1101. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 244–246.
[London]
Dec. 28. 1842–
I am bewitched, my beloved friend, to be sure! Do you know I could have been obstinate in my self-persuasion that I had returned to you Mrs Trollope’s letter [1] & here it is in my writing basket. And all this while I have been rewarding you for your kindness in letting me see it, & teaching you never to do so again, & keeping you from sending your answer, by my carelessness.
‘Why then I see queen Mab has been with me’. [2]
As for my headache, to have exposed you to the annoyance of fancying that you had annoyed me is as bad as ten headaches. I ought’nt to have mentioned it—& indeed I wdnt have done so, had it not been for a fit of literary vanity which came upon me while those bad verses went from me. I did not like you to think that I cd do quite so badly without a bad headache to suit. And so, I annoyed you. And that was wise of me & kind—& altogether I am in a shocking humour with mine own personality, today.
Well—I will speak about the letters—or rather cause them to be spoken of at the postoffice: for I am vowed to, here, that they go regularly from this house, & I have no reason for suspecting the truth of the assurance. Since however that particular letter [3] did not reach you until tuesday I wish it had been good enough to keep away altogether—because as far as I can remember the ‘new version’ of my verses was the better one. Yet in any case you shd use your own—& therefore it is not of much consequence about the others.
Ah my dearest, dearest friend, how could you, how cd Mrs Niven let you, go along that road again in the dark to meet another bludgeon! [4] It was very, very wrong! And then for you to be ill afterwards!– Those hysterics! and your strong, energetic, magnanimous nature to be rent & shattered like th<at> of the least of us women, by those terrible attacks! I know what they are, too well. Yet I dont cry & laugh in them––or shriek—but am convulsed & lose the power of swallowing. I used to suffer so– It is not the case now. Do do, my beloved friend, give yourself rest—repose. You have thrown yourself into society before your spirits are fit for it—and if I dared to say so, Mrs Niven is a companion less suitable to the circumstances than a duller & more ordinary talker. My suspicion is that you did not suffer that night merely from fear acting upon a morbid state of nerves. You are excitable, & were naturally excited & kindled by that peculiar strain of conversation you have described to me, .. & then the reaction of the silence, & darkness caused you to sink & be overwhelmed. And my suspicion goes very near to a persuasion.
Mr Kenyon has gone away again to Brighton … à propos-itally to suspicions. Nay, I do not talk scandal about queen Elizabeth [5] —but, but, … he is gone to Brighton—& if a certain Miss Baillie [6] does’nt run in his heart she does in my head .. which I am far from intimating to be the same thing. Before his journey to Torquay, he went to Hastings—& she was there! and now that he goes to Brighton I prophecy with my tongue [7] that she is there. Who else can be at Brighton! And there was something in the manner—a consciousness—an hesitation! Well! it may all be my fancy. I wont consent to be burnt as a witch if it is’nt so. I have no reason in the world for a word of my speculation. But it’s in the nature of woman, they say, to gossip—& I have nothing to gossip about except Mr Kenyon & Flush—& so they take the consequences—and so do you my beloved friend—witnessing this nonsense!–
You are of course right about Andrè [8] —but you will smile to hear that I have not read that work yet—you will think that it is’nt naughty enough for me. The truth is, that it has been absent from Mr Saunder[s]’ library whenever I have sent for it—but I have sent again today & hope to be successful. You say not a word of Pere Goriot. [9] Did you throw it into the fire in a paroxysm, & are you afraid of abashing me by telling me? It is a very powerful work—altho’ the road through it is muddy, & noxious to the nostrils. And after all—we talk loudly & aright .. with a righteous indignation,—against this & similar works––but to look back on the imaginative works of a previous century, of Marivaux & Crebillon, & compare––why the books of La jeune France are clean & holy to them. Do you remember what Gray said about his idea of paradise being to lie all day long on a sofa & read eternal new romances of Marivaux & Crebillon? [10] And did you ever look at—I dont say read—the ‘Sofa’ of Crebillon fils. [11] I sent for it once in the innocense of my ignorance, & after a quarter of an hour’s turning of the leaves dropped it like a burning iron. It is the most disgusting sensual book I ever tried to read—but did’nt read, I do assure you. This post, this post. Time gallops when I write to you.
Ever your own
EBB.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 134–136.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Presumably her letter of condolence of 16 December 1842 (L’Estrange (1), II, 78–79).
2. Cf. Romeo and Juliet, I, 4, 53.
3. i.e., letter 1097.
4. i.e., to risk another attack, similar to that recounted in letter 1069.
5. Cf. Sheridan, The Critic (1781), II, 1.
6. Sarah Bayley, not Joanna Baillie.
7. Cf. Acts, 19:6.
8. George Sand’s novel, published in 1835.
9. EBB had mentioned sending Balzac’s novel in letter 1091.
10. See letter 335, note 18.
11. Le Sopha, Conte Moral (1742).
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