1075. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 199–202.
[London]
Dec. 6th 1842–
My beloved friend forgive me! Forgive me for a word that sounded with apparent light allusion to your past afflictions: [1] yet believe that when I wrote it down I was guiltless of the lightness it inferred. Your case is indeed altogether & absolutely different from the one I contemplated. Your struggle was for others—your grief for others: & I can understand the last as I admire the first, just as fervently as the whole world can: & I could, if I were Genevieve herself. But alas, I am not Genevieve. Think, my dearest friend—& admit, confess that I am not Genevieve. [2]
Well—I am not talking of myself. The case we contemplated was that of a woman dying of the fear of losing her fortune [3] —a single woman, with no one to fear for. That I thought unworthy of any thinking & feeling woman. I think so still. Forgive me, but you must suffer me to think so. To die of the fear of losing a fortune seems to me more ignoble than to die of the exhaustion & struggle & humiliation of actual poverty. It is, I think, more ignoble. Will you not admit it? For my own part I cannot understand & must imperfectly sympathize with the sort of feeling—& more especially where the sufferer has tasted of bitterer grief. For that very circumstance which you tell me of as the mot [4] of the enigma, seems to me to remove it still farther from solution.
Now, you, my beloved & admirable friend shall answer yourself for me. You who have struggled through what may be called in a worldly sense, humiliations,—but which are in my eyes a course of moral triumphs & exaltations,—would you in the bitterest moment have chosen (casting aside any consideration of duty & propriety, & looking at the subject simply & passionately as an occasion of pleasure & pain) would you in the bitterest moment of struggle have chosen rather to part with those for whom you struggled, than to struggle on? You say no. I hear you say it all this distance off. ‘No’—& not through duty, not through generosity. ‘No’ is best & happiest for you. And that ‘no’ determines the question in my favor, & proves my persuasion true, .. that altho’ poverty is an evil, it is a minor evil as compared with any bereavement of the affections.
My dearest dearest friend, may God preserve you from any future form of poverty. ‘Part from Flush’. No indeed you shall not!– What a thought! And to have sprung too from a word of mine! Forgive me for saying it. Dear dear Flush!–
Oh yes! To be sure, poverty is an evil. I never felt the actual pressure—never did. And then I am not alive all over to the hypothetical pricking of it, as some people are. For instance, I shd feel nothing stronger than a little vexation, & even that not long, .. if I were forced to go away from this house to .. I wont say to a cottage in the country where I might plant ivy & be poetical & selfsufficient, .. but to a little lodging-room over a grocer’s shop. It wd[’]nt grieve me, to be forced to live on spare diet .. “a raddish & an egg” [5] —or to dress in dimity & a patch. ‘None of these things’ would ‘trouble me’. [6] Nor wd it humble me to have to say “I am poor”. There are more real evils connected with poverty than these things, & I know it: but as the sting of death is sin, [7] so is the sting of poverty, love—& I come back to my burden .. that it is an unworthy dying for a woman, to die of the fear of an unpartaken suffering thro’ solitary poverty.
Ah—my poor dearest Papa! How I remember the coming of that letter to apprize him of the loss of his fortune [8] —not down to the point of “elegant competence” [9] but very far below it! He was surrounded by his family—& they, so young! & not educated,—& with not one prospect amongst them. And the letter came—& just one shadow past on his face while he read it (I marked it at the moment) & then he broke away from the melancholy, & threw himself into the jests & laughter of his innocent boys. That was the only shadow seen by any of us, with a direct relation to those evil news! And in all the bitter bitter preparation for our removal, .. there never was a word said by any one of us to Papa, or by him to us, in that relation. He suffered more, of course,—he suffered in proportion to the silence: but he bore up against the mortification & the anxiety, gallantly admirably—as you would do, my dearest Miss Mitford: & the reserve in matters of suffering is a part of his nature & not to be disturbed by the most tender of those who love him. Even now, I never say ‘Hope End’, before him. He loved the place so. The circumstances of our leaving it (it was siezed under a mortgage) were full of mortification to him, & to us for his sake! It is a beautiful place—and people crowded to see it under the pretence of purchasing,—& our old serene green stilness was trodden under foot, day after day!– And we had to hide, even away from our own private rooms, where we used to be safe from all the world,—& to hear in our hiding-place the trampling, & voices of strangers through the passages everywhere, & in the chambers which had been shut up for years from our own steps, sacred to death & love. [10] It was a miserable time, I thought then—miserable for the sake of love & not for that of a mere lost possession. Miserable I called it– But in proportion to what has happened since, I do call it a happy time—thrice happy & blessed. And yet I [11] am called Genéviève! Ah—dearest friend! Why shd you call me Genevieve? Have you forgotten?
Instead of being Genevieve, I am a little bit bête [12] I think—anybody’s fool except Shakespeare’s who are too wise for me. Really it is too bad & foolish of me to amuse you in analysing evils & determining which is best or worst to die of, instead of striving to refresh you into a smile. Poor Mrs Dupuy. I compassionate her sincerely– She has suffered heavy trials. And you—and you! My dearest dearest Miss Mitford!–
He is better now I fancy, I have a presentiment. Try not to be frightened beyond what is necessary. Controul your imagination—& dont analyze Mr May’s countenance except when he “laughs out openly”. Mr Haydon & I have been & are corresponding by little notes on great subjects. He was’nt a bit angry about Plato [13] —& I quite like him, for his fervency of spirit & genius.
When I opened Mr Horne’s portrait, [14] I started back as if I caught sight of your bludgeon. [15] Imagine a high-browed & broad-browed head, absolutely bald, appearing to the fancy as if all the glistening auburn ringlets belonging to it, had fallen down to the base of the head & expended themselves in whiskers & moustachios! The features are very handsome—the nose delicate & aquiline, the eyes a clear blue, serene & elevated,—the mouth strikingly expressive of resolution—the complexion quite colorless, almost to ghastliness—with a Rembrandt light full on it. I assure you, I started. What Papa meant by ‘no peculiarity,’ I cant conceive. [16] He says it is very like indeed—& very peculiar it assuredly is—very peculiar & very expressive. Somebody cried out [‘]‘It[’]s like an assassin”,—& somebody else [‘]‘It[’]s like a saint.” A very fine head certainly! with a fifth Act in the very look of it! [17] But I deprecate the moustache, & half believe & hope that it has been cut away since the picture was painted. He has a noble generous nature in spite of all the moustachios in the world, & to match his poetic genius.
May <God> bless you ever & ever<!>
Yr <EBB>
Oh Mdme Brulart! How I forget. Another day– [18] <Admi>re Persuasion & Anne Elliot! [19] <to be> sure I do!– No room to say how much.
Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 104–107.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. In speaking of Mrs. Dupuy in letter 1072, EBB had said she could not understand “mere personal griefs for money’s sake”; apparently Miss Mitford had felt the remark to be a reflection on her own preoccupation with financial cares.
2. In letter 1074, Miss Mitford had quoted Coleridge, who said of Genevieve, “Few sorrows hath she of her own.”
3. A further reference to Mrs. Dupuy’s litigation (see letter 1055, note 10).
4. “Answer.”
5. Cowper, The Task (1785), IV, 173.
6. Cf. Revelations, 2:10.
7. I Corinthians, 15:56.
8. One of EBB’s major preoccupations in her Diary was the anticipated loss of her beloved Hope End owing to her father’s financial reverses.
9. Cf. “Spring” (1728), The Seasons, line 1160, by James Thomson (1700–48).
10. EBB’s mother’s room was closed off after her death in 1828, but had to be opened to prospective buyers. EBB was particularly bitter that supposed friends took the opportunity afforded by the impending sale to inspect the house without any intention of purchasing it (see Diary, p. 99).
11. Underscored twice.
12. “Stupid.”
13. In letter 1053, EBB had expressed the fear that Haydon might be offended by her saying that she found his stepson’s translation of Plato’s Gorgias to be “inelegant.”
14. His portrait by Margaret Gillies, one of three sent to EBB (see letter 1063).
15. i.e., the weapon used in the recent nocturnal attack on Miss Mitford (see letter 1069).
16. In letter 829, EBB recounted her father’s impression of Horne.
17. i.e., very dramatic.
18. EBB returns to this in letter 1105. Mme. Brulart is Mme. de Genlis, Brulart being the family name of her husband, the Comte de Genlis.
19. Anne Elliot is the heroine of Jane Austen’s Persuasion (1818).
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