Correspondence

1192.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 28–30.

[London]

March 29. 1843–

I am disappointed,—& so I fear you will be my dearest friend, about the chocolate; the West India form of it being beyond our reach until the ships come in. Nevertheless I am going to make an experiment by Papa’s suggestion, & have some of the nuts ground up & prepared simply, upon trying which you must return to me your conclusions & K’s. I am very very sorry—but the ships may come in next month—& then you shall certainly be supplied. In the meanwhile, my everlasting oysters beg you not to be tired of them, & prepare to go to you by this day’s carriage accordingly.

I have been reading to my amusement, Mrs Trollope’s Hargrave. [1] She has great skill in the construction of a story & shows it here; altho’ I do not think that otherwise & generally, the work is of her cleverest. It is in the Widow Barnabys [2] & such large deer, [3] that she glorifies herself– Bottom does not act Titania very well. [4] Moreover this identical Bottom wd talk the language of the fairies more idiomatically than Mrs Trollope can talk French: & something being of course to be attributed to the printer’s diablerie, enough miserable Stratford-on-le-bow-French [5] remains in these three volumes to make one surprised at the fact of a travelled & educated lady writing so! Any way .. the detestable fashion of mixing all sorts & kinds of languages in one work is hard to bear—but when the fusion becomes complete by the loss of the respective idioms, it is past bearing indeed, & one cant help crying out–

Dearest Miss Mitford, I do long to hear of the subscription, & most of all how you are––and yet I am reasonable enough (be certain!) not to wish you to write to me just now. All this morning I have had a particular care of my own about Mr Flush, who took it into his pretty head to walk out by himself during four hours. Crow looking out of the window saw him in Devonshire Place surrounded by a congregation of dogs—& I, the while, in terror lest he had been stolen– Naughty Flush! He came into the house wagging his tail like a preux chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, [6] & must have been wonderfully astonished indeed when Crow, to express her sense of the merits of the case, began straightway to whip him! Up he rushed shrieking to my door, & being splashed up over his ears, was taken from thence to the washing tub. So, altogether, he could scarcely have considered his adventure as perfectly successful: and you may suppose what my share of it was, when I tell you that I never breathed a reproach against Crow for whipping him. She loves him too well to hurt him much—and anything is better than that he shd get into the habit of going away from the house when he is put out at the door for five minutes in the mornings. We live in the midst of a gang of dog-stealers: the only wonder is that Flush has never been stolen,—Mrs Nugent’s little dog having been lured away four or five distinct times. [7] Now if he were taken I shd probably recover him, as she has recovered her dog, for the dogs appear to be stolen simply for the sake of the reward: but then think of my poor little Flush who sleeps with me & is careful to lay his head upon the sheet .. who eats with me & fares delicately every day .. who lies close beside me & cries if he is not noticed—think of this poor Flush driven out into a yard .. left to sleep on straw or without it .. & forced to eat perhaps horseflesh or a bone!– How wd he live through the first night!—& how sad I shd be in thinking of him, poor little thing!—! So Crow was justified in whipping him, & I commend her cruelty–

I have been thinking much, beloved friend, of your new house .. which is to be yours, .. & wondering whether you will have access from it to your garden .. that garden which you now call yours. [8] Oh, I hope, I hope so!– I cling to my idealogy about that garden & the flowers & the bay tree, & could not bear to think of your being so near to it & yet not its mistress. When you write to me (whenever you do) you will tell me (will you not?) how you are likely to determine these matters, & whether in the new house you shall have a pretty cheerful sittingroom with windows looking towards garden or fields–

The first opportunity I have of seeing Bewick I will not let go, I promise you. I hold stedfastly to Christopher North in the meantime, [9] —not as an authority in the matter of birds, but as having a winged soul [10] himself. Forgive me. My perversities are a part of me– On the other hand I can scarcely credit that you, with your strong sense of the beautiful, are altogether insensible to passages in those Recreations; & indeed you have not persuaded me of it, down to this moment. There’s an impertinence to be added to the perversity! & so you make “the full sum of me” [11] in simple addition.

Ever your attached

EBB–

Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / Near Reading.

Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 194–196.

Manuscript: Eton College Library and Wellesley College.

1. Hargrave, or the Adventures of a Man of Fashion had just been published.

2. The Widow Barnaby (1838), one of Mrs. Trollope’s best-known works, was followed in 1840 by a sequel, The Widow Married.

3. Cf. King Lear, III, 4, 138. In this and subsequent Shakespearean quotations, the line numbers correspond to those used in The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston, 1974).

4. Cf. A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

5. Cf. The Canterbury Tales, Prologue, lines 124–125.

6. “Valiant knight without fear and without reproach,” the epithet applied to the Seigneur de Bayard in the title of an anonymous book about his exploits, published in 1527.

7. EBB described one of these incidents in letter 958.

8. The move proved to be temporary, while repairs were made to Miss Mitford’s present quarters.

9. See the remarks on ornithology in letter 1183.

10. II Henry VI, III, 3, 16.

11. The Merchant of Venice, III, 2, 157.

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