Correspondence

1143.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 312–313.

[London]

Feb 1. 1843–

Do you mean to say, my beloved friend, that Sir Robert Throgmorton [1] wrote to you disrespectfully of the memory dear to you—unkindly of yourself?– Was it from simple emotion, or distress, that your tears fell? I am not clear about it from your words—& my desire to know is imperious—because if he did such a thing ......!!!

Here I am writing, writing, writing– It is so hard to keep myself from writing: & yet I know, I know, that I ought to be quiet & sit in my corner like little Jack Horner, [2] instead of teazing you out of your last degree of self-possession & memory. I have no business to be writing to you my ever dearest friend, when everybody else in the world is writing to you & you are writing to everybody else in the world. Presently, when there is a pause, my turn will come again—& unless I find you as you half predict, blasèe as to ‘reading [’]riting & ’rithmetic’, [3] & sworn to a nunnery from everything like a letter, .. why then, I may begin again without doing as much harm as I am doing peradventure today–

That dear Mr Kenyon did not tell me! When he sent me your letter by your desire I found the place where his donation came, neatly cut out with a pair of scissors. He wont come here either. He promised to come last sunday & every day I have been expecting him, & he does’nt come, & I want to see & ask him twenty questions– Every day too I search the papers for your announcement, & nothing appears. [4] Are you not rather slow in bringing the machinery to bear? When will it bear? and what are you waiting for? No—do not answer me– Do not take any notice of me my beloved friend!— I ought to be put down—with other too troublesome people.

I have just had a long letter from Mr Mathews of New York—& he says in reply to what I had told him about my sending his ‘Wakondah’ to you, .. “I am glad that anything of mine is going into the hands of Miss Mitford—a name thronged with kindly associations in America— and whose Rienzi shows a spirit capable of entering the stronghold of passion & expression when it chooses”. [5]

But pace [6] —you wd rather that Mr Mathews & I too went away! May God <***>

Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 170–171.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Sir Robert George Throckmorton (1800–62), High Sheriff of Berkshire, was one of the signatories of the impending subscription notice.

2. In the nursery rhyme, “Little Jack Horner sat in the corner / Eating a Christmas pie.”

3. Sir William Curtis (1752–1829), M.P., Lord Mayor of London 1795–96 and an intimate friend of George IV, poorly educated and a bad speaker, was the butt of wits. He is reputed, when asked for a toast, to have said: “I give you the three R’s—’riting, reading, and ’rithmetic.”

4. The notice appeared in The Morning Chronicle on 13 February and in The Times, 14 February.

5. See letters 1059 and 1103.

6. “Peace.”

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