1280. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 180–181.
[London]
[ca. 11 June 1843] [1]
<***> that you wd shut yourself out from some of your social pleasures & attend to the pleasures of the grateful public by writing more Villages. “If it were but for two or three hours a day”! said he wistfully! “But people are always going to her—and then she must walk down with them to the garden-gate.”!– I was determined to tell you what he said. [2]
Did I ever say a word to you (talking of garden-gates) about your kindest of thoughts of inviting this house to your strawberry-beds? If I did, was it gratefully .. as I ought to do? So kind of you, so almost impossibly kind, as the thought was!
Did I tell you too of Flush’s being lost last week … & of his finding his way some three miles from hence, from the other side of Hampstead, across Regent’s Park, home again? Arabel took him there where she was to spend the day, & trusted him to a friend to bring back. He shrieked piteously to be taken care of by ‘the friend,’ & rushed after her—& both she & the friend calculated upon his safety with each other, .. the consequence of which was that Flushie was left alone. After five hours wandering (he cd not return by the way he went, on account of a shut door) he arrived at home in an ecstasy, & up to his throat in mud, & at seven o’clock in the evening. Dear, dear little Flushie! Tom Thumb (I dont meant [sic] yours) [3] could not have ‘got out of the wood’ [4] better; & the gesticulation of rapture in which he expressed both his sense of past danger & of present security, you must have seen to imagine adequately.
To be sure he is a coward altho’ descended from heroes!– A great shriek was heard through the house yesterday. Somebody said .. “The cat must have tried to scratch Flush” .. which will prove to you the popular opinion of him. It turned out however to be that he suddenly saw the housemaid behind the door, as, relying on the solitude of the early morning, he had ventured to walk into the diningroom!– There’s a hero for you!– .. or rather for me!–
Ever your attached
EBB
Ah—I wish I could see your pretty room!– I have a vision of it.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 244–245 (as [8? June 1843]).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. This letter precedes no. 1286, in which EBB responds to Miss Mitford’s questions about Flush’s “wandering mazes.”
2. EBB is probably reporting a conversation with Kenyon, one of her few visitors.
3. EBB means the diminutive hero of Fielding’s drama, not Miss Mitford’s pony.
4. Mme. d’Arblay used this phrase in a letter to Mrs. Locke, 20 December 1792 (Diary and Letters, III, 473).
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