1290. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 191–192.
[London]
June 16. 1843.
My dearest friend, The victory (Mrs Dupuy’s) is complete—& what is of more importance, the perfect honor of her prosperity remains clear & stainless. Was I the first to tell you yesterday? How happily she must have gone to sleep & dream last night, on the very pillow of her former anxieties, cut down & withered for ever! She had the victory “with costs”. [1] I am very glad indeed, both for her sake & yours .. knowing the cordial pleasure it will give you!
Just ten minutes ago I had a note from poor Mr Horne who is not at all well, nor has been so for some little time .. & whom the nascent glories of Orion, who arises into the third edition next tuesday morning, cannot quite revive. He sends me an order upon this third edition for the twenty five copies, & a direction to send twenty of them to you, keeping five myself .. to which I answer that I wont have five or one … “what needs one?”. [2] No, my dearest Miss Mitford, I am on the spot, & surely by a little politic management I may get from one edition or another, the few copies I require—I am not like you (who is?)—I do not number my “learned & accomplished friends” by battallions, [3] .. & your power to do good to the poem by distributing it among the discerning, is much, .. while mine is null. Therefore I shall assuredly send you the twenty five copies & rejoice that you have them.
In the midst of this, comes Lady Margaret Cocks. She came yesterday when I was down stairs & too tired to see her; & being kind enough to come again today, there was no possibility of saying nay, in spite of my unfinished letter beckoning at me. Really she is kind—really I am unkind. I have given back the odes, applauding in one word tumbling over another, the good intention of them. [4] And she has been telling me of Mrs Archer Clive who is not so old after all,—she cant be older than her husband by more than three or four years, [5] —& was in love with him in an extreme way. How he came to think of marrying her has puzzled everybody, says Lady Margaret,—for she is certainly so lame as not to be able to walk at all without irons, & of no beauty of face or countenance, further than an intelligent expression. But Lady Margaret liked her as Miss Wiggins [6] very much, calls her very clever, & applauds her poetry more than I cd agree with her Ladyship in doing. There are thoughts & lines which are good .. fine sometimes: but the want of impulse is evident everywhere: & my idea of V [7] has always been .. a clever woman, whose vocation it is not, to write poetry. Her “I watched the Heavens” is after Dante—after in all sorts of ways. Of the “Nine poems” I have seen extracts only. [8] But you dont think the worse of her for riding .... do you? Poor thing!– She is lame: & it is a natural resource; & surely, since Diana Vernon’s time, it cant be called an ungraceful one!– [9]
I boasted yesterday of the security of my geraniums. Towards the evening one of them began to fade .. & at last the melancholy truth was obvious, that it had been broken off from the root (by the florist who helped himself to the roses) & planted again without a root!– How vexing!—how honest it makes one in proper indignation against dishonesty!–
Dearest friend, Crow interrupts me with warnings of the post.
I am none the worse for my exertion yesterday except by a bad night which was matter of course & expectation.
Ever your
EBB.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 249–250.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. For a full report of the judge’s summation and decision, see The Times, 16 June 1843, pp. 6–7.
2. Cf. King Lear, II, 4, 263.
3. Cf. Hamlet, IV, 5, 79.
4. See letter 1278, in which EBB had sighed over Lady Margaret’s verses.
5. Caroline Clive (née Meysey-Wigley, 1801–73), poetess and novelist, now remembered mainly for Paul Ferroll (1855), “a sensational novel of great power and considerable imagination” (DNB). She had married, in 1840, the Rev. Archer Clive, whose father, Edward Bolton Clive, was for many years M.P. for Hereford and was known to the Moulton-Barretts when they lived at Hope End (see letter 97); the family would, of course, have been equally well known to Lady Margaret.
6. Sic, for Wigley, Mrs. Clive’s maiden style.
7. The pseudonym used by Mrs. Clive in her early publications.
8. IX Poems by V. (1840) and I Watched the Heavens. A Poem, By V. (1842).
9. Diana Vernon, in Scott’s Rob Roy (1817), tells how “I learned out of doors to ride a horse, and bridle and saddle him in case of necessity, and to clear a five-barred gate, and fire a gun without winking, and all other of those masculine accomplishments, that my brute cousins run mad after” (ch. X).
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