Correspondence

1061.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 172–173.

[London]

Saturday– Novr 26– 1842–

My ever dearest friend, I longed to write to you yesterday, & was pressed upon by other matters; & even today, a letter I put off to the outermost verge of opportunity has made my fingers ache past writing almost, [1] & certainly past writing the sort of letter, of long gossipping letter, which is in my head & heart to write to you. When I begin to write, my hands burn, my feet burn, my heart beats .. & I wish the fire in the grate ten miles away!—and ‘all that’ tires me & forces me to be quiet again. Yet, oh, how much better I am. No return of the spitting of blood! & I, up all day long on the sofa, & able to walk in a fashion. Could your Mr May do me more good? I doubt it. I doubt if anything in the world except quiet & warmth are capable of doing me good. The only fault now, is a weakness which hangs on me, & does not give way in natural proportion, it seems to me, to the withdrawing of the other symptoms. I stagger still like a drunken man, when I try to walk; & tremble & ache all over me: & the very slightest fatigue brings on a gallopping pulse & burning hands, the reaction being felt in faintness & intermission of the heart. Well—this is groan the first & last. [2] I ought to be very thankful instead of groaning,—& so I am on most days; be sure. It was only the spirit of dissatisfaction conjured up by an obstacle to writing longer to you.

Here is Mr Kenyon—coming up stairs, they say! Now I cant write! & this is saturday—& tomorrow, is no post.

Expect a letter from me on Monday. I thank you so gratefully, so tenderly for yours. You are too kind to me by very far– You care too much that I shd write my various nonsenses to you! but even the little redbreast seems to sing well on a snowy day .. & so it is I suppose that in the absence of other light & song, I come to be better worth hearing.

The oysters go to you today.

Adieu to Monday! God bless you both! Yes! you & I tread sometimes upon perilous ground to be sure! Christopher North says gravely in the reprint of his ‘Recreations’, that Beaumont & Fletcher are fit reading for the stews [3] —and Mr Hallam observes in his learned work upon the Literature of Europe that ‘no woman of common respectability’ wd read either. [4] So we will hold our respectability to be uncommon—like our reading.

This is my last breath for haste.

Your EBB.

Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.

Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 91–92.

Manuscript: Eton College Library and Wellesley College.

1. Doubtless letter 1060 to Boyd.

2. See letter 433, note 6.

3. John Wilson, in “An Hour’s Talk About Poetry” in The Recreations of Christopher North (1842), while not speaking exclusively of Beaumont and Fletcher, said “the Old English Drama is stuffed with ineffable pollutions; and full of passages that the street-walker would be ashamed to read in the stews” (I, 339).

4. Henry Hallam (1777–1859) discussed Beaumont and Fletcher in chapter VI of his Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the 15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries (1837–39), saying “The Maid’s Tragedy, unfortunately, beautiful and essentially moral as it is, cannot be called a tragedy for maids; and indeed should hardly be read by any respectable woman. It abounds with that studiously protracted indecency which distinguished Fletcher” (III, 339).

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