Correspondence

1322.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 238–240.

[London]

Thursday– [13] July– 1843 [1]

I shall not be able to write much to you today my dearest friend—for Mr Hunter & Mary are coming .. Mary to stay with Miss Trepsack & Mr Hunter to spend the day, as both the others will, in this house. In the meantime, to your brief oracle (ah! if my oracles shd be growing dumb!) of yesterday, I will return brief rites of thanksgiving—begging you when you write again to tell me particularly how you are. Whether the crowds of tea drinkers have produced the specific evil you describe or not, it is clear that they cannot possibly be good for you in any possible way,—& the sooner the strawberries vanish away the better pleased for your sake, shall I be. It cannot be good for you! and I am surprised with all my knowledge of your benevolence & warm social charities, that it ever could be pleasant. Pray excommunicate your friends on certain days!– Nobody could be offended if you were to describe the exact case—that you are not strong, & that you cant find conversation at indiscretion for the whole population of the east of England, without suffering in your health & nervous system. My dearest Miss Mitford, when I was well & jubilant, I could not have borne it: the idea of it would have driven me into a wilderness .. to say nothing of a melancholy. And even more social persons than I (for I dont pretend to great capacities in that respect) would shrink & falter & grow misanthropical at the mere thoughts of such a social extravagance. I was sure it wd wear you out, before you confessed to being tired even! Ben ought to draw up the drawbridge,––& K .. stand in the breach. Dearest friend, dont wait for the strawberries to go—be valorous & resist the ingress.

For the rest,—have you consulted Mr May? Can you take fruit? I entreat you to tell me how you are.

The young Hedley boys are gone,—& the eldest son, nearly eighteen, has taken their place [2] —in this house—and uncle Hedley himself will replace him presently—we are very full, & have been very warm .. hot, I shd say, with the thermometer at seventy & above it. Today however is cooler. My ivy is growing with all its ivy-heart; & to look at the window you might think, if you are imaginative, that I live here in a bower, .. a rural cottage—& that people who give me goodmorrow, do it

 

[‘]‘through the sweetbriar & the vine

And the twisted eglantine”: [3]

so wonderfully effective & suggestive is the embrace of the ivy & the scarlet-runners.

Are you aware—did I tell you?—that Mr Edward Kenyon & his wife have arrived. Oh, I think I told you. Our Mr Kenyon is infinitely happy in it. He has removed to his new house in which he told me last week, is neither carpet nor curtain—and he sits in his easy chair, not like Scylla among ruins, but in a hopeful sort of desolation, building his Carthage. [4]

Yes! I like the spirit & courteous goodness of Mr James’s books [5] —and now since he has honored himself by taking an active interest in your affairs, I shall more than like him. I believe I have read almost everyone of his books .. either when I was ill or when I was well. They have much of what Chaucer calls “gentilesse” .. if not much passion & imagination— and his scenic descriptions are admirable. I do not know better books for an invalid—although the author of them wd not be pleased with my reason for saying so––viz that they seldom make the heart beat.

If you wished to contradict effectually any rumour which might be injurious, why not let it be stated in a newspaper by some friend who can spell, [6] as a passing gossip, that Miss Mitford’s subscription consists of so much? That might be done in two lines without any list or approach to a list–

Now I must go! I hear Mr Hunter’s voice!

I will question him about your Agnes. [7]

Ever most affectionately

your EBB–

No! it is’nt Mr Hunter!–

Tell me how K’s baby is. Is he with you, at Three Mile Cross?–

Did I tell you that Mr Rogers is about to set out to Munich with Mr Eastlake the artist? That is fine energy in an octogenarian. If he falls in love on the road, it will be complete. Only you wont permit people to be in love after .... what is the age?– I say, a hundred and ten—and you must not quarrel with me on such a point of sentiment.

You remember Mademoiselle de Montpensier’s delightful memoirs. She was fifty or past it when she met Lauzun, & the tears ran down my cheeks as I read the recitation of her love sorrows. [8] From something however which I said lightly about the book, Mr Horne fancied that I spoke mockingly of her grief in consideration of her age; and he reproved me with great &, I think, just gravity. This was long ago—but he mistook my meaning altogether.

You desecrate the physiology of love, I must believe, by confining the sentiment to youth. Now do consider this!– Only I eschew the controversy of it!– That foolish marriages shd be made by elderly people proves & disproves nothing in the question.

Now that is Mr Hunter!

Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 269–271.

Manuscript: Folger Shakespeare Library and Wellesley College.

1. Day provided by the arrival in London of John Kenyon’s brother on 8 July; see letter 1323.

2. Robert (“Robin”) Hedley was to commence his studies at Oxford in October.

3. Milton, “L’Allegro,” lines 47–48, slightly misquoted.

4. A lapse of memory; Carthage was razed by Scipio Africanus Minor in 146 B.C.

5. George Payne Rainsford James (1801–60) was the author of Henry Masterson (1832), The Gypsy (1835), Attila (1837) and The King’s Highway (1840).

6. By this reference to correct spelling, EBB is obliquely debarring herself from acting in this matter.

7. The daughter of Miss Mitford’s friend Mrs. Niven. The question may have been about her becoming one of Hunter’s pupils.

8. Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans, Duchesse de Montpensier (1627–93), niece of Louis XIII, fell in love with Antoine Nompar de Caumont, Duc de Lauzun (1633–1723) in March 1670 and they obtained Louis XIV’s permission to marry. The wedding was fixed for 20 December 1670, but on the 18th the King withdrew his consent, and in 1671 de Lauzun was sent to the Bastille. It was rumoured that they married secretly in 1681, on his release from prison; at that time he was nearly 50, she 54. The ups and downs of the relationship are depicted in her Mémoires (1729).

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