1110. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 258–260.
[London]
Jany. 2. 1842 [sic, for 1843] [1]
I meant to have written a Lacedemonian note [2] to you on saturday my beloved friend, to remonstrate, in the brevity that at one time seemed possible to me, against your intention about the ring [3] —but Mr Kenyon coming & staying beyond the post put even brevities out of my power. My dearest dearest Miss Mitford, if “being angry” wd do any good in dissuading you from this exaggerated kindness, I wd certainly endeavor to get up an unnatural anger—even though the tears stood in my eyes with my quick inward sense of what your kindness meant, & expressed to me– But, as it is, .. I will at least try first .. a remonstrating gratitude—& entreat you, should there be yet time, to change that generous intention, to consent to change it & let me remember it for ever after as a simple intention .. an impulse of your precious affection for which I thank you tenderly & which was prevented from becoming a deed by my own intercession & sense of what was not due to me. Now listen to me, my beloved friend. That your dear father shd ever have thought of sending me this hair is very affecting to me, & proves that he understood how much I love you. Let me therefore have the hair—I will put it into a ring & wear it thankfully—& with the thoughts you wd desire: and do you counterorder,—shd it be possible, .. this ring you speak of, & which is superabundant machinery to the sentiment & feeling of the real gift. My beloved & too kind friend—let me have my way in this!—that is, let me have the hair without the ring, & keep it for ever for his sake & yours, & as a sign of the inward grace of my love for you. Let me have my way in this particular, my beloved friend!
I have hope that I shall persuade you yet—I have indeed!—and it is only in the view of the possibility of your being over-positive, of matters having gone too far with the jeweller, or of some improbable casualty, that I say besides .. in such a case, would it be wrong in me, to ask if a few hairs from your own head might be united to the others & placed together in the ring, to make a perfect type of your unity both in love & in my memory? If I am wrong, I will not persist in the asking. But I shd like & prefer the union; and supposing me to prevail against the too generous “sweet superstition” [4] of the ring, & to receive only the sacred gift of the silver hair, I do mean straightway to unite it to a certain dear lock which I already possess & wear them together. Now do understand that the idea of your ever having had such an intention in relation to me, & of your dear father having said those words, is touching to me beyond the expression of these. Forgive me, oh forgive me, should you think me wrong in remonstrating so much—in seeking to modify your kindest wish,—& in asking as I have done, for either less or more. However you determine the result, my tender & grateful affection must remain wholly to you.
Ah my beloved friend, how the foreshadowing of my improbable book [5] stirs you into goodness & zeal—I have scarce so much zeal myself for it—I have cooled down wonderfully already since my first thought that way, & when I talked of it to Papa I fancied that he was a little bit cool & inclined to think that miscellaneous poems wd not answer so well as I opined, without a poem of importance to make the introductions. In fact I was half inclined to give the matter up until next year again .. when your letter comes & relights me: & certainly my own view is, that a volume of miscellanies would answer & that a subsequent publication wd appear with some advantage by my stirring a little now—& then, I have such a recoiling for good & bad reasons, from publishing poetry in the magazines—prose being altogether a different business, & engaged in with an altogether different sort of constituency! But after all, I am not earnest about publishing this year– Perhaps I may not do it after all. If you were to ask Mr Chorley, would it be necessary to do the thing—or could you ask as a matter of theory & hypothesis? As to trusting him, believing in his “safety,” why of course I would & do. My only shrinking is from giving unnecessary trouble.
Mr Kenyon & I talked a very little on the subject when he was here last, & he was a good deal surprised, he said, that Moxon shd have answered so decidedly. I myself however was by no means, surprised. I was Jeremiah the prophet [6] all the way through, & had a second sight of the answer– Mr Moxon told George that he cdnt “push” a poem—that a poem wdnt be pushed—& that all the poets, except Tennyson in his last publication, perished with him. Perhaps you are right as to Mr Moxon: & there may be a larger worm at the root of his gourd [7] than even unsaleable poetry.
I must interrupt myself to ask a question about a phenomenon. Did you ever experience a remarkable crisis of the intellect or hand, during which you have a tendency to spell every word wrong, to turn your whiches into witches–your woulds into woods, & to talk of the pail of the church? I do assure you that throughout this letter I have been on the brink of orthographical ruin—it has been an effort with me to keep pace with the 3d class of a charity school in spelling. I positively wrote improble for improbable, or was about to commit myself with a lamentation upon the prospects of unsailable poetry.
To go back to my book––if it be a book, it will consist of your two ballads, ‘The brown rosarie’ & ‘Romance of the Page,’ & another unfinished ballad which shall be finished [8] —& several poems of eight or ten pages to fifteen or twenty pages in length .. in brief, with all my thoughts in verse since my last volume went to press. I might make nearly as large a volume as the former one—but my wish is to compress it to a five shilling book– It wd be more judicious in many ways, I think– Do not you? There can be no objection to Whittaker who did I believe publish the ‘Chaucer Modernized’ on his own account [9] —but then, it wd not do to force the poor man into a risk, or unless he embraces it willingly to consent that he shd undertake it. You are too kind in all things <&> wishes—ah yes!– May this year be happier than the last <for> you, dearest friend!
Yr. EBB
You do not say how you are. May God bless you. I will finish my letter another day.
Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 140–142.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by postmark.
2. i.e., very small. The smallest Greek character, iota, was known as the Lacedæmonian letter in recognition of the austerity and self-denial practised by the inhabitants of the Spartan capital.
3. Miss Mitford had declared her intention of having a ring, to incorporate a strand of Dr. Mitford’s hair, designed and made for EBB. EBB’s objection was, presumably, on account of the expense such a gesture would entail.
4. We have not located the source of this quotation.
5. i.e., the collection of poems eventually issued in 1844.
6. i.e., echoing the doleful note sounded in the Lamentations of Jeremiah in the Old Testament.
7. Cf. Jonah, 4:7.
8. Probably “The Rhyme of the Duchess May,” as early versions of this exist (see Reconstruction, D776–777), although it might have been “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,” hastily finished by EBB to fill the second volume of Poems (1844); (see Taplin, pp. 122–123). The two ballads were written at Miss Mitford’s request for Findens’ Tableaux.
9. George Byrom Whittaker (1793–1847) had published some of Miss Mitford’s work as well as The Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer, Modernized, to which EBB contributed.
___________________
