1124. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 284–286.
[London]
Jan. 10. 1843–
No—I shd not dare to propose such a thing. None of us dare to make any allusion to the defect [1] —& when Papa has laid in his way books professing to let one in to remedial systems, it has been in vain—he will not be persuaded. The excessive sensitiveness to the defect is far worse, infinitely worse than the defect itself—which if it were mine, I should think very little about. I dare say Mr Darley’s is of a more distressing character. [2] Stormie, dear fellow, will talk with no sign of it, when he is unexcited & unabashed. At moments of excitement on the other hand, he can scarcely articulate at all—& he is very excitable indeed. Say a word against O’Connell .. & the whole evil becomes developped! My dear dear Stormie! Yet it does not affect his spirits. He is joyous enough with us—& eager about politics. The shrinking from society is unattended by any moodiness or melancholy—altho’ enough remains, of course, to vex Papa a good deal & to fill us all with deep regret–
I shall feel more for Mr Darley since I have heard this of him—& the meaning of his word “mask” I already understand the bearings of– Yes!—it struck me that in one or two notes of his which you allowed me to see, there was an undue proportion of classicism– Now vive romanticism, in our letters at least! it is dreadful to be wise all day long—& I like to have what Cousin calls “l’homme et le grand homme” [3] both together .. sometimes peradventure liking the first better than the last. But Mr Darley! I dare say I shd like him, for all the classicism! I do like the poet—and the poet (depend upon it) altho’ you & Mr Kenyon dont think so, is the innermost man, the most real man of all– I dare say I shd like Mr Darley, whether in letters or conversation. What I dont like in him, is his crossness—his acerbity—his acrimony—his want of sympathy for his brothers in literature– [4] That I dont like—& I confess that my knowledge of it has given me a sort of distaste to the individual, & made me feel cold at moments when I recognize his genius most confidently.
Mr Jago, a very clever surgeon & an enemy to quackery, advised Nelly Bordman to use the prussic acid, [5] & is of opinion that in cases where it does no good it is innoxious. Such is his opinion—& I am so ignorant, that I cant feel my way between his & Mr May’s, & therefore stand suspended. Mrs Niven shd surely have advice for her eyes– She who interprets Prometheus into advancing Science, shd be aware that, thanks to Hercules, he is freer from the bird’s beak now than he was forty or thirty or twenty or even ten years ago, [6] —& that where ancient oculists told her to shut her eyes & go despondingly to sleep, a modern one might bid her open them & see as far as the anointed Dervish in the story– [7] Dr Turnbull (do let me affront your ears with Dr Turnbull’s name once more!) said to a friend of mine that nobody need wear spectacles for what is called old sight, if they wd go to him! That, I can scarcely believe. Because the old sight arises from the flattening of the eye—does it not?—& an actual change in the construction appears scarcely possible even to this imperious acid. But Dr Turnbull said so, according to my witness & belief!–
Your letter this morning left me quite discontented—because it had no end. Not that I like to come to the end of your letters! My discontent differs from every other discontent common to me! But seeing no end & signature, I fancy that you must have forgotten to put the peroration-page under the cover, & that so I have lost, by the disfavor of some cruel east wind, a leaf from my Sybil. [8] If you find it, do send it to me.
Ah—you may well write scorns about the ring! By my description of it yesterday, you may judge how too little, it deserves them! It is one of the very prettiest rings I ever saw—nay, handsome & massive—& I am ashamed, I must say once more, not being the queen, to see it on my finger. Ashamed! nay, that is wrong!– That can only be, when I look to the exterior, to the “base metal” [9] of gold! The thing itself, the meaning & sentiment, I regard with some pride & more tenderness .. it will be precious to me for ever– Believe this, my ever beloved friend!—believe it as surely as you do my love for you!–
Mr Haydon & I are great friends, I assure you; & he has ended (now I tell you this in confidence) he has ended—considering me as a sort of Abstraction called Elizabeth Barrett,—before which it wd be impossible to blush or tremble,—by confiding to me a MS autobiography unseen before by any human eye even in his own family. Only the first part, reaching to the beginning of his Academical career, I have yet seen; but I am much delighted & interested, & look forward with staring eyes [10] towards the remainder. It is full of blood & pulses—& of the detail of life,—& of the life-agony of genius. You may imagine whether I am pleased or not!– But you had better perhaps, my dearest friend, not say to Mr Haydon that I had mentioned to you even the existence of this M∙S—for if the Abstraction, the daughter of Ens, [11] & cousin of the quiddities, once gets a reputation for prating, .. there, will be an end to the confidences!– He has twentyfive volumes of Journal, he says, which he once thought of sending to me but afterwards found out that “they cant be sent”. How vexed I was when he found it out! But the Autobiography consoled me in some sort; & Northcote Opie & Fuseli have appeared on the scene already– [12] Now you see! I was bent on making you as jealous of me (almost) as I am of Mr Kenyon for certain reasons you are ‘’ware of’!! Your introduction of me went a good way with Mr Haydon—& then my state of adversity—& then my genius for making unknown friends with whom I am intimately acquainted all except their faces!—these three things overcame him.
May God bless you my dearest, dearest friend!
Your ever attached
EBB–
Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 155–158.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. i.e., her brother Storm’s stammer.
2. George Darley, in a letter to Miss Mitford, said that writing “is the only way … in which I can ever have any unpainful communion with any friend. My impediment is, as it were, a hideous mask upon my mind which not only disfigures, but nearly suffocates it” (L’Estrange (1), II, 6).
3. Victor Cousin (1792–1867) was the author of Le Cours d’Histoire de la Philosophie Moderne (1841–46). We have not located the phrase quoted by EBB, which, loosely translated, gives the sense of “the private and the public man.”
4. i.e., in his reviews. EBB had referred to his comments on Chaucer, Modernized as “the Chaucer massacre” in letter 946 and to his “able guilty article upon Ion” in letter 748.
5. For her ocular problems; see letter 1113.
6. See letter 906.
7. Unidentified.
8. The context suggests that EBB was thinking specifically of Amalthæa, the Cumæan Sybil, who gave Tarquin the nine books of prophecies.
9. Timon of Athens, III, 3, 6.
10. Spenser, The Faerie Queene, II, vii, 5.
11. The father of the ten Predicaments (see Milton, At a Vacation Exercise in the College, 1628).
12. See letter 1119.
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