1247. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 130–133.
[London]
Tuesday– May 16th 1843.
So I was right in my ‘ornithology,’ whatever Christopher North may be in his! [1] Eagles dont shut themselves up in farmyards & henroosts, refusing to come out when the sun shines! [2] I am delighted– Mr Kenyon says, or rather he was here yesterday & said, .. that he could’nt conceive what occasion cd have been given for such a mistake,—because Mr Eagles wrote of your arrival to him as soon as ever he, Mr Eagles, heard of it, & with an evident interest & inclination towards your acquaintance. There was inclination instead of disinclination from the very beginning—and never fancy otherwise. As to all the rest of the high fantasy—& about my entering for anything into his motives, .. be quite sure that it is no such thing, .. & that it was altogether out of “gentle courtesy” [3] to your protective friendship of me, that I ever came to be named to you at all. My dearest friend, I am only an indifferent first cousin of his daughter’s husband .. and he has no particular reason for taking into favor the relations of his son-in-law, as I once, I think, explained to you. [4] Then, as to literature, I have a very sure & clear ‘second sight’ that Mr Eagles does not esteem my poetry—I know it, as a Swedenborgian knows a spirit,—by a sort of intuitive revelation!—not that I ever heard it––but because I know it. Altogether, I announce to you that you must be content to receive his homage for yourself, & his kindness, for Mr Kenyon, .. (.. I [5] having nothing to do with either ..), and put out of your mind for ever & ever that I am likely to open my door, at the threshold of which twenty people are waiting, in order to let in Mr Eagles. My dearest Miss Mitford, I wd as soon open my door to let in a tiger! I am strong in natural history you see, though you forgot to send me Bewick [6] —but I am not strong in anything else: and the true respect I entertain for the visitor in question, makes the shutting of the door all the surer.
As many thanks as I can heap up on a little sheet, for your delightful large ones! Think of my receiving two long letters by the same post—& of my being amused, charmed by them, a whole long dreary morning before morphine!– Thank you, thank you!– I will send this to Linton [7] as you tell me—and I am sure it was useless to write to you while you were holding court at Clifton & Bath. [8] How cd you hear in such a noise—& ‘in the interstices of the intersections’ [9] of those curious successive layers of humanity to which Miss James was committing you? You will stand like a fossil in the valley of rocks [10] by this time, & be patient while I talk to you.
I hope you may meet with Mrs Trollope after all, [11] to add to your cheerfulness & enjoyment of the scenery. She has an eye for scenic beauty––the painter’s—I dont say the poet’s, because I demur to thinking so–
Mr Haydon says “Thank my dear friends for me—but I hope she will weather it.” His daughter does not lose ground in strength, & she seems to have none of the worst symptoms—no expectoration—no pain in the side .. I do trust that she may, as he expresses it, “weather it.” Would that poor Cissy’s case did not threaten more cruelly! We heard a somewhat better account of her today—but it is a bad, bad case. Did you ever hear of Mr Shaw of Cheltenham, who has made himself famous by the cure of consumptive affections, & obnoxious to the physicians by taking away their patients? My aunt is putting her faith in him for Cissy—dear little Cissy!–
Perhaps it is a secret, altho’ I have made no vows of secrecy—but Mr Haydon (I must tell you) is about to publish his memoirs, his autobiography, in five successive volumes, of 400 pages each: & Bentley, it appears, has taken the work—and Mr Haydon says (oh—it cant be a secret, or he wdnt say so to me!) “Speak a good word”! [12] A good word of my speaking, will be a word spoken to the wind—and so I “pass it on” to you ..... “speak a good word.” The work will be full of interest & animation—but I do fear for certain rashnesses of opinion & expression .. certain self-exaltations, which are ‘Haydonian’ enough, & provocative of almost all the rest of the world. I have tried to persuade him to let the lion only roar, without saying articulately “I am a lion”—but he persists in saying “I am a lion” & wont be persuaded by my ‘natural history’!–
No—my beloved friend, it wdnt answer to prick the sides of possible Intentions [13] —it wdnt answer even for you to do it!– No—shd you come, it must be for the attainment of a sure & rational end, .. such as giving me the delight of the sight of you!—& not for any other!– No– No! we have air, in this London, & very good air, notwithstanding your disdain—we have oxygen, hydrogen .. what are the gens [14] which make up the thing called air? And as to Hampstead––why, do you remember that Wordsworth, the divine ‘old man of the mountains,’ [15] called Hampstead a “breezy heath”? [16] For shame, to blaspheme Hampstead!—there are trees there!–
Your account of Prior Park is charming. I was there with you my dearest friend,—your wishes having indeed the power of realizing themselves. Some of those old hymns are, I agree with you, very noble [17] —but I hold that many of them are older than the Roman Catholic Church—and that the Roman Catholic Church ought not to be called par excellence “the ancient church” by those who, in right of their Protestantism, must believe the early Christian church to be simple in proportion to its antiquity– So, when you publish your sketch of Prior Park,—& number 7 is ripe for the compositor, [18] —I shall try to coax you not to say the “ancient church”—and then you shall praise Dr Baines [19] into being ‘a little lower than the angels’ [20] if you please, afterwards! K’s idea of sending for Mr May, amused me exceedingly––but I persist in thinking you in no danger of being a convert. [21] Yes—there must be a strong likeness between the Jewish & Romish forms .. & something, I fear, there is, of Pagan tradition. For instance those altars & votive offerings & exaggerated litanies to the Virgin & innumerous saints, find no prototype in the customs of the Jews: and to the devout Jews of the present day they are more offensive than to protestants. And now I am arrived at the sixteenth division of my discourse!
I wish you had gone to hear Mr Jay .. I shd have liked you to have gone!
Dearest friend, you have done with me today. Think of Mr Kenyon confiding to me yesterday, that Flush had actually bitten him—that is, “mumbled, like a sheep.” [22] I must turn over a new leaf with Flush & put a muzzle on him—naughty Flush!—a little tiger, he is!–
Your ever affectionate
EBB–
I sent a letter to you last saturday—to Clifton—which I hope you received, yet fear—because another letter, sent at the same time, has never been heard of: and our page has confessed consigning all the letters of that day, “to a boy who was going near the post office”!! Tell me if you received it.
I think that Mrs Schimmelpenninck translated the very interesting story of the Port Royalists. Is she not the same person? [23]
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 225–228.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. EBB had discussed Christopher North’s ornithology in letter 1183.
2. A reference to the purported refusal of John Eagles to meet Miss Mitford (see letter 1241).
3. Spenser, The Faerie Queene, VI, i, 26, 8.
4. EBB had described in letter 910 the “family tempest” occasioned by her cousin’s marriage to Miss Eagles.
5. Underscored twice.
6. In letter 1188, EBB said “I have seen Bewick only in extracts”; the postscript to letter 1204 suggests that Miss Mitford had offered to lend her the book (The History of British Birds).
7. Sic, for Lynton, a popular summer resort on the north coast of Devon.
8. In a letter of 8 May to Miss Harrison, Miss Mitford said “I have seen, upon an average, from fifty to sixty people, most of them new people, every day” (Chorley, II, 6).
9. Part of Dr. Johnson’s celebrated definition of a net.
10. A scenic attraction just west of Lynton.
11. Mrs. Trollope was staying at Ilfracombe, some three miles west of Lynton, but Miss Mitford returned home before a meeting could be arranged.
12. Haydon clarified this expression in letter 1249. His autobiography was not published until 1853.
13. Cf. Macbeth, I, 7, 26.
14. A suffix denoting “that which produces,” from the Greek γενής.
15. A somewhat inappropriate comparison; the Old Man of the Mountains was Hassan ben Sabbah, the leader of the Assassins, a band of 11th-century Moslem fanatics.
16. “Extempore Effusion Upon the Death of James Hogg” (1835), line 32.
17. While at Prior Park Miss Mitford had been shown “a little volume of Latin hymns, the hymns Sir Walter Scott liked so well” and had been told that Thomas Moore had taken away a copy, perhaps with the intention of making an English version of them (Mitford, II, 202).
18. i.e., Miss Mitford’s seventh letter is available for the projected publication.
19. Peter Augustine Baines (1786–1843) had established, and now supervised, the college at Prior Park. Miss Mitford wrote: “The charm of Dr. Baines’s conversation is difficult to describe. He was the son of a Yorkshire farmer, and had risen to the rank of Vicar Apostolic, titular Bishop of some Eastern see, and to the highest influence among his English co-religionists” (Mitford, II, 201).
20. Psalms, 8:5.
21. Miss Mitford’s maid had feared that her mistress was about to embrace Catholicism (see L’Estrange (2), III, 175).
22. “Mumbled” used here in the sense of “to bite or chew softly, without making much use of the teeth” (OED).
23. “Mrs. Schimmelpenninck, authoress of ‘A Tour to Alet;’ a charming, venerable lady, with her Moravian dress and language, and her habit of feeding and comforting everything she came near; she would walk out alone, and return with a train of dogs and children, expecting and receiving doles of cake and gingerbread from her inexhaustible pockets” (Mitford, III, 9). EBB had referred to her book on Port Royal in letter 729.
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