any Mr Westwood’s cd be.
Mr Kenyon called yesterday, but I could not see him with such a head & such spirits! and he left Lady Blessington’s Annual, & promised to come again today or tomorrow. Dear kind Mr Kenyon! The annual is fuller of trash than usual I think, which is saying a good deal of ill. His own contribution indeed is a very excellent & poetical paraphrase of Schiller’s ‘Gods of Greece’—& there is a prose story by Mr Landor which has much beauty in his peculiar manner,—and there is, moreover, a graceful fairy story by Miss Garrow, which I prefer to her last year’s ballad, although retaining my opinion of the want of individuality & of power. [7]
Thank you a hundred times for your goodness about speaking in Mr Hunter’s behalf when you have an opportunity of doing so. [8] He says [‘]‘I am a dissenter, & people will be afraid of me”,—which is probable enough with regard to some people, & those the majority. And yet the most determined church person (take an archbishop) might trust him with an infant bishop, & no harm done or offered. He is a Christian on the broadest principles, & with more leaning to the aristocracies of religion than I have—indeed he wd make no very bad archbishop himself. I am far more decidedly a dissenter (as he tells me & as I tell him again,) than he is at the head of his deacons. And for highmindedness in the best sense, & tenderheartedness in every sense, besides the cultivation, & strong thinking, it would be hard to find his superior in the office of a teacher. Thank you my beloved kind friend, for having such a thought! You could not please me better than by speaking at some future opportunity that promised word.
For the rest, you are perfectly right about Mary [Hunter]. It is a dangerous situation. And yet, what can be done? Her mother is removed from her by a stroke worse than death .. madness! & there is no hope of a restoration. On the other hand, her father’s circumstances are miserably straightened, & the only apparent opening lies towards the pupils. She must be forwarned & prudent.
You amused me very much with your teaching successes! how you did amuse me! But your Emily did you great credit after all! Well—laugh as you please! I believe in Emily’s “great advantages”! [9] Shut up the dictionaries—& you still remain—and my creed is that nobody could be very near you, though she watered flowers, without being the better for it as well as the happier! May God bless you, my dearest friend!
There does not seem to be any essential change in the state of your beloved sufferer. Do bear up, continue to do so .. valliantly. I shall think of you much,—of both of you, tomorrow, the 15th, [10] & shall send the grapes .. when? Will they be in time, if sent tomorrow or next day? Ah—dont say “thank you.” Dont, if you love me—but only “I have received them”. What has ‘thank you’ to do between you & me?
Ever your own
EBB.
Crow says that I have forgotten the grape-day, & thinks they shdnt go until tuesday. But I wish I knew exactly how many days they last. Tell me.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 73–77.
Manuscript: Folger Shakespeare Library and Wellesley College.
1. In letter 1049, EBB says this letter was written on Saturday, which was the 12th.
2. i.e., Torquay, scene of Bro’s death.
3. EBB actually spent three years in Torquay, from September 1838 to September 1841.
4. William Scully (1778–1842) was called to attend EBB in Torquay after the death of Dr. de Barry (see SD1058).
5. See letter 1046.
6. Coleridge said, in his Biographia Literaria (chapter XXII): “A poem is not necessarily obscure, because it does not aim to be popular. It is enough, if a work be perspicuous to those for whom it is written, and, ‘Fit audience find, though few’.”
7. The Keepsake for 1843 included Kenyon’s “The Gods of Greece” (pp. 77–80); “A Story of Santander” by Landor (pp. 154–166); and Miss Garrow’s “The Lady of Ashlynn” (pp. 112–131), as well as contributions by Frances Brown, Barry Cornwall, Mrs. Abdy and Monckton Milnes. Miss Garrow’s earlier contribution was “The Doom of Cheynholme.”
8. i.e., in seeking pupils for him.
9. Cf. George Herbert, The Temple: The Church-Porch (1633), line 313. Emily has not been identified; from the context, she seems to be either servant or pupil.
10. Dr. Mitford’s 82nd birthday.
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