1306. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 213–215.
[London]
June 30th 1843–
Dear dear little Flush!– How frightened you must have been—& how glad we both are that he is better! No! my Flush never has been “seriously ill.” He was unwell, sick, & without appetite, for several days once—but he was never very bad indeed .. not so bad as not rather to enjoy than otherwise the nursing & the patting & the pittying pertaining to his state of indisposition. My Flush is very fond of pity—& we suspect him of making the worst of his grievances upon most occasions. Who says that vanity, coquetry & affectations are peculiar to our humanity?– I dont, since I know Flush. I cannot pretend to such an opinion, as long as I see him preferring the coffee cup to the saucer (to the obvious inconvenience of his nose,) for the sake of drinking his coffee after my fashion——and sneezing as hard as he can contrive, when I hold up a bottle of eau de cologne with the cork in it——and sneezing by the same unnatural effort, when he sees Crow about to light a candle,—because the matches are kept in a bottle too; & the noise & the sudden flame frighten him; & he considers that the most emphatic way of expressing his disapprobation is to sneeze at the offence!– And then, his pleasure at being praised .. called pretty .. told that he has pretty teeth!– He will hold his head still, & his mouth half open, for minutes, until you have exhausted your admiration on his teeth—and triumphs in a succession of collars—& even, the other day, took a fancy to a bracelet on Arabel’s arm, & wd not be satisfied until she took it off & lay it over the back of his neck. If all that is not personal vanity, I really do not know what is!– But he never, although breathing this stagnant simoom commonly called London air, has been “seriously ill”—and a dog-dealer being in the house the other day & examining his mouth, told Crow that he never in all his experience, saw a house-dog in such a faultless state of health.
Did I tell you that it is Flush who always calls me in the morning? He always does. Crow comes into the room & pours out the water before she brings it to my bedside—& as soon as she enters the door, there is Flush, [who] leaps up & gives me one kiss as a signal that she is coming. He is gone to Chelsea to-day with Crow for an excursion—set off in high spirits, with the full sense of a pleasant day before him, leaping & dancing!–
As to what you quote, my dearest friend, for Southey’s opinion of Miss Austen,—with a modification at the “fine sentiment”, I could almost use the words of it in expressing mine. He does not say, nor does he intimate, that she looks upon life on its poetical side—& this is all I deny. “Dutch painting” it is, I think, in a sense—a depicturing of conventional life!—only there is more grace in her conventionality. Let your Dutch painter paint from middle life in England,—& you make a Miss Austen in his Art of him. That is my sincere impression.
Take Mrs Inchbald her contemporary. [1] Do you not feel that Mrs Inchbald even, who is limited in her powers, & by no means so perfect a consummator of her own aspiration as Miss Austen is, .. touches deeper pulses of the heart than your favorite writer was aware of in her anatomy? And for Bulwer, who is full of faults, he is a poet when he writes prose, & the spirit-world therefore presses around & pierces into sight through the material world as he contemplates it. Be sure my dearest friend, that,—as we cannot if we try, disinherit ourselves of our eternal relations,—any work of Art, however vivid & consummate, which excludes the sense of a soul within us & of a God above us & takes life in its conventionality denuded of its inner mystery,—will be felt in the end to be one-sided & unsufficing,—& deficient in the elements of greatness. And I do not say this through fanaticism—but through humanity .. through I mean, an apprehension of what man is. Looking back to the Greeks & to their divine works of Art, I feel that they shunned this conventional view of life upon principles of art. Were they not right?
It is a long argument—but I have been reading quite lately & for your sake & for the third time, her two best works .. Persuasion & Mansfield Park: & really my impressions do grow stronger & stronger in their old places. She is perfect after her kind—true to the nature she saw—& with a sufficient sense of the Beautiful, for grace. Like Mrs Hemans, she is too obviously a lady. I have put it in the shape of blame—& many might remark the same thing for praise: I mean however, that her ladyhood is stronger in her than her humanity. Not that she is defective in strength as Mrs Hemans sometimes is—she can “always do the thing she would” [2] better than anybody else. Surely, surely I am not a niggard in my praise of Jane Austen! To call her a great writer & learned in the secrets, heights & depths of our nature, or a poet in anywise, is all that I refuse to call her——and indeed I have not breath & articulation for such an opinion: & it astonishes me that you shd be so exorbitant my dearest Miss Mitford, in your claim for her! As to Charles Dickens, do you not know that I am not such an enthusiast as people call themselves generally in admiration of him … by no means a thick & thin Bozite?– But he makes me feel his power again & again & again—he has the heart of a man & it beats audibly, & I must confess that I hear the vibration of it. By the way, the last Chuzzlewit has made me angry for America. He is bitter as another Trollope!– [3]
Poor Mrs Dupuy!– It is sad indeed, this renewing of anxiety,—& worse, .. this jangling of evil tongues!– But it is not very strange,—is it?—that the individuals who spoke to you, being friends of Col. Blagrave’s, [4] shd be biased by his opinion,—& it is not likely, from all I can understand, that the impartial public will end by doubting her honor. I am very sorry for her however—very sorry! May God give her comfort!–
Dearest friend, you seem to have opened your tea-gardens for the summer, & I do not at all wonder at the crowds who enter in thereat. What I do wonder at is simply .. that you can ‘abide it’!– [5] I couldn’t, I am sure! I shd waste away gradually like my strawberries—Jupiter Hospitalis [6] wd smite me to death with his thunderbolt at my own door!–
Now I cannot write any more. I let Mr Horne know of his geranium-apotheosis [7] & of the whole multitude of your kindnesses—& the next news which comes to me will probably shew his arrival across your threshold. You will be ‘irresistible,’ as the Pythian called Alexander. [8]
Well! When he comes, ask him about Jane Austen. Say before him .... “Jane Austen & William Shakespeare” .. & there, stop—& watch the psychological phenomena!–
Forgive me my insolence! Will you? can you?
But you must!– Because I am in spite of my speeches, yours in admiring affection, always!–
EBB.
Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 258–261.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Elizabeth Inchbald (née Simpson, 1753–1821) was for a number of years an actress, appearing first in the provinces and then in London at Covent Garden and the Haymarket. She later turned to writing numerous plays. She is now remembered principally for her romance, A Simple Story, published in 1791.
2. Cf. Romans, 7:20.
3. The July number contained chapters XVI and XVII, in which Chuzzlewit arrives in New York and begins to make friends; they reflect Dickens’s disillusionment with America. Mrs. Trollope had also caused offence by her slighting references in Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832).
4. Mrs. Dupuy’s brother-in-law.
5. Joel, 2:11.
6. Jupiter presided over hospitality and punished any breach of its laws (cf. Æneid, I, 731).
7. i.e., his having a geranium named for Orion (see letter 1304).
8. See letter 787, note 2.
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