1231. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 107–111.
[London]
May 4– [1843] [1]
Ever dearest Miss Mitford,
I meant to hear from you this morning, but I did’nt; & am only beginning to consider, now at three o’clock p.m., that I had no manner of reason for expecting such a thing. Your letter of yesterday was as water to the thirsty soul, & made me happy about you with the persuasion that you are getting on to be better & blyther, just as I cd desire– Pure air to breathe—true friends to talk with—new & striking scenery to look at,—and old memories to consecrate & increase the present pleasure,––how cd you not be better & blyther, even without Ben & Flush?– So now, if you please, I dont mean to be uneasy about you a bit more or longer—I give you notice of it!– You are with Miss Austen & Smollett [2] .. to say nothing of Celia & Rosalind [3] (you see how you make me invert the dignities of Shakespeare who taught me long ago to say Rosalind & Celia!) and Ps [4] transfigured!– Altogether, that you shd remain another week at Bath, appears to me a wise step .. leading to enjoyment! I approve of it in spite of what you tell me about your presentiment of danger from arch-enchanting bishops at Prior Park, [5] .. for after all, I am not very much afraid that you will ever put your conscience in the keeping of the most fascinating of men. The good sense & clear judgment predominate in you too much—you are not a woman to go over in a rapture & a puff of incense into the belief of an infallible Pope—& therefore I am not afraid– For the rest I wd not willingly speak with disrespect of Roman catholic Christians.
I have come into Papa’s room, the adjoining room to mine, .. for the first time today—to have the windows opened & a little dusting done .. which will make me cleaner & more exemplary tomorrow– The consequence of living through the winter in one room, with a fire, day & night, & every crevice sealed close, .. you may imagine perhaps by the help of your ideal of all Dustfulness, latent & developped. At last we come to walk upon a substance like white sand, & if we dont lift our feet gently up & put them gently down, we act Simoom, [6] & stir up the sand into a cloud. As to a duster or a broom, seen in profile even, .... calculate the effect upon us!– The spiders have grown tame—& their webs are a part of our own domestic œconomy,––Flush eschews walking under the bed. The result of which is that I am glad May is come, that I yield to that necessity at once– May God bless you—& give you health,—& gladness by its means! Write to me—do—! Your writing reeled from your pen in this letter! I never remember observing that it trembled so before. May God keep you, my dearest dearest Miss Mitford.
Yes, I have been in Bath twice—once when I was quite a child & we travelled through it & I did not stir from the hotel door—& once on our way from Herefordshire to Sidmouth, [7] a few years since, when I was too weak & out of health to stir from the hotel window. We spent one night there on the latter occasion, & I gathered my impressions from my place at the window (.. of the York House) & in passing through the streets. So you see how right you were in telling me everything, & how much ignorance there is in me to disperse—& besides, if I knew the place by heart, I shd like to look at it through your stained-glass-idiosyncrasy, as you may readily guess. That my impressions, snatched up at random, & your impressions, shd have a shade of likeness, is delightful to me! As you found by my letter, & as I always said, Bath is the very ideal of a town to me,—worth a hundred Cheltenhams, notwithstanding those noble avenues which almost save Cheltenham! But as a town .. I choose Bath: it is a fine birth of its own hills .. marble of their marble, heart of their heart .. almost grand with their spirit. The Bath town-scenery is the noblest I ever saw .. apart from associations—and if I had to live in a town which was not London, I would rather live at Bath than anywhere, I think. Oh—the great nature stooping to look into the humanity, as those hills seem to me to do!—and the great human quarry eyed constantly by the Nature! how striking it all is!– Your description has refreshed & revived my impressions, & I stand close by you with open eyes!– Ah—but if I did so really, I should be looking at you–
Tell me if you found Mrs Trollope & whether she is recovering from the lakes. I am afraid ‘the Widow’ is not in the next New Monthly [8] —making no sign in the advertisements.
Mr Kenyon came just as I was ready to seal my last letter to you—and he desired me to instruct you in the propriety of going to Holme Chase, [9] the great wild lion of southern Devonshire, in the case of your reaching Totness. Moreover I am commanded by Aforesaid, to apprize you that there are certain Bonds in relation to the Kennet & Avon canal, which are at the present moment good for investments, with government security at four & a half per cent interest,—& the principal unsunken– There! I hope I may have said my lesson pretty well– Mr Kenyon told me that perhaps if you knew of it you might feel inclined to take Mr Blandy’s opinion on it. And now you will pat my head & let me go–
But I must tell you first that Mr Browning is said to have finished two plays, one for Charles Kean & the public, the other for himself & Bells & Pomegranates. [10] I am sorry. He appears to me capable of most dramatic effluences & passionate insights—& it wd be wise in him I think to spend this faculty upon poems which the sympathizing cd read, rather than on plays cast to the mercy of the great unwashed [11] who cant read right. And besides .. you will say, (altho’ I have the grace to feel that I ought’nt to say it ..) acting a play of Mr Browning’s, is like reading a riddle-book right through without stopping to guess the answers!– Something like .. perhaps– Yet after all, he is a true soul-piercing poet—and it is easier to find a more faultless writer than such a one–
Mr Kenyon met four & twenty … not fiddlers [12] .. but harmonious spirits in different degrees, at your friend Mr Chorley’s the other evening. The new German wonder Mr D..... (I really am afraid to write him down, so little sure of him am I) raised thunderclouds & lightenings out of the piano forte [13] .. and Moscelles, [14] who is only a demi-god followed the miraculous with his heroic—and Adelaide Sartoris sang like a spirit—and Mrs Butler read Shakespeare. And your Mr Chorley lives in an enchanted house in Victoria Square .. (a new square with tiny houses)—in a sort of golden .. not “vinegar-bottle” .. but vinaigrette .. with ceilings & chairs of gold, & hangings of silken crimson– “It is like a jewel-case,” says Mr Kenyon—and Mr Chorley lives like a ruby in the glory of it.
Poor little Flushie!—and Ben!—I like his letter … and that expressive .. “hardly” .. after the pause!
Tell me who is at Bath to see & admire you besides Miss James. I am so glad she is there—it is a comforting thought that you have a true friend near you after all—but do write to me for I am anxious. Do you see Mr Landor? Mrs Trollope? anybody else worth seeing?— any Ps.?
May God bless you, dearest friend. I never heard Mr Jay, & very likely shd not admire him—but he is a good man with wide influence. [15]
Ever your EBB–
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 217–220.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by Miss Mitford’s visit to Bath.
2. Bath figures in Smollett’s The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751) and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771) and in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1818) and Persuasion (1818).
3. New acquaintances, previously mentioned in letter 1229, likened to the characters in As You Like It.
4. Miss Pickering.
5. About a mile S.E. of Bath, Prior Park was a Palladian mansion built in 1743 for Ralph Allen (1694–1764), one-time Mayor of Bath, where he entertained Pope, Fielding and other luminaries. In 1829, the property was acquired by Peter Augustine Baines (1786–1843), Vicar Apostolic of the Western District, who made structural alterations and opened an ecclesiastical college. Miss Mitford told Miss Harrison that she “was so charmed with the place and the people, Bishop Baines and his secretary, that I cannot resist going [to vespers], to confirm the impression and increase my acquaintance with these very interesting persons” (Chorley, II, 7). Apparently, her maid worried that Miss Mitford might be contemplating embracing the Church of Rome.
6. A hot and suffocating desert wind.
7. The first occasion, in 1810 when EBB was four, was when the family was moving to Hope End; the second, in August 1832, when EBB stayed at York House, en route for Sidmouth.
8. Mrs. Trollope was publishing The Barnabys in America (a continuation of The Widow Barnaby and The Widow Married) in instalments in The New Monthly Magazine. Two chapters were included in the April issue (pp. 496–506), but the next two did not appear until June (pp. 189–204).
9. Sic, for Holne Chase, near Ashburton, the hunting seat of Sir Bouchier Palk Wrey (1788–1879).
10. EBB had already commented on these in letter 1220 (see note 3 thereto).
11. Edmund Burke is among those to whom this phrase is variously attributed.
12. Nursery rhymes make reference to “four and twenty blackbirds” and “four and twenty tailors,” but only to “fiddlers three.”
13. The Examiner of 13 May 1843 spoke of “the new pianist, M. Dreyschock, who has been making much sensation in France, and arrives among us crowned with all the laurels that our Parisian neighbours so lavishly bestow … M. Dreyschock is certainly an extraordinary pianoforte player … and must infallibly command attention” (pp. 294–295).
14. Sic, for Ignaz Moscheles (1794–1870), pianist and composer, who studied under Salieri and Albrechtsberger and had been performing in public from the age of 12. He had settled in London in 1821.
15. The Non-Conformist minister whom EBB had suggested Miss Mitford hear (letter 1220).
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